Anne Stevens

Women, power and politics

This is major new introduction to womens political involvement and role in the liberal democratic world drawing examples from a wide range of countries to illustrate key common features and divergences. Stevens assesses womens participation and representation in government, parliaments and at the grassroots. Does gender make a difference?

Representative Bureaucracy — What, Why and How? Evidence from the European Commission

Issues of representation have become increasingly salient in European countries with attempts to find mechanisms to increase the representation of women, including various types of quota and parity legislation. This article examines the extension of the idea to bureaucracies. It looks at two arguments about this extension: should bureaucracies be regarded as places where representation can and should occur, and, even if representation in bureaucracies is regarded as possible, is it desirable. Having concluded that it is both possible and desirable, the article then examines the outworking of the notion of representation within one bureaucracy, the European Commission, on the basis of the considerations applied by feminists to elected representation. The example of the EC illuminates aspects of representative bureaucracy, and supports a normative argument for representation on the basis of symbolic, justice and deliberative arguments even if the agency argument must be nuanced by the need to avoid partiality.

The Reform of EU Management: Taking Stock and Looking Forward

Aside from its caricature as a bloated, corrupt and unaccountable foreign bureaucracy dedicated to interfering with the British way of life, little is either known or understood about the European Commission in the UK. According to the Commissions own website, it has four main functions: to propose legislation to the European Parliament and the Council; to manage and implement EU policies and the budget; to enforce European law (jointly with the Court of Justice), and to represent the European Union on the international stage. As readers of PPA will know, the Commission is made up of a college of political appointees (as of May 1st 2004, the college is 25 strong with one Commissioner from each member state), while the day-today work of the Commission is done by its administrative officials, experts, translators, interpreters and secretarial staff drawn from all the member states. There are at least 24,000 of these European civil servants responsible for managing and developing policies in some two dozen areas and overseeing a budget in excess of EurolOO billion spent in over 100 countries (http://europa.eu.int/institutions/ and Stevens with Stevens, 2001). It is the management of this latter part of the organization and its recent reform which is the subject of this special issue of PPA, gathering together as it does a unique set of contributions from the players involved and leading academics in the field. They were brought together for a conference in July 2004. We should like to acknowledge the sponsorship of the University Association for Contemporary European Studies, Glasgow Caledonian University and Aston Centre for the Study of Politics and the History of Ideas which made the conference possible. The personal and practical support of the Vice-Chancellor of Aston University, Professor Michael