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The purpose of this monograph is to present the first English translation of a unique French colonial report on women living under colonial rule in West Africa.

The issue begins with a discussion of the contribution this report makes to the history of social development policy in Africa, and how it serves the on‐going critique of colonisation. This is followed by the English translation of the original report held in the National Archives of Senegal. The translation is accompanied by explanatory notes, translator’s comments, a glossary of African and technical terms, and a bibliography.

The discussion highlights contemporary social development policies and practices which featured in identical or similar forms in French colonial social policy.

As the report demonstrates, access to basic education and improving maternal/infant health care have dominated the social development agenda for women in sub‐Saharan Africa for over a century, and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future in the Millennium Development Goals which define the international community’s agenda for social development to 2015. The parallels between colonial and post‐colonial social policies in Africa raise questions about the philosophical and cultural foundations of contemporary social development policy in Africa and the direction policy is following in the 21st century.

Though the discussion adopts a consciously postcolonial perspective, the report that follows presents a consciously colonial view of the “Other”. Given the parallels identified here between contemporary and colonial policy‐making, this can only add to the value of the document in exploring the values that underpin contemporary social development practice.

Christian Democracy as an ideology and as a political movement has been ascendant in Western European states for half a century, forming the governing party or a major part of the governing coalition of parties in many of them over numerous decades up to the present. Yet the study of Christian Democracy, its general ideology and general programmatic elements across Western Europe, has been singularly lacking. Centrist establishment parties and economic programmes seem not to have the same appeal to academic investigators as the more exciting and ideologically demarcated ones. Also the future seems bleak for some Christian Democratic parties in Western Europe. The focuses are on the general ideology of the movement and the shared programmatic commonalities among the parties. Advances a consideration of the future for CD parties in the short term and the problems confronting Christian Democracy in the future. Also assesses the role and prospects for Christian Democracy in the European Union, particularly as they relate to the European People’s Party (EPP) in the European Parliament.

To study the legal underpinnings of the definition of social enterprise in the context of the problems with the corporate legal structures available in the UK in the late twentieth century and the reforms of the early twenty first century to assess whether further reforms are needed to facilitate the growth of the social enterprise movement.

A definition of social enterprise is proposed and examined in light of the problems associated with twentieth century company law and the efforts to reform and develop it in the period, 2000‐2006.

Three major developments may be seen to have important consequences for the continuing reform and development of company law: the Industrial and Provident Societies Act 2002 (Office of Public Sector Information 2002a) (private members bill); the Co‐operatives and Community Benefit Societies Act 2003 (Office of Public Sector Information 2003) (private members bill); the PIU Report “Private Action, Public Benefit” (Cabinet Office/Strategy Unit 2002) and the resulting Companies (Audit, Investigations and Community Business) Act 2004 (Office of Public Sector Information 2004); and the Charities Act 2006 (Office of Public Sector Information 2006). Refers also to other developments impacting on company law, notably the European Co‐operative Society’s European Co‐operative Society Statute (SCE) Regulation and Directive.

Provides a useful guide to UK legal trends likely to impact on social enterprises.

This article provides information about the Public Libraries Mobilising Advanced Networks (PULMAN) project, funded under the European Commission Information Society Technologies programme. As the project is carried out in the framework of the e‐Europe action plan, the e‐Europe strategy is outlined. Background information is included about the history of the project and about the PULMAN network. The main results to date include the PULMAN guidelines, which are being reviewed throughout the remaining period of the project, the gateway to distance learning courses for the library, museum and archives sector, and training workshops. The role of EBLIDA as an important partner in the PULMAN project is discussed. This article concludes that public libraries play a crucial role in ensuring a literate information society. The outcome of the PULMAN project and the resulting policy actions contribute to public libraries achieving their full potential in the information society.

The purpose of this paper is to reveal the formation and development of Slovenia’s neo-corporatist industrial relations system in the 1990s, and its change which overlaps with Slovenia’s accession to the EU and the eurozone.

The approach is based on the presumption that the transitional processes engaged in by the societies of “real socialism” were merely part of a larger and deeper transition – the great recommodification of the post-war decommodified societies of European democratic capitalism.

Already by the mid-1990s, the Slovenian industrial relations system contained all key features of the neo-corporatist regimes emerging after the Second World War in the European systems of democratic capitalism. Like those systems, in the 1990s Slovenia also saw a system being formed of political exchanges based on wage restraint policy. The combination of this wage policy and appropriate national monetary policy facilitated the Slovenian economy’s competitiveness and above-average growth. Slovenia was a success story.

The Slovenian system started to change in the middle of the last decade. The trigger of this change was Slovenia’s entry to the eurozone. Since then, Slovenian neo-corporatism has been subject to systematic deregulation. Despite this, the analysis suggests the Slovenian industrial relations system still contains a coordinating mechanism that distinguishes it from other “post-communist”, and, generally speaking, liberal market economies.

The purpose of this paper is to identify e‐skills shortages, gaps and mismatches in Europe, and the reasons behind these. In this light, the paper explores some key issues/aspects related to development of e‐Skills, while attempting to provide some benchmarking tools by which European countries may be able to access their current and future challenges regarding e‐Skills.

The paper begins with an overview of the problem highlighted in the literature and then moves on to what has already been done to solve the problem in European countries. Several policy options are proposed which could be implemented to deal with the problems of shortages, gaps and mismatches of e‐Skills.

The paper presents recent developments in the field of e‐Skills and highlights the various dimensions/aspects and issues of e‐Skills in the European perspective and prescribes innovative policy options to solve the problems of e‐Skills shortage/gap/mismatch in Europe.

The paper presents a discussion and provides some policy options to solve the problems of e‐Skills shortage/gap/mismatch in Europe, which will be helpful for policy‐related discussions and in suitable policy formulations.

The paper provides a detailed analysis of the issues related to e‐Skill by a comprehensive survey of literature and the existing framework. It also prescribes some alternative ways to resolve the problems of e‐Skills shortage/gap/mismatch in Europe.

While information communication technologies (ICTs) are essential for social and economic development in today's emerging digital society, the problem of the digital divide persists. To close this gap, the European Union has proposed eInclusive policies. However, a general belief has emerged that this issue must be dealt with at the local level. The purpose of this paper is to report on such an effort, the Digital Local Agenda (DLA). It aims to show the DLA development in Europe and provide an example of its utilization in practice through a European initiative.

The paper explains the rationale for the DLA, and examines implementation of the DLA in pilot sites in five European countries to support civil servants in small municipalities, and empower them to develop and utilize their capacities to use ICTs and reach people most in danger of eExclusion.

Preliminary findings indicate that the DLA should be considered when looking for solutions to the persistent problem of digital exclusion in Europe. Implementing the DLA may improve public service provision and reduce the digital divide faced by disempowered groups.

Given the flexible and adaptable instruments provided for in the DLA, the paper argues that the DLA is an effective and strategic approach to translate policy frameworks into solutions that practitioners can deploy to overcome the barriers of accessing eGovernment, reduce the digital divide among marginalized groups in Europe and include all stakeholders in decision making processes.

This paper aims to provide a meta-analysis of the main themes emerging from public domain foresight studies on the defence and security environment undertaken in the decade since the 9/11 attacks on the USA. The authors focus mainly on foresight studies undertaken in Europe.

The paper is based on a content analysis of public domain foresight studies.

Foresight studies on the defence and security environment reflect a shift in security thinking away from a focus on state-centric threats towards a much broader view of security risks that includes risks presented by the vulnerability of European society to the failure of critical infrastructure, to pandemics, environmental change and resource based conflicts. The authors place a particular emphasis on the treatment of technological change in these defence and security foresight studies and argue that the growing importance of dual-use technologies is likely to mean that defence will play a declining role as a sponsor and lead-user of advanced technologies in the future.

Foresight studies on the defence and security environment have grown in number since 9/11 not least in Europe. However, they have been the subject of little systematic analysis. This paper makes a contribution to such an analysis.

The purpose of this research is to investigate the future of education (pre‐primary, primary and secondary education) in Cyprus until the year 2020.

A three‐round Delphi forecasting technique is used in order to make predictions about the future of schools and schooling in Cyprus based on the opinions of a panel of Cypriot experts.

Future problems and difficulties, strategies for anticipating the future and possible and desirable features of the Cyprus school until the year 2020 are identified. Among these features are: increased influence of the free market, compatibility of the school with the information society, keeping pace with developments in European schools, re‐planning of the school infrastructure and programs, the increase in pupil violence, emphasis on evaluation procedures and staff development, and increased school “openness” towards society.

This study is limited in the fact that the only way to verify predictions about the future is to wait until they occur. Moreover, since it is based on the opinions of a select panel of experts, generalization of results must be made with caution.

The future characteristics of Cypriot schools that have been described and the specific predictions that have been made constitute a vast think‐tank of thoughts and opinions for the future state of schools and schooling in Cyprus.

The results of this study constitute a rich setting of future developments for Cyprus schools, which provides a particular source of information for those who have the responsibility of creating educational policy and planning for the years to come. Further, the value of the study as a comparative paper about how educational systems can cope with future challenges is great; additionally, the methodology used was technologically advanced and could easily be imitated by other researchers who would like to utilise it in future studies.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how innovation has become more important in information society policy and what the implications are for policy design, policy coordination and policy evaluation.

Against the background of European information society policy, a case study is done on the policy mix for ICT innovation in The Netherlands. A highly structured qualitative methodology is developed to analyse the relevant policy instruments in information society policy and innovation policy. The methodology includes a typology for rationale, policy instruments and element of the innovation process.

To a large extent, information society policy and innovation policy are complementary. There is some overlap between policy instruments. The rationale and objectives can be more explicit. The policy mix had a positive impact on information communication technology (ICT) knowledge, broadband and e‐government.

The paper presents the relevance, methods and results of a detailed study on the intersection of two policy fields: information society policy and innovation policy.