Since 1994, the Swiss federal government has promoted a four-pillar model in drug policy comprising the elements prevention, therapy, harm reduction and law enforcement. Swiss Federal Narcotics Law (Betäubungsmittelgesetz, BetmG), however, limits the competence of the federal government in the area of drug policy to coordinating the activities of federal, cantonal and local authorities (besides responsibilities for information and documentation, research, training of professional staff as well as quality assurance). Policy implementation, in contrast, rests with the cantons. Against this background, the Federal Office of Public Health (Bundesamt für Gesundheit, BAG) has established various coordination mechanisms with a view to ensuring the nationwide diffusion and consolidation of the federal drug policy model, both on strategic and operational levels. For that purpose, INFODROG, the Swiss Office for the Coordination of Addiction Facilities (Schweizerische Koordinations- und Fachstelle Sucht), which is responsible for the pillars of therapy and harm reduction, was established in 2005 as a merger of two formerly independent institutions. So as to facilitate exchange with the cantonal governments and play a more influential part in cantonal policy-making on drug-related affairs, the BAG decided to commission the operation of INFODROG to the Conference of Cantonal Directors of Social Affairs (Sozialdirektorenkonferenz, SODK). In its function as a body of members of the cantonal executives, SODK tends to have a major impact on the strategic direction of social policy-making in the cantons. With the contract between BAG and SODK being up for renewal in early 2009, the present evaluation study (commissioned by BAG) aims at assessing to what extent the contractual relationship was effective in accomplishing its principal objective, i.e. the consolidation of the federal drug policy model in the cantons. It thus follows a summative approach and is to provide BAG with recommendations on whether to continue the contractual relationship with SODK and how to design this relationship in future. Drawing on both qualitative and quantitative methods, the study entails five modules: (1) investigation of the interactions between BAG and SODK in the context of the contractual relationship; (2) analysis of the perception of INFODROG by, and its impact on, the 26 Swiss cantons; (3) detailed case studies on the impact of INFODROG on six cantons and two cities; (4) online survey among cantonal addiction facilities; (5) synthesis of results and policy recommendations.
Vor dem Hintergrund der kontrovers geführten Diskussionen um den Bau von Minaretten in der Schweiz sowie im Zusammenhang mit einem Vorstoss aus dem Kantonsrat hat der Regierungsrat des Kantons Zürich eine Studie zur muslimischen Bevölkerung im Kanton Zürich in Auftrag gegeben. Die Studie soll die Thematik ausgehend von staatlichen Tätigkeitsfeldern angehen; eine vertiefte Untersuchung soll in den Feldern Bildung, Gesundheit, Soziales sowie Strafen und Massnahmen erfolgen. Ergänzend werden weitere Themenfelder (Arbeitsmarkt, Lebenssituation im Alter, politische Partizipation etc.) berücksichtigt. Dabei stellen sich Fragen, wie jene nach dem Umfang der muslimischen Bevölkerung, nach der Gewährleistung der Religionsfreiheit, den allenfalls seitens der staatlichen Stellen, der muslimischen Bevölkerung oder anderen Betroffenen auftretenden Problemen und den seitens des Staates getroffenen Vorkehrungen. Die Studie soll die Grundlagen für eine Versachlichung der Diskussion bereitstellen.
The study is aimed at identifying the factors which support a successful development of national strategies, programmes, packages of measures etc. with the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health (SFOPH) and will provide findings and guidelines for the future planning of programme development processes. The research is based mainly on detailed case studies of selected programme development processes in the SFOPH. The case studies consist of a detailed reconstruction of the programme formulation processes with special emphases on the actors involved in the processes and other factors influencing the success of the programme formulation. In addition to a traditional comparative case study design, the research will rely on the Actor Process Event Scheme approach (APES; see pwi-apes.uzh.ch) which allows not only for a graphical analysis of the processes but as well for a comparative social network analysis.
The Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN) is in charge of the environmental education on the federal level. The unit for Environmental Education (EE) encourages the implementation of environmental education since 12 years. The activities in environmental education of the FOEN are mostly based on partnerships with the following four institutions: the Foundation for Environmental Education (SUB/FEE), the Education Centre of WWF, Partner for Environmental Training and Sustainability (sanu) and Silviva, an organisation for environmental education and forest. Furthermore the FOEN collaborates with the Federal Office for Professional Education and Technology (OPET) and the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education. The evaluation of these activities intends to analyse the effects of the FOEN regarding the implementation of the environmental education in the educational system in Switzerland. It should give a basis for future activities of the FOEN in environmental education. The leading questions are 1) Did the division EE of the FOEN achieve their goals from 1993-2005? 2) How are the effects of the EE on a political level regarding the educational system in Switzerland and on a textual level in schools and education centres? 3) What can be improved regarding synergies with other domains like health and global learning in the framework of education for sustainable development? 4) What are the consequences of an abandonment of the EE in the FOEN? 5) What role plays the International Day of Forest? 6) What is the ideal institutional setting of the EE unit within the FOEN? The study follows a multi-methods approach with inter alia documentary analysis, surveys and expert interviews.
Many scholars have asserted that the legitimacy of democratic political systems depends more and more on the performance of public policies. Output of the political system is replacing input as the central criterion for legitimate public action. For a political system to achieve output legitimacy, it must incorporate information about the public’s perception of its performance into its policy-making processes. The question of how to measure public policy performance, the processes through which the media system selects and communicates news about public performance, and the utilization of information on public perceptions of performance in public decision-making have each received wide attention in the literature, some of which addresses the Swiss case. However, no research to date has attempted to show how these issues relate to each other. We propose to investigate these questions in a common framework, which will allow us to address how the interdependencies between the processes of creation, diffusion, and utilization of information affect public performance. Connecting these processes is a necessary step towards answering the question of whether information on performance can generate political legitimacy. To investigate these questions, four policy fields are selected, within each of which three to four case studies are conducted. Each of these embedded case studies deals with one policy-making process. The main questions are: 1) how is information about the performance of the public sector created? 2) How do the media (and other communication channels) select and frame information about public performance for diffusion to citizens and decision-makers? And 3) how does the public sector use this information about perceptions of its performance? This integrative approach will provide insight into the processes of creation, diffusion and utilization of information about public performance. In so doing, the project will contribute to the ongoing debate on whether democratic legitimacy can be secured by political system output and thereby covers a crucial topic for the future of democracy in the 21st century.
Background: HIV/Aids policies in Western Europe entered the phase of normalisation since the mid nineteen-nineties. The overall objective of this research project is to describe and to explain the development of HIV/Aids prevention policies in Western Europe in the current phase of normalisation, as well as to assess the capacity of national HIV/Aids prevention networks to meet current and future challenges in limiting the spread of HIV. Aims: During the first phase of funding, research activities were focused on the Swiss case (analysis of recent developments in HIV prevention policy at the Federal level as well as in seven cantons). The second phase of funding will be used to discuss the Swiss results in the light of developments in other European countries. Methods: The second phase of funding will entail comparative qualitative case studies in Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, and compare them to the Swiss case. The international case studies will work out developments of the various national HIV/Aids policies, since the mid-1990s, at the level of (1) policy ideas, (2) actors’ interests and motivations, and (3) institutional structures and procedures. More particularly we will focus on four domains of the national HIV/Aids policies: (a) large scale information campaigning, (b) targeted prevention for female sex workers, (c) targeted prevention for migrants, and (d) clinical treatment for persons living with HIV.
Wie kaum ein anderer Politikbereich verdankt die HIV/Aids-Prävention in Westeuropa ihren Erfolg der systematischen Verwendung von sozialwissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen. Auch in der Schweiz wurde seit dem Auftauchen des HIV Mitte der 1980er Jahre im Bereich der HIV/Aids-Prävention sozialwissenschaftliche Erkenntnisse gefördert, vermittelt und verwendet. Im Zuge der sogenannten Normalisierung wurde in der Schweiz die Förderung der HIV/Aids-spezifischen Grundlagenforschung im Jahre 2004 eingestellt, bzw. in die Strukturen der allgemeinen Forschungsförderung durch den Schweizer Nationalfonds übergeführt. Das Ziel dieser Expertise ist es, abzuschätzen wie sich diese Entwicklung auf die Erzeugung, Vermittlung und Verwendung von Erkenntnissen der sozialwissenschaftlichen HIV/Aids-Forschung auswirkt. Dazu wird erstens die Entwicklung der sozialwissenschaftlichen HIV/Aids-Forschungsförderung auf nationaler Ebene in der Schweiz aufgezeigt. Zweitens wird die Entwicklung der Forschungslandschaft anhand eines Inventars der geförderten Projekte im Bereich der sozialwissenschaftlichen HIV/Aids-Forschung dargelegt. Drittens werden die Auswirkungen der Veränderungen der HIV/Aids-spezifischen Förderungsstrukturen auf die Erzeugung, Vermittlung und Verwendung von politikrelevantem Wissen in diesem Bereich analysiert. Dazu wird einerseits ein Vergleich mit den Förderungsstrukturen von Frankreich und Deutschland sowie im Bereich der Suchtforschung in der Schweiz angestrebt, anderseits werden Interviews mit Experten aus der Forschung, Politik und Praxis geführt.
Since 1992 the Swiss Federal Office of Public Health and the Swiss Conference of Cantonal Ministers of Education encourage prevention and health promotion activities in the educational sector. The predecessor project "Santé Jeunesse" and the impulse program "Schools and health" laid the foundation for the current framework program "education + health – network Switzerland 2002-2010". The current program is based on a network approach and aims to establish a well founded understanding of health-related subjects in the entire educational sector, from pre-school up to and including the tertiary level. It supports the creation and nationwide coordination of a network of so called national centres of excellence for different health issues (e.g. nutrition, sexual health, stress and resource management). The evaluation of this program has a formative orientation and intends to improve the ongoing program. Furthermore, it develops an evaluation design for an upcoming summative evaluation. The evaluation consists of three parts: first it assesses the general appropriateness of the program strategy. Therefore we reconstruct the program theories underpinning the program strategy at the different levels (network of the centres of excellence/networks of each individual centre/individual school setting). Second, based on a multilevel network analysis, it provides an intermediate evaluation of the current implementation state. Third it prepares the evaluation concept to be implemented in a summative evaluation in 2008. For reasons external to our study, the evaluation has to be prematurely terminated. Therefore no final report for the general public is available.
The goal of this project is to develop guidelines for the application of the Evaluation Standards of the Swiss Evaluation Society (SEVAL-Standards) (see www.seval.ch) in the Swiss Federal Administration. The guidelines will rely on the experiences made so far applying the SEVAL-Standards. In addition, the guidelines will be tested together with representatives responsible for evaluation tasks within the Swiss Federal Administration. This project is part of the activities of the Federal Administration to implement Art. 170 of the Swiss Federal Constitution.
Our project intends to improve our understanding of how measures against right-wing extremism can best be evaluated in terms of their effectiveness. As part of this effort, we will also gather empirical evidence about the conditions for success in measures already undertaken to combat right-wing extremism. The results of this research project will provide the underpinnings for guidelines to be followed in crafting evaluations of measures undertaken against right-wing extremism, as well as recommendations of how measures against right-wing extremism can themselves be successfully crafted. To reach these goals, the research project consist of the following elements: The first step will be to collect and synthesize information from existing evaluations of programs against right-wing extremism or similar measures in Switzerland and abroad. A metaevaluation will be conducted as part of this synthesis to provide knowledge about how the effectiveness of measures against right-wing extremism can be assessed. The second step will be to create an inventory of successful projects by surveying organizations active in employing measures against right-wing extremism. Third, using the Delphi technique, experts will assess the success of the measures contained in the inventory. The objective here will be to select two best practice examples from each of three areas (police and penal law, youth work, school) as well as two examples from other fields. The success conditions for each of these eight best practices will be worked out in detailed evaluative case studies in a fourth step. These eight evaluative studies will be compared systematically in a fifth step, primarily to provide evidence about the generalizability of the criteria for success. On the basis of the results from the preceding steps, the sixth and final step will be to provide recommendations for the future design of (1) measures against right-wing extremism in Switzerland as well as (2) evaluation of the effectiveness of these measures.