The three types of issues discussed in Chapter 5 involve a combination of interesting and routine issues. Probably the most interesting are those related to eligibility that dealt with formal qualifications: legal training, law license, practice time, residence, age, and gender. Several challenges to licensing requirements arose because the requirement was stated as “learned in the law,” which in turn raised questions as to whether that meant holding a law degree. The more interesting issues concerned age, particularly after the passage of the federal Age Discrimination in Employment Act (ADEA); importantly, the ADEA cases arose in states that appointed rather than elected judges, and the issue was whether judicial positions fell under the “policy position” exclusion. Age-related cases were brought on other grounds (e.g., equal protection) as well, but those cases failed. Term length cases generally concerned how long a judge appointed to fill a vacancy was to serve. Vacancy cases concerned the existence of a vacancy and how vacancies were to be filled.

National convention delegates are chosen through a bewildering array of procedures that vary from state to state. Because states, for the most part, determine not only whether parties hold a primary or caucus, but also which voters are eligible to participate, delegates arrive at the national convention having been selected by very different constituencies that have very different policy ideas and very different levels of commitment to their respective parties.

The result is that neither the Republican Party nor the Democratic Party is able to express a clear ideological message through its presidential nominations. Presidential candidates seeking to win delegates in different state elections must appeal to the electorate in each state—and the state electorates differ greatly because the state-imposed voter eligibility rules differ greatly from state to state. As a result, candidates who articulate a clear and consistent message will draw different levels of support from the primary electorate in the various states, even when their messages appeal to similar proportions of party members and non-party members in each state.

Human services practitioners who are entering the field in the early twenty-first century, or who have worked in the field for some time and have seen wide-ranging changes in the ways human services are conceived, funded and delivered, face the same task of making sense of complexity at the government, organisational and grassroots levels. In analysing current social policy, it is appropriate to ask not only what is expected to be the impact of any proposed policy change on affected individuals and groups but also how the particular issue being addressed has come to be nominated as a social problem and which ideological forces are proposing change or opposing it. Social policy in Australia since white settlement has been shaped by dominant white, Judaeo-Christian values. Beyond that, any classification of Australian political dynamics and debates concerning social policy in terms of competing ideologies risks over-simplification. A distinguishing feature of successive Australian governments in the twentieth century was their respective approaches to social change being shaped by fundamentally different commitments to and strategies of social welfare provision.

In 2017, the Global Fund Board revised its Eligibility Policy, which sets out the criteria for which countries are eligible for financing. This chapter considers the impact of decisions made using those indicators, and explores debates over use of Gross National Income per capita (GNIpc) to determine aid eligibility. It also shows the role of civil society and community representatives in these high-level policy debates. Reviewing the Global Fund’s history, this chapter shows it was not the only donor wrestling with these problems of prioritization, and that in many countries the Fund was the last remaining external HIV donor to transition out. When some middle-income countries with concentrated epidemics among key populations saw multiple donors divest, programs for key populations, such as harm reduction, were at risk. In revising the Fund’s Eligibility Policy, the high-stakes contest was focused on a brief document of just a few pages, in which changing a single indicator could have sweeping consequences for countries such as Russia, where the Fund supported civil society advocacy for key populations. This chapter shows how three civil society delegations worked together to advance a shared position on the policy.

The chapter concerns steps to consider in preparing to become party to a treaty. It examines the eligibility of States and IOs to participate in multilateral treaties, including scenarios in which eligibility to join a treaty is not clear and what procedures may be used to resolve such issues. The chapter explains the importance of understanding ‘modes of expressing consent to be bound’, and choosing the appropriate mode. It looks at how a treaty may be made by exchange of instruments. Lastly, the chapter considers internal preparations to give consent to be bound for States and IOs, including consultations with stakeholders.