Thomas Koenig, Sabina Mihelj, John Downey and Mine Gencel Bek
Media Framings of the Issue of Turkish Accession to the EU: A European or National Process?
Abstract
Recent empirical research has argued that there is a movement towards a Europeanized public sphere in the European Union. Based on a representative sample from the British, French, Slovenian, Turkish, and US-American press, this article explores via a novel content analytic method that codes frames semi-automatically through keywords, in how far the discourses about the proposed accession of Turkey to the EU approximate a European public sphere. The findings show that discourses do not fulfill basic standards of democratic deliberation: Not only are there vast differences in the intensity of the debates, but the distribution of the main frames that structure the discourse – a "clash of civilizations" between "Islamic Turkey" and "Christian Europe" on the one hand versus a liberal-multiculturalist project that unifies different civilizations under one political roof on the other – are differently distributed across the countries surveyed. The actual manifestations frames vary by country. All frames employed also consider collectivities rather than individuals the major parties of the discourse, a conception that runs against the tenets of rational-democratic deliberations.
Helena Valve
Evaluating Social Learning Potentials Generated by EU Structural Funding Programmes
Abstract
The EU structural funding programmes affect the circumstances in which people and organizations are to take part in regional development. The evaluation of this institutional impact poses a challenge to policy analysis. This paper suggests that the evolution of participation conditions can be evaluated by focusing on the social learning potential generated by the practices of programme implementation. Following Bourdieu, the context of social learning is described as a field; the crucial quality of a field is its level of autonomy. The analysis of the regional implementation of two Objective 5b programmes shows that the logic of structural funding restricts participation in many crucial ways. At the same time the constitution of social learning potential depends on the quality of the fields for which the programmes provide symbolic capital. However, policy implementation is non-linear by nature. The initiatives of civil actors and ‘reflexive practitioners’ can, for example, make a difference.
Nicoline Frølich
The Contribution of Cultural Theory to Understanding the Embeddedness of Arguments in the Implementation Process: The Case of University Reform
Abstract
The aim of this article is to explore the contribution of cultural theory to understanding the embeddedness of arguments in the implementation process. The application of cultural theory to studies of implementation entails investigating the implementation of reforms as different normative arguments pursuing different organizational solutions. Institutional theory posits that implementation of reforms in organizations depends on how well the values defending the reform match the basic values of the organization. Cultural theory contributes to institutional theory in two ways: firstly, cultural theory is an instrument for investigating the values that defend the reform; secondly, cultural theory posits that an organization consists of more than one value base. Consequently, cultural theory does not offer a fixed prediction concerning the outcome of implementation.
Sonia Morano Foadi
Key Issues and Causes of the Italian Brain Drain
Abstract
Scientific migration is a highly debated issue in Italy. Evidence of its actuality can be found in newspaper articles, television programmes as well as academic essays. There is a clear-cut use of the expression ‘brain drain’ rather than of the more modern terms ‘brain circulation’ or ‘brain exchange’, generally adopted to describe scientific flows in other European economies. To assess the causes of the Italian exodus of talent, this article uses a comparative approach to research key issues characterizing Italian scientific migration. More specifically, it aligns media descriptions of the phenomenon with the voices echoed by respondents interviewed in a study on mobility and excellence in science careers (the MOBEX project). This makes possible the systematic extraction of key issues of Italian scientific migration. A comparison between media accounts and migrant scientists’ narratives gives a clear picture of the nature of such outflow. Similarities and differences between these two social agents further enrich the analysis.
