Why do local elected representatives facing similar institutional constraints choose different strategies? This dissertation develops a theory of strategy choice under incomplete decentralization, where municipal councilors remain electorally accountable but depend on bureaucratic and higher-level political actors for implementation, finance, and approval. Administrative, fiscal, and political constraints define the institutional setting, while leverage, the capacity to induce response, and cover, protection from sanction, capture councilors’ unequal positions within it. Drawing on more than 450 interviews, 67 municipal council meeting transcripts, and an original survey of 506 current and former councilors in urban India, I distinguish collaborative strategies based on coordination and follow-up from combative strategies based on public pressure and cost-imposition. Collaboration overwhelmingly dominates. Perceived bureaucratic discretion is the strongest correlate of movement toward combativeness, while leverage and cover do not reliably predict the binary shift between strategies. Instead, leverage more clearly distinguishes procedural from discretionary forms of collaboration. These findings show that incomplete decentralization does not eliminate local representation. It channels representation through continued dependence on actors councilors do not command and shifts attention from whether councilors collaborate to how they collaborate and when they escalate.
In November 2019 the European Parliament (2019/2930(RSP)) declared a climate and environmental emergency, calling for urgent and concrete action. The year 2019 was Europe's hottest year on record (Copernicus Climate Change Service, 2019), and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2018, p. v) reported that ‘emissions of greenhouse gases due to human activities, the root cause of global warming, continue to increase, year after year’. Swedish teenage climate activist Greta Thunberg inspired and led a worldwide school strike movement, and mass protests dominated by young women took place around the world (Wahlström et al., 2019). The European Parliament resolution of 14 March 2019 (2019/2582(RSP)) ‘welcomes the fact that people across Europe, in particular younger generations, are becoming increasingly active in demonstrating for climate justice’. At the institutional level 2019 was a year of renewal, with the European Parliament elections in May, the adoption of a new Council strategy in June and the appointment of a new Commission in December. Climate change was a priority for all these institutional actors. The Council strategy 2019–24, for example, insists on the urgent need to build a ‘climate-neutral, green, fair and social Europe’. The new President of the Commission Ursula von der Leyen announced her intention to see Europe become the first climate-neutral continent by 2050. Climate change arrived on the EU agenda in the 1980s, emerging out of environmental policy, which was already established as an area that required transnational action. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s the climate ambition of the EU exceeded its ability to agree on, and implement, effective actions (Dupont and Oberthür, 2015). When the USA withdrew from the Kyoto protocol in 2001 the EU took on a global leadership role and has continued to construct an identity as a global actor around the issue of climate change (Jordan et al., 2010). This had economic motivations (to avoid being undercut by exporters with lower environmental standards) but was also part of the post-Maastricht efforts to increase the EU's global actorness. The past decade has seen climate change gain prominence and take centre stage. In 2009 the landmark climate and energy framework (COM(2014)15 final) introduced targets for greenhouse gas emissions, energy efficiency and renewable energy. Within the European Commission climate action gained its own Directorate General, DG CLIMA. This was an important part of the process of institutionalizing climate change. The issue of climate change continued to rise up the EU and the global agenda, and there was a strong dynamic between the two. The Lisbon Treaty (2007) gave the EU competence to conclude international environmental agreements. The EU, along with its member states, is a party to the United Nations Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and plays a key role in trying to reach agreement on global targets (Biedenkopf and Dupont, 2013; Oberthür and Groen, 2018). It is in this context that the EU emerged as an influential player in the 2015 Paris Agreement, the first climate agreement to be universal and legally binding. International targets and monitoring and reporting have acted as an impetus for action on the part of the EU and many, although not all, its member states (Dupont, 2019). The European Green Deal (2019), drafted against the background of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (2018) report on the predicted impact of a global temperature rise of 1.5°C, further highlights the way that the issue of climate change has become part of the institutional fabric of the EU. Reinforcing the EU's commitments under the Paris agreement, as well as the UN's 2030 Agenda, with its Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (2015), it provides a framework in which the EU can try to assert leadership and mould its own efforts towards a sustainability that ‘leaves no-one behind’. The Council's conclusions on climate diplomacy of 18 February 2019 describe 2019 as the year of pushing further convergence between the SDGs and the climate agenda. The initial focus of EU climate policy was climate change mitigation. This refers to strategies for reducing climate change, largely through the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Key policy frameworks are the Climate and energy package and the Environmental Action Programme, which provides an overarching framework for all environmental and climate policy. The European Green Deal (COM(2019)640 final), proposed by the new Commission in 2019, sets out a strategy to achieve net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 while sustaining economic growth, and promises to enshrine this in legislation, with the first climate laws due to be proposed in 2020. Since 2013, internal EU climate policy has also included an adaptation strategy, in recognition of the fact that climate change is having an impact within the EU, as well as, more obviously, elsewhere. While climate change mitigation is more readily framed as an issue to be dealt with at the EU level, adaptation to the effects of climate change appeared, until recently, to require local responses or to be of concern only in the countries that are most severely hit by the impact of climate change, and are concentrated in the global south. The floods and heat waves of the early 2000s raised awareness of the impact of climate change within the EU and of its cross-border nature (Rayner and Jordan, 2010), prompting the adoption of an EU adaptation strategy (COM(2013)216). Member states are encouraged to produce national adaptation strategies, setting out, for example, how they will climate-proof their transport, energy and agriculture sectors, and protect their populations from flooding, droughts and heat waves. Adaptation has a longer history as part of EU external relations. The visible impact of climate change in developing countries, and the use of development aid for adaptation purposes, mean that climate change has been prominent in EU development policy. A Commission communication in 2003 (COM(2003)85 final) declared that climate change was a problem for development, as well as an environmental problem. Since the Lisbon treaty (2007), however, climate change has been substantially reframed on the external agenda, replacing a development frame with one much more closely related to migration and security (Youngs, 2014). Development policy is expected to align with the Union's strategic priorities, set out in the Global Strategy (2016), which is the overarching statement of EU foreign policy and that frames climate change as a security threat and a root cause of migration (Global Strategy, 2016, p. 27). This article will focus on two aspects of recent EU climate policy. The first is not new, but is important. It is the recognition that climate change, like other cross-cutting issues, cannot be addressed in isolation. It is inextricably connected to key areas of EU activity, including energy, transport and agriculture. Climate objectives need to be integrated into all areas of policymaking. This is referred to as climate mainstreaming and has been embraced by EU policymakers as a desirable practice. It has obvious parallels with gender mainstreaming, but, as this article shows, is itself gender blind, and this is problematic. The second aspect of recent EU climate policy on which this article focuses is new. It is the growing presence of statements about the need for a ‘just transition’ to a climate-neutral economy, one which ‘puts people first’ and ensures that ‘no-one is left behind’. I argue that embedding a gender lens in these two aspects of EU climate policy makes a valuable contribution to efforts to create a sustainable and just future. On the surface, it may seem that climate change affects everyone equally. As British Conservative MEP and member of the European Parliament Committee on Women's Rights and Gender Equality, Marina Yannakoudakis, said, ‘The climate is the same for males and females, so far as I know. When it rains we all get wet’ (BBC News, 2012). However, gender, development and environment scholars have produced a large volume of literature demonstrating that climate change is, indeed, gendered. The early contributions to this literature argued that structural inequalities in the global political economy and within societies increase women's vulnerability to the impact of climate change (Agrawala and Crick, 2009; Alston, 2013; Brody et al., 2008; Skinner, 2011). They argued that climate change has a particularly detrimental effect on the poorest countries and, within them, on the poorest parts of the population. As women constitute a large proportion of the poorest in society, they will be amongst the hardest hit and the least well positioned socially, legally and economically, to respond (Morrow, 2017). There is evidence to support the argument that women's vulnerability to the effects of climate change is increased in relation to men's by their relative disadvantage in terms of access to resources, land ownership, education and caring responsibilities (Dankelman, 2010). However, there is also a crucial insistence in the literature that women cannot be perceived as helpless victims of climate change (MacGregor, 2017). A second strand of the early gender and climate change literature emphasized women's agency and specific skills and knowledge which, it was argued, made them potentially useful actors in climate change adaptation. As food producers, for example, they were well placed to adapt agricultural techniques to changing environmental conditions. It was also argued that, as energy users in the home, they could play a role in climate change mitigation by adopting new forms of cooking stoves, for example. The gendered impact of climate change and women's role as climate actors are not confined to the global south, and researchers have demonstrated these links in rich industrialized countries, including EU member states (Tschakert and Machado, p. They have that there are gendered in the of climate change, including transport and energy They have gendered in vulnerability to the effects of climate as heat waves and and they have gendered in towards climate change and towards the need to mitigation and adaptation on and gender is to between women and and between and of women and not to between of and which can be by and women and Gender inequalities with other structural inequalities including and and Gender is one of of that have an impact on the of and as a of and makes it of in its with other structural lens has been by scholars to important contributions to of the impact of climate change and responses to it et al., and and Machado, 2012). can and in relation to climate change. women as victims of climate change, an that social on as gender, and place the vulnerability and of and example, on and the EU and 2013; and that there are gendered in energy and but that gender is not the only more women are not a and there are within the global and the global south. and p. for example, argue that, climate most have in with women across Europe with their at the Commission and this to their climate impact as well as climate to which inequalities in and p. and have out that women's presence in climate is and have for this to be and Development 2018). 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After a general campaign that aimed at changing the political and socioeconomic system, the 15M/Indignados abandoned the visible occupation of central squares decentralized through neighborhood assemblies, and specialized around different issues, such as housing, and the health and public education systems. Although often cohabitating amid tension, feminist activists of different generations forged internal and autonomous spaces that prioritized feminist aspirations and permeated dissent in the shadow of the Great Recession, sharing arenas with people who would not have been reached otherwise. Despite the feminist movement(s)’ heterogeneity, intersectional character, and organization through polycephalous networks, it has in recent times grown to stand out as the movement with the highest mobilization capacity in the country. Based on original qualitative data from 12 semi-structured interviews with key informants and activists, the piece of research sheds light on the tensions between different generations of feminists. It will explain the continuities and discontinuities between veteran and younger activists’ world views when it comes to their forms of politicization, theoretical underpinnings, strategic priorities, organizational configuration and resource mobilization, repertoires of action and cultural foundations. In addition, it contends that the ability of veteran and new activists to forge arenas of encounter, fostering debate and synergies during the antiausterity cycle of protest, were key to account for the cross-generational alliance-building processes, which have hitherto seldom been explored in the feminist movement(s) and beyond.
This paper explores the “Bill of Rights†in the Justice Verma Committee Report as an analytical framework for gender budgeting in justice. Gender budgeting in justice, as a public good, needs effective planning and financing strategies more than just a Budget Head on “Nirbhaya Fund†in national budgets. As gender budgeting in justice is more effective at the decentralized levels, a gender-conscious fiscal devolution, rather than “one size fits all†gender budgeting policies, should be designed as the plausible entry point to integrate gender justice in fiscal federalism. If “climate change†is already integrated in the TOR of Finance Commission in India, can “TOR on gender†in the Commission be far behind?
The candidate selection process in the United States has been, since the second half of the 20th century, one of the most inclusive and decentralized among the developed democracies. While such systems often presuppose party weakness or lack of control over the process, this article shows that patterns of campaign finance indicate that party weakness over candidate selection in the U.S. case may be overestimated. It also argues that a very open selection process offers opportunities for insurgent movements within parties that bring new ideas and demands. Finally, it suggests that political culture may mediate the relationship between party strength and democratized selection methods.
Over the past decade, a large number of studies have shown that in advanced democracies policymakers are more likely to represent the preferences of high-income citizens than the preferences of low-income citizens (e.g., Gilens 2005, 2012; Bartels 2008; Ellis 2012; Giger, Rosset and Bernauer 2012; Hayes 2012; Rigby and Wright 2013). In a quest to understand this income bias in substantive representation, several authors have recently suggested that the persistent descriptive underrepresentation of low-income groups in policymaking institutions may explain why political decisions are so frequently skewed toward the preferences of the affluent (e.g., Carnes 2012; Carnes and Lupu 2015).2 However, although this is a plausible explanation, many previous studies dealing with the consequences of descriptive representation have failed to find an effect of policymakers' incomes or social class backgrounds on their behavior in office (e.g., Matthews 1984; Norris and Lovenduski 1995). In this essay, we argue that descriptive representation may indeed have an effect on policymaking, yet for it to be consequential three necessary conditions must be satisfied. We explain in the next section what these conditions are. We then present research that we have recently conducted on representation in the Swiss parliament. Our analyses show that although Swiss legislators coming from lower-income backgrounds appear to have distinct preferences over policy, these differences in preferences do not translate into distinct behavior in the policymaking arena. Finally, drawing upon the three necessary conditions described below, the last section provides some suggestions as to why we fail to find an effect of descriptive representation on legislative behavior in the current Swiss context. The descriptive representation of different income groups may be important simply on symbolic grounds, since the legitimacy and authority of a “representative” body such as parliament can be undermined if it fails to reflect the composition of the population that it is intended to represent (e.g., Norris and Lovenduski 1995). If we assume, however, that constituents care primarily about policy outcomes (e.g., Downs 1957), rather than the composition of parliament, descriptive representation is important only to the extent that it affects legislative behavior.3 Based on this assumption, and following in part Carnes and Lupu (2015), we argue that there are three necessary conditions that must be satisfied for descriptive representation to have an effect on legislators' policymaking actions. First, legislators must share policy preferences with the group they represent descriptively, at least for a subset of the policies on the political agenda. Such preference congruence can be the result of two mechanisms. On the one hand, people with similar background characteristics may have “shared experiences,” which in turn promote similar interests and preferences over policy (Mansbridge 1999). By merely following their personal preferences, descriptive representatives then further not only their own interests but also those of the social groups they represent. On the other hand, congruence between the preferences of representatives and citizens belonging to the same socioeconomic group may be the product of responsiveness (Achen 1978). If the former have incentives to respond to the policy preferences of the latter (for instance because of reelection concerns; see, e.g., Mayhew 1974), the represented can “induce” preferences in their legislators (e.g., Snyder and Ting 2005). Second, much of the literature on legislative politics assumes that multiple principals can influence the voting behavior of legislators. Most important in this regard are party discipline and constituent pressure (e.g., Levitt 1996; Burden 2007; Carey 2009). Consequently, although legislators' behavior may be constrained by party leaders and constituents who do not belong to their descriptively represented groups, for descriptive representation to be relevant these principals must not determine legislators' actions completely. In order to be able to act according to the preferences of the groups they represent descriptively, representatives must therefore have some discretion in the policy decision-making process (see also Carnes and Lupu 2015). Third, legislators who descriptively represent a particular group must be presented with choices in the policymaking process that separate them from other legislators who do not represent the same group descriptively but are otherwise similar (e.g., in terms of party affiliation). If this is not the case, it is difficult to disentangle the effect of descriptive representation from the effects of other characteristics shared by the descriptive representatives and other (similar) representatives. Provided that these three conditions are satisfied, we expect descriptive representation to matter for legislative behavior. We turn next to a discussion of our research assessing whether and to what extent socioeconomic characteristics affect legislators' attitudes and behavior in the Swiss parliament. The Swiss parliament is a militia parliament. Hence, although the compensations legislators receive for their parliamentary activity may suffice to cover the cost of living, many retain a professional activity during their parliamentary mandates. Members of the Swiss parliament are therefore likely to have relatively diverse economic conditions, not only as a result of the different professions they exercised before entering parliament and the different levels of accumulated wealth, but also because their incomes can vary substantially depending on the professional activities conducted during their mandates. An important argument put forward by proponents of the militia system is that it allows for a more diverse composition of parliament and a closer connection between legislators and their constituents. However, in practice, the militia system does not seem to enhance the descriptive representation of different social classes, as the Swiss parliament is predominantly composed of liberal professionals, entrepreneurs, and high-rank civil servants (Pilotti et al. 2010, Pilotti this debate). These two features of the Swiss parliament – diversity in legislators' income levels, combined with a significant overrepresentation of representatives coming from high-income backgrounds – make it an interesting case for analyzing the link between the descriptive and the substantive representation of economically defined groups of citizens. In this essay, we thus report on two recent studies dealing with descriptive representation and its consequences in Switzerland. The first study focuses on policy preferences among candidates in the Swiss Federal elections of 2007 (Rosset 2013a, pp. 109-133). It is based on data from the candidate survey conducted as part of “Selects,” the Swiss electoral study. For this survey, all candidates to the two chambers of the Swiss parliament have been contacted and asked to answer a paper or online questionnaire regarding their political engagement, campaign activities, policy preferences as well as their socioeconomic background. Based on these data, the study analyzes candidates' preferences with regard to redistribution, using a question asking to what extent respondents agree with the statement that the state should do more to reduce income differences between the rich and the poor. The main independent variable of interest is the candidates' monthly household income. The analysis reveals that controlling for party affiliation, gender and education, income – even though measured only crudely by seven categories – has a significant negative effect on support for redistribution. In other words, candidates from the same party are on average less favorable to redistribution of income by the state if they themselves have higher incomes. Consequently, since citizens on average have both lower incomes and policy preferences that are much more favorable towards redistribution than their representatives (Rosset 2013b), this result suggests that the unequal descriptive representation of income groups in parliament could explain the unequal representation of their preferences on redistribution. The second study focuses on legislator responsiveness. It takes advantage of Switzerland's direct democratic system, in which parliament votes on each policy proposal that is put to a popular vote (Wüest and Lloren 2014). This institutional setting thus provides a unique opportunity to compare legislators' and citizens' policy preferences on identical scales.4 The empirical analysis consists of two steps. First, based on data from surveys carried out after popular votes (“Vox” surveys), the study examines whether citizens' policy preferences vary according to income. In line with previous research findings (Gilens 2009; Rigby and Wright 2011), this analysis shows that with regard to economic issues the poor tend to have more left-leaning preferences than more affluent citizens. After having shown that the preferences of poor and rich citizens differ, the study then assesses in a second step whether legislators with different socioeconomic backgrounds respond unequally to the policy preferences of different income groups. To do so, Wüest and Lloren (2014) regress legislators' voting decisions in parliament on three sets of independent variables: (i) indicator variables showing whether a legislator has a lower-income, middle-income or higher-income occupation (see Pilotti, Mach and Mazzoleni 2010), (ii) variables measuring the preferences of poor, middle-income and rich citizens, respectively, in a legislator's reelection constituency and (iii) a set of indicator variables to control for legislators' party affiliations.5 The analysis reveals, first, that representatives are more responsive to higher-income groups and that the preferences of the less affluent are therefore underrepresented in the legislative arena. Second, and most importantly for this essay, representatives occupying low-wage jobs are not more likely to cast a left vote than their colleagues who have middle- and higher-income occupations. Thus, conditional on party affiliation, legislators' socioeconomic backgrounds do not affect their voting decisions. Finally, the results show that legislator responsiveness to income group preferences does not depend on party affiliation. Consequently, this second study suggests that occupational income has no effect on legislators' behavior in final passage votes and that the overrepresentation of well-off representatives in parliament does not contribute to explaining the lack of congruence between legislators and lower-income citizens. At first sight, this finding contradicts a growing body of research that politicians' personal such as gender or ethnic influence their political behavior at various stages of the legislative process, thus enabling marginalized groups to voice their political concerns more accurately (Lefkofridi, Giger, and Kissau, 2012; Lloren 2015b; Preuhs 2006; Swers 2002). Some might argue that grouping legislators' according to income could be an improper measure to grasp the effect of one's position in the social structure on political decision-making (Carnes 2012; this debate; Mansbridge this debate). Accordingly, the politics of presence (Philipps 1995) postulates that personal features matter only to the extent that they generate shared social experiences, such as discrimination. Indeed, although a law student and a manual worker can be found in the same income brackets, no one would expect them to have similar social experiences or life chances, and, in turn, share a distinct set of policy preferences. However, the study carried out by Rosset (2013a) and discussed in the previous section shows that personal income determines candidates' preferences with regard to redistribution. Our findings presented above have shown that Swiss legislators' socioeconomic backgrounds are related to their attitudes towards income redistribution, yet do not seem to translate into specific patterns of voting behavior. Hence, although more research is needed to better understand the relationship between representatives' preferences and policymaking actions, we conclude this essay by offering some suggestions as to why legislators' socioeconomic characteristics do not appear to affect their behavior in parliament. As set forth in the introduction, three conditions must be satisfied for descriptive representation to have consequences for legislative behavior. Whereas the first of these conditions – that preferences of legislators are close to the preferences of the socioeconomic group they descriptively represent – is obviously satisfied, the other two are potentially violated. The second condition is violated if legislators' behavior is completely determined by party leaders and/or constituents not belonging to the groups they represent descriptively. In Switzerland, parties are decentralized organizations and legislators do not attach much importance to party loyalty as a guiding principle for their actions (Loewenberg and Mans 1988). However, this does not mean that they do not act in a cohesive manner and recent research suggests that party unity is higher on final passage votes and votes on salient issues (Traber et al. 2014). Therefore, the small influence of socioeconomic characteristics on legislators' voting behavior might be explained by the fact that their behavior is largely determined by party positions in votes on economic issues which are arguably salient. With regard to constituent pressure, we first note that given the large size of the underrepresented group of low-income citizens, legislators have a priori little electoral incentives to respond exclusively to the preferences of the more affluent. However, there is a clear class bias in political participation, which might explain why representing richer citizens could be of particular importance for reelection-seeking legislators (Rennwald 2014). Further, given the lack of party finance regulations and the low level of party subsidies in Switzerland, it may also be that politicians attach more importance to the preferences of constituents with greater financial resources they can contribute to political campaigns. Finally, the third condition for descriptive representation to matter is violated if there are no alternatives on the political agenda separating descriptive representatives from other legislators who do not represent the same group descriptively but who are otherwise similar. While coalition patterns among Swiss parties tend to differ across policy domains, recent research shows that with regard to economic issues there is a clear left-right cleavage, with center and right-wing parties favoring less welfare state than left-wing parties (Afonso and Papadopoulos 2014). Economic policies, therefore, divide legislators strongly along party lines, blurring more subtle differences in preferences that may exist among legislators with different income levels within parties (see also Mansbridge this debate). Consequently, proposals on economic issues might simply be not heterogeneous enough to allow us to disentangle the effects that socioeconomic characteristics may have on legislative behavior. This discussion also intends to serve as a cautionary note. Although in our analysis we failed to find an effect of descriptive representation on legislators' behavior, this does not imply that descriptive representation is irrelevant for policymaking. Rather, we believe that its effect is context-dependent. When the context changes (e.g., when party pressure decreases or more heterogeneous proposals are voted on in parliament), descriptive representation may become more important in structuring legislative behavior. For example, women's descriptive representation in the Swiss National Council has increased substantive representation for women (Lloren 2015a). In that case, the three conditions discussed earlier were satisfied. Women legislators are more likely to favor women friendly policy than their male colleagues and to vote together – sometimes even against their party – to support women's interests, especially on policies that yield weak left-right polarization such as moral issues. Exploring such context dependencies for other politically marginalized groups thus constitutes a fruitful avenue for future research. Finally, we should note that legislators' socioeconomic backgrounds might affect behavior other than roll call voting. For instance, some scholars have argued that legislators are less constrained by party pressure in earlier stages of the legislative process, such as when sponsoring bills or in floor debates, and therefore have more discretion to act according to the preferences of groups they represent descriptively (see, e.g., Carnes and Lupu 2015; Lupu this debate). Anouk Lloren is a postdoctoral visiting fellow at Columbia University funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Within the field of political behavior, her work relates to political participation, representation, gender, and socio-economic inequalities. Jan Rosset is a postdoctoral researcher at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES), University of Mannheim, with a fellowship from the Swiss National Science Foundation. His research focuses on the relationship between economic and political inequality and on democratic political representation. Reto Wüest is a PhD candidate in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of Geneva. His research interests include legislative institutions and behavior, economic inequality and political representation, and formal theory.
In Turkey, important decentralization measures were taken after the 1980s. The new administrative model gave local governments the role of dealing with social exclusion while financing social welfare expenditures through entrepreneurial investment of their non-material resources. This study is an attempt to discuss how such a challenge for local governments has been resolved through the analysis of gendering impacts of three decentralization reform programs.
The past eighteen years have witnessed a shift in the locus of much public sector service provision from elected and heavily regulated local government to the more opaque, appointed sector of quasi‐autonomous non‐governmental organizations (QUANGOs). This shift has been the basis of much debate about the nature of democratic accountability and whether the users of public services are empowered by such decentralization. What has yet to be considered is how the displacement of local authority representation and service delivery may affect different groups of service users. This article is concerned with such issues in relation to women as consumers of public services who, from genuine political as well as expedient motivations, have been relatively well represented by local authorities. The concern here is that as decision making moves away from public view, the need to be seen to accommodate difference is lost, and representative diversity will suffer.
This article provides an historical overview of the politicization of sexual harassment and legislative remedy in the United States and Sweden. While the American state formally recognizes the existence of sexual harassment and has taken steps against it, the Swedish state has been reluctant to provide legal remedy. This difference can be attributed to Sweden's centralized state and the strength of labor, which had the organizational capacity to effectively dismiss issues pertaining to women's sexual inequality. By contrast, American women benefitted from an autonomous feminist movement and a decentralized state that proved more permeable to feminist demands. Sweden's lack of legislative recognition of sexual harassment provides one of the most compelling challenges to the conventional characterization of the Swedish state as interventionist, innovative and egalitarian. While Sweden prides itself on the adoption of its most recently revised Equal Opportunities Act (1994), intended to promote equal rights for women with respect to employment, it has failed to mitigate effectively a central condition at work which is highly disadvantageous to women, sexual harassment.