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Aim: this article proposes a radical new approach to the monitoring and governance of services, and the education and training of nurses to meet ‘failure to rescue’ requirements. Background: healthcare policy in the UK that seeks to ensure safe and effective services for the acutely ill has largely failed, resulting in adult patients dying unnecessarily. Despite grand rhetoric, UK governments have distanced themselves from implementation, resulting in patchy localised developments and creating inconsistent service responses. Design and data sources: this article draws on a review of research and UK policy literature and best international practice to propose a new national framework approach that combines competency development, governance and performance monitoring to address ‘failure to rescue’ shortcomings. Implications for nursing: paramount is a nationally agreed and fit-for-purpose competency tool using simulation to assess staff in order to improve recognition of the deteriorating patient. Service improvements should include increased investment in telemedicine; service performance should be communicated through publicly available ratings and overseen by patient panels; and governance will require strengthening through enhanced Care Quality Commission/Monitor input, which should be linked to the maintenance of foundation trust status. Conclusion: health professional bodies, regulators, providers and the Government must work together to strengthen the safety and effectiveness of acute services. This will require investment in staff competency and enhancement of the governance to ensure services consistently meet public expectations and reduce unnecessary deaths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article references the paper published by the journal in 2015 on the association between day of admission and mortality, which health secretary Jeremy Hunt apparently used in his House of Commons speech on July 16, 2015, claiming that 6,000 people die yearly because of lack of a proper seven day service in hospitals. Topics discussed include where the 6,000 figure came from, whether the Department of Health (DH) commissioned the new analysis, and whether data were shared with the DH.

This paper is concerned with the inclusion, exclusion and reshaping of articles within the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) as they are translated into English education legislation. The CRC comprises 54 articles aimed at outlining rights and freedoms for children and was ratified by the United Kingdom (UK) government in 1991. The paper builds on a previous publication by the authors which highlighted how the mobilisation of articles within the CRC into professional practice undergoes multiple translations. This paper takes an in‐depth and critical look at the first stage of the translation process in which articles are mobilised from the CRC into national legislation. Specifically, the paper presents findings from a documentary analysis which explored the translation of principles pertaining to Article 12 of the CRC into English Education Regulations, Acts and Statutory Guidance for schools. Findings demonstrate that the reshaping of the article within education legislation strongly reflects the government's priorities and agendas. The study raises new insights into the need to establish processes to ensure the full mobilisation of Article 12 and questions whether specific principles pertaining to the article could or should be incorporated into national legislative systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence suggests that as public opinion towards immigration becomes more negative, so the descriptive representation of ethnic minority groups is increasingly restricted. Recently, some initial research into the causal mechanism hinted that this effect is driven by patterns of candidacy. This suggests that political parties are creating an 'ethnic penalty' of their own in the selection stage. This paper investigates the relationship between patterns of candidacy, party strategy, and public opinion in Great Britain from 1997 to 2019, and proposes that 'punitive parties' are strongly responsible for shaping the representational outcomes of minority groups. I find support for earlier suggestions that parties are increasingly likely to place ethnic minority candidates away from 'winnable' contests as anti-immigrant hostility rises. These findings are important for our conceptions of ethnic penalties, of party behaviour in selection processes, and for the study and cause of improving political representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers how dominant narratives of the housing crisis, since the 2008 banking crisis in England, have been created and what actions taken in its name. The paper deconstructs the term "crisis", highlighting that its meaning has evolved from a critical moment to a protracted narrative which must be understood historically. Through discourse analysis into housing and party political policy, media and think tank reports, we argue that the employment of housing crisis by the government and others perceives it as an outcome of housing supply constraints and over‐regulation—narratives that have justified subsequent policy actions aimed at propping up the housing and financial systems, opening new avenues for housing commodification, deregulation and financialisation and reproducing crisis anew. However, we note that these narratives can also break down and space can be created for the articulation of new narratives which refocus housing crises as emerging from inequality and class divisions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to clarify the dynamic interplay between immigration and nationality legislation and policymaking in post-imperial and pre-Brexit Britain. In 1981 and 2002, the years on which this paper focuses, three pieces of legislation were enacted marking watershed moments for British policy regarding immigration and nationality. The British Nationality Act of 1981 established 'British citizenship' in the statute book. The Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act of 2002 claimed to introduce new meaning and value to the acquisition of British citizenship by introducing a citizenship test and pledge. Furthermore, the British Overseas Territories Act of 2002 expanded the geographic scope of British citizenship by, in theory, providing citizenship to all those eligible in the existing dependent territories. Debates on the meaning of Britishness and the political projects linking immigration and nationality legislation to it, continue today in government, academia, and the media, all of whom are competing to have a tangible impact on policy. This paper addresses two questions. First, how can we account for the protracted nature of the debate on Britishness, and government efforts to enact immigration and nationality legislation based upon it? Second, if the meaning of Britishness has evolved over time, how has it been shaped by the course of these ongoing political debates? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for a more sustained consideration of how fandom – as both a set of practices and topic of political conversation – underpins a broader "celebritization" of politics and public life. It analyses, via a Twitter-based qualitative content analysis, the ways in which fandom is expressed and spoken about in relation to three contrasting politicians from the UK, namely Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and Jeremy Corbyn. While the precise dynamics of fandom vary depending on the politician in question, our analysis identifies a more general tendency whereby overtly fannish discourses and practices co-exist with expressions of unease or hostility toward the figure of "the fan." This in turn reflects longstanding cultural representations of the figure of the fan as improper and excessive, particularly in the context of democratic politics. These contradictory responses to fandom in politics are crucial to understanding the ambivalent character of the celebritization of politics more generally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2010 the UK government has undertaken extensive spending cuts which have manifested in significant reductions in welfare, local authority and justice system spending. The cuts have been linked with rising poverty, food bank use and serious health issues. Such extreme cuts are likely to affect how citizens view and interact with government. This paper argues that the theories of civic voluntarism, grievance and policy feedback in combination explain why austerity has provoked relatively little political participation in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, Solomos provides an account of the impact of Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech on policy agendas about race relations and immigration. He argues that Powell's intervention helped to shape policy frames around race and immigration in its immediate aftermath and beyond. By exploring the impact of the speech on the policy climate, his paper argues that perhaps the most important aspect of the speech is the way it helped to shape the policy agendas of both the Conservative and Labour parties, even as Powell himself was marginalized from mainstream politics. He concludes by suggesting that Powell's intervention links up with contemporary debates and preoccupations about race and immigration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the theological influences on the Balfour Declaration which was made on the 2 November 1917 and for the first time gave British governmental support to the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. It explores the principal personalities and political workings behind the Declaration before going on to argue the statement cannot be entirely divested from the religious sympathies of those involved, especially Lord Balfour. Thereafter, the paper explores the rise of Christian Restorationism in the context of Scottish Presbyterianism, charting how the influence of Jonathan Edwards shaped the thought of Thomas Chalmers on the role of the Jews in salvation history which in turn influenced the premillennialism of Edward Irving and his Judeo-centric eschatology. The paper then considers the way this eschatology became the basis of John Darby's premillennial dispensationalism and how in an American context this theology began to shape the thinking of Christian evangelicals and through the work of William Blackstone provide the basis of popular and political support for Zionism. However, it also argues the political expressions of premillennial dispensationalism only occurred in America because the Chicago evangelist Dwight L. Moody was exposed to the evolving thinking of Scottish Presbyterians regarding Jewish restoration. This thinking had emerged from a Church of Scotland 'Mission of Inquiry' to Palestine in 1839 and been advanced by Alexander Keith, Horatius Bonar and David Brown. Finally, the paper explores how this Scottish Presbyterian heritage influenced the rise of Zionism and Balfour and his political judgements. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the state of the art of the Brexit negotiations in the area of financial services. It uses a two‐level game model to first explain the positions of UK and EU negotiators on the basis of the domestic constraints they face, and second, to consider the scope for final agreement based on the 'win‐set' of both sides. The paper analyses the preferences and power of three main groups of players within the UK and EU: the political authorities, financial regulators, and the financial industry. We argue that the scope for agreement on financial services has been severely hampered by political and regulatory constraints which forced UK and EU negotiators to adopt early hawkish negotiating positions, and by the absence of a unified position from the financial industry. After the 2017 general election, the position of the UK government and UK financial industry briefly converged, thereby narrowing the domestic win‐set, but also increasing the scope for agreement. However, the July 2018 'Chequers' deal represents a hardening of the UK government's position on financial services. We argue that this reflects the fact that the twin pressures facing UK negotiators—acute political constraints at home and bargaining weakness in Brussels—has become more, not less, acute over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we present an analysis of how constituents procure services at the constituency office of a Member of Parliament (MP) in the United Kingdom. This paper will investigate how several previously documented interactional practices (e.g. entitlement) combine at the constituency office in a way that secures service. From a corpus of 12.5 hours of interaction, and using conversation analysis, we examine constituents’ telephone calls and meetings with constituency office staff and the MP, identifying practices constituents use. First, constituents opened encounters with bids to tell narratives. Second, constituents presented lengthy and detailed descriptions of their difficulties. These descriptions gave space to manage issues of legitimacy and entitlement, while simultaneously recruiting assistance. Third, we examine ways in which constituents display uncertainty about how the institution of the constituency office functions, and what services are available. The paper offers original insights into how constituency services are provided, and how constituency offices give access and support to ordinary citizens, while expanding the conversation analytic literature on institutional service provision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The impact of H.L.A. Hart's The Concept of Law on modern legal thinking is undisputed. But does it reflect the reality of the way British institutions work? In Concept, Hart argued, amongst other things, that one of two 'minimum conditions necessary and sufficient for the existence of a legal system' was that 'its rules of recognition specifying the criteria of legal validity and its rules of change and adjudication must be effectively accepted as common public standards of official behaviour by its officials'. In this paper, we begin the process of testing that statement empirically. Specifically, we ask whether non-judicial UK officials have a uniform view of what the rules of recognition, change and adjudication are, and whether they uniformly take an internal point of view towards them (i.e. whether they accept the rules and do not merely obey them). By way of a pilot study, thirty non-judicial UK officials were interviewed. Those officials comprised currently serving and retired senior civil servants, senior military officials, chief constables and local authority chief executives. The findings of the pilot study are presented in this paper. They allow us to deduce that Hart's statement might well be an inaccurate and incomplete description of the modern British constitution, and to comment on the implications of that conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides a critical theoretical review of the political factors, which significantly influenced the June 2016 Brexit decision to leave the European Union (EU). This paper also provides a critical investigation of the likely impact of Brexit on certain social, political and economic aspects of the UK landscape. To this end the paper also analyses the effect EU policies on the economy, migration, sovereignty and democracy had on Brexit views. During the 2014 European Parliament elections, the UK Conservative Party haemorrhaged electoral support to the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP). During the 2016 Brexit Referendum campaign, the ruling elite had an unfounded expectation that UK citizens would vote to remain in the EU. Under the policy vacuum of no change, the political mantra of UKIP became appealing to an increasing majority in the UK. The failure to ensure that UK citizens were informed of the finalised EU-UK Brexit deal before the referendum took place (as indicated in David Cameron's 2013 Bloomberg speech) will prove to be telling. By August 2018, the rationale that a second referendum should be held was overwhelming. The UK population will experience many of the significant elements of the political threats, which were made during 'project fear'. The reality of post Brexit for many UK people will be quite different to the panacea they envisaged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is the second of two linked papers that focus on the work of the Royal Fine Art Commission (RFAC), which for three quarters of a century held the mantel of the UK Government's advisor on design in the built environment. This paper tells the story of the organization's final 15 years when, under a new and charismatic leader, the Commission substantially changed its modus operandi, and came out of the shadows, although without ever fully embracing the modern era of government. Analysis of the archives are supplemented by what the limited available literature tells us about the RFAC and by a small number of interviews with key stakeholders with firsthand experience of the operation of the RFAC; those who either worked for it, were responsible for it within Government, or were reviewed by it. The experience offers valuable insights into the practices and problematics of design governance that today, internationally, forms one of the keystones of modern day planning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes the British approach to the so-called refugee question within the Sovereign Base Areas (SBAs) of Cyprus. By drawing on examples from 1974-1975, 1998, and 2015, this paper will show that it is a policy of detachment that connects and defines the British response to this question in their attempt to successfully overcome the issues of precedent and responsibility that are so intertwined with refugee problems. This paper will highlight the importance of what has been termed the detached ideal: contain, manage, and remove. Each step involves balancing pain against gain, action against reaction, and if needed, one side over the other, in the pursuit of the least damaging way of solving this problem. Ultimately, what this paper shows is that in addressing the refugee question on Cyprus, the British government would much rather face criticism outside of its borders rather than issues within them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a reflection on the UK governments' latest regulatory intervention affecting all non-financial institutions, including the Office of Nuclear Regulation (ONR). The intervention forms part of the government's response to the economic downturn experienced in the UK and requires regulators to take into account not only their responsibilities for maintaining safety, but also the impact of their actions on economic growth. While this may be a valid proposition for some organisations, the paper suggests that the unique characteristics of the nuclear industry should exempt its regulator from these government provisions. The paper identifies existing and historic regulatory and governance weaknesses that would suggest regulatory intervention should be reviewed but not from a need to enhance economic growth. Rather a need exists to redesign the regulatory process so that the industry's hazards and risks arising are mitigated. An inherent conflict of interest is also identified that compounds historic governance problems where publicly-funded, government-appointed regulators attempt to regulate publicly-funded, government-appointed third-party organisations. While in neoliberal terms this may not be seen as an issue, I examine notable, generic, regulatory incidents where managerial and regulatory action failed to resolve resource allocation issues between the need to improve levels of economic growth or safety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2013, the UK Government announced that seven of the nation’s largest banks had agreed to publish their lending data at the local level across Great Britain. The release of such area based lending data has been welcomed by advocacy groups and policy makers keen to better understand and remedy geographies of financial exclusion. This paper makes three contributions to debates about financial exclusion. First, it provides the first exploratory spatial analysis of the personal lending data made available; it scrutinises the parameters and robustness of the dataset and evaluates the extent to which the data increase transparency in UK personal lending markets. Second, it uses the data to provide a geographical overview of patterns of personal lending across Great Britain. Third, it uses this analysis to revisit the analytical and political limitations of ‘open data’ in addressing the relationship between access to finance and economic marginalisation. Although a binary policy imaginary of ‘inclusion-exclusion’ has historically driven advocacy for data disclosure, recent literatures on financial exclusion generate the need for more complex and variegated understandings of economic marginalisation. The paper questions the relationship between transparency and data disclosure, the policy push for financial inclusion, and patterns of indebtedness and economic marginalisation in a world where ‘fringe finance’ has become mainstream. Drawing on these literatures, this analysis suggests that data disclosure, and the transparency it affords, is a necessary but not sufficient tool in understanding the distributional implications of variegated access to credit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to provide a critique of Shared Parental Leave (SPL) in the UK from a gender equality perspective, namely to assess whether SPL is capable of enabling more men to take leave in order to act as the main carer for their child. Leave policies in Nordic countries, where the rate of take-up by fathers is high, are also examined. It argues that SPL is open to legal challenge by fathers who do not meet the eligibility criteria, as the SPL scheme as currently drafted breaches the terms of the EU Parental Leave Directive and is also discriminatory on grounds of sex. The paper concludes that SPL is flawed as a policy. Whilst the UK government argues for a more equal division of childcare between father and mother, it seems unwilling to challenge the expectation that mothers provide the primary care for young children. Thus SPL will only be successful if the policy is reformed to include a higher rate of pay and a period of leave reserved for fathers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent scholarship posits that ambiguous ('polysemic') ideas are effective for coalition building between diverse stakeholders: their capacity to be interpreted differently attracts different interests. Hence, in search of political solutions to 'wicked' and similarly complex problems, deploying polysemic ideas would be critical to effective policy-making. This paper scopes the policy-making potential of polysemic ideas by examining the impact of an ambiguous concept known as 'One Health' on responses to antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in Australia and the UK. It offers two primary arguments. Firstly, polysemic ideas can help mobilise broad attention to complex problems: since One Health became associated with AMR, political and administrative attention has grown more intense and coordinated than previously. Secondly, however, a polysemic idea alone may be insufficient to generate effective action: the contrast between Australian and UK AMR policies illustrates that polysemic ideas do not suspend interests, institutions, or ideas that can be readily deployed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The winter of 2010–11 saw a significant upsurge of student protest in Britain. This paper analyses the numerous references to 60s’ radicalism which circulated in responses to the protests, with a focus on left-wing media. Drawing on performativity theory, the paper traces the highly polarised divisions between affirmations and repudiations of ‘1968’ in responses to the protests. This polarisation, I argue, reflects an absence of a clear-cut collective memory of the British radical 60s. More broadly, the paper sheds light on the hitherto under-explored mechanisms through which memories of ‘1968’ shape the discursive and affective landscape of contemporary radical politics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article explores the crisis within the Conservative Party in 1922 over the continuation of the coalition with Lloyd George's section of the Liberal Party, focusing on the actions of the Conservative chief whip, Leslie Wilson. Previously unused papers relating to Wilson's career shed new light on his role in the fall of the coalition. Wilson co‐ordinated opposition to the continuation of the coalition in its existing form, helping to solidify the group of junior ministers opposed to Lloyd George into a cohesive and powerful faction, which then forced the Conservative Party leader, Austen Chamberlain, into making concessions. Above all, Wilson was influential in forcing Chamberlain to agree to a meeting of MPs at the Carlton Club on 19 October 1922, at which the rebels won a decisive victory, causing the resignation of Chamberlain as party leader and Lloyd George as prime minister, in one of the most important events in modern British political history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Political discussion networks significantly influence citizens' political behaviours and attitudes. They promote political information and facilitate mobilisation and conformity to social norms (Fowler, 2005 ; Huckfeldt and Sprague, 1995). It has been suggested that ethnicity plays an important role in shaping the composition and impact of these networks (Leighley and Matsubayashi, 2009). In this paper, we employ discussion network data to contribute to this debate and explore the relationship between co-ethnic discussants and their political characteristics, which we refer to as mobilisation value; how these relationships vary across ethnic minority/majority groups; and the implication of these phenomena for voter turnout in Britain. We find that, for White British, co-ethnic discussants have greater mobilisation value. However, overall, for Asians and other ethnic groups have higher mobilisation value than White British or Black respondents. In turn the mobilisation value of discussants has a positive effect on turnout regardless of a citizen's own ethnicity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The EU carbon price lies well below estimates of the social cost of carbon and "target-consistent" carbon prices needed to deliver ambitious targets such as the 40% reduction target for 2030. In light of this, the UK introduced a carbon price floor (CPF) for its electricity sector in 2013 and the new Dutch Government has recently made a similar commitment, while successive French Governments have called for an EU-wide CPF. This paper analyzes the impacts and design of a power- sector CPF, both at the EU and national level, using a political-economy approach. We find a good case for introducing such a price-based instrument into the EU ETS. We suggest that a CPF should be designed to "top up" the EUA price to €25-30/tCO2, rising annually at 3-5% above inflation, at least until 2030. We argue that the new EU Market Stability Reserve enhances the value of a CPF in terms of delivering climate benefits, and discuss the potential for a regional CPF in North-West Europe. We also review international policy experience with price floors (and ceilings). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has indicated that English identity was a strong predictor for a Leave vote in the referendum on membership of the European Union, and that it is an identity that is increasingly playing a role in British politics. In this paper, we explore whether Englishness affects even left‐right positioning of parties. Focusing on Labour, we find that it does, even controlling for other attitudinal and demographic variables. Alongside age and perceptions of the party leader, perceptions of immigration change and perceived lack of political efficacy also play a significant role. Given the potential electoral significance of this, we reflect on and propose a range of policy options that Labour could utilise to address this gap between English‐identifiers and the party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article talks about the Working Paper published by the Modern British Studies (MBS) research centre on new ways of thinking about the transformation of British society, culture, politics and economy between 19th century and 2015. It highlights the cultures of democracy and the rising political, social and cultural change. It states that the paper can be used as a study material for understanding the state of history in present times.

Who do you think will win in your constituency? Most citizens correctly answer this question, and groups are even better at answering it. Combining individual forecasts results in the 'wisdom of crowds' explained by Condorcet's jury theorem. This paper demonstrates the accuracy of citizen forecasts in seven British General Elections between 1964 and 2010, and reports what citizens interviewed in February and March forecasted for the election in May 2015. 'Citizen forecasting' predicts vote shares and winners in constituency elections, and seat numbers and governments in national elections. The paper also introduces a new method for predicting vote shares from citizen forecasts. Citizen forecasts are direct, accurate, and comprehensible. Pollsters should collect them and communicate their results more often. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper notes the contemporary emergence of 'morality' in both sociological argument and political rhetoric, and analyses its significance in relation to ongoing UK welfare reforms. It revisits the idea of 'moral economy' and identifies two strands in its contemporary application; that all economies depend on an internal moral schema, and that some external moral evaluation is desirable. UK welfare reform is analysed as an example of the former, with reference to three distinct orientations advanced in the work of Freeden (), Laclau (), and Lockwood (). In this light, the paper then considers challenges to the reform agenda, drawn from third sector and other public sources. It outlines the forms of argument present in these challenges, based respectively on rationality, legality, and morality, which together provide a basis for evaluation of the welfare reforms and for an alternative 'moral economy'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increasing social mobility is the 'principal goal' of the British Government's social policy (Cabinet Office, 2011: 5). However, while policy perspectives present mobility as an unambiguously progressive force, there is a striking absence of studies looking at the impact of mobility on individuals themselves. Drawing on 39 lifecourse interviews with upwardly mobile respondents drawn from the UK Cultural Capital and Social Exclusion Project (CCSE), this paper examines how mobility affects the psychic and emotional life of the individual. More specifically, it examines how mobility influences social, familial and intimate relationships, as well as the ontological coherence of the self. Following Bourdieu's (2004: 127) description of his own upward trajectory, the paper argues that the concept of a divided habitus, or habitus clivé, may be particularly useful for understanding some iterations of the contemporary mobility experience, particularly its most long-range forms. Such a concept, it argues, helps explain how the emotional pull of class loyalties can entangle subjects in the affinities of the past, and why - despite prevailing political rhetoric - upward mobility may remain a state that not everyone unequivocally aspires to. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the historical formation of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) in the United States and argues that programme emergence depended on the ability of policy entrepreneurs to link the economic concerns of agricultural production with the ideational concern of national security. Using a historical institutionalist framework this paper stresses the critical juncture of the Second World War and the positive feedback loop created between agricultural industries and schools to understand the emergence of the NSLP. In addition, it stresses the role of frames in policy-making and focuses on the use by policy entrepreneurs of a security frame whereby child malnutrition was cast as a national security issue. The policy window of war gave policy entrepreneurs the chance to use the politically and culturally resonant frame of security, in the contexts of agricultural subsidies, to push for the creation of this programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Devolution has become a key 'global trend' over recent decades as many states have decentralised power to sub-state governments. The UK resisted this trend until the late 1990s when devolution was enacted by the then Labour Government, taking a highly asymmetrical form in which different territories have been granted different powers and institutional arrangements. Devolution allows the devolved governments to develop policies that are tailored to the needs of their areas, encouraging policy divergence, although this is countered by pressures to ensure that devolved approaches do not contradict those of the central state, promoting convergence. This review paper aims to assess the unfolding dynamics of devolution and policy divergence in the UK, spanning different policy areas such as economic development, health and social policy. The paper emphasises that devolution has altered the institutional landscape of public policy in the UK, generating some high-profile examples of policy divergence, whilst also providing evidence of policy convergence. In addition, the passage of time underlines the nature of UK devolution as an unfolding process. Its underlying asymmetries have become more pronounced as the tendency towards greater autonomy for Scotland and Wales clashes with a highly centralised mode of policymaking in Westminster, the consequences of which have spilt over into the devolved territories in the context of the post-2007 economic crisis through public expenditure cuts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this introductory essay, we outline how recent events have generated considerable debate and discussion surrounding the future constitutional status of Scotland and the current devolutionary settlement in the UK, and how the aim of this collection of papers is to evaluate UK devolution and the policy mobilities surrounding it. We argue that there has been a tendency for scholars to concentrate on the detail of the constitutional and administrative structures and a reluctance to theorise devolution, and suggest geographers can offer a particular contribution here through an understanding of devolution as fundamentally about the interaction of politics, culture and territory. We discuss the value of considering the particular geographies of policy at work, and the role of the everyday work of civil servants in creating and sustaining the creation of new state spaces. We then briefly highlight the main findings of each of the papers in this special collection and show how, together, they add to our understanding of the geographies of devolution and of policy at a critical juncture in the devolution story. We conclude that whatever the particular future for the United Kingdom, the policy interactions between territories will continue to have an important role in their governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an engagement with theoretical deficits in some uses of neoliberalism as an explanatory concept. It draws on theories of ideology, of governmentality and of assemblage to offer alternative conceptions of the relationship between neoliberalism and its others, and to illuminate the ambiguous and contradictory role of local governments in the UK in processes of neoliberalisation. The paper develops an analysis of local governments as strategic actors in the ‘landscapes of antagonism’ generated by current cycles of economic, political and governance change, and argues for more attention to be paid to the relationship between theory, politics and critique. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article considers the opening up of parliamentary proceedings to greater public scrutiny in the two decades after the 1832 Reform Act. It examines developments in the publication of parliamentary debates, considering why proposals for an official parliamentary record were rejected in the 1830s. It also discusses two less well-studied but equally vital means of publicising parliamentary activity: the publication of official division lists and the sale to the public of parliamentary papers. It argues that the 1830s was a critical decade of change, influenced by shifting perceptions of the relationship between the reformed house of commons and those it sought to represent. This was driven, in particular, by liberal notions of the importance of parliamentary accountability to public opinion: MPs were increasingly aware of the need to keep constituents informed of their parliamentary activities, whether in the chamber, committee room or division lobby. This article also highlights the extent to which the Commons' approach to publicising its activities was constrained not only by the fact that it remained a breach of parliamentary privilege to publish reports of debates, but also by the physical space that the Commons occupied. The destruction of much of the old Palace of Westminster by fire in 1834 provided an important opportunity to remodel existing arrangements, notably with the addition of a second division lobby and the construction of a reporters' gallery. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper considers the notion that innovation in territorial governance is associated with a set of core neoliberal ideas about local economic development which have come to constitute a new and pervasive consensus. Through a case study of attempts to construct city-regional institutions in Manchester, England, over a period of 25 years, it attempts to track the themes that have underpinned the development of a local politics of economic development. The paper considers the extent to which evolution of city-regional institutions and policy accord to wider ideas about post-political forms of governance and the erosion of democracy in cities. It concludes by considering the degree to which this experience is representative of a wider orthodoxy in the governance of local economic development. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper investigates whether five English political parties are differentiating themselves based on the brand personality they are communicating through their websites. The relative brand positions of five English political parties are analyzed using Aaker's brand personality scale. The text from each party website is analyzed using content analysis and a dictionary-based tool. The results are plotted in relation to one another on a correspondence analysis map. We find that the two main dimensions on which parties’ brand personalities differ relate to the trade-offs between communicating competence and communicating sincerity and between communicating sophistication and communicating ruggedness. We find that parties’ brand personalities are distinctive, with the exception of the Green Party, and that the position of one party, the United Kingdom Independence Party, is particularly distinctive. Our research uses Aaker's existing framework for thinking about brand personalities, rather than creating a new framework for politics. By using an existing framework, we are able to use tools developed in other disciplines and show their usefulness for the study of political marketing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines debates about the design and provision of post-war housing within the papers and report of the Parker Morris committee. It does so to show how the models of citizens' rights and expectations which underpinned post-war welfare provision were transformed by mass affluence and the dynamic sphere of commercial consumption. Parker Morris's deliberations demonstrate that, as early as the 1950s, the citizen-subject was reimagined as a consuming individual, with requirements based on their expressive needs and consuming desires, and that this had far-reaching consequences for social democratic systems of universal welfare provision. The introduction of consumerist imperatives into publicly defined models of citizens' needs enhanced the political and cultural authority of the commercial domain, prompted a heightened role for commercial experts and market logics within public governance, and served to devalue socialized forms of provision in favour of consumer choice in the private market. The article thus engages with the growing scholarship on the politics of mass consumerism by showing how the material and emotional comforts of post-war affluence came to be constructed as critical to social democratic citizenship and selfhood. Situating this uneasy entanglement of social democratic rights with consumer satisfaction as part of a wider trajectory of political change, the piece suggests that Parker Morris marks an early but significant moment in the transition from post-war welfarism and social democracy to the consumer- and market-oriented forms of governance which came to dominate British politics and society in the latter part of the twentieth century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Driven by a desire to improve academic outcomes and transform ‘failing’ schools, governments around the world have often turned to the development of new forms of state-funded school. This paper looks at three such instances of the introduction of new forms of schooling, within three urban localities (academy schools in London; charter schools and small schools of choice in New York City; and Schools of Tomorrow in Rio de Janeiro). It considers the extent to which these types of school did improve academic outcomes for their students and draws comparisons across each case study in order to understand their similarities and differences. It concludes that although the quasi-marketisation of school systems through the introduction of new (often private) providers might improve outcomes, this is not the only means by which improvement can be attained; and that instead the introduction of new forms of school may be successful because this enables certain other changes to happen. It highlights the limited nature of impact evidence available in all instances, which restricts our ability to properly evaluate the effect of new school types on outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Should we agree with Tom Peck that David Cameron was the "Worst Prime Minister in a Hundred Years?" (2016). Joseph Butler once stated that "Every thing is what it is, and not another thing" and that "Things and actions are what they are, and the consequences of them will be what they will be: why, then, should we desire to be deceived?" (Butler, 1841: Preface; 76). The United Kingdom (UK) is now faced with the claim that "Brexit means Brexit" - a vacuous phrase which palpably begs the question at issue. For the issue is: what is Brexit? and what type of Brexit was voted for? To say that "Brexit means Brexit" is whistling in the dark as a means to ward off unwelcome spirits and to conjure up an appearance of resolve. This paper argues that the referendum on whether the UK should stay in the European Union was held by the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, to satisfy internal party critics and the campaign conducted in a manner inspired by his previous success in holding and winning referendums. Further, it argues that it has unleashed a new doctrine: that of the referendum result as an expression of the undiluted 'will of the people'. The holding of the referendum, its conduct and its result were direct results of complacency and hubris; what precisely a vote for Brexit means is unclear and ambiguous, and the populist belief that the result has to be upheld because it expresses the 'will of the people' is both cause and consequence of the referendum campaign and result. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the most striking questions raised by Brexit is undoubtedly related to security and defence. What should we expect from the United Kingdom (UK) in the collective and multilateral efforts within the European Union (EU) and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) after Brexit? This article aims to contribute to an answer by arguing that, in the security and defence field, Brexit hardly represents a threat to NATO or the EU. Instead, it offers an opportunity to readjust priorities and investments towards an effective multilateralism, both European and transatlantic. The paper argues that, faced with an apparent overlap of the threats and challenges shaped by the strategic environment and the priority concerns of both organisations, it is expected that the UK will continue to be engaged in the EU common security and defence policy's (CSDP) civilian missions and military operations as a third country, as well as enhance NATO's commitments in the aftermath of the implementation of the 2016 Warsaw Declaration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers an empirically-based overview of changes and challenges for UK civil society in the first years of the twenty-first century. It draws together recent published research findings about volunteering and smaller civil society organizations, discerning themes in published studies by the author and other researchers. It concludes with a discussion about the inter-relationship between changes in civil society and changes in public policy, including new public governance and the marketization of the welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The research discussed in this paper arose from the writer's interest in United Kingdom (UK) rural policy, government and governance. Its aims were to: 1) find out the extent to which the participants in the research, many of whom are involved in UK local government, were aware of the nongovernmental advisory and support organisations that, from 1909 until 2013, were involved with rural policy; and 2) establish the loci of influence in relation to aspects of rural policy. The data, gathered from interviews and an online questionnaire, suggests that political influence lies primarily with the Conservative Party, whose elected members run the district and county councils. Other sources of influence include the middle and landed classes. There is ambiguity, however. Some clerks and councillors admitted that they do not know where influence lies; suggesting that they, at least, do not believe it lies with them. Awareness of the organisations is unsurprisingly varied according to the participants' backgrounds. Overall, the data suggests that the more remote organisations were physically from 'work on the ground', and the more years that have passed since their closure, the lower the awareness of their existence and work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of leaving the European Union (EU) will have profound consequences for health and the National Health Service (NHS) in the UK. In this paper, we use the WHO health system building blocks framework to assess the likely effects of three scenarios we term soft Brexit, hard Brexit, and failed Brexit. We conclude that each scenario poses substantial threats. The workforce of the NHS is heavily reliant on EU staff. Financing of health care for UK citizens in the EU and vice versa is threatened, as is access to some capital funds, while Brexit threatens overall economic performance. Access to pharmaceuticals, technology, blood, and organs for transplant is jeopardised. Information used for international comparisons is threatened, as is service delivery, especially in Northern Ireland. Governance concerns relate to public health, competition and trade law, and research. However, we identified a few potential opportunities for improvement in areas such as competition law and flexibility of training, should the UK Government take them. Overall, a soft version of Brexit would minimise health threats whereas failed Brexit would be the riskiest outcome. Effective parliamentary scrutiny of policy and legal changes will be essential, but the scale of the task risks overwhelming parliament and the civil service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following the accident at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986, the United Kingdom Government imposed restrictions on the consumption of sheep meat that became contaminated by nuclear fallout to ensure it was extremely unlikely that any consumers would receive an unacceptable dose. The international context for the restrictions is summarized and a brief review of the strategies employed by the UK is presented. An analysis using the J-value framework, including the de minimis quantum of life expectancy, is made of the cost effectiveness of the sheep meat restrictions in force until 2012, in terms of 4 categories of consumer ranging from the average to the extreme. The paper shows that the risk to the general population was very low indeed at the time the restrictions were removed in 2012. Retaining the restrictions for an extra year, would have averted the dose to the average consumer by a fraction of a microSievert, corresponding to a gain in life expectancy of 8 s. Meanwhile for the ICRP Representative Person, the gain in life expectancy from retaining the restrictions for an extra year ranged between 17 and 25 s. These gains are nugatory, as they are a factor of between 8 and 23 below the de minimis quantum of life expectancy. This new measure provides a meaningful quantitative criterion for judging when the radiation exposure of a large population is trivial in the sense used by the ICRP. The gains in life expectancy for the Field Representative Person and the Extreme Consumer were above the trivial level, but the associated J-values were 10 and 40, an order of magnitude or more above the value of unity where a case could be made for retaining the restrictions for another year. The high J-values and/or de minimis life expectancy ratios suggest that the food restrictions could almost certainly have been ended earlier. Also discussed are: the choice of the Representative Person, the role of intervention levels, the extent to which conservatisms in analysis are warranted and how socio-political factors in decision making can be taken into account in a transparent way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, there have been several calls for geographers to engage more closely with the normative in their work. This paper supplements those calls by suggesting that geographers turn their attention to popular understandings of and discourses about justice. In the first part of the paper, I make a case for such scholarship and argue that it should be undergirded by two premises. The first premise is that understandings of justice depend not only on abstract ideas about the just, but on the geographical and historical frames - geographical imaginaries - through which we understand the world; the second is that understandings of justice (including both abstract ideas and geographical imaginaries) are deeply historical and social. In the second part of this paper, I demonstrate the centrality of historical and social geographical imaginaries to assessments of justice by examining the discourse surrounding the controversial 1940 Land Transfer Regulations in Palestine. Put in place at the behest of British Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald, the Regulations restricted the areas in which Jews could buy land in Palestine. While Jews in Palestine condemned the Regulations as racially discriminatory, MacDonald defended them as necessary if the British were to fulfil the British Mandate Government's obligations to the Palestinians as well as to the Jews. A close look at the positions of each side reveals that their differences lay not in their abstract principles of justice but in the geographical imaginaries through which they viewed Palestine and the Palestinians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of the United Kingdom's exit from the European Union (the so-called Brexit) means a turning point both in the history of the European integration and also of the United Kingdom. The 51% of the British electorate voted in favour of leaving the EU, which raised up uncountable legal, political and economic questions to be answered. The legal questions raised by the Brexit could be categorized into some groups. According to Takis Tridimas, there are open procedural, institutional and administrative issues of the withdrawal, which organize the 'know how' of the process; but we could talk about the future relationship forms between the United Kingdom and European Union; and the future of the European integration paradigm; or about the development and changes of the European Union's and United Kingdom's legal system due to the Brexit. In this paper - after presenting the historical background of a member state's withdrawal-I focus on the summary of the main public law questions opened to be answered by the Brexit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the Leveson inquiry's use of a narrative device - the policy cycle - to justify the need for a break with the past. We challenge that narrative, which runs through much of the literature, and posit a more nuanced and complex account of the politics and history of press inquiries, drawing upon the political science literature. We then reflect upon the implications of our findings for the future of press regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

No established liberal democracy has achieved sex balance in its national legislature. Scholars agree skewed candidate pools put forward by parties during elections cause sex-disproportionate seat distribution, but disagree as to whether disproportionality is caused by too few women aspirant candidates coming forward (supply) or party selectors preferring men (demand). This paper uses a multistage method to explore supply and demand during the British Labour party's candidate selection process. Rare data from three elections and 4622 aspirants allow for an unobstructed look inside the secret garden of politics and reveal the party is not fully feminized insofar that women aspirants are disproportionally filtered out of its selection process and are disproportionally underrepresented in its candidate pool. Testing reveals a lack of selector demand for women aspirants has a greater impact on women's underrepresentation than an undersupply of women aspirants, a finding which supports using sex quotas to level imbalanced candidate slates. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The image of Margaret Thatcher appearing on television dressed in a ‘peacock blue sari’ must seem rather farfetched—and yet, for a brief moment, it appeared a distinct possibility. That such an event seemed plausible reflected the growing recognition among senior Conservatives of the electoral significance of ethnic minority voters. While Conservatives had begun to experiment with measures to appeal to BAME voters as early as 1951, from the mid-1970s formal party structures dedicated to the recruitment and representation of BAME voters began to emerge. In 1976 the Party launched the Anglo Asian Conservative and the National Anglo West Indian Conservative Societies, both of which sought to address poor performance among black and Asian voters. This paper explores the development of Conservative electoral strategies targeting BAME voters in the period after 1951, and reflects on what these strategies reveal about Conservative narratives of the nation in the 1980s. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to conduct a big data analysis of public library operations and services of two cities in two countries by using the Chernoff face method.Design/methodology/approach The study is designed to evaluate library services by analyzing the Chernoff face. Big data on public libraries in London and Seoul were collected, respectively, from Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy and the Korean government’s website for drawing a Chernoff face. The association of variables and human facial features was decided by survey. Although limited in its capacity to handle a large number of variables (eight were analyzed in this study) the Chernoff face method does readily allow for the comparison of a large number of instances of analysis. A total of 58 Chernoff faces were drawn from the formatted data by using the R programming language.Findings The study reveals that most of the local governments in London perform better than those of Seoul. This consequence is due to the fact that local governments in London operate more libraries, invest more budgets, allocate more staff and hold more collections than local governments in Seoul. This administration resulted in more use of libraries in London than Seoul. The study validates the benefit of using the Chernoff face method for big data analysis of library services.Practical implications The Chernoff face method for big data analysis offers a new evaluation technique for library services and provides insights that may not be as readily apparent and discernible using more traditional analytical methods.Originality/value This study is the first to use the Chernoff face method for big data analysis of library services in library and information research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]