A Human Rights Perspective on Citizen Participation in the EU's Governance of New Technologies

This article considers the EU’s approach to citizen participation in the governance of new technologies from a human rights perspective. Noting that there is a dearth of insight on the interplay between citizen participation and human rights, the article sketches the essence of its own human rights perspective as being about empowerment. This perspective is brought to bear on EU discourse on citizen participation in the governance of new technologies. Analysis of the discourse—comprising law, citizen participation in EU governance and citizen/science relations, the ‘public understanding of science and technology’, risk and bioethics—reveals a disempowering ‘deficit model’ of citizens in need of education through their participation in governance. The analysis thus suggests that citizen participation in EU governance of new technologies is not truly informed by human rights, but is instead used as a legitimating technique.

The Governance of Mandated Partnerships: The Case of Social Housing Procurement

Partnership working is nowadays a seemingly ubiquitous aspect of the management and delivery of public services, yet there remain major differences of opinion about how they best work for the different stakeholders they involve. The balances between mandate and trust, and between hard and soft power, are crucial to current debates about public service partnerships. This paper explores the example of social housing procurement in Northern Ireland, and the requirement to form mandated procurement groups. The research shows that the exercise of hierarchical power is still important in network governance; that mandated partnerships alter the balance between trust and power in partnership working, but the impact is uneven; and that these relationships are (re)shaping the ‘hybrid’ identity of housing associations. The balance between accountability for public resources and the independence of third sector organisations is the key tension in mandated partnerships. The Northern Ireland experience suggests that trust-based networks could provide more productive working relationships in partnerships for service delivery.

Rescaling the Governance of Renewable Energy: Lessons from the UK Devolution Experience

Efforts to rescale governance arrangements to foster sustainable development are rarely simple in their consequences, an out-turn examined in this paper through an analysis of how the governance of renewable energy in the UK has been impacted by the devolution of power to Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Theoretically, attention is given to the ways in which multiple modes of governing renewable energy, and the interactions between modes and objects of governance, together configure the scalar organization of renewable energy governance. Our findings show how the devolved governments have created new, sub-national renewable energy strategies and targets, yet their effectiveness largely depends on UK-wide systems of subsidy. Moreover, shared support for particular objects of governance—large-scale, commercial electricity generation facilities—has driven all the devolved government to centralize and expedite the issuing of consents. This leads to a wider conclusion. While the level at which environmental problems are addressed can affect how they are governed, what key actors believe about the objects of governance can mediate the effects of any rescaling processes.

The Governance of Childcare in Transition:A Comparative Analysis

Diversifying From Within: Community Policing and the Governance of Security in Northern Ireland

The subtle and complex nature of Northern Ireland's transitional landscape presents acute difficulties for the community policing concept. As the core to the police reforms in the country, its implementation has faltered in the face of institutional inertia within the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). This has been further exacerbated by a failure of the police to adequately increase the co-production of security through improved engagement and utilization of Northern Ireland's diverse community infrastructures. This paper will assess the delivery of community policing by the PSNI, while exploring their engagement with Northern Ireland's grass-roots community organizations, and specifically those involved with the governance of security at the local level. Thus, through a framework of adaptation, engagement and delivery of community policing by the PSNI within the unique context of Northern Ireland's security ‘otherness’, the paper will explore the key issues to police–community interaction associated with the broader vision of the Independent Commission on Policing (ICP) on community policing.

Corporate Mechanisms and the Presumption of Accountability

This paper seeks to draw out this focus on form in British public administration reform by focusing on the role that the idea of the corporate form has played in reform. Drawing on the codification of Foundation Trusts in the English NHS, I argue that, while accountability ought to be considered as a 'social space' in which conduct conducive to particular interests emerges, reformers tend to regard accountability as a function of appropriate procedures and forms. The turn to the corporate form relies on a hope that it will deliver various 'accountability' benefits will emerge. This hope, I argue, is misplaced

Committing to Effective Climate Governance in Northern Ireland: A Defining Test of Devolution

This is the second of a two-part analysis exploring the interaction between UK devolution and governance of the national low carbon transition. It argues that devolution shaped the national climate governance regime created by the Climate Change Act 2008, but will itself be tested and even altered as the traction of the low carbon imperative intensifies. This dynamic is explored in the specific context of the UK’s most devolved region. The first article argued that devolution facilitated and arguably forced Northern Ireland’s devolved administration to give a highly qualified and potentially illusory consent to the regional application of the UK Act. The second article argues that making a more effective commitment to climate governance will be a defining test of its devolution arrangements but will require constitutional arrangements designed for conflict resolution to mature. Failure to do so will have important implications for the UK’s putative ‘national’ low carbon transition and the longer-term viability of devolution in the region.