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This paper seeks to extend work previously published that points to the importance of rhetorical analysis to policy studies. It argues against the notion that policy can be dismissed as 'spin' and explores further the work of rhetoric within the UK government's policy texts of lifelong learning. For the authors, rhetorical analysis helps to point to the politics of discourse that is at play in policy-making processes. This paper points to some of the conceptual resources upon which one can draw in undertaking rhetorical deconstructions of policy texts and discourses, in this case, of lifelong learning, and one's own role, as analysts and sultans of spin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues both that devolution is central to our understanding of developments in social policy in the contemporary UK and that social policy is a key means through which we can develop a critical understanding of the process of devolution itself. Much of the devolved powers available to the governments in Edinburgh, Belfast and Cardiff centre on social policy innovation and practice. Devolution was widely welcomed as opening up the potential for the development of radically different social policies. However, the discussion of devolution has been largely dominated by an approach that focuses on institutional and/or organizational differences marginalizing, in the process, the wider social relations of welfare around which social policy is organized. In bringing the study of devolution into the heartland of social policy analysis, it is argued that we can begin to develop a more critically informed appreciation of social policy across the entire devolved UK. Through critical social policy analysis we can both evaluate and explain the complex interrelations between devolved governance and the continuing reproduction of inequalities and social divisions throughout the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political devolution in the UK has afforded opportunities for studying policy differences and similarities in relation to local-level community-based planning initiatives in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Organised around the concepts of 'lesson-drawing' and the 'filling in' of local governance, this paper critically considers aspects of policy design and development associated with community-based planning within and between the devolved UK polities. In practice, policy instruments vary with respect to their institutional, scalar and organisational rationalities. A policy mobility perspective may enable a relatively more critical understanding of how local governance arrangements are being externally and internally shaped in the respective devolved nation-regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The presence of undocumented migrants is increasing in many Western countries despite wide-ranging attempts by governments to increase border security. Measures taken to control the influx of immigrants include policies that restrict access to publicly funded health care for undocumented migrants. These restrictions to health care access are controversial, and evidence suggests they do not always have the intended effect. This study provides a comparative analysis of institutional, actor-related, and contextual factors that have influenced health care policy development on undocumented migrants in England and the Netherlands. For undocumented migrants, England restricts its access to care at the point of service, while the Netherlands restricts through the payment system for services. The study includes an analysis of policy papers and semistructured, in-depth interviews with various actors in both countries. Findings confirm the influence of such contextual factors as immigration considerations and cost concerns on health care policy making in this area. However, these factors cannot explain the differences between the two countries. Previously enacted policies, especially the organization of the health care system, affected the kind of restrictions for undocumented migrants. Concerns about the side effects of generous treatment of undocumented migrants on other groups played a substantial role in formulating restrictive policies in both countries. Evidently, policy development and implementation is critically affected by institutional rules, which govern the degree of influence that doctors and professional medical associations have on the policy process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the influential analysis of Thatcherism by the late Jim Bulpitt, this paper seeks to do two things. First, to use the enquiries of the Treasury and Civil Service Committee of 1980 to underpin an account of economic policy-making in the initial period after 1979 which stresses the inadequacy of accounts which see policy as based upon a coherent, monetarist doctrine. Instead, it is argued that policy in this period is best described as ‘adventurist’, based on strikingly little analysis of its possible consequences. Second, this analysis is linked to the question of Conservative ‘statecraft’, and especially what Bulpitt called the ‘political argument hegemony’, which enabled the Conservatives to win the 1983 election despite mass unemployment. Here, it is argued, notions of economic ‘decline’ were crucial.British Politics (2007) 2, 3–19. doi:10.1057/palgrave.bp.4200038 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article introduces several papers about gender in contemporary British politics. Women have made substantial inroads into the masculine world of politics. The articles provide a valuable and timely commentary on contemporary political developments and at the same time perfectly demonstrate both the quality and range of current research in this area. For both Sarah Childs and Nirmal Puwar the context is the House of Commons. Childs uses the experience of the 1997 intake of Labour women Members of Parliament (MPs) to ask whether they have a distinctive style of politics. Puwar reflects on the symbolically disruptive impact of the presence in parliament of women, black and other ethnic minority MPs. Judith Squires and Mark Wickham-Jones provide an assessment of what has been achieved in terms of mainstreaming gender concerns in the policy process, by what has been known as the Women and Equality unit. Vivien Lowndes uses data on women's participation in politics and social networks at local level to engage with the currently highly influential social capital thesis. Rosie Campbell explores current gender differences in ideology and issue preferences through a statistical analysis of data from the British Election Study.

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Copyright of Policy & Politics is the property of Policy Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article discusses some problems related to locating public records and how the researcher might approach the public records to help in elucidating the policy process in Great Britain. The increase use of typewriter, carbon paper and the office copier have led to a vast increase in the quantity of records being produced within the government. Due to frequent transfer of public records from a government agency to another, the historian will face problems in tracing his sources and in placing them in their proper administrative context. In considering the relevance of these public records to the study of the policy process in action, it is useful to consider that process as one of three stages: initiation, development and execution.

The article discusses various reports published within the issue, including one by Stephen Meredith and Philip Catney on the assumption that the New Labour policy is driven by a highly centralised policy-making ethos, and another by Nigel Bowles, Desmond King and Fiona Ross on a comparative analysis of leadership studies in both the U.S. and Great Britain to challenge traditional assumptions about the nature of Prime Ministerial power in Britain.

This article addresses two interrelated critiques of participatory-deliberative democratic institutions: that they are beset by problems of scale and that they achieve weak policy impact. This article tests these criticisms through the case of the UK Sustainable Communities Act ( SCA), a multi-level process that is relatively strongly institutionalized. The evidence lends qualified support to these critiques. The article differentiates between contextual factors, related to the attempt to institutionalize participatory-deliberative processes within existing socioeconomic and political structures, and design factors to do with institutional and process design. The case of the SCA calls for caution about the claim that multi-level participatory-deliberative processes can overcome problems of scale and policy impact, but the question remains open. The article ends by suggesting that expectations of direct policy impact might be too high. Rather than determinants of policy, multi-level participatory-deliberative processes might function best as agenda-setters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many political systems legislators face a fundamental trade-off between allocating effort to constituency service and to national policy-making activities, respectively. How do voters want their elected representatives to solve this trade-off? This article provides new insights into this question by developing a conjoint analysis approach to estimating voters' preferences over their legislator's effort allocation. This approach is applied in Britain, where it is found that effort allocation has a significant effect on voter evaluations of legislators, even in a political system where other legislator attributes - in particular, party affiliation - might be expected to predominate. This effect is nonlinear, with voters generally preferring a moderate balance of constituency and national policy work. Preferences over legislator effort allocation are not well-explained by self-interest or more broadly by instrumental considerations. They are, however, associated with voters' local-cosmopolitan orientation, suggesting that heuristic reasoning based on underlying social dispositions may be more important in determining preferences over representative activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What determines the bureaucratic agenda? This article combines insights from models of bureaucratic behaviour with agenda-setting models of government attention to test the effects of elected government, public, and EU agendas on the bureaucratic agenda. Using time series cross-sectional analyses of subject and ministry coded data on UK statutory instruments from 1987 to 2008, I find strong effects for both the elected government and EU legislative agendas on UK statutory instruments. Furthermore, by breaking the data into different sets based on their relationship with the EU, several logical differences in these effects are found. These results include the EU agenda having exclusive influence on instruments implementing EU directives, and the UK agenda being the sole driver of bureaucratic attention on those instruments that mention the EU but do not implement EU legislation. This article opens a new avenue for research on bureaucracy by approaching it as a unique policy-making institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The academic study of sport and politics has long been seen as a ‘hobby’ on the margins of the mainstream of political studies. The sport policy community has been, traditionally, a ‘weak’ area of policy. The last two decades, however, have seen the political salience of sport rapidly increase and, given that politics and sport are inextricable bound up with one another, it is surprising that so few political scientists study sport politics and policy. This article sets out to do two things: first, it makes the case that sport is very much about politics – and always has been – and for this reason is worthy of study by those concerned about power, resource allocation, policymaking, governance, political identity, race, gender and the like. Second, and more importantly, it contends that while the study of sport and sport policy per se is worthy, it can and should be also used as a prism through which to understand the wider machinations of politics and policy in Britain and in international relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovative attempts to involve citizens in policy making have been one of the defining features of the New Labour government in the UK. In this article, we examine the nature and impact of community engagement mechanisms within the flagship regeneration programme—the New Deal for Communities. Through interviews with practitioners, analysis of survey data and participant observation of governance boards we examine the methods and impact of initiatives to engage residents in policy making. While it is apparent that innovative strategies have been put in place to engage and empower communities in local policy making, this has not always been matched by the development of tools for measuring the impact of involvement or for scrutinizing the policy development and decision-making process. More people may have got involved, but little is known about precisely what effect their involvement has had upon policies at the local level. Consultation, or just publicizing what is happening and community involvement in decision-making are often conflated, and there is only a limited attempt to delineate and quantify the impact of each. It is also evident that information gathered as a result of some community engagement initiatives is not easily linked to policy development and is not always utilized in the policy process. For community involvement to become a meaningful and sustainable aspect of local policy making, an appropriate infrastructure needs to be developed to ensure that the decision-making process is transparent and accountable, and that the input from citizens genuinely informs decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term ‘policy style’ simply means the way that governments make and implement policy. Yet, the term ‘British policy style’ may be confusing since it has the potential to relate to British exceptionalism or European convergence. Lijphart's important contribution identifies the former. It sets up a simple distinction between policy styles in majoritarian and consensual democracies and portrays British policy-making as top down and different from a consensual European approach. In contrast, Richardson identifies a common ‘European policy style’. This suggests that although the political structures of each country vary, they share a ‘standard operating procedure’ based on two factors — an incremental approach to policy and an attempt to reach a consensus with interest groups rather than impose decisions. This article extends these arguments to British politics since devolution. It questions the assumption that policy styles are diverging within Britain. Although consultation in the devolved territories may appear to be more consensual, they are often contrasted with a caricature of the UK process based on atypical examples of top-down policy-making. While there may be a different ‘feel’ to participation in Scotland and Wales, a similar logic of consultation and bureaucratic accommodation exists in the UK. This suggests that, although devolution has made a difference, a British (or European) policy style can still be identified.British Politics (2008) 3, 350–372. doi:10.1057/bp.2008.15 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the reasons for the absence of statehood in Great Britain stressing problems and failures in public policy and public service. Reconstruction of statehood based on signage or branding and state phenomenology; Public management; Realization of common interests and the need for common formation among public officials; State and political history; Administrative history and practice.

Examines key issues pertaining to the evolution of economic governance focusing on the formulation of economic policies in Great Britain. Comparison of varying forms of government and governance; Application of the social science approach to governance; Hybrid nature of governance; Relations between the market and corporate hierarchy; Dichotomy between state and market; Aspects of social democracy.

This article is focused on the evaluation of one of New Labour's area-based initiatives in the UK. It traces local evaluators' changing concerns in the face of increasing control from a national evaluation programme. It shows how strains are being felt in relation to evaluators' roles, timescales and approaches to reporting. A pre-specified framework of indicators and a template for reporting are tending to concentrate effort upon finding the 'looked for' or confirming the 'asked for', at the expense of new learning. We look at the difficulties in trying to integrate participatory evaluation and performance management, and in particular in trying to make evaluation meaningful and educative, rather than a bureaucratic burden, for local participants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the significance of law to public policy. The author presents the significance and necessity of the role of statute law in public policy conduct. He shows the relevance of law to non-statutory resources of the government, and describres the extent to which laws can build guidelines for social actions. According to the author, law is a significant resource of the government but still has some limitations. The author notes that law cannot simply be ignored by both the government and the subjects because they are an integral part of every public policy. It is the law that mandates the line as to what extent the government can and cannot do.

This article sets out a series of conditions for the successful transfer of an organizational or policy initiative from one country to another. It then assesses whether recent developments in the organization of British central government provide a model for transfer to other European countries which have also been concerned with a separation between policy-making functions and execution through service delivery agencies. The article concludes by suggesting caution in attempting to use the Next Steps initiative in Britain as a model for transfer to other European countries, since it lacks a valid theory of administration, has no clear operational blueprint to copy, is not the sole method used by British government itself, and would not necessarily map well on to countries with different relationships between ministers, agencies, the core bureaucracy and the legislature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interviews Madsen Pirie, president of the Adam Smith Institute about government policy making in Great Britain. Privatization of government policy making involving think-tanks or outside agencies; Effect of lobbying on policy making; Need for people to be given time to debate the merits and drawbanks of legislation.