This volume argues that international human rights law has made a positive contribution to the realization of human rights in much of the world. Although governments sometimes ratify human rights treaties, gambling that they will experience little pressure to comply with them, this is not typically the case. Focusing on rights stakeholders rather than the United Nations or state pressure, Beth Simmons demonstrates through a combination of statistical analyses and case studies that the ratification of treaties leads to better rights practices on average. Simmons argues that international human rights law should get more practical and rhetorical support from the international community as a supplement to broader efforts to address conflict, development, and democratization.

/pdf/mobilizing-for-human-rights-international-law-in-domestic-1kn9xhxi9f.pdf

Mobilizing for Human Rights: International Law in Domestic Politics

Family planning: the unfinished agenda

https://www.who.int/reproductivehealth/publications/general/lancet_2.pdf

Sexual behaviour in context: a global perspective.

This paper focuses on the role of international actors in policy/ knowledge transfer processes to suggest a dynamic for the transnationalization of policy results. The paper seeks to redress the tendency towards methodological nationalism in much of the early policy transfer literature by bringing to the fore the role of international organizations and non-state actors in transnational transfer networks. Secondly, attention is drawn to 'soft' forms of transfer - such as the spread of norms - as a necessary complement to the hard transfer of policy tools, structures and practices and in which non-state actors play a more prominent role. Thirdly, transnational networks are identified as an important vehicle for the spread of policy and practice not only cross-nationally but in emergent venues of global governance.

/pdf/transfer-agents-and-global-networks-in-the-8wbtor7vv0.pdf

Transfer agents and global networks in the 'transnationalization' of policy

The case for undertaking policy analysis has been made by a number of scholars and practitioners. However, there has been much less attention given to how to do policy analysis, what research designs, theories or methods best inform policy analysis. This paper begins by looking at the health policy environment, and some of the challenges to researching this highly complex phenomenon. It focuses on research in middle and low income countries, drawing on some of the frameworks and theories, methodologies and designs that can be used in health policy analysis, giving examples from recent studies. The implications of case studies and of temporality in research design are explored. Attention is drawn to the roles of the policy researcher and the importance of reflexivity and researcher positionality in the research process. The final section explores ways of advancing the field of health policy analysis with recommendations on theory, methodology and researcher reflexivity.

/pdf/doing-health-policy-analysis-methodological-and-conceptual-3eh3hfi1iq.pdf

Doing health policy analysis: methodological and conceptual reflections and challenges

The politics of 'branding' in policy transfer: the case of DOTS for tuberculosis control.

The political environment of HIV: lessons from a comparison of Uganda and South Africa.

Since 1994, integrating human immunodeficiency virus/sexually transmitted disease (HIV/STD) services with primary health care, as part of reproductive health, has been advocated to address two major public health problems: to control the spread of HIV; and to improve women's reproductive health. However, integration is unlikely to succeed because primary health care and the political context within which this approach is taking place are unsuited to the task. In this paper, a historical comparison is made between the health systems of Ghana, Kenya and Zambia and that of South Africa, to examine progress on integration of HIV/STD services since 1994. Our findings indicate that primary health care in Ghana, Kenya and Zambia has been used mainly by women and children and that integration has meant adding new activities to these services. For the vertical programmes which support these services, integration implies enhanced collaboration rather than merged responsibility. This compromise between comprehensive rhetoric and selective reality has resulted in little change to existing structures and processes; problems with integration have been exacerbated by the activities of external donors. By comparison, in South Africa integration has been achieved through political commitment to primary health care rather than expanding vertical programmes (top-down management systems). The rhetoric of integration has been widely used in reproductive health despite lack of evidence for its feasibility, as a result of the convergence of four agendas: improving family planning quality; the need to improve women's health; the rapid spread of HIV; and conceptual shifts in primary health care. International reproductive health actors, however, have taken little account of political, financial and managerial constraints to implementation in low-income countries.

https://www.who.int/bulletin/archives/77(9)771.pdf

Integrating reproductive health: myth and ideology.

In the wake of the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development in Cairo considerable activity has occurred in national policy-making for reproductive health and in research on the implementation of the Cairo Program of Action. This report considers how effectively a key component of the Cairo agenda--integration of the management of sexually transmitted infections including HIV with maternal and child health--family planning services--has been implemented. Quantitative and qualitative data are used to illuminate the difficulties faced by implementers of reproductive health programs in Ghana Kenya South Africa and Zambia. In these countries clear evidence is found of a critical need to re-examine the continuing focus on family planning services and the nature of the processes by which managers implement reproductive health policies. Implications of findings for policy and program direction are discussed. (authors)

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/172211.pdf

Implementing the integration of component services for reproductive health.

Over the past few years increasing attention has been given to the role of international organizations in the diffusion of policy ideas and promotion of particular macro-level policies. Much of the attention has been on the ideological driving forces behind such policies, and on the extent to which the policies are externally imposed. There has been limited discussion on the bread-and-butter, technical policies of international organizations, and how they devise, adopt, adapt, and then promote what come to be seen as policies of global "best practice." This paper seeks to redress this gap by looking at the process of transfer of two infectious disease policies between international and national levels. It demonstrates that international organizations play different roles in policy transfer at particular stages in the process. The paper suggests that health policy transfer is a long adaptive process, made up of several iterative loops, as research and clinical practices developed in one or more countries are adopted, adapted, and taken up by international organizations which then mobilize support for particular policies, market, and promote them. Assumptions that new ideas about policies flow "rationally" into existing decision making are challenged by the processes analyzed here. Policy transfer, given the experience of these infectious diseases policies, goes through separate, "bottom-up," research-oriented, and "top-down" marketing-oriented loops. Individuals and different configurations of networks play key roles linking these loops. In the process, complex, context-specific policies are repackaged into simplified guidelines for global best practice, leading to considerable contestation within the policy networks.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1468-0491.2004.00243.x

L Lush

Papers

The politics of 'branding' in policy transfer: the case of DOTS for tuberculosis control.

The political environment of HIV: lessons from a comparison of Uganda and South Africa.

Integrating reproductive health: myth and ideology.

Implementing the integration of component services for reproductive health.

International Organizations in Transfer of Infectious Diseases: Iterative Loops of Adoption, Adaptation, and Marketing