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The role of evidence and expertise in policy-making has been of interest to public health professionals and political scientists alike. The public health community often sees its efforts as part of a linear knowledge transfer process and tends to blame itself for inadequate communication or translation of its arguments to policy-makers' language when its efforts fail. Political science, especially theories of the policy process, offer alternative perspectives to explain the success or failure of experts' preferred policy goals. This paper focuses on the concept of epistemic communities (groups of experts with a common policy goal derived from their shared knowledge) in policy-making, drawing on examples from the field of health technology assessment in Europe. By combining the parsimony and the central focus on experts of the linear knowledge transfer model with the recognition of complexity of political science, the epistemic communities concept provides a useful structure for the public health community to analyze its efforts to influence policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper studies the transition to ICT-based support systems for scientific research. These systems currently attempt the transition from the project stage to the more permanent stage of an infrastructure. The transition leads to several challenges, including in the area of establishing adequate governance regimes, which not all projects master successfully. Studying a set of cases from Europe and America, we look at patterns in the size and scope of the undertakings, embeddedness in user communities, aims and responsibilities, mechanisms of coordination, forms of governance, and time horizon and funding. We find that, though configurations and landscapes are somewhat diverse, successful projects typically follow distinctive paths, either large-scale or small-scale, and become what we term 'stable metaorganizations' or 'established communities.' [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we carried out a bibliometric analysis of the social sciences at three European universities (Vienna, Zurich, Oslo). The data source for this investigation was the Web of Science SSCI and publications between 2000 and 2006 were included for retrieval. Apart from the analysis of the publication output, activity and impact, networks of co-authorships, disciplines and references were explored. In general the results reveal that overall Oslo outperformed the other two universities which show similar publication activities and outputs. Using the University of Oslo as a benchmark should help to outline different strategies (research, publication and cooperation) to enhance the international visibility of the output of the University of Vienna in different fields of the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Resistance to antibiotics is a major public health problem and antibiotic use is being increasingly recognized as the main selective pressure driving this resistance. Yearly and quarterly data on outpatient antibiotic use were collected by the European Surveillance of Antimicrobial Consumption (ESAC) project for the period 1997–2009 from 33 and 27 European countries, respectively, and expressed in defined daily doses per 1000 inhabitants per day. Since repeated measures were taken for the countries, correlation has to be taken into account when analysing the data. This paper illustrates the application of mixed-effects models to the study of country-specific outpatient antibiotic use in Europe. Mixed models are useful in a wide variety of disciplines in the biomedical, physical and social sciences. In this application for outpatient antibiotic use, the linear mixed model is extended to a non-linear mixed model, allowing analysis of seasonal variation on top of a global trend, with country-specific effects for global mean use and amplitude, and trends over time in use and in amplitude. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In light of recent outbreaks of diseases such as measles in Europe, policymakers and public health practitioners are seeking strategies to address anti-vaccination attitudes and to increase immunization rates. Identifying effective strategies that will not further alienate vaccination sceptics raises challenges that go to the heart of relations between the state and society. Drawing on accounts of state–society relations, this article discusses how the problem of vaccination hesitancy might be explained from a political science perspective. Discourse-analytical approaches emphasize the importance of storylines, politics and social context in explaining a range of phenomena. Given the number and strength of prevailing discourses in groups with anti-vaccination sentiments, the literature on discourse coalitions can offer perspectives on the challenges that arise in designing strategies to address vaccine hesitancy. Paying closer attention to individual reasons why parents are vaccine hesitant might allow for designing strategies that are more suited to address concerns. However, given the pervasiveness of the discourses of anti-vaccination movements, challenges in reaching citizens who are sceptical of vaccines will remain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article aims at contributing to understanding the European Research Area (ERA), from the perspective of science policy coordination. It first looks at ERA as an evolution of European science policy, shaped by ideas as to what science policy is and should be, by its own history and by evolutions in national systems. The article argues that in a context of an apparently increasing concern with societal challenges and priority-setting, institutional developments in Europe mark a trend away from mission-oriented policies and towards diffusion-oriented policies. The article looks in detail at national structures, resources and programmes in social sciences and humanities which are subjected to the coordinating influence of a changing European policy landscape. As new elements in European policy increase the coordinating influence of the European level on the national, the article concludes on the way the differences in resources and structures affect the way different countries participate in the ERA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although weighting seems to be a popular strategy for coping with panel attrition in sociological research it is not clear how effective it is in reducing attrition bias. This article aims to fill this gap by giving an assessment of the effectiveness of weighting in the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). Estimates of the distribution of social class and education appear to be dropout biased in the ECHP. Moreover, the direction of the bias differs across countries. Weighting with the ECHP longitudinal weight tends to reduce this bias to some extent; yet, unexpectedly, it also sometimes increases it. The latter problem is largely avoided, however, by replacing the available ECHP-weight with a new longitudinal weight that includes better predictors of dropout, such as covariates related to the interview process, to respondents' previous interview experiences, and education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Foreign direct investment (FDI) is considered a powerful catalyst in market transition. However, FDI flows vary greatly across Central and East European transition countries. I compare and contrast current approaches, which consider country characteristics as determinants of FDI, with a relational approach that emphasizes institutional, political, economic, and cultural connections between investor and host countries. Regression analyses of FDI flows in country dyads provide little evidence for the effects of country characteristics. Political, migration, trade, and cultural relations between investors and hosts have strong positive effects on FDI flows, and they add considerably to the proportion of the explained cross-national variance. These findings highlight the utility of a relational understanding of macroeconomic processes, as well as the importance of examining how substantively different social relations shape economic exchange. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article illustrate contrasts and similarities in the general development of European and American sociology in recent times. A conspicuous difference in this respect is that in American Sociology has grown as a child nursed by the Universities and Colleges; while in Europe its modern start, since August Comte, and development have in a considerable degree taken place outside of the Universities and Colleges. Indeed a number of the founders of the principal modern sociological systems in Europe never occupied the position of a teacher in University at all. This difference also continues to exist at the present moment: although the number of Universities and Colleges in Europe where sociology has been introduced as a regular course has considerably increased since the time of the War and Revolutions; nevertheless this number is still much below that of the United States. Another difference lies in the character of the European and American sociologists. The bulk of the sociological works in America are marked by their quantitative and empirical character while the bulk of the sociological literature of Europe is still marked by an analytical elaboration of concepts and definitions; by a philosophical and epistemological polishing of words.

The story of man's occupation of the earth seems to be divided into two rather sharply marked periods the ancient and the modem world. It is not altogether a distinction of time; somewhat it is of space. For more than half of mankind is living in the ancient world today for all practical purposes. People of Europe and the Western Hemisphere and of certain islands of the Western seas are proud of our modernity. Perhaps the pride is based too heavily upon the modern machinery that people use so universally. The difference between the ancient world and the modern world, wherever those worlds may exist in time or space, is the difference of ideals upon which the two worlds are founded. The ancient world seems to have risen upon the theory that physical force is man's final arbiter, The modern world seems to be growing upon the faith that ideas rule that things of the spirit are unconquerable when they promote broader fellowships, more abundant living, more kindly pace in the works and ways of men.