By global actors, we mean either agencies with a global membership (e.g. the UN, the World Bank), or international non-governmental organisations (e.g. IPPF), or national agencies that are active on a global scale (e.g. USAID, SIDA). By national actors we mean primarily national governments or non-governmental associations active on a national scale in adopting policies and/or implementing programmes), and by local actors we mean the men and women who choose to change, or not change, their fertility attitudes and behaviour.

In accounting for fertility declines–or, in some cases, the failure of fertility to decline-- most researchers have focused on the motivations of individual actors (e.g. women deciding whether to have fewer children and/or whether to use family planning.) Others have focused on the role of global actors e.g. «Supply-side» approaches or on national actors (e.g. discussions of the importance of «political will»). For this session, papers may address any aspect of interactions between at least two of these levels (e.g. between global and national, or between national and local, or all levels). Papers may focus either on policies (e.g. population, family planning) or on programmes (e.g. media, provision of family planning).

For example, a paper might consider the efforts global actors made in the 1960s and 1970s to encourage a specific national government to adopt a population policy or to implement a family planning programme, and then examine the national government’s response. Did the national government object to some aspects of the policy or some areas of implementation? Did it modify the suggested policy, or implement it in a way that global actors had not envisaged? Similar questions could be asked about Cairo: is the government adopting some of the Cairo recommendations but rejecting others?

For example, national governments may institute a family planning programme but meet resistance from clinic personnel to some aspects of the programme. For example, clinic personnel may be uncomfortable making family planning available to young unmarried women or asking about STDs, or they may object to making family planning available through non-medical personnel such as Community Based Distribution agents.

For example, gender issues: those in charge of national family planning programmes in the 1960s and 1970s (and sometimes later) often claimed that it was necessary to involve men in the programmes, but until recently few such efforts have been made. Why not, and what accounts for the recent increase in attempts to involve men? Have such attempts worked?