21 Cantonal department of Health, Social Affairs and Culture, Social Action Service, 'Results World Café 'Handicap Valais' 2019. Preparation of the partial Revision of the Valais Law on the Integration of People with Disabilities, in collaboration with the people concerned', Valais, February 2020.

of Persons with Disabilities'.23 Additionally, the office responsible for coordinating disability issues was renamed 'Office of Co-ordination for Disability Issues'. The law's primary objective, which was previously to promote the integration of persons with disabilities, was redefined to emphasise the realisation of the rights of persons with disabilities in all areas of society. The drafters also adjusted the uses of the term 'disability' or 'handicap' to reflect a view that disability is a product of social and societal barriers, rather than merely an impairment. The legal terminology was accordingly adjusted to reflect this change. Finally, the implementation of the legal changes called for the creation of a specialised centre for the rights of persons with disabilities, which required additional means (one full-time employee).

In the cantonal parliament, the parliamentary Commission on Health, Social Affairs and Integration dealt with the draft partial revision of the law. The commission made some modifications and adopted the revision with ten voices for, two against and no abstention. Finally, the cantonal parliament unanimously approved the legislative modifications after the first reading. This example of cantonal engagement with the CRPD thus started from the specialised policy bureaucracy—with the approval of the cantonal government—and involved experts, civil society and people with disabilities. It is an implementation-centred engagement because the CRPD was at the core of the process which finally led to a legislative amendment accepted by the cantonal parliament.

To summarise, introducing legislative reforms with the aim of aligning with a treaty represents an implementation-centred engagement with the treaty. This engagement can be initiated by the uses of the treaties by specialised bureaucrats (Chapter 4) or civil society, and it often benefits from the participation of diverse actors. Regardless of who initiates or participates in the process, the parliament and government—as subnational political authorities—engage with the treaty by adopting the new law or legislative reform.

### *<IP_ADDRESS> Issue-Specific Engagement: A Sub-Type of Implementation-Centred Engagement*

Within the implementation-centred engagement, which we mainly constructed to refer to cases in which the main goal of the law project is to implement a treaty 'as a whole' (even if not all the obligations of the treaty are eventually implemented), we identified a sub-type of issue-specific engagement. Issuespecific engagement occurs when political authorities decide to engage with only one or some obligations of the treaty. In this type of engagement, they do not engage with the treaty 'as a whole', in a comprehensive way, but limit their engagement to a specific issue. This type of engagement can be a first step leading to a more comprehensive implementation-centred engagement or, to the contrary, can follow an implementation-centred engagement by dealing

23 See footnote 12.

with a specific issue that would not have been dealt with before. We observed some cases in which a law reformed adapted the existing legislation to consider a specific issue raised by a treaty. For example, the modification of the Protection against Violence Act (*Gewaltschutzgesetz*) in Zurich to extend the scope of application so as to help victims of stalking. This reform notably referred to the obligation made by the Istanbul Convention to punish stalking (art. 34, IC). Hereafter, we present a paradigmatic case that directly aims at implementing one specific article of the CRPD by modifying the cantonal constitution.

In the canton of Geneva, a parliamentary commission studied a draft constitutional law on the political rights of persons with disabilities. The CRPD played no role whatsoever at the beginning of this process. Rather, the authorities' original idea was to simply align the cantonal constitutional text with the federal legislation to address the practical problem of having to deal with different electoral registers at the cantonal and the federal level.24 The CRPD (nor the European Convention on Human Right) appears nowhere in the report of the government presenting the new law.25 During the commission's work, cantonal MPs decided to seek input from two professors of constitutional law from the University of Geneva who brought the attention of the commission to the fact that Switzerland was a party to the CRPD and that the treaty was relevant for the canton.26 The commission then invited Caroline Hess-Klein, an expert in disability law and a representative of the CSO *Inclusion Handicap*.

It was only through these hearings that the parliamentary commission and the cantonal government realised that the draft constitutional law was not aligned with international law. Subsequently, cantonal MPs drafted their own attempt to modify the cantonal constitution. They not only mentioned the CRPD in the explanatory text, but entitled their proposal as a draft law to 'ensure conformity with the CRPD' more than a year later.27 The commission of cantonal MPs proposed an amendment to ensure that no one with a disability would be denied political rights at the cantonal level. This amendment was ultimately transformed into a constitutional law reform entitled 'Constitutional Law Amending the Constitution of the Republic and Canton of Geneva (Implementation of Article 29 of the UN Convention on the Rights

24 There are elections and referenda at municipal, cantonal and federal level, so if the rules on the denial of political rights differ between the various levels, this can create administrative and logistical challenges.

25 Canton of Geneva, Draft law and explanations, PL 11969, p. 3, 14 September 2016, https://ge.ch/grandconseil/data/texte/PL11969.pdf.

26 Three interviews with members of the cantonal parliament (from the Liberal-Radical Party, the Social Democratic Party and the far-left party 'Ensemble à Gauche') Geneva, 14 and 17 March, and 27 April 2022.

27 Canton of Geneva, Draft law and explications, PL 12211, 3 November 2017, https:// ge.ch/grandconseil/data/texte/PL12211.pdf.

of Persons with Disabilities—CRPD) (A 2 00 – 12211)'. On 29 November 2020, a large majority (74.77% of voters) accepted the reform.28

This example illustrates how subnational political authorities did not originally intend a reform to implement an obligation of the CRPD as such. Rather, this type of engagement occurred when the relevant subnational authorities tried to address a concrete issue and 'en route' discovered that they were drafting legislative modifications in a way that was not compatible with the CRPD and the authorities then started to look more closely into article 29 of the CRPD on political rights of persons with disabilities. It is worth noting the pivotal role played by the parliamentary commission, academic experts and a civil society representative, who effectively communicated to the parliamentarians about their international obligations and the evolving landscape of international law. By using the treaty as a legal basis, members of the commission drafted a motion engaging with the CRPD to implement Article 29 of the CRPD by modifying the cantonal constitution, eventually improving the political rights enjoyment of persons with disabilities at the subnational level.

This case serves as an example for other cantons who are studying the possibility of following Geneva and also improving the political rights of persons with disabilities in their canton.

We will now turn to the second type of implementation-centred engagement: this time, the route is not a legislative action, but action plans crafted within the cantonal administration.

### *<IP_ADDRESS> The Bureaucratic Way: Adopting Action Plans*

Subnational political authorities can also carry out an implementation-centred engagement with a treaty by adopting an action plan aimed at implementing a human rights treaty. The development of an action plan involves specialised policy bureaucrats who are tasked to implement the treaty or managing the policy area related to the treaty. The goal of such an instrument is to (re)organise the actions, means, funding, instruments, actors, institutional framework and sometimes the goals and policy paradigm (cognitive dimension) in the domain targeted by the treaty. An action plan is about coordinating and organising public policy, so we consider it a policy bureaucratic approach (Page & Jenkins, 2005) to implementation-centred engagement. The measures contained in an action plan do not always require parliamentary ratification, but the support of the cantonal government is necessary for practical and financial reasons.

We observed that the adoption of action plans is a particularly popular type of implementation-centred engagement in relation to the Istanbul Convention.

28 Loi constitutionnelle modifiant la constitution de la République et canton de Genève (Cst-GE) (Mise en oeuvre e l'article 29 de la Convention de l'ONU relative aux droits des personnes handicapées—CDPH) (A 200–12211), du 27 février 2020), adopted in a popular referendum: https://www.ge.ch/votations/20201129/cantonal/.

According to a 2023 stocktaking report of the Swiss Conference against Domestic Violence (CSVD), 20 cantons have already adopted cantonal action plans or series of measures mandated by the cantonal government to fight against violence against women and/or domestic violence, with a view to implement the Istanbul Convention. According to our interviewees, action plans have been encouraged by the Swiss Conference against Domestic Violence and the Federal Office for Gender Equality. Most specialised policy bureaucrats whom we interviewed explained that they used the report of the Swiss Conference against Domestic Violence and the seven priority themes to build their stocktaking report, and then their action plan. Thus, they use mediations (Miaz, 2019) and implementation mechanisms (Kaempfer, 2021) to interpret the treaty and relate it to local realities. The report of the Swiss Conference against Domestic Violence thus significantly shapes the ways political authorities at the subnational level engage with the treaty. Specialised policy bureaucrats elaborating action plans refer not only (and even sometimes not at all) to the human rights treaty as such, but also (or only) to the report of the Swiss Conference against Domestic Violence. We qualify this type of engagement as implementation-centred as there is a commitment by the subnational political authorities to deal with the treaty, including when the authorities only refer to the report prepared at the inter-cantonal level.

Elaborating action plans suggests a back-and-forth process between treaty and field needs*.* The process of developing action plans, much like the process of elaborating law reforms, often involves a collaboration between policy bureaucrats, street-level organisations and civil society groups. For all the action plans identified in this study, the specialised policy bureaucrats are the key actors co-ordinating the elaboration of the action plan. Typically, members of cantonal parliaments do not play a significant role in this process, but we observed that they play an important role earlier in the process when they use the treaty to push the cantonal government to engage with it by elaborating an action plan (see Chapter 4 on the example from Zurich in relation to the Istanbul Convention, where use of the treaty by individual parliamentarians was decisive to spur a later engagement by the subnational authorities). In Vaud, a specialised policy bureaucrat explained that following the adoption of the cantonal 'Law on the Organisation of the Fight against Domestic Violence' in 2017,29 the Federal Office for Gender Equality collaborated with the cantonal commission on the fight against domestic violence to develop an action plan. This commission was composed of various bureaucratic services, such as the Welfare and Social Assistance Department, the Youth Protection Service, the cantonal police, the judiciary, and institutions specialising in the treatment of domestic violence, including housing and victim support services.

29 Canton of Vaud, Loi d'organisation de la prévention et de la lutte contre la violence domestique, 26 September 2017, https://prestations.vd.ch/pub/blv-publication/actes/ consolide/211.12?key=1678646562856&id=0d5932f8-2b0d-478d-83ec-f68a77e943a1.

When subnational authorities engage with the treaty by initiating the establishment of a cantonal action plan, the cantonal administration considers different types of information. First, those elaborating on the action plan recounted that they aimed to respond to the needs and realities of the field. The engagement with the treaty thus implies a variety of actors working 'on the ground' to ensure that the action plan is in line with the contextspecific needs of the field and the drafters engage in a collective and relational work. Second, in this process, the treaty is used alongside various documents and mediations. The specialised policy bureaucrat responsible for developing the action plan in Vaud explained that she relied not only on the Istanbul Convention, but also on the questionnaire sent by the GREVIO and the documentation provided by the Federal Office for Gender Equality. As a result, the action plans we identified in relation to the Istanbul Convention usually emphasise the seven priority themes identified by the Swiss Conference against Domestic Violence, the CSVD (on the role of the report by the CSVD, see Chapter 3) For instance, in the canton of Valais, the action plan follows these priority themes. It sets nine axes of intervention for the canton, based on both the report of the Swiss Conference against Domestic Violence and the recommendations made in a report that took stock of the existing measures in the canton:

In short, we took these recommendations [of the report of the CSVD] along with the recommendations of the report [established by an external expert who works in an institution for victims of domestic violence in another canton] and that's really what made up the architecture of our action plan, and for us it was important that the action plan be validated afterwards by the cantonal government, and then that's really our roadmap.30

Similarly, the subnational government in the canton of Zurich adopted an action plan that draws heavily from the recommendations of the CSVD. The authorities decided to engage comprehensively with the Istanbul Convention as a result of uses of the treaty by two cantonal MPs (see Chapter 4) and tasked their bureaucracy to elaborate an action plan. The administration used, 'above all' the report of the Swiss Conference against Domestic Violence.31 The cantonal government approved the final list of measures on 31 March 202132 and each of the 16 measures references specific articles of the Istanbul

30 Interview with the Head of the Co-ordinating Office for Disability Issues, Social Action Department, Valais, 23 March 2022.

31 Interview with the two Co-directors of the Domestic Violence Intervention Centre, Zurich, 23 April 2021.

32 Canton of Zurich, Decision of the cantonal government 'Violence against women, implementation of the Istanbul Convention in the Canton of Zurich; measures and establishment plan' (Decision 'Gewalt gegen Frauen, Umsetzung der Istanbul-Konvention im Kanton Zürich; Massnahmen und Stellenplan'), Extract from the minutes of the Government Council of the Canton of Zurich, Meeting of Convention. The decision also includes an additional full-time position and a stronger Intervention Centre against Domestic Violence.

Just like the 'in chain' reaction observed after the adoption of a law on the rights of persons with disabilities in the canton of Basel-Stadt, we also observe a mechanism of diffusion in which specialised policy bureaucrats draw inspiration from examples set by other cantons. For instance, in the small canton of Jura, a specialised policy bureaucrat explains that she followed the lead of the canton of Valais, which had previously adopted an action plan.33 Therefore, this engagement pattern is also disseminated through examples of 'good practices' inspiring other cantons.

In summary, action plans typically start by taking stock of the existing measures and identifying the gaps and needs on the ground. They involve specialised policy bureaucrats, other public sector organisations, street-level actors, civil society organisations and non-profit organisations involved in public policy. In the case of the CRPD, persons concerned have also been involved through consultative commissions and some cantonal authorities initiated the elaboration of an action plan. The subnational government in Zurich adopted such an action plan for the CRPD and another one is being prepared in Neuchâtel. Compared to the Istanbul Convention, however, implementation-centred engagement by way of adopting an action plan seems less common.

### *<IP_ADDRESS> The Continuation of Implementation-Centred Engagement After Legislative Change or the Adoption of an Action Plan*

So far, we have distinguished two sub-types of implementation-centred engagement: one going through the cantonal parliament and the other one based on action plans elaborated by the specialised bureaucracy. What remains to be mentioned in this section is the combination of the two within one and the same cantonal jurisdiction and the progressive and intertwined processes. Implementation-centred engagement with a treaty does not end with the adoption of a law or an action plan. Rather, it is a progressive and continuous process, as seen in Neuchâtel, where after the adoption of the law on domestic violence in 2019, cantonal MPs used various parliamentary tools to ask questions about specific issues related to the Istanbul Convention. In response, in June 2022, the cantonal government presented an information report on the 'Cantonal action plan for the prevention and fight against domestic violence'.34 This example illustrates that the implementation-centred engagement with a treaty is an ongoing process that continues as the treaty

31 March 2021, https://www.zh.ch/bin/zhweb/publish/regierungsratsbeschluss-unterl agen./2021/338/RRB-2021-0338.pdf.

33 Interview 61 with a Head of Domain, Social Action Department, Jura, 6 April 2022. *Translated from French*.

34 Canton of Neuchâtel, Plan d'action neuchâtelois de prévention et de lutte contre la violence domestique, June 2022, https://www.ne.ch/autorites/DECS/OPFE/violenceconjugale/Documents/Plan%20d%27action%20violence%20domestique\_I.pdf.

becomes part of the legal landscape and public policy. Specialised policy bureaucrats, parliamentarians and civil society can all drive law reforms, and while specialised policy bureaucrats are the key actors in action plans, members of cantonal parliaments can play a supporting or agenda-setting role. In other words, the subnational authorities' engagement leads to further uses of the treaty by subnational actors and those uses, in turn, again stimulate further engagement by the authorities.

Ultimately, the implementation-centred engagements examined in this section have a common goal of implementing a treaty's obligations and we can say with reasonable confidence that such engagement is an ideal starting point for a dynamic implementation process that promises to lead to practical improvements of human rights realisation in real-life situations.

Not surprisingly, however, not all subnational political authorities opt for what we have termed implementation-centred engagement. We will now turn to what we call initiating engagement.

#### *5.2.2 Initiating Engagement*

We observed initiating engagement in certain cantons where there are limited or no previous policy measures in the domain covered by the relevant treaty. Initiating engagement represents a crucial first step towards implementing at least some aspects of the treaty. Typically, an initiating engagement originates with cantonal bureaucracies, who request the establishment of an office or allocation of additional resources. In this context, the treaty is leveraged as a cognitive, legal and political resource by bureaucrats to institutionalise and coordinate policymaking in the relevant domain. Contrary to implementationcentred engagement, the treaty is not used as a starting point for legislative changes or an action plan with a view to implement the treaty as such, but initiating engagement aims at the allocation of some resources and mandates to take stock of the situation and suggest improvements.

We have observed such a pattern of initiating engagement with the Istanbul Convention in Schaffhausen. In this small canton (82,537 inhabitants in 2021), the head of the Social Security Office was, among many other tasks, also responsible for addressing issues related to domestic violence, and viewed the Istanbul Convention as a significant opportunity to secure resources, including a new position dedicated to implementing the Istanbul Convention:

So for us, the Istanbul Convention is a huge opportunity. It is the best legitimisation in this field, the need to act, to comply; to do more in qualitative and quantitative terms than we have done so far. This is a huge opportunity. I believe that if we did not have this Istanbul Convention, it would have been much more difficult to politically legitimise doing more in this area.35

35 Interview with a Head of Service, Social Welfare Office, Schaffhausen, 19 May 2021.

During our discussions, the interviewee explained that there was no comprehensive strategy in place to prevent and combat violence against women and domestic violence, and that he thought the domain lacked co-ordination. The initiating engagement by the public authorities led to the creation of a new position: the Co-ordination Office for the Prevention of Violence against Women and Domestic Violence. Its primary task is to identify gaps in this area and work towards addressing them.

We knew that there were gaps, but we had neither the resources nor the mandate to identify these gaps. But we knew that, for example, in the area of perpetrator prevention, also in dealing with children in victim assistance, etc., there are various gaps […].36

The establishment of this new office has facilitated the institutionalisation and organisation of co-ordination efforts within this policy domain.

The position is the Co-ordination Office for the Prevention of Violence against Women and Domestic Violence Istanbul Convention. So it's really clear: we are the co-ordinating body for the implementation of the Istanbul Convention. […] And there is a clear mandate from the government council for this position. So then to the question, what are your frameworks and requests, and [what my tasks are]. First and foremost, that is really to co-ordinate the actors, to drive the implementation of the Convention and immediately, to promote this interdisciplinary cooperation.37

To summarise this example, a bureaucrat's use of the treaty succeeded in securing at least an initiating engagement with the Istanbul Convention. The impetus for action first came from the Social Affairs Office, which then led to the establishment of the Co-ordination Office. The cantonal government supported the proposal to create a new position, and the cantonal parliament approved the proposition,38 resulting in the creation of the Co-ordination Office.39 Compared to implementation-centred engagement, the engagement of the subnational political authorities is much more limited: there is no overarching commitment (yet) to implement the relevant treaty as such, but

36 Ibid.

37 Interview with the Head of the Co-ordination Office for the Prevention of Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (Istanbul Convention), Schaffhausen, 8 February 2021.

38 Minutes of the 17th Session, Cantonal Parliament of Schaffhausen, 18 November 2019, 934–947.

39 Jurga Wüger, 'Bei mir laufen alle Fäden zusammen', *Schaffhausen Nachrichten*, 25 November 2020, https://www.shn.ch/region/kanton/2020-11-25/bei-mir-laufenalle-faeden-zusammen.

a willingness to initiate a certain institutionalisation and the provision of additional resources to address at least some aspects of the treaty. This initiating engagement was finally followed by a more implementation-centred one through the elaboration and adoption of the cantonal action plan 2022–2026 for the implementation of the Istanbul Convention.

Another initiating engagement also involved a commitment to undertake a preliminary stocktaking exercise and the creation of a new position within the cantonal administration. In the small canton of Glarus (40,370 inhabitants in 2021), a parliamentary intervention by the members of the Social Democratic Party on the Istanbul Convention asked for information about the departments responsible for the issue of violence against women and domestic violence and the implementation of the measures planned by the Convention.40 This interpellation was a starting point that led the cantonal bureaucracy to take stock of what exists in the canton and to identify the gaps, based on the report of the Swiss Conference against Domestic Violence.

It was the point where we knew: oh, now we really have to deal with it. I think the [Social Democratic Party] has already hit a nerve to say 'hey, there is this Convention, where does the canton of Glarus stand'. And that was really the first moment – to be honest – where I think the canton seriously dealt with this Istanbul Convention.  And on the basis of this interpellation – which was then also answered to the satisfaction of the Social Democratic Party – we naturally then thought about it internally and knew clearly that we do not yet fulfil some points, we need such a co-ordination office. We need a guardian of this Convention, because otherwise in the dayto-day business, yes, it gets lost. And now we are at this point where we can clearly say: yes, the engagement is there, now we create this office or designate this office and equip it sufficiently.41

In the bureaucracy, the Head of Social Services42 is responsible the prevention and fight of violence against women and domestic violence, but without any resources to fulfil this task. Consequently, the Head of Social Services sought additional resources, especially the creation of a new position (50%) in her office to 'really implement the Istanbul Convention'.43 Finally, in February 2022, the cantonal government established the domestic violence unit. The responsibilities of this specialised office for domestic violence were defined by a working group that included the Social Services, victim assistance and counselling, and the cantonal police. The unit's duties are to promote the

40 Interpellation 'Istanbul Convention', filed by Sarah Küng Hefti and Christian Büttiker (SP), Cantonal Parliament, Glarus, 6 December 2018.

41 Interview with the Head of Social Services, Glarus, 4 March 2021.

42 Contrary to other cantons, social services are cantonal tasks (not municipal ones).

43 Interview with the Head of Social Services, Glarus, 4 March 2021.

implementation of the Istanbul Convention and to co-ordinate efforts within the agencies involved.44

We observed a gradual evolution of the subnational political authorities' engagement with the Istanbul Convention: from a modest initiating engagement, it is possible that the authorities begin to move towards a more implementation-centred engagement, strengthening over time the commitment not 'only' to take stock and provide some resources, but to conceive that the treaty as such must be implemented. In both examples of initiating engagement presented here, the human rights treaties served as a catalyst for the policy process, resulting in the establishment, institutionalisation and restructuring of the policy domain. These initial steps can pave the way for further engagement with the treaties, such as the development of an action plan or the creation of a new law. Therefore, we refer to these measures as initiating engagement.

In addition to implementation-centred and initiating engagement, a third type of engagement is embedded engagement.

#### *5.2.3 Embedded Engagement*

Embedded engagement with a convention occurs when a treaty is used within a legislative project whose main goal is not the implementation of the treaty or compliance with it, nor is the treaty the starting point for the law reform or policy measures. The use of and reference to the treaty are part of the arguments, or even of the cognitive resources in the policy process, but they are not the main ones. Thus, the treaty—usually specific obligations of the treaty—is used as a legal argument among other legal references to justify the reform, which engages with the treaty only on specific obligations. Engagement with the treaty is thus embedded in a broader legislative project. This type of engagement can combine with an implementation-centred engagement.

In Geneva, for example, we observed different intertwined patterns of engagement with the Istanbul Convention, even one aiming at the implementation of the treaty through an action plan. Besides this implementationcentred engagement, we also observed an embedded engagement in the case of the draft law on equality and the fight against gender-based violence and discrimination filed in the cantonal parliament of Geneva on 16 December 2020 by the cantonal government. While the Istanbul Convention is one of several legal references, the draft law's aims do not centre on the Istanbul Convention. As the Head of the Cantonal Office for the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Violence explained to us, she initiated work on this draft law even before Switzerland ratified the Istanbul Convention:

44 Canton Glarus, 'Kanton Glarus baut Fachstelle häusliche Gewalt auf', *Public Newsroom*, https://www.gl.ch/public-newsroom.html/31/newsroomnews/2153/prin, 15 February 2022.

We have an equality law which is, which has been elaborated, which is in consultation now, equality and fight against gender violence, so that's at the Geneva cantonal level, that too was not linked to the Istanbul Convention, we had started that quite a while ago.45

The drafters of the law did engage with the Istanbul Convention. For instance, on the issue of sexual harassment, the draft law mentions the Istanbul Convention.46 The IC is also used to provide education in line with the treaty's goal to prevent sexism. Here, the weight given to the Istanbul Convention is not particularly high, probably because the canton of Geneva, compared to many other cantons, already had an elaborate legislative and institutional framework. In this case, the engagement with the treaty happens 'on the go', as a welcome additional layer of arguments.

The example above constitutes an embedded engagement with the treaty, as the engagement with specific obligations of the treaty is embedded in this broader, related law project that did not directly aim at addressing the implementation of the treaty. It is worth noting that such embedded engagement may occur in parallel to an implementation-centred engagement with the treaty, where the canton may have taken other measures to implement the human rights treaty.

### *5.2.4 Synthesis: Types of Engagement with International Treaties*

To conclude this section, we identified different types of engagement that we classified through the goals of the process, the types of measures taken and the trajectories of the process. We showed that several types of engagement aim at implementing the treaty or at preparing the implementation of the treaty (implementation-centred and initiating engagement). Besides, we also identified embedded engagement, through which the subnational authorities use a treaty or specific obligations contained therein when they are pursuing a concrete objective during an already ongoing process for which the implementation of the treaty is not the starting point, nor the goal of the project.

Implementation-centred engagement includes enacting laws or making reforms to clarify the issue in question, establish new rights, and provide a solid legal basis for a new policy framework. The process also involves developing and implementing action plans in line with the new policy, ultimately reorganising the entire policy field and its measures. Implementation-centred engagement is a crucial step in the empirical life of a treaty at the subnational level and denotes a shift where decisions are often made which will ultimately lead to better rights implementation.

45 Interview with the Head of the Cantonal Office for the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Violence, Geneva, 1 July 2020.

46 'Draft law on equality and the fight against gender-based violence and discrimination' (*title translated from French*), PL 12843, 16 December 2020, p. 30.

In cantons where there were only a few concrete and unified public policies in the domain covered by the treaty, initiating engagement can lead to institutionalisation and the impetus of a new public policy. This engagement results in the creation of new bureaucratic positions, new offices specialised in the issue covered by the treaty, and new means to implement the treaty. Thus, the initiating engagement mainly involves new actors and a new institutional framework, which can, as we saw for the canton of Schaffhausen, open the space for a more implementation-centred engagement involving new instruments, a new institutional framework and cognitive changes in public policy.

Finally, embedded engagement often occurs when an engagement with the treaty is included, embedded in a broader legislative project which does not directly aim at implementing the treaty of specific obligations. The embedded engagement is a pragmatic one as the broader law project provides an opportunity to engage (further) with the obligations of the treaty and, at the same time, to legally argue in favour of the legislative project. We expect to increasingly observe this type of engagement as the treaties become part of the common legal landscape of cantonal authorities and as the latter increasingly develop implementation-centred engagement. In doing so, we expect that they will become interested in pursuing treaty-related issues that will lead them to continue to engage with some of the treaty's obligations by developing public policies in related areas that touch certain aspects of the treaty.

### 5.3 Comparative Outlook and Conditions for Engagement

This section offers a comparative outlook to distil similarities and differences in how uses translate into engagement and the different patterns of engagement with the two treaties serving as case studies, and we discuss the conditions shaping the turn from uses to engagement and the engagement patterns.

We begin by reflecting on the uses that did not lead to engagement in order to identify limiting factors.

### *5.3.1 From Uses to Engagement? Factors Limiting Subnational Engagement*

In this section, we present cases where subnational actors, such as specialised policy bureaucrats, experts and members of cantonal parliaments, have used the treaty pushing for policy measures, but where political authorities have then declined to take action or simply did not react, i.e. there was *no engagement*. We classify these uses according to the conditions hindering the engagement with the treaty, and we discuss these conditions. These include the weakness of left-wing political parties in the cantonal parliament and government, an underdeveloped existing policy—an engagement with the treaty implying a significant policy change—a perception of weak financial resources (or potential to increase them) or weak cantonal policy investments, and no specialised bureaucracy. Small cantons tend to be more likely to find themselves in such situations.

Chapter 4 has shown that subnational actors often use treaties with the aim of pushing political authorities to take policy measures (action plans, laws and public policies). When this happens as a result of the treaty, we stated that political authorities engage with the treaty. However, the turn from uses to engagement does not always occur. In certain cantons, we observed that even where there are parliamentary interventions calling for the implementation of the Istanbul Convention or the CRPD respectively, the political authorities do not engage with the treaty and do not take concrete measures. For example, in the case of the Istanbul Convention, several cantons have not adopted specific measures to implement the treaty,47 and the same observation is made for the CRPD—probably at an even larger scale—as there are only a small minority of cantons that have adopted laws on inclusion, on the rights of persons with disabilities, and/or on self-determination. We can distinguish two main groups of limiting factors: an unfavourable political context and a real or perceived lack of resources.

### *<IP_ADDRESS> Lack of Political Will or Unfavourable Political Balance of Power*

How can we understand the occurrence of uses not leading to engagement? Several interviewees believe that the main reason for a lack of engagement relates to a 'lack of political will', which in turn, according to the interviewees, correlates with the political balance of power in cantonal parliaments and governments.

In Chapter 4, we observed that many uses came from left-wing cantonal MPs, all the more so if they have already been active in relation to issues related to gender equality, or human rights of persons with disabilities. Likewise, we observe that conservative parliaments and/or governments, i.e. a low presence of left-wing politicians, may limit or hinder the engagement with a treaty.

Several interviewees referred to a 'lack of political will' to explain the lack of engagement by subnational authorities with regard to the examined international human rights treaties. This was obvious in at least three interviews with members of administrations who lamented the 'lack of political will' to give them adequate resources to act in this area. This 'political will' refers to political feasibility conditions that are in turn related to the political profile and

47 Interview 14 with the Head of the Cantonal Office for the Promotion of Equality and Prevention of Violence, Geneva, 1 July 2020.

Swiss Conference on Domestic Violence, 'Mise en œuvre de la Convention d'Istanbul au niveau des cantons. Etats des lieux et mesures à entreprendre' (Appendix 1), September 2018, www.csvd.ch in: Réseau Convention d'Istanbul (eds), «Mise en œuvre de la Convention d'Istanbul en Suisse. Rapport alternatif de la société civile», June 2021, https://istanbulkonvention.ch/assets/images/elements/Rapport\_alte rnatif\_Reseau\_Convention\_Istanbul.pdf.

partisan affiliation of the ministers in charge of these files in these cantons. A head of department of an Office for Social Affairs in a canton where no action has been taken as a result of the Istanbul Convention explained that gender equality and violence against women were not considered a priority on the political agenda.48 According to another interviewee, the attitude of the cantonal government and the weight of political conservatism in the cantonal government and parliament limit the possibilities for members of the administrations to propose political or legal measures, as well as additional financial or human resources.49

One of the cantons in which we conducted our interviews falls into this category of cantons where, despite parliamentary interpellations in favour of the implementation of the Istanbul Convention, a political majority in the government and parliament—according to our interviewees—do not consider it a priority, or even a 'political topic' in the canton. This is a rather small conservative canton with a right-wing majority in the cantonal parliament and government and with the right-wing Swiss People's Party as the largest political party. As one of our interviewees puts it, the issues of domestic violence or violence against women are topics that 'are hardly ever discussed in the cantonal government or parliament'.50 A staff member of a cantonal service against domestic violence explains that nobody at the cantonal roundtable on domestic violence has ever heard of the Istanbul Convention or of the CEDAW.51

In this canton, two cantonal MPs from the Social Democratic Party relayed the parliamentary interpellation but removed a question on transgender persons, considering that the inclusion of a reference to transgender persons would have been counterproductive given the conservative context of the canton. The goal was to concentrate on domestic violence and at least discuss the Istanbul Convention.52 This interpellation made it possible to obtain an inventory from the cantonal government regarding the measures and infrastructures to fight violence against women and domestic violence but did not lead to an engagement by the political authorities with the Istanbul Convention. An interviewee confirmed that for the cantonal political authorities, the implementation of the Istanbul Convention 'is not on the agenda, it is not planned'.53

Thus, the ability to use the Istanbul Convention as a political, legal, cognitive or practical resource to achieve the engagement of the relevant subnational

48 Interview with a Head of Service, May 2021. (For confidentiality issues we choose to anonymise this interview and the ones in the following footnotes).

49 Interview with a Head of Office, April 2021.

50 Interview with a specialised bureaucrat, December 2020.

51 Interview with a specialised bureaucrat, January 2021.

52 Interview with a cantonal MP from the Social Democratic Party in this small canton, 28 January 2021.

53 Interview with X, Canton Y, 2021.

political authorities, as well as a window of opportunity, depends not only on civil servants or parliamentarians, but also on the cantonal political context, which shapes the possibilities of seizing the treaty and taking political or legal measures in this area. In the most conservative cantons, a balance of power in favour of the conservative right in the cantonal government and parliament limits the possibilities for legal and political changes related to the Istanbul Convention. Specialised policy bureaucrats, as they anticipate the reactions of their cantonal government and the parliament, cannot use the Istanbul Convention as a resource in the same way according to the cantonal context and balance of power.

### *<IP_ADDRESS> Lack of Financial Resources*

Financial constraints and priorities and the economic context of the canton can also hinder the engagement of subnational political authorities with a treaty. Catherine Le Bris and Pierre-Edouard Weill also explain, on the French case, that local policies to implement human rights heavily depend on the financial and institutional resources of local authorities (Le Bris & Weill, 2022). In small cantons in particular, there is a discourse—and sometimes a political strategy—about the lack of availability of financial resources to invest in new 'costly' policy measures, all the more so when the economic context is 'complicated'. Swiss cantons are sovereign in tax matters but increasing the availability of resources or setting priorities differently is of course politically sensitive. One civil servant explained that 'change must come from above' because, while the 'large' cantons such as Berne, Zurich, Geneva or Vaud have working groups for the implementation of the Istanbul Convention, smaller cantons have 'small' administrations with much more limited means 'and we can hardly cope with this additional burden'. According to her, it is therefore necessary to go 'beyond international law' by making federal laws that will encourage subnational political authorities like the ones in her canton to engage with the treaty and budget the necessary resources for its implementation.54

### *5.3.2 Enabling Conditions: Alignment with Pre-Existing Policies and Strong Specialised Policy Bureaucracy*

Effective engagement with human rights treaties requires a comprehensive approach tailored to the specific policy domain. When public policy in cantons aligns, at least to some extent, with the treaty's approach, engagement with the treaty reinforces and legitimises existing efforts and measures. For example, in certain cantons, especially the French-speaking ones, the fight against domestic violence and violence against women more broadly was already moving in the same direction as the Istanbul Convention. In these cases, ratification of the Istanbul Convention offered an opportunity to enhance existing measures with innovative means and a new dynamic. At the federal level, the authorities

54 Ibid.

adopted an action plan to continue the momentum initiated by the Istanbul Convention. Meanwhile, at the cantonal level, subnational political authorities took measures like the creation of new positions, law reforms, and action plans to engage with the treaty. Federal and inter-cantonal actors supported these processes by playing a critical role in promoting subnational engagement through reports, recommendations, and a national action plan encouraging cantons to take measures, providing them with 'good practices' and priorities, and highlighting a federal 'political will'. Overall, specialised policy bureaucrats were primarily involved in this bureaucratic approach, with parliamentarians playing a smaller role.

Conversely, engaging with the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) at the cantonal level proved to be more challenging. One major obstacle was the significant paradigm shift (Heyer, 2015) required by the CRPD compared to existing cantonal disability policies. The CRPD emphasises autonomy, self-determination, and inclusion, which differ greatly from most cantonal policies. Therefore, implementing the CRPD requires changes across various sectors of the administration and public policy domains. Furthermore, the Federal Bureau for the Equality of People with Disabilities has fewer resources than the Federal Office for Gender Equality, limiting its capacity to lead or encourage the implementation of the CRPD in the cantons. Despite these challenges, several subnational political authorities have taken steps to engage with the CRPD. Prioritising the revision or adoption of laws over other measures, such as creating action plans and establishing new positions, highlights an approach that seems to more heavily prioritise legislative measures than what we found for the Istanbul Convention. This may be due to disability policy administrations relying on legal experts in their policy processes, or a higher need of legislative changes to ensure the implementation of the treaty obligations. The measures taken promote inclusion, self-determination, and the rights of persons with disabilities in the concerned cantons, constituting an engagement with the treaty. They offer an opportunity to take a new policy path that can have a long-term impact on improving the inclusion of persons with disabilities.

Table 5.1 presents the different types of engagement we identified and summarises the various goals pursued by the policy process, the measures taken, dimensions of policy change, trajectories, and the conditions we identify as favourable to that type of engagement. Lastly, the table indicates in which canton we observed a given type of engagement.

### 5.4 Conclusion

This chapter presented an overview of the three categories of engagement that we observed in our case studies on the Istanbul Convention and the CRPD. We observed different patterns of engagement depending on various factors and conditions specific to the cantons where the subnational authorities engage with human rights treaties. Specifically, when a public policy in the

For a list of the acronyms, see https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfs/en/home/basics/symbolsabbreviations.html#accordion1714280292791

domain and direction of a treaty is already well-established in a given canton, the possibility that uses of the treaty lead to implementation-centred engagement is higher than when a canton has no pre-existing policy. Conversely, in cantons that are less receptive to implementation-centred engagement, uses are more likely to lead to a more modest, initiating engagement, which could involve the creation of a new position within the cantonal administration.

This chapter also highlighted that engaging with the Istanbul Convention was encouraged by federal and inter-cantonal authorities and was facilitated by existing policies—conducted by specialised policy bureaucracies—to combat domestic violence55 in several cantons, resulting in an effective bureaucratic approach through the adoption of action plans. Conversely, engagement with the CRPD proved to be more challenging due to the substantial paradigm shifts required in cantonal policies regarding disability, often first requiring awareness-raising, legal analysis, and input from academic experts. In all cases, engaging with the treaty has contributed to the implementation in one way or another. As we cautioned in the introductory chapter, engagement is no guarantee for successful or complete implementation, let alone compliance. But this chapter illustrated how engagement is a key phenomenon if we are to understand the various steps that follow when subnational political authorities commit to deal with a treaty.

In the sixth and final chapter of this book, we take a step back, synthesise the results and reflect on what is next in terms of future research.

### References

55 As mentioned before, however, domestic violence is only one part of the Istanbul Convention, which more broadly aims at preventing and combating *violence against women*  and domestic violence.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

CHAPTER 6

# Towards a Contextualised Understanding of Human Rights Treaty Implementation

**Abstract** This chapter offers a synthesis of the arguments outlined in this book and discusses the main findings from the empirical study of the Swiss case. It appears that international law obligations do not impact the national level following a descending trajectory. Rather, they provide opportunities and constraints to a core group of subnational actors who use them to achieve their goals. These actors make the most of their agency and they can contribute to the engagement of political authorities with the treaties, ultimately enhancing local human rights protection. However, their contribution is specific and necessarily selective, and whether and how subnational political actors engage with human rights treaties is strongly shaped by favourable political conditions and institutional resources, whose absence is likely to undermine or at least strongly limit the process. Furthermore, in the last section of this chapter we sketch a new agenda for this area of research.

**Keywords** Human rights treaties · Implementation · Subnational actors · Uses of treaties

### 6.1 Taking Stock

The study of the way Swiss subnational political authorities engage with international human rights treaties suggests that obligations contained in a human rights treaty do not simply impose restrictions on the actions of subnational actors. Instead, a small group of specialised subnational actors interpret and actively use human rights treaties to achieve their goals. More specifically,

**Fig. 6.1** Implementing international treaties

as outlined in the following two sections, our study has shown that subnational actors can use the treaties in various ways, consequently shaping how cantonal political authorities engage with them, in the view of ensuring their implementation (see Fig. 6.1).

#### *6.1.1 Pre-ratification Phase and Implementation Strategies*

Our study first revealed the importance of researching the pre-ratification procedure. Indeed, this procedure provides the national government with an opportunity to interpret the Convention, thus shaping the preferences of subnational units and orienting future implementation. We show that the government uses this procedure to put forward its narrative about the implications of ratification and thus convince domestic institutional actors, including subnational ones, to support ratification. Consequently, this procedure influences how political authorities will engage with the convention.

Post-ratification, we observe that implementation processes follow diverse patterns. In the case of the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention, several state entities responsible for implementation designed implementation strategies, in what looks at first sight as a top-down process. For the the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD)), despite the establishment of a focal point responsible for implementation, we observe that there has been no explicit implementation strategy at the federal or inter-cantonal level. Then, academic experts stepped in and produced alternative tools to lead the implementation process. In any case, the mechanisms designed to elicit subnational engagement with the treaties are of a soft nature. They essentially correspond to information mechanisms, which seek to influence the behaviour of the subnational authorities through communication and advice. This enables the large leeway and the important role of subnational actors, who can use international treaties to achieve their goals, and often shape the engagement of subnational political authorities.

#### *6.1.2 Uses*

Our study has shown how subnational actors use human rights treaties to shape political agendas (Chapter 4; Jones & Baumgartner, 2005) at the cantonal level. Although treaties can be seen as constraints for subnational authorities, they also offer opportunities for actors to advance their interests. Specialised policy bureaucrats such as the director of the Equality Office in the public administration, the cantonal delegate for equality, or the head of the cantonal administration for support measures for people with disabilities have a prominent role therein. By making the most of their expert knowledge and connections with the international and federal level, they can use treaties to legitimise existing policies, gain resources, and reinforce their leading and co-ordinating position as focal points in policy processes. Subnational parliamentarians, i.e. members of cantonal parliaments, and especially those who are members of relevant parliamentary committees, can request the implementation of specific obligations and use treaties as legal and political arguments to support their claims, such as those related to equality, women's rights, and rights of persons with disabilities. Civil society actors can remind authorities of their legal obligations and can formulate and campaign around specific demands or suggest concrete implementation options. Academic experts can also, for instance, provide expertise on the interpretation of the obligations or on comparative examples in which certain options were tested.

As such, treaties offer important legal, political, and cognitive resources for subnational actors to set an issue on the agenda, frame a public problem, and impulse policy processes. Studying how actors refer to treaties suggests that the actors' uses are pragmatic and 'crafty' rather than predetermined by systematic legal analysis. As explained in Chapter 3, there is no linear implementation process to follow when it comes to implementing human rights treaties. Actors do not primarily consider treaty provisions as containing obligations to be fulfilled, but rather as a catalogue of opportunities to be selected according to their function and meaning they could acquire at the local level. Subnational actors can actively use these obligations by adapting them to the local context in accordance with their goals and interests. As such, international human rights treaties can provide a way to legitimise existing approaches or offer opportunities to reshape public policies in a given direction. Thereby, the processes through which international obligations are implemented at the subnational level are complex and iterative, involving both top-down and bottom-up dynamics. Implementing international human rights treaties is a continuous and incremental process that involves backand-forth interactions and feedback loops, also entailing considerable room for manoeuvre of the involved actors. In that regard, it is nonetheless worth noting that not all actors are equal. As mentioned, specialised policy bureaucrats are particularly prominent at different stages in Swiss cantonal policy processes, with some standing out as key players—possessing the competencies, expertise, information, motivation and resources—who are able to exploit the opportunities provided by international human rights treaties and use them in accordance with their strategy. These actors are small in number but potentially very effective, factually working as policy entrepreneurs, whose mobilisation is fundamental in order to articulate policy ideas on the agenda of cantonal policy makers, open new windows of opportunity (Kingdon, 2014) and eventually trigger policy change (Mintrom & Norman, 2009). As we will see in the next section, the impact of these strategies is, however, highly dependent on the political context of the subnational unit at stake and the degree of favourableness of the political majority populating cantonal political institutions.

Contrariwise, the role of legislators is more marginal than what one could have expected, as members of cantonal parliaments are overall rather passive and, for the vast majority, they do not seem to make active use of international human rights treaties. This is not entirely surprising, as the literature has already pointed to the declining power of parliaments confronted to dominant executives, especially at the subnational level (Downs, 2014), whereby 'the initiative and control functions of parliaments are expected to be weak, with parliaments instead being confined to the role of ratifying bodies' (Benz & Papadopoulos, 2006, p. 3). It is also a Swiss peculiarity that semi-professional members of parliament are confronted with a more resourceful federal administration (Di Capua et al., 2022; Sciarini, 2015; Sciarini & Fischer, 2019) which in turn plays an increasingly important role in policy processes (Varone & Giauque, 2022). Furthermore, it is generally accepted that 'internationalization increases the role of governments vis-à-vis other domestic actors (i.e. parliament and interest groups) who do not have similar strategic resources' (Papadopoulos, 2008). This gap is even larger at the subnational level, where members of cantonal parliaments (cantonal MPs) are weakly professionalised and may be unaware of specific developments of international law: in most cantons, they spend less than 20% of a full-time equivalent on their parliamentary occupation (Eberli et al., 2019). And yet, the marginality of cantonal MPs is still puzzling and, in particular, potentially leading to political contestation. Even though specialised bureaucrats may have the best intentions, and indeed work for the greater good, they are less directly accountable to citizens than what parliamentarians would be, thus raising questions about the need for reinforcing the democratic legitimacy of these practices through a more active role of subnational legislators.

It is worth noting that, even if the number of MPs using human rights treaties is limited, some specific legislators can nonetheless have an impact. First, we observed that some members of parliament who are specifically committed to human rights or to a cause covered by a treaty (equality, women, or disability rights) play an important role in the process through which cantonal authorities engage with human rights treaties. These particularly committed parliamentarians participate in placing the implementation of the treaties, or of specific obligations, on the cantonal political agenda. They can also use the treaties to relay the claims of civil society actors, social movements, or people concerned by the treaties. Second, members of parliaments can also acquire more leverage as they become involved in committees working on legislative proposals and reforms that lead them to work with the treaties and on their implementation. In doing so, they become aware of the treaty and participate in defining an engagement through their amendments or by requesting the government to take measures.

#### *6.1.3 Engagement of Political Authorities with Human Rights Treaties*

Our study identified three different types of engagement of subnational political authorities with human rights treaties, by which political authorities aim at ensuring their legislative and practical implementation. These types of engagement sometimes follow directly from the uses of the treaties by other actors, such as individual bureaucrats or civil society. As such, they include those that directly aim to implement the treaty, prepare for implementation or comply with specific obligations. In addition, there is a type of embedded engagement, where the treaty or specific parts thereof are used to support a policy change or legislative reform whose main goals are not to implement the treaty and that concern a domain close or related to the treaty. Conversely, uses that do not lead to engagement involve placing the issue of treaty implementation on the political agenda without resulting in any tangible change. Engaging with human rights treaties requires a comprehensive approach that involves enacting laws, making reforms, establishing new rights, allocating budgets and developing action plans. When public policy aligns with the treaty's approach, engagement with the treaty reinforces and legitimises existing efforts and measures, providing opportunities for advancement and evolution. In cantons where the treaty requires significant changes, the treaty creates a window of opportunity to start changing the policy paradigm and take a new policy path. Initiating engagement involves institutionalisation and the impulsion of a new public policy, establishing a new institutional framework and empowering new actors through the creation of new bureaucratic positions or even new offices, in cantons where there were only few (or almost no) concrete and unified public policy in the domain concerned by the treaty. Issue-specific engagement concerns specific obligations of the treaty, which can be part of a broader engagement with the treaty or involve going further with an obligation. Embedded engagement occurs in cantons with well-developed public policies in the domain of the treaty, where policy bureaucrats or members of cantonal parliament can use the treaty or specific obligations as arguments and take measures that can be related to the treaty and that are embedded in a broader project that does not mainly aim at implementing the treaty.

Finally, uses not leading to engagement occur in cantons where the issue of treaty implementation is put on the political agenda but no concrete measures are taken. This can be due to various conditions, including the weakness of political parties supporting the issues under consideration in the cantonal parliament and government (especially left-wing ones in the field of human rights law), an unfavourable balance of power, an underdeveloped existing policy, weak financial resources and no specialised bureaucracy. Small, rural cantons are likely to find themselves in such situations, albeit not exclusively. These structural limitations can be at least partially overcome, however, when the federal level takes its role of providing guidance seriously, and cantonal institutions consequently work under the shadow of the hierarchy (Héritier & Lehmkuhl, 2008), and even more so when small cantons can rely on their counterparts within platforms aiming to structure and organise co-operative horizontal interactions, such as intergovernmental cantonal conferences (Behnke & Mueller, 2017; Schnabel & Mueller, 2017). In these venues, mutual learning processes might occur, facilitating the implementation of complex procedures, while also allowing actors to create new coalitions that may be instrumental for confronting local political opposition.

### 6.2 Main Implications

To conduct our inquiry, we relied on a systematic case study methodology based on document analysis and in-depth semi-directive interviews with different types of actors on the two investigated treaties: The Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence, better known as the Istanbul Convention (IC); and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). Our analytical approach is context-sensitive, insofar as it focuses on the micro-level determinants of the observed regularities and variations in the preferences, behaviour, and consequent aggregate outputs (Coleman, 1994). Specifically, we look at the implications of how local actors use human rights treaties for the engagement of cantonal political authorities with these treaties. This research strategy allowed us to generate a fine-grained understanding of the processes at work and of the perceptions of the relevant actors therein. However, following this approach, the external validity and the limits to the generalisability of our results require special attention. In particular, it is worth discussing the scope conditions under which our main findings are expected to hold. Scope conditions neither explain nor determine the phenomenon under investigation, but they restrict the applicability of a complex causal relation and define the conditions for observing a given result. More specifically, they can provide evidence about relevant contextual variables, and thereby offer an instrument to delimitate the context in which hypotheses apply (Falleti & Lynch, 2009; Foschi, 1997; Maggetti, 2015).

Against this background, a number of factors can be distilled from our research, which could possibly work as scope conditions. As scope conditions typically consist of structural elements that shape (but do not fully determine) political actors' identities, perceptions, goals and orientations, and, ultimately, their actions (Scharpf, 2000), we purposively focus on three institutional factors. The first condition allowing subnational actors to make their own use of international treaties is the existence of a certain *room for manoeuvre* at the local level. Such a room for manoeuvre derives from both the autonomous political authority attributed to the federated states and the distance of actors from the central government. Second, the international treaty under consideration needs to imply—as is typically the case—*flexibility* in implementation. A flexible approach to implementation involves the attribution of more leeway to actors targeted by the rules and to those in charge of their implementation in adapting to the local context and to their own preferences, i.e. subsidiarity, for instance by setting objectives rather than strict rules, offering alternative options, allowing for a margin of appreciation of the relevant actors (Treib et al., 2007). The third condition is the presence of *issue-specific* policy competencies, involving political actors—usually, specialised policy bureaucrats—who are entrusted with specific tasks in the areas potentially related to the treaty. The attribution of these tasks allows these actors to claim issue ownership and to develop a credible expertise in the issue area, leading to the emergence of an epistemic community (Niederhauser & Maggetti, 2023).

Under these conditions, as observed in the Swiss case with respect to the two examined human rights treaties, a small number of policy entrepreneurs possessing specific expertise and with a high intensity of preferences—located at the subnational level are key in triggering purposive uses of the international treaties and thus favouring the engagement of the political authorities of the subnational unit. In turn, their effectiveness is affected by the presence of political coalitions that support or oppose the proposed reforms.

The three above-mentioned institutional factors correspond to some of the main defining features of multilevel polities. This implies that we can possibly extend our findings to other multilevel democratic systems, where background factors are, broadly speaking, comparable, namely when subnational human rights implementation is at stake in other federal democratic states or devolved jurisdictions. For instance, similar dynamics are possibly observable in the United States, where federal institutions largely delegate to states the duty to conform their practices with human rights treaties, and states are keen to retain responsibility over areas that fall under their control. While this situation enables the development of bottom-up, contextual solutions, it is also creating an uneven situation across the country, with some of them falling short of international obligations (Spiro, 1997).

### 6.3 Looking Forward

Our research points to some blind spots that deserve further attention.

First, while our research has focused on the relationship between rulemakers (governments interacting at the international level) and rule-takers (or targets, at the subnational levels), and specifically on the role of various actors who play an intermediation function (Abbott et al., 2017; also see: Pélisse 2019; Talesh & Pélisse, 2019), rule beneficiaries, i.e. the individuals who are supposed to benefit from increased protection, need to be considered more explicitly. In particular, it would be important to examine how the various uses of treaties and forms of engagement at the subnational level have an impact on the prospected rule beneficiaries. In that regard, it is possible to expect that different uses and different patterns of engagement are associated with different outcomes. For instance, one could assume that when the engagement of political authorities involves a significant bottom-up component, it will more accurately account for the real situation on the ground and therefore be more effective, and the allocation of human and financial resources more sustained. Moreover, it would be particularly relevant to question how international human rights treaties impact the legal consciousness (Chua, 2019; Ewick & Silbey, 1998; Sarat, 1990) of the people concerned (e.g. persons with disabilities, victims of violence against women or domestic violence), especially their rights consciousness (Merry, 2003). The CRPD, for example, seems to have changed the perception certain persons with disabilities conceived the rights they have (and they can claim) and what policy change they can claim for. Besides, this questioning on international law consciousness could be extended to activists and civil society actors to examine how treaties potentially change the way they frame their cause, their claims, their strategies, and their actions.

Second, we did examine implementation processes, especially from the perspective of legislative implementation, but the street-level dimension of implementation has not been directly tackled in our study (Buffat et al., 2016; Lipsky, 2010). However, other actors that hold less institutionalised positions than policy bureaucrats and legislators are also likely to be influential at that level and thereby deserve attention. For instance, studying the day-to-day practices of frontline actors such as social workers would be crucial to examine the extent to which positive obligations derived from the treaties become enshrined into local contexts. Furthermore, it is important to look at the impact of non-institutional practices. As a matter of fact, civil society actors such as NGOs, charities, and foundations—may draft guidelines inspired by and/or referring to international treaties, which are diffused through more or less formalised channels to directly target street-level actors, such as teachers and police officers, possibly affecting their behaviour.

Third, as soon as local political authorities engage with an international treaty, the latter become institutionalised, and therefore likely to deploy longterm effects on subnational policy processes. As such, a human rights treaty can have a gradual but transformative impact on public policies in the related areas. This type of policy change can occur especially through regulatory layering, corresponding to a process by which the incremental adoption of new rules and the related organisational developments, e.g. the creation of specialised offices in the public administration, eventually alter the logic of the regulatory framework (Maggetti, 2014). This implies that even changes that appear marginal and almost irrelevant in the short term can significantly modify the situation on the ground in the medium-long term. International human rights law thus matters: the accumulation of small changes over time and the degree of coherence of the trajectory of reform could indeed induce a paradigmatic shift in the way the issues at stake are dealt with by the relevant local policy communities. Therefore, such trajectories would also need to be studied in a comprehensive, integrated way, accounting for their historical evolution.

### References

Varone, F., & Giauque, D. (2022). L'administration fédérale. In Y. Papadopoulos, P. Sciarini, A. Vatter, S. Häusermann, & F. Fossati (Eds.), *Handbuch der Schweizer Politik—Manuel de la politique suisse* (pp. 373–402). NZZ Libro.

**Open Access** This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter's Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the chapter's Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

# Index

### **A**

Aargau, 37, 38 academic experts, 3, 38, 60, 63, 64, 72, 84, 85, 94, 97, 100, 116, 121. *See also* University action plan, 11, 38, 50, 53, 56, 59, 62–64, 72, 75, 84, 91, 92, 94, 100–104, 107, 108, 110, 113–116, 123 agenda-setting, 71–74, 76, 83, 84, 104 institutional, 84 political, 14, 74 Appenzell Ausserrhoden, 37 Appenzell Innerrhoden, 37, 40, 59 authorities, political, 2–8, 11–19, 23–27, 29, 31, 33–36, 39, 41, 48, 68, 72, 78, 82, 85, 90–95, 97, 98, 100, 101, 104, 105, 107, 109–113, 116, 119–121, 123–127

#### **B**

Basel-Landschaft, 38, 94 Basel-Stadt, 37, 94, 95, 97, 103 Berne, 53–56, 58–60, 62, 77, 94, 112 BFEG, 54–58, 63 BFEH, 59–61 bias, 34 bottom-up, 3, 15, 18, 26, 28, 58, 61, 63, 122, 125, 126 Bourdieu, Pierre, 81, 83 budgets, 4, 6, 11, 31, 84, 112, 123

bureaucrats/bureaucracy, 2, 3, 8, 12, 26, 27, 29, 36, 60, 64, 65, 69–72, 84, 85, 92, 97, 98, 100–106, 109, 110, 113–116, 122–124, 126

#### **C**

cantonal, 3, 4, 7–11, 17, 24–26, 30–32, 36, 38–41, 48, 51–63, 68–80, 82–85, 90–116, 120–124 cantons, 9–11, 16, 30, 33, 34, 36–40, 50–65, 69–72, 74, 75, 77, 79, 81, 82, 91, 92, 94–96, 99, 100, 102–104, 106, 108–113, 116, 123,

124 case studies, 2, 16, 25, 28, 32, 34, 48, 62–65, 83, 91, 109, 113, 124

civil society, 2, 16, 26, 28, 36, 50, 64, 65, 71, 73, 76, 78, 95, 97, 98, 100, 101, 121, 123, 126

civil society organisations (CSOs), 3, 27, 30, 38, 70, 71, 73, 75, 78, 79, 84, 85, 90, 103

cognitive resource, 2, 12, 35, 72, 78, 83, 85, 107, 115, 121 compliance, 4, 5, 11, 13–16, 49, 62, 90, 107, 116 conditions, enabling or hindering engagement, 109, 114 constitutional law, 2, 25, 99 consultation procedure, 51–53, 55, 58

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2024 J. Miaz et al., *Engaging with Human Rights*, Palgrave Socio-Legal Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53518-5

131

context, 5, 10, 15, 17, 23, 25, 27–30, 33, 35, 41, 52, 69, 80, 85, 102, 104, 110–112, 121, 122, 124–126 Convention, 31, 32, 38, 51, 53–59,

61–64, 73, 105, 106, 120

Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), 3, 23, 27, 29, 32, 33, 36, 38, 40, 48, 58–64, 68, 70, 72, 73, 75–79, 82, 91, 94–100, 103, 110, 113, 116, 120, 124, 126

Council of Europe, 30, 32, 56

Council of Europe Expert Group on Action against Violence against Women and Domestic Violence (GREVIO), 36, 64, 70, 102 courts, 7, 8, 50

### **D**

data, 2, 3, 9, 12, 16, 24, 25, 33–35, 40, 41 disability/disabilities, 3, 12, 19, 23, 27, 28, 32–34, 60, 61, 69–73, 75–77, 82, 94–100, 110, 113, 116, 121, 123, 126 discrimination, 34, 107 domestic violence, 6, 19, 30, 31, 38, 55, 69–72, 74, 76, 79, 81, 82, 92, 93, 101, 103–106, 111, 112, 116, 126 Donald, Alice, 8, 14, 26, 36, 50, 63, 90 duties to protect.  *See* legitimacy Lucerne, 38

#### **M**

Maggetti, Martino, 25, 85, 125, 127 mechanisms, 3, 5, 8, 11, 14, 16, 17, 24, 27, 31, 36, 41, 47–53, 58, 60–65, 91, 101, 103, 121 mediation, 71, 101, 102 members of parliament (MPs), 70, 71, 73–76, 78–80, 84, 85, 93, 94, 99, 102, 103, 110, 111, 114, 122, 123 Merry, Sally Engle, 15, 27–29, 68, 126 Miaz, Jonathan, 10, 28, 68, 83, 101 migration, 34 mobilisation, 3, 14, 27, 35, 80, 122 *Mobilizing Human Rights*, 5 monism, 10, 16 multi-level, 16, 25, 28

#### **N**

Neuchâtel, 38, 40, 55, 71, 72, 74–77, 81, 92, 93, 103 New Legal Realism, 24–27 Nidwald, 37, 59

Niederhauser, Matthieu, 85, 125 non-governmental organisation (NGO), 4, 70, 74, 126 norms, 6–8, 10, 11, 15–18, 27, 34, 35, 69, 82

### **O**

Obwald, 37

### **P**

parliament/parliaments, 3, 7–12, 24, 26, 27, 38–40, 50–52, 54, 56, 59, 68–74, 79–81, 83, 90–93, 95–98, 103–105, 107, 109–111, 115, 121, 122, 124 parliamentary services, 111 Pélisse, Jérôme, 28, 29, 68, 83, 126 policy processes, 2, 4, 8–11, 15, 18, 24–27, 30, 35, 36, 39, 41, 51, 53, 68, 69, 83, 85, 90, 113, 121, 122, 127 political science, 2, 24, 25, 29 political will, 10, 63, 110, 113 positive obligations, 6, 7, 126 procedure, 3, 4, 6, 25, 47–52, 54, 59, 62, 64, 68, 120, 124 process-tracing, 26 public policy, 2, 14, 27, 83, 90, 92, 100, 103, 104, 109, 112, 113, 123 public problem, 30, 31, 33, 35, 71, 72, 81, 83, 85, 121

### **R**

racial discrimination, 34 ratification, 3, 30, 36, 40, 47–49, 51–54, 58, 59, 62, 64, 69, 71, 72, 100, 112, 120 research design, 16, 26 resources, financial/economic, 12, 18, 34, 92, 110, 114, 124, 126 right-wing, 40, 111

### **S**

sanctions, 16, 48, 53, 63, 64 Schaffhausen, 38, 70, 77, 104, 105, 109 Schefer, Markus, 60, 61, 95

Schmid, Evelyne, 6, 23–25 Schwyz, 38, 40, 54, 74, 75 Sikkink, Kathryn, 14 Simmons, Beth, 3, 5, 6, 8, 14, 15, 26, 35, 48–50, 52 size of cantons, 39, 57, 68, 103, 104, 106, 110, 112, 114, 115, 124 Social Democratic Party (of Switzerland), 70, 73–81, 94, 97, 99, 106, 111 sociology of law, 2, 25, 26 Solothurn, 37, 38 specialized bureaucrat(s), 69, 72, 83, 93, 98, 122 specialized policy bureaucrats, 30, 68–73, 81, 83–85, 90, 100–104, 109, 112, 113, 121, 122, 125 St. Gallen, 37, 38, 57 street-level, 85, 101, 103, 126 subnational, 2–11, 13–19, 23–26, 28–31, 33–36, 40, 41, 48–53, 55, 58–65, 68–72, 76–78, 81–83, 85, 90, 91, 93, 95, 96, 98, 100–105, 107–113, 116, 119–123, 125–127 definition, 125 Swiss Conference against Domestic Violence (CSVD), 54–58, 63, 102 Switzerland, 2, 5, 7, 9, 10, 16, 17, 23, 29–34, 36, 39, 40, 48, 51, 52, 54, 55, 59, 62–65, 68, 76, 80, 94, 96, 107

### **T**

Talesh, Shauhin, 27, 28, 68, 83, 126 Thurgau, 37, 38, 54, 59 Ticino, 37, 81

top-down, 3, 15, 17, 24, 26, 58, 63, 64, 120, 122 translation (of law/norms into policy), 15 treaties, 2–19, 23–36, 38, 39, 41, 47–52, 62–65, 68–79, 81–85, 90, 95, 98, 107–110, 112–114, 119–126 turn to the local, 5

### **U**

United Nations Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD), 36, 59, 70 United Nations (UN), 36, 50 University. *See also* academic experts Uri, 37

### **V**

Valais, 37, 38, 72, 94–97, 102, 103 Vaud, 38, 59, 101, 102, 112 violations (human rights), 26 violence against women, 28, 30–32, 55, 64, 69, 70, 74, 75, 81, 82, 92, 105, 106, 111, 126

### **W**

widespread scepticisms of human rights, 18 Wyttenbach, Judith, 8–11, 24

### **Z**

Zug, 37 Zurich, 38, 40, 74, 75, 77, 99, 101–103, 112


# **Challenges of Post-COVID-19 for a Sustainable Development Society**

Edited by Sandro Serpa and Carlos Miguel Ferreira Printed Edition of the Special Issue Published in *Societies*

www.mdpi.com/journal/societies

## **Challenges of Post-COVID-19 for a Sustainable Development Society**


*3.4.1. Phase constant: dispersion diagram β* − *ω*

For each mode, *β* is a function of frequency *ω*; it is known as the dispersion diagram of the structure. In general, this relationship is not linearly proportional to the frequency for waveguides. The computation of the dispersion diagram with the TLM approach for guiding structures is as follows: The structure has to be excited as explained in Section 3.1. Then, the field components at the time step *k*∆*t* can be found through (17, 18, 30, 31, 39, 40). After a sufficient number of time-step iterations, the response corresponds to the superposition of the modal fields in the guide. By performing a Fourier transform, the frequency response of the structure can be obtained. The peaks in this spectrum correspond to the modes, and they belong to a specific value of the phase constant *β*. Hence, different *β* values have to be imposed to obtain the dispersion diagram.

### *3.4.2. Attenuation constant*

2*Z*0∆*xH*(*n*) *x* = *Y*ˆ

2∆*xE*(*n*) *x* =

2*Z*0∆*xH*(*n*) *x* = *Y*ˆ

2∆*xE*(*n*) *x* =

254 Advanced Electromagnetic Waves

*Vr* 9 *Vr* 11 *Vr* 8 *Vr* 10 *Vr* 4 *Vr* 2 *Vr* 6 *Vr* 3

=

the node. By replacing the above expressions of the fields in (8), one obtains

∆*yE*(*n*)

∆*yE*(*n*)

∆*yE*(*n*)

∆*yE*(*n*)

The calculation of reflected voltages at stubs is done as for standard SCN:

*Vr*

*Vr*

*Vr*

*Vr*

*Vr*

*Vr*

**3.4. Results of the 2.5D modal approach**

*3.4.1. Phase constant: dispersion diagram β* − *ω*

TLM approach for guiding structures.

*yz Vr* 7 − *Vr*

*zy Vr* 4 − *Vr*

In summary, 12 expressions at the center were found. These expressions relate fields at instant *n*∆*t*, incident and reflected voltages. They allow us to update the eight voltages in

∆*xE*(*n*) *x* − *Z*0∆*yH*(*n*)

*y* − *Z*0∆*zH*(*n*) *z*

*y* + *Z*0∆*xH*(*n*) *x* ∆*zE*(*n*) *z* + *Z*0∆*yH*(*n*)

*y* − *Z*0∆*xH*(*n*) *x* ∆*xE*(*n*) *x* + *Z*0∆*yH*(*n*)

*y* + *Z*0∆*zH*(*n*) *z*

∆*zE*(*n*) *z* − *Z*0∆*yH*(*n*)

13 = ∆*xE*(*n*) *x* − *Vi*

15 = ∆*zE*(*n*) *z* − *Vi*

16 = ∆*xZ*0*H*(*n*) *x* − *Vi*

18 = ∆*zZ*0*H*(*n*) *z* − *Vi*

To characterize any waveguide field amplitudes, attenuation constant and phase constant must be calculated. Here, we examine how to obtain these parameters by using the 2.5D

For each mode, *β* is a function of frequency *ω*; it is known as the dispersion diagram of the structure. In general, this relationship is not linearly proportional to the frequency for waveguides. The computation of the dispersion diagram with the TLM approach for guiding

14 = ∆*yE*(*n*)

17 = ∆*yZ*0*H*(*n*)

 *Vr* 2 + *Vr*

 *Vr* 1 + *Vr* 5 + *Vi*

8 + *Vi*

*y*

−

*Vi* 9 *Vi* 11 *Vi* 8 *Vi* 10 *Vi* 4 *Vi* 2 *Vi* 6 *Vi* 3

*y*

*y*

*y*

13

14

15

16

18

*y* − *Vi*

*y* − *Vi* 17

1 + *Vi* 12

2 + *Vi* 9

12 + *Vi*

9 + *Vi*

7 − *Vr* 5

4 − *Vr* 8

(49)

(50)

(51)

(52)

The attenuation of the modes can be extracted from the time-domain response at a phase constant *βl* given by

$$E\_{lm}\left(k\Delta t\right) = \sum\_{k=0}^{M} E^{lm}\left(0\right) e^{-\frac{\omega\_{lm}}{2Q\_{lm}}k\Delta t} e^{j\omega\_{lm}k\Delta t}\,,\tag{53}$$

where *M* is the number of modes propagating in the structure, *Elm* (0) is the initial field magnitude of the *m*-th mode, *Qlm* its quality factor, and *ωlm* the angular resonance frequency of the mode in radians per second for the *l*-th evaluated value of *βl*. A similar expression can be found for the magnetic field by replacing *E* by *H* in (53). To characterize the attenuation of the modes, the damping parameter has to be estimated. At each frequency *ωlm* in the dispersion curve of a given mode, the attenuation constant is related with the quality factor *Qlm* and the group velocity *Vglm* by [34]

$$
\omega\_{lm} \approx \frac{\omega\_{lm}}{2Q\_{lm}V\_{\mathcal{G}^{lm}}} = \frac{\omega\_{lm}}{2Q\_{lm}} \frac{\partial \beta}{\partial \omega} \tag{54}
$$

The terms *ωlm*/2*Qlm* can be extracted from the sampled time-domain response of (53) by using an estimation technique for modal content of a time-varying waveform. For instance, the Matrix pencil method has been a very popular technique for efficient extraction of the modal parameters [14]. Finally, the group velocity in (54), which involves the derivate of *β* with respect to *ω*, can be approximated by taking the finite differences ∆*β*/∆*ω* of the dispersion diagram calculated in the previous section.

### **4. Implementation of the 2.5D TLM for guiding structures**

To validate this approach, the study of a simple theoretical "reference solution" for a canonical geometry is considered. A metallic-rectangular waveguide homogeneously filled with a lossy dielectric material is studied in this section.

### **4.1. Results for a homogeneously lossy dielectric-filled metallic-rectangular waveguide**

Consider a metallic waveguide with dimensions *a* = 6 cm and height *b* = 4 cm. It was filled with a lossy dielectric with relative permittivity *r* = 2 and a conductivity *σ* = 0.001 Sm−1 and simulated with the 2.5D TLM, as shown in Figure 7 (a). An array of 14 × 10 nodes is considered, and a perfect electric boundary condition is imposed at the top, bottom, and side walls, as illustrated in Figure 7 (b). To reduce the dispersion error, a mesh size of ∆*l* = *λ*/15 at 6 GHz is chosen. The signal is obtained after *N* = 4000 time steps and is convolved with a Hanning window.

**Figure 7.** (a) Rectangular-metallic waveguide filled with a lossy dielectric; (b) 2.5D TLM mesh of the rectangular waveguide terminated by a perfect electric boundary condition (PEC). The dimensions are given in terms of the mesh size ∆*l* = *λ*/15 at 6 GHz

The dispersion diagram is obtained in the frequency range from 1 GHz up to 4 GHz and is compared with the theory. For the case of a rectangular-metallic waveguide, the theoretical expression for the dispersion diagram is given by [26]:

$$\beta = \sqrt{\left(\omega\sqrt{\mu\varepsilon}\right)^2 - \left(\frac{m\pi}{a}\right)^2 - \left(\frac{n\pi}{b}\right)^2},\tag{55}$$

where *ω* is the angular frequency; *µ* = *µ*0; = *r*0; *m*, *n* correspond to the order of the modes; and *a* and *b* are the waveguide dimensions. The comparison between the numerical dispersion diagram and the theoretical one is shown in Figure 8.

The continuous lines represent the theoretical results, whereas the discrete points are the results obtained by using the 2.5D TLM algorithm. Different *β* values ranging from 0 to 80 (rad/m) with 80 samples have been considered. The simulation is carried out for 4000 iterations for each *β* value. Good agreement between theory and the 2.5D TLM for guiding structures was obtained. The dispersion curves of a plane wave propagating in free space and a wave propagating in a medium with the same relative permittivity as the loading material (*r* = 2) are plotted as well. It is worth observing that the dispersion curves of the modes tend to the curve of a plane wave propagating in a medium with relative permittivity *r* = 2 as the frequency increases. Finally, the theoretical attenuation constant of the metallic waveguide is calculated by [26]:

$$
\mathfrak{a}\_d = \frac{k^2 \tan \delta}{2\beta},
\tag{56}
$$

where *k* = *ω*√*µ* is the (real) wave number in the absence of losses, *tanδ* = (*ω* + *σ*) /*ω* is the loss tangent with = − *j* = *r*0 − *jσ*/*ω*, and *β* is the phase constant. The results

considered, and a perfect electric boundary condition is imposed at the top, bottom, and side walls, as illustrated in Figure 7 (b). To reduce the dispersion error, a mesh size of ∆*l* = *λ*/15 at 6 GHz is chosen. The signal is obtained after *N* = 4000 time steps and is convolved with

**Figure 7.** (a) Rectangular-metallic waveguide filled with a lossy dielectric; (b) 2.5D TLM mesh of the rectangular waveguide terminated by a perfect electric boundary condition (PEC). The dimensions are given in terms of the mesh

The dispersion diagram is obtained in the frequency range from 1 GHz up to 4 GHz and is compared with the theory. For the case of a rectangular-metallic waveguide, the theoretical

2 −

where *ω* is the angular frequency; *µ* = *µ*0; = *r*0; *m*, *n* correspond to the order of the modes; and *a* and *b* are the waveguide dimensions. The comparison between the numerical

The continuous lines represent the theoretical results, whereas the discrete points are the results obtained by using the 2.5D TLM algorithm. Different *β* values ranging from 0 to 80 (rad/m) with 80 samples have been considered. The simulation is carried out for 4000 iterations for each *β* value. Good agreement between theory and the 2.5D TLM for guiding structures was obtained. The dispersion curves of a plane wave propagating in free space and a wave propagating in a medium with the same relative permittivity as the loading material (*r* = 2) are plotted as well. It is worth observing that the dispersion curves of the modes tend to the curve of a plane wave propagating in a medium with relative permittivity *r* = 2 as the frequency increases. Finally, the theoretical attenuation constant of the metallic

*αd* = *k*2*tanδ*

where *k* = *ω*√*µ* is the (real) wave number in the absence of losses, *tanδ* = (*ω* + *σ*) /*ω* is the loss tangent with = − *j* = *r*0 − *jσ*/*ω*, and *β* is the phase constant. The results

 *mπ a* 2 − *nπ b* 2

, (55)

2*β* , (56)

a Hanning window.

256 Advanced Electromagnetic Waves

size ∆*l* = *λ*/15 at 6 GHz

waveguide is calculated by [26]:

expression for the dispersion diagram is given by [26]:

*β* =

dispersion diagram and the theoretical one is shown in Figure 8.

(*ω*√*µ*)

**Figure 8.** Dispersion diagram of a rectangular-metallic waveguide with dimensions *a* = 6 cm and *b* = 4 cm: Theory (continuous lines), results using the guiding 2.5D TLM approach (dots)

**Figure 9.** Attenuation constant for a lossy dielectric filled metallic-rectangular waveguide: Theory (continuous lines), simulation (dots)

obtained for the attenuation constants by numerical simulation and theory are shown in Figure 9.

The comparison between both curves validates this approach quite satisfactorily. The discrepancies observed close to the cutoff frequency are explained by the fact that (57) is valid as long as *α* << *β*.

$$
\alpha \approx \frac{\partial \beta}{\partial \omega} \Delta \omega \tag{57}
$$

Consequently, since *α* is deduced from ∆*β* in the numerical approach, an inevitable large calculation error on the attenuation constant *α* is obtained for a given error on ∆*β*. To illustrate this point, let us consider the calculation of the propagated error on *α*. The total differential of a function *z* = *f* (*x*1, *x*2, ..., *xN*), where *xi* is the *i*-th independent variable, is given by

$$dz = \left(\frac{\partial f}{\partial \mathbf{x}\_1}\right) \Delta \mathbf{x}\_1 + \left(\frac{\partial f}{\partial \mathbf{x}\_2}\right) \Delta \mathbf{x}\_2 + \dots + \left(\frac{\partial f}{\partial \mathbf{x}\_N}\right) \Delta \mathbf{x}\_N \tag{58}$$

the term *dz* denotes the error in *z*. The uncertainty in the calculation of the attenuation constant for waveguides can be found by considering the differential of the attenuation and phase constants, *α* and *β*, respectively. The differential of the attenuation and phase constants can be computed by

$$
\Delta \mathfrak{a} = \left(\frac{\partial \mathfrak{a}}{\partial \omega}\right) \Delta \omega\_{\prime} \tag{59}
$$

$$
\Delta \beta = \left(\frac{\partial \beta}{\partial \omega}\right) \Delta \omega. \tag{60}
$$

Finally, by dividing (59) by (60), the differential of the attenuation constant in terms of the differential of the phase constant is given by

$$
\Delta \alpha = \left(\frac{\partial \alpha}{\partial \omega}\right) \left(\frac{\partial \omega}{\partial \beta}\right) \Delta \beta \tag{61}
$$

is obtained.

As frequency increases, the first partial derivative on the right-hand side of (61) tends to zero and the second to the speed of light in free space, *c*0. Hence, for high frequencies, the error ∆*α* is bounded. For low frequencies, the first derivate tends to infinity and the second to a finite value, resulting in a larger error. Indeed, in Figure 9, the highest difference between both approaches occurs at cutoff frequencies of the modes and decreases far from these frequencies. Apart from this relative error on *α*, the comparison between numerical results and theory for both propagation constant *β* and the attenuation constant *α* confirms the suitability of the 2.5D TLM to characterize modal parameters in waveguiding structures.