Dominant approaches to norm development have shaped and limited the direction and impact of the norm research programme. While early work tended to characterise norm development in relatively teleological and progressive terms, more recent work has explored how a norm’s meaning changes through processes of interpretation, contestation, and violation. In spite of this important corrective and the rich debates that have emerged from it, understandings of norm development have continued to be hampered by a focus on behavioral measures and on changes in norm content. As a result, approaches to norm development remain incomplete, most notably in their neglect of norm strength. To address these shortcomings, this chapter critically reviews existing scholarship on norm change and development, highlighting the need to consider norm content and norm strength as distinct and constitutive elements in processes of norm development. The chapter proposes a typology that identifies four forms of norm change, along with an updated conceptual framework for understanding norm development. This conceptual framework overcomes existing conceptual gaps and inconsistencies in the study of norm processes. In so doing, it promises to advance existing theoretical debates, open new directions of inquiry, and contribute to the further accumulation of knowledge about international norms.

Between the late 1960s and early 1980s, at least ten major and many smaller inquiries were held into neglectful, abusive and violent practices in a number of psychiatric and ‘mental handicap’ hospitals. Many of these institutions, or certain wards inside them, had become professionally isolated and severely under-resourced. Deeply ingrained cultures of harm and neglect had evolved over years, causing untold suffering to many of society’s most vulnerable people, including those with severe learning disabilities and older people. This chapter provides an overview of shifts in the understanding of institutional environments in the post-war period and the subsequent emphasis on moving care for acute conditions into the community, leaving long-stay wards more isolated than ever. It explores the social, cultural and political mechanisms that facilitated the exposure of harmful practices by the press and campaigners, compelling politicians to order inquiries. Finally, it examines how the inquiries helped to bring about change to the provision of long-term care in the 1970s and contribute to the widespread closure of the old Victorian asylums from the 1980s.

Several approaches have emerged for understanding how policy advisory systems are organised and operate. A dominant early theme in PAS research has been location, focusing on distributional issues about where the supply of advice was located and the ability of a government to control it. Research charted the ascendency and decline of advisory units, with an emphasis on the public service’s changing role, and the impacts on policymaking and governing of new sources of supply and shifting demand. A second approach has been the content of policy advice. This has recognised that, while location was important, the composition, operation, and influence of units within these systems were in part a result of the congruence of the content of advice with demand, regardless of the location or government control. Third are the dynamics linked to the stability and change of individual components or entire systems over time. The main focus has been the externalisation and politicisation of these systems because of their significance and identifiability. Another approach is to examine change according to its magnitude: from overarching frameworks to micro adjustments. Finally, organisational dynamics are considered as types of advisory units rise and fall in significance or change character.

Chapter 8 analyses the patterns of change and the state of the respective systems. Comparative analysis provides an understanding of the types and nature of change, drawing attention to system-wide and localised modifications to advisory instruments. It also highlights distinct types of changes and the shared and distinct trajectories that have impacted the configuration and operation of these systems. The analysis focuses on differences in types of change by adapting Hall’s (1993) three ‘orders’ of change: first-order policy advisory systems (PAS) changes involving routine adjustments to existing practices or units; second-order change addressing the ascendency and decline of categories of advisers and shifts in advisory practices; and third-order macro-level changes. The trajectories of PAS change are distinguished by differences in tempo and sequencing, some being gradual and longer-term (e.g., erosion of public service capacity), while others are abrupt and transformational (e.g., responses to the global financial crisis). The cases feature different sequencing when (de)institutionalisation occurs (e.g., partisan advisers). The dynamics of externalisation and politicisation are reappraised using subtypes that reveal their breadth. The flexibility and adaptability inherent in PAS, government preferences and environmental pressures will lead to continuing change and the need for comprehensive approaches to understand it.

Through shared spaces and experiences, alliances, friendships and animosities developed between inmates from diverse backgrounds, as well as between prisoners and the staff charged with their care and control, Chapter 3 focuses on relationships that developed or were sustained in the predominantly female environment of the women’s convict prisons. Facilitated by the tendency for meticulous record-keeping in the vast penal system, this chapter relies heavily on records relating to perceived misbehaviour to demonstrate how alliances and rivalries were formed, expressed and navigated behind bars. This also includes an analysis of relationships that developed between staff and inmates across assumed boundaries of power. The out-of-turn conversations, laughter, name-calling and arguments indicate the interconnectedness of women’s lives behind bars. As this chapter shows, alliances and rivalries emerged despite the prison regime, but also perhaps because of it. It argues that the development of friendships and animosities was inevitable within the prison confines. This chapter also demonstrates that friendships forged or cemented in the institution were not necessarily forgotten on release.

This chapter consists of a literature review of girls’ and young women’s crime and deviance from a long-term perspective. It shows how certain themes have dominated European discourses and realities of female juvenile delinquency across several centuries and up until the present day, and how these various threats and transgressions have been countered by recurrent strategies. In assessing sexual misconduct, theft and vagrancy – three crime categories that were prevalent among prosecutions of young women – it identifies powerful and enduring narratives centering on concerns about girls’ sexuality and independence. Finally, in comparing responses to female juvenile crime and deviance across Western Europe since the eighteenth century, certain ‘solutions’ have proven dominant and very enduring: institutional confinement of criminal and problem girls on the one hand, and the pathologisation of female (juvenile) crime on the other.

Employing a mixed-method approach to quantitative data from the Queensland Police Gazette and qualitative evidence from newspaper archives and government reviews of women’s gaols, this chapter studies women’s imprisonment in Queensland, Australia, at the end of the nineteenth century. It describes the profiles of men and women committed to prison in Queensland from 1880–1899, and the extent to which men and women recidivated. In spite of a number of methodological caveats, women were more likely to be (chronic) recidivists than men during the late nineteenth century in Queensland. This chapter argues that this can be explained in terms of their different social and economic disadvantages and vulnerabilities, related to their stigmatization, policing and institutionalization.

This chapter draws on research into the lives and prison experiences of around 650 male and female convicts who were released on licence (an early form of parole) from sentences of long-term imprisonment in England in the mid- to late nineteenth century. While both men and women were overwhelmingly committed to the convict system for larceny, their treatment differed significantly. The vast majority of convicts were released early on licence from their prison terms, even those committing very serious offences. However, female offenders were released slightly earlier and under different conditions than men. Having offended against their gender as well as society, more moral rehabilitation was deemed necessary for deviant women than for men, leading to requirements such as entering refuges or shelters. Female convicts’ internment in these institutions after being granted a licence reveals the impact of gender expectations on female prisoners in England.

Chapter 6 explores the approach of international actors to child génocidaires and to the Rwandan government’s legal and policy responses to such children. It describes briefly the approach of UN bodies (both non-operational and those with a field presence in Rwanda) and international NGOs. It then details UNICEF Rwanda’s involvement with child génocidaires, examining how it became involved with the issue and providing an overview of its activities. It draws upon specific issues to exemplify how UNICEF Rwanda interpreted and applied international standards in the Rwandan context and illustrates the contention within UNICEF, and the friction between UNICEF Rwanda and other actors over how best to implement the CRC, particularly as regards institutionalisation. It finds that UNICEF Rwanda interpreted the provisions of the CRC (and related instruments) in a non-restrictive way to fit the Rwandan context, relying in particular on the best interests of the child principle, and that this included working progressively towards implementation and compliance and prioritising some rights over others.

The previous chapters showed how Christians assimilated the classical tradition of free speech and turned it into a Christian practice. This chapter explores the other end of the spectrum of the Christian reception of classical free speech, and investigates the doubts and reservations against frank speech that were expressed in some Christian communities, especially in ascetic milieus, from the fifth to the seventh centuries. It questions Foucault’s thesis that the rise of monasticism smothered classical ideals of free speech. As this chapter shows, authors of ascetic literature did indeed emphasise the beneficial effects of silence versus the dangerous power of the tongue and maintained that unrestrained freedom of speech and free behaviour of monks amongst each other impeded spiritual growth. However, it also shows that ascetic ideals of self-control and silence did not replace, but rather reframed the traditional discourse of free speech.

This chapter investigates narrative representations of free speech in early Christian martyr acts written between c. 150 and the end of persecution in 313. It discusses both pagan and Christian models that inspired authors of early Christian martyr acts to represent the speech and behaviour of martyrs in a certain manner. One of the issues the authors addressed was how a Christian should behave when he or she stood trial before secular authorities, and what measure of frank speech was appropriate in this situation. Early Christian martyrs are often presented as respectful, polite and reticent towards authorities during interrogation. We also see a clear preference for plain speech over studied rhetoric. The chapter addresses the question of whether new interpretations of parrhesia that we find in these martyrdom narratives should be seen as indicative of a growing reluctance among Christians to criticise those in power, or as part of a process of acculturation.

This final chapter assesses the feasibility of the ideas proposed in this book. It concludes that many parts of the project are feasible because the scientific knowledge exists and in many cases databases have already been produced. Also, the split into system and quality accounts allows for structured multidisciplinarity to be implemented. A practical problem is organisation and implementation of this programme.

The previous chapters have shown that there is one powerful community (“the GDP multinational") which is being challenged by a heterogeneous and weakly organised community (“the Beyond-GDP cottage industry). The ever-expanding range of Beyond-GDP initiatives will not lead to success however. A new strategy is based on the GDP success story and aims to create an institutionalised community with a clear goal and coherent structure based on a common language. The chapter argues that the community should not be based on the SDGs, green accounting or the SEEA. It also argues that the community should not be based on economic terminology and theory but rather on multidisciplinary building blocks such as stock/flow accounting, networks and limits. The aim of the community is to enhance well-being and sustainability and one of its most important features is its common language: the System of Global and National Accounts (SGNA). The SGNA has four system accounts (environment, society, economy and distribution), which describe how the systems are developing. However, this does not yet tell people whether the developments are good or bad. This is left to the quality accounts.