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Cross-cultural differences in governance and policies for learning disability services are of interest. This article focuses on two UK government policy documents issued in 1971 and 2001. Their context, creation, principles, proposals and proposed implementation are examined, and lessons are drawn for an international audience as to the changing nature of services in the UK. The analysis reveals a move from a detailed and prescriptive policy in 1971, largely defined by professionals and bureaucrats, and aimed primarily at families with a disabled member, to statements of broad principles in 2001, devised in consultation with and aimed at a range of groups, including disabled people themselves. The article acknowledges progress in individual rights and choices for people with learning disabilities, but raises doubts about how significant this is in achieving a qualitative improvement in their lives. Some of these doubts relate to the governance process itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the UK economy's slow and unbalanced growth, this paper discusses the degree to which recent Conservative Governments in the UK have moved towards the adoption of a strategic and coherent set of industrial policies to enhance economic performance across the country. It starts by outlining the priorities and principles of new forms of industrial strategy which emphasises the importance of cross-sectoral goals, intensive dialogue between government and the private sector, co-ordination between different policies and levels of government, directions to address societal and environmental challenges and the role of place-based policy making. The paper discusses the degree to which these principles have shaped, or been largely absent from, recent industrial policy development in the UK and particularly the interface between industrial and regional policies. It discusses the May Government's move to set up an Industrial Strategy with a place 'pillar' and the influence of a mission approach. It then reviews the Johnson's Government's 'Plan for Growth' industrial policy agenda, focussing on the recent Levelling Up White Paper and examines how far and in what ways it has embedded these reforming principles. It finds that despite reflecting some of these principles in its rhetoric, the current government programme has substituted innovation and infrastructure policies for an actual industrial strategy, and continues to rely mainly on a top-down and technologically driven type of approach. The agenda lacks the capacity to deliver its levelling up goals due to inadequate funding, an incomplete devolution agenda and insufficiently developed place-based capacities and policies. Future development needs to move the principles from rhetoric into industrial policy direction and design, and to remedy the continuing lack of local and regional collaboration and co-ordination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite increasing scholarly and media attention on sexual violence in public spaces, including those associated with the night-time economy and licensed venues, music festivals have been largely absent from research and policy. This paper presents the findings from the first UK study of sexual violence at music festivals, drawing on data from interviews with 13 women who have experienced some form of sexual harassment or assault at a festival. Analysis reveals that sexual violence at festivals occurs on a continuum and represents an extension of rape culture through which sexual violence is culturally condoned and normalized, enabled through a number of environmental and culture features that are unique to festivals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The platform is emerging as a key organizational form and operational logic of contemporary capitalism, intimately tied to financialization and assetization. However, discussions to date have focused on platforms and platformization in the context of the private, corporate, and technology sectors. In this paper, we develop an analysis of how platformization operates in the context of public policy. Using the UK's National Health Service as a case study, we explore how platformization is altering the form and function of the state. The platformization of the NHS has its roots in the UK government's strategic interest in the development of the bioeconomy. This led to the creation of a research infrastructure within the health service. Subsequently, the NHS has leveraged various assets into a range of data- and technology-focused initiatives. We argue that platformization has been a major form of neoliberalization within the NHS. The paper concludes with a discussion of what an analysis of public platformization can teach us about ongoing transformations of the state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To enable consistency of investigation and the establishment of best practice standards, consensus guidelines have been formulated jointly by the UK National Poisons Information Service (NPIS) and the Association of Clinical Biochemists (ACB). The types of laboratory investigation required for poisoned patients were categorized as either (a) essential common laboratory investigations or (b) specific toxicological assays, and also as either (i) common or (ii) specialist or infrequent. Tests in categories (a) and (bi) are expected to be available 24 h per day, with a maximum turnaround time of 2 h. For the specialist assays, i.e. category (bii), availability and turnaround times have been specified individually. The basis for selection of these times has been clinical utility. The adoption of these guidelines, along with the use of the NPIS online poisons information resource TOXBASE (www.spib.axl.co.uk), will enable the poisoned patient to receive appropriate, 'best practice' investigations according to their clinical needs and will avoid the use of unnecessary investigations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whilst the COVID-19 pandemic and 'cost of living' crisis revealed and intensified the United Kingdom's (UK) socio-spatial inequalities, these crises did not emerge into a vacuum. Long-term trends of deindustrialisation and austerity have meant many places particularly the former industrial areas across the North and Midlands have been 'left behind'. The current crises have exposed the structural fault-lines created by austerity across 2010/20 especially comprising significant cuts to welfare and local government services, with the outcome being sizable parts of the UK's post-industrial landscape experiencing poverty and destitution. In this paper, we focus upon deindustrialised Stoke-on-Trent in the North Midlands of England. Enduring long-term deindustrialisation and suffering from austerity, the article draws on qualitative and quantitative data to outline how the city contains a panoply of embedded structural problems including low-paid jobs, welfare retrenchment, poverty and destitution. Given it is a possibility that austerity will be reimposed after the next UK general election in December 2024, the paper concludes by briefly discussing the implications of these structural problems for UK government policy, indicating the urgent need for alternative policies to adequately address structural issues in places like Stoke. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the alteration in health care model for elderly people in Great Britain. The need for the change in treatment approach emerged due to diminishing younger workforce and rapidly growing number of elderly people. The effectiveness of all advances in care for the elderly is undermined by government policies and particularly due to the ways of spending money.

Venture capital plays a significant role in economic development through the emergence of new firms, technologies, industries and markets. This role, however, is associated with systemic uneven development regionally as both the supply of venture capital and the investment in new and growing ventures is highly concentrated regionally in the core economic regions of a country. Over the past decade, this intra-national regional concentration has been accompanied by an increasing internationalisation of the venture capital industry, as cross-border investment becomes more significant. In this paper, we explore the implications of this internationalisation for regional economic development in the UK. We conclude that the geography of venture capital in the UK has been shaped since the turn of the century by a significant increase in venture capital investments made by foreign funds, mainly in the form of co-investments with local funds. These foreign venture capital investments are primarily concentrated in London, Southeast England and East of England, which collectively attracted 82.5% of all foreign venture capital investments made to UK companies in 2017, strongly reinforcing the existing spatial concentration of venture capital investment. The paper concludes by questioning whether this increased dependency of these regions on foreign venture capital matters to regional development and draws out some of the implications for public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the conclusion of the Stern Review that the cost of climate change could be as much as 20% of the global GDP. In this paper, I identify two major sources of variation in the estimates of the aggregate cost of climate change. One is the disagreement among the AOGCM models on the magnitude of climate change, and the other is the divergence among the economic models on how harmful these changes will be to the economy. The main conclusion of this paper is that only under the alarmist approach—which assumes both the most severe climate change and the most extreme estimate of climate change damage to the economy—we can be convinced that the cost of climate change is close to 20% of the global GDP in 2100. In most other cases, the cost will be under 1% of the global GDP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Entrepreneurial ecosystems are the focus of government economic policies around the world for their potential to generate entrepreneur-led economic development. The paper identifies key research questions and challenges to building effective public policy: (i) the limitations of existing data sources, (ii) the need to balance findings from quantitative and qualitative studies, (iii) the danger that entrepreneurial ecosystems will be just a policy fad, (iv) the narrow focus of policy and research on high tech firms and scale-ups, and (v) the need to balance research approaches between simplified models and a complex systems approach. There is a need for a better understanding of the diversity of policy contexts (level of government, country context) and model of ecosystem governance. A more granulated understanding of ecosystem thinking is required, with greater consideration of the diversity of actors and the institutional context, with more attention given to the heterogeneous nature of places and complex interactions between actors and networks. Looking to the future, the potential of new data sources and methodologies is identified. Future research should give greater consideration to the institutional context to understand how policy can better support entrepreneurial activity and the extent to which specific policies can be replicated elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) set up in 2003 was tasked to oversee a review of options for managing UK radioactive waste and to engage the public in choosing a long-term solution with the objective of inspiring public confidence. This paper reviews the Committee's processes against their remit and guidance on public engagement. It shows that CoRWM assumed proof of-concept for geological disposal, despite the contrary verdict of the Sellafield inquiry, and biased the framing of options against 'interim storage plus ongoing R&D' (Netherlands option). CoRWM also failed to propose technical criteria comparable to those used internationally, and to resolve the deep disagreement on timescale between key stakeholders. The paper points out vested interests operated via CoRWM's programme manager (AMEC-NNC) and sees the checking role of Defra's chief scientist as also undermining the proclaimed independence of the Committee. CoRWM did recognise their need to range much wider than scientific and technical issues, introducing concepts of institutional breakdown, volunteerism, and socio-cultural timescales. However, these concepts were not subjected to stakeholder consultation and public judgement. The audit of public and stakeholder engagement omitted questions of procedural norms, imbalance of power, and lack of consultation on novel judgements. Two late 'show stoppers' were ignored in a desire to complete the task, resulting in a fudged compromise papering over deep divisions between members. Their final choice of 'Phased Deep Geological Disposal' expressed qualified confidence in the concept, yet favoured keeping the repository open while continuing R&D into other options. The substantial scientific uncertainties associated with this choice, the problematic process by which this decision was reached, and the concerns associated with the modes of public engagement, mean that their 'solution' is more rhetorical than real. The technical problems and requirements for public confidence remain obscured and unresolved. The reasons for this problematic outcome are located in the current UK policy push for substantial new nuclear power plants and in a culture tolerant of vested interest in nuclear policy-making and civil service warping of the science process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creative industries have long been seen as an innovative sector. More recent research posits that creative occupations are also a fundamental, but overlooked, driver of innovation. Theory also suggests cities are important for both creative industries and occupations, with urban environments helping firms innovate. Yet little empirical work has considered the links between creative industries, occupations, cities, and innovation at the firm level. This paper addresses this gap using a sample of over 9000 UK SMEs. Our results stress that creative industries firms are more likely to introduce original product innovations, but not those learnt from elsewhere. Creative occupations, however, appear a more robust general driver of innovation. We find no support for the hypothesis that urban creative industries firms are particularly innovative. However, creative occupations are used in cities to introduce product innovations learnt elsewhere. The results suggest that future work needs to seriously consider the importance of occupations in empirical studies of innovation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tables are presented depicting the International Systems of Units for basic instrument measurement adpoted a partial metrication policy in Great Britain.

Although small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) were particularly hard hit by the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, some performed relatively well, maintaining or increasing employment growth. We study these differences in performance through the lens of dynamic capabilities (DCs) theory, which we extend by incorporating the moderating effect of government support during COVID-19. We analyse responses from 1421 UK SMEs and find that government support and DCs positively impact employment. We also show that government support moderates the link between DCs and employment with a negative effect after the first COVID-19 lockdown. The findings highlight the role of government policy intervention in discouraging SMEs from effectively exercising DCs during a crisis and the general importance of DCs and government support in enabling SMEs to cope with shocks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It appears that recent debates within human geography, and the broader social sciences, concerning the more-than-rational constitution of human decision making are now being paralleled by changes in the ways in which public policy makers are conceiving of and addressing human behaviour. This paper focuses on the rise of so-called Behaviour Change policies in public policy in the UK. Behaviour Change policies draw on the behavioural insights being developed within the neurosciences, behavioural economics, and psychology. These new behavioural theories suggest not only that human decision making relies on a previously overlooked irrational component, but that the irrationality of decision making is sufficiently consistent to enable effective public policy intervention into the varied times and spaces that surround human decisions. This paper charts the emergence of Behaviour Change policies within a range of British public policy sectors, and the political and scientific antecedents of such policies. Ultimately, the paper develops a geographically informed, ethical critique of the contemporary Behaviour Change regime that is emerging in the UK. Drawing on thirty in-depth interviews with leading policy executives, and case studies that reflect the application of Behaviour Change policies on the design and constitution of British streets, the analysis claims that current strategies are predicated on a partial reading of new behavioural theories. We argue that this partial reading of human cognition is leading to the construction of public policies that seek to arbitrarily decouple the rational and emotional components of human decision making with deleterious social and political consequences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Older people who live alone face particular challenges if they are to age and die well in the place and manner of their choosing. This discussion paper examines the experiences and needs of older people living alone towards the end of life. The paper focuses on the UK, given recent policy and service development initiatives there which emphasize home as a place of support and care; the promotion of independence; ensuring choice and decision making; and equity. These initiatives do not acknowledge diversity in the older population and make little provision to meet the specific needs that older people living alone may have as they approach the end of life. We identify three broader social factors that influence whether older people who live alone can remain at home until the end of their lives. The first factor is the physical environment; the second concerns their material environment; and the third relates to their social environment and their access to informal and formal care services. In future, palliative care research of relevance to older people should consider living arrangements as an important variable and be cognisant of the way in which wider social issues constrain the quality of end-of-life care that those living alone in older age receive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Utilising an account of the development of gun control legislation in Britain and the work of Norbert Elias, this paper argues that there are a number of processes that influence the development of such legislation, both in Britain and elsewhere. It argues that while processes such as the state's predisposition to consolidate its monopoly on the use of violence and advances in people's threshold of repugnance at violence influence the development of legislation, they can also lead to a blurring of the distinction between legally held sporting guns and illegal firearms in the hands of criminals. The paper concludes by considering other factors such as the efficacy of the prohibitionist lobby on the one hand and the gun lobby on the other, together with historical factors that may, in part, account for international variation in regimes of gun control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on issues related to the British government's policy regarding chronic somatization. The process of seeking medical help by persons without any serious disease has been called "somatization." Unlike the U.S., there are few prevalence data on this disorder in Great Britain. The model of illness implicit in the White Paper emphasizes on diagnostic technology.

Of the many theories of corporatism the most adequate is that which sees the relationship as a form of interest group intermediation and policy implementation. It has been argued that the Annual Review of Agriculture is one of the best examples of a corporatist institution. This paper examines the Annual Review and demonstrates that, although it has features of corporatism, the relationship between the Ministry of Agriculture and the National Farmers' Union is not corporatist. The paper then examines the policy community approach and by looking at the formation and operation of the Annual Review argues that this is a much better description of the relationship between the ministry and the union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the research and development that underpins the Curriculum Framework for Children and Young People with Vision Impairment (CFVI): a new unifying framework that outlines the breadth of support that should be received by children and young people with vision impairment (CYPVI) in the United Kingdom (UK). The study used the Delphi method as a systematic process of participatory consultation with key stakeholders. Three rounds of consultation took place with a panel of 48 participants including young people, parents, professionals, and professional training providers. This process resulted in the agreed 11 curriculum areas of the CFVI with high levels of agreement and satisfaction among participants. The development of the CFVI responds to established evidence of the distinctive challenges to learning associated with childhood vision impairment, and the importance of addressing these through targeted intervention approaches. Drawing on a dual model of access ('access to learning' and 'learning to access'), the framework acknowledges that these approaches should promote inclusive education by balancing universal inclusive practice with specialist skills-based interventions. Such an approach captures 'what matters' to the field of vision impairment education – ensuring fair access to a shared curriculum and education system while developing the specialist skills to develop personal agency and increase independence. The article is original in reporting on the development of the first curriculum framework for CYPVI in the UK. The CFVI was launched in March 2022 and provides clarity about what should be taught, when, and by whom. The CFVI promises a transformative contribution to UK policies and practice in ensuring CYPVI and their families will more easily be able to navigate complex education systems and secure equitable access to the services to which they are entitled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to understand how the UK government's headline climate change targets are translated into action at the local level in the transport sector drawing on the findings of research in two English regions. In doing so, these headline targets are identified as a symbolic meta-policy that results in little action on the ground and which challenges established conceptions of policy implementation. Both the 'meta' and 'symbolic' aspects of the policy offer part of the explanation for the lack of substantive action on the ground. As a meta-policy, the headline targets across government require the elaboration of other policies at other levels such as targets for government departments and local authorities, but these are largely absent, leaving the meta-policy without teeth. Over time, these headline targets have developed into a symbolic policy, serving political goals but having little practical effectiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Peer research has the potential to empower young people to participate in research by minimising power imbalances between researchers and participants; this may reduce bias and promote improved understanding to inform policy and practice. However, these benefits are not automatic; the relative inexperience of peer researchers adds layers of complexity to the research process. Moreover, the validity of findings from research adopting less traditional methods may be questioned and policy makers may be cautious about accepting this evidence, thus limiting its contribution and impact. This paper explores the advancement of participatory peer researcher methodology in research with children in and leaving care and ethical, practical and data quality issues that arose in two studies exploring young people’s transitions from care to adulthood. It concludes that the peer research methodology can yield rich data but that adequate resources and effective research management are crucial. The authors also caution against a reductionist approach that privileges peer research methodology above other methods of inquiry in the study of transitions from care to adulthood. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we explore the scaling of resilience policy and practice not as an effect upon infrastructure but as enacted through infrastructure. Drawing on Foucault's topological analyses of governmental power, especially his elaboration of its coeval centripetal and centrifugal flows, we argue that understanding the scaling of resilience policy and practice involves acknowledging its infrastructural composition. We examine this infrastructural scaling through an empirical analysis of UK resilience policy and practice, as recounted by those working across multiple organizations involved in planning for, and coping with, aleatory events. This reveals how the neoliberal decentralizing refrain, expressed in resilience policy and its critique, is both sustained and displaced by interwoven circulatory mechanisms of obstruction, filtration, and acceleration. Together these infrastructural flows amount to ‘fractionally coherent’ scalings that not only centralize governmental power but are constitutive of governmental centres. Our analyses of infrastructural scaling suggest that resiliency policy and practice is far less decentralized, or localized, than others have suggested, with both centripetal and centrifugal flows of power resulting from a composite of infrastructural circulatory mechanisms that can variously scale political agency in relation to aleatory events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'Work-first' (or 'workfare') activation policies severely restrict the choices of the unemployed. Can third-sector organisations (TSOs), with their person-centred mission, support long-term unemployed adults to make their own choices, given individual and societal constraints? Commentators often focus on 'what works' in supporting those with complex needs; others draw on the 'capabilities approach' (CA). With commentators often talking past each other, two key issues emerge. First, what constitutes real choice, and, second, how do we deal with the testimonies of programme users when those experiencing social deprivation may overstate the choices available to them? We argue that the CA's dichotomisation of 'true/real' versus 'constrained/no' choice is problematic for a balanced assessment of choice possibilities across different programmes. Building on insights from current literatures, we develop a framework for researching choice possibilities. Using qualitative research, we apply this framework to a TSO employability programme in England, and find users have more control over their choices compared with UK workfare policy. The article contributes to international debates on the value of the CA, the links between programme form, user choice and well-being, and the scope for TSOs to deliver on their user-centred mission and prefigure better alternatives to workfare. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Influential governance theories argue that we live increasingly in a world of networks either relegating hierarchy to the shadows or dismissing it altogether. This paper develops a Gramscian critique of these currents, advancing two key arguments. First, drawing on Gramsci's concepts of hegemony and passive revolution, it reinterprets the cultivation of networks as a prominent element in the hegemonic strategies of Western neoliberalism, exemplified by UK public policy. Second, however, governing networks struggle to cultivate trust, relying instead on hierarchy and closure. It is argued that network governance can therefore be understood as a form of Gramsci's integral state, a concept which highlights both the continuing centrality of coercion in the governance system and the limits of the networks project. It is concluded that conceiving of urban governing networks as micro configurations of the integral state off ers a distinctive way of overcoming the 'government to governance' dualism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politics takes diverse forms within the museums sector, from the effect of national government policies and funding decisions to the manner in which the contents of museums are presented to the public. This diversity of political forms leads to the creation of a range of administrative and managerial contexts within which museums operate. This paper explores the relationship of political practices and administrative and managerial regimes for the manner in which museums and galleries in the United Kingdom undertake the functions that they are responsible for, and indicates the possibilities and problems for museum and gallery practice that are associated with different political forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Competition Commission's analysis in 2007 of entry and exit conditions among small stores across more than one thousand British high streets provided a landmark piece of research on a topic in which debate and policy recommendations had moved significantly, and arguably dangerously, ahead of the available evidence base. Within a general context of a continuing long-term decline of specialist small stores in British town centres and high streets, it cast considerable doubt on the popularly held view that a broad-based decline of the independent convenience store sector was taking place across the UK, or that Britain's high streets were experiencing an accelerating decline in their small and specialist stores. Additionally, and even more controversially, the Commission's analysis was able to demonstrate that competitive entry by larger format corporate food retailing was not inevitably and uniformly associated with negative impacts on the small store sector. It is known that the Commission's research was paralleled by an identical analysis conducted on behalf of one of the main parties to the Groceries Market Inquiry by the University of Southampton. The first component of the Southampton analysis, which both corroborated and extended the Commission's findings, is available in the public domain. This paper now presents the second component of the Southampton analysis, which similarly both corroborates but also extends the vitally important `conditional entry' dimension of the Commission's research-focusing directly on the extent to which entry into the small store sector during the early to mid 2000s might have been constrained by, and exit from the sector accelerated by, the competitive impacts of larger format foodstore openings by the major corporate retailers. The paper shows: (a) that there is an important missing regional dimension within the Commission's analysis, and (b) that entry and exit into the small store sector in the UK during 2000-06 was constrained and/or accelerated by the competitive impacts of supermarket opening in a different fashion within `London and prospering southern England' than elsewhere in the country. That is to say, in the region of the UK in which arguments about the threat of corporate retail to the diversity of the small store sector had often proved particularly heated, the Southampton analysis shows small shops in town centres and high streets to have been more robust to the competitive opening of larger format corporate foodstores than elsewhere in the UK. In that context, the paper suggests that the findings represent an `inconvenient truth' which deserves consideration both in policy debate and in future processes of planning regulation reform. Discussion of the relevance of the findings in respect of the proposed changes to Planning Policy Statement 6 released for consultation by the Department for Communities and Local Government in July 2008 is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The UK government has set out a clear framework for tackling climate change which establishes a carbon reduction pathway to 2050. If, as is claimed, this is the first of its kind anywhere in the world, can the obligation it brings be converted into 'first mover' opportunities for businesses and the economy as a whole? This question will be of heightened importance to the English Regional Development Agencies and local authorities following the government's recently strengthened endorsement of their responsibility for economic growth and efficiency at regional and local levels. This paper considers the policy levers that can help turn the obligation into opportunity and the role that regional and local agencies can play in this through spatial planning, innovation, procurement, skills development and enterprise. It summarises and updates a previous SQW Viewpoint which can be found at www.sqw.co.uk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selective industrial policy in the United Kingdom is conventionally believed to have vanished prior to the global financial crisis. This article, in contrast, argues that industrial policy remained an intrinsic, if seldom acknowledged, element of neoliberal statecraft. The basis of this is a subterfuge, conceptualised here as a 'dual industrial policy', which we explore via an empirical focus on the Thatcher governments. Throughout this time, actions explicitly endorsed by governments as industrial policy generally corresponded with neoliberalism's hostility to intervention. These conveniently distracted attention from a second set of policies which, although never codified by government as industrial policy, were intended to affect the allocation of resources between economic activity. Analysis of official government publications and expenditure reveals that industrial policy expenditure under Thatcher was far higher than customarily reported. The United Kingdom's approach has important implications for debates about neoliberal resilience, especially neoliberalism's capacity to conscript apparently contradictory ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Through a dynamic analysis of the interplay between structure and agency, this article explores the factors shaping an inclusive approach to labour market activation for clients who experience multiple barriers to work. While previous studies argue that 'street-level bureaucrats' (SLBs), such as advisers and job coaches, have minimal agency to shape the services they deliver, the pilot programme that is the focus of this article allowed SLBs greater discretion to support clients and to use their entrepreneurial skills to build relationships with local employers. However, the unresolved tension between personalisation and swift labour market insertion meant that SLBs often reverted to engrained employability interventions that simply prepare clients to compete for low-wage entry-level jobs. We argue that the 'policy closure' around a work-first model of activation in the UK constrains social innovation among SLBs, and limits the freedoms of citizens to navigate their own transitions into paid work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper develops a rational-choice explanation for the adoption of deterrent work-welfare programmes by recent governments in Britain and the US. Such programmes require the recipients of welfare or unemployment benefits to participate in a training programme or work activity in exchange for receiving their benefits and reflect a New Right (in contrast to a social democratic) conception of social citizenship. Governments design such policies to generate a partial separating equilibrium under which some claimants identified by the state as undeserving are discouraged from seeking benefits. These programmes are intended lo overcome problems of free-riding and false claiming viewed, by the New Right, as inherent in state-administered benefit systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The German party debate concerning European Community policy-making is a low key affair which contrasts greatly with the situation in Britain. This paper examines the form of the debate in the Federal Republic and argues that the nature of the European institutions, of the German party system and, particularly, of internal party policy-making account for this situation. Three short case histories are used to show the operation of the `German model' of party policy-making. The conclusion is that the parties seem to lack any clear function in their activities in connection with the European Community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the face of a global demographic shift, an aging population and a 'crisis' in adult social care (ASC), this study analyses over 3000 pledges on ASC in political parties' manifesto discourse following the United Kingdom's move to a multi-level electoral politics in 1998/1999. Although often overlooked, attention to this formative phase of social policy-making reveals the discursive political antecedents of welfare interventions. The analysis shows a major increase in issue-salience and party politicisation of ASC policy. The discourse reveals political cleavages on welfare mixes and policy framing, and sub-state resistance to central government policies. Against the backdrop of the international rise of devolved governance, the present case is of wider international significance because it illustrates how the transition from state-wide to (quasi-)federal electoral practices gives rise to new territorial dynamics in the electoral discourse of welfare provision; in turn, promoting territorialisation, pressure for welfare state expansion and the rise of 'sub-state' welfare regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What factors explain the success of the UK Cabinet Office's Behavioural Insights Team? To answer this question, this article applies insights from organizational theory, particularly accounts of change agents. Change agents are able--with senior sponsorship--to foster innovation by determination and skill: they win allies and circumvent more traditional bureaucratic procedures. Although Behavioural Insights Team is a change agent--maybe even a skunkworks unit--not all the facilitating factors identified in the literature apply in this central government context. Key factors are its willingness to work in a non-hierarchical way, skills at forming alliances, and the ability to form good relationships with expert audiences. It has been able to promote a more entrepreneurial approach to government by using randomized controlled trials as a robust method of policy evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a comparative study of the labour market and social policy measures introduced in light of the COVID-19 crisis in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom between March 2020 and January 2021. Its main aim is to understand whether the crisis response has changed the structures of the welfare states concerned. Focusing in particular on the differences regarding the crisis measures taken for individuals in 'standard employment' and 'non-standard workers' in each country, it argues that, although extensive temporary protection instruments were introduced for both groups during the crisis, these did not lead to an immediate convergence as regards these groups' social protection. Rather than changing the underlying structures of welfare systems, many of the measures in fact highlighted the specific vulnerabilities of large segments of Europe's labour markets. States have, however, granted social compensation at unprecedented levels, which could result in improved infrastructures and a clearer understanding of the responsibility of the welfare state in future emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is the first of three reviews in which economic geography is viewed through the lens of crises. This article focuses on the resurgence of uneven development as a political problem, which has led to public policy debates and responses in which economic geography is an underpinning construct. The article focuses on the UK where public policy responses have engaged with the problems caused by uneven development. Arguments made over many years about the long-term damaging impacts of geographical inequalities in opportunity and income have broken through into the political mainstream and gained traction. The article explains how this happened, as an already unbalanced regional economy was exacerbated first through growth led by financial services and then austerity-led decline. There are opportunities for economic geography in this public policy conjuncture, although it will require an ability to engage competently and critically with mainstream economics, and a willingness to work with political actors and a challenging, frustrating, and uncomfortable political process. Moreover, it also requires that the problem of uneven development remains adequately defined and attended to, so that appropriate public policy responses may be formulated, and continues to garner sufficient political attention, to allow both time and opportunity for intervention in public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of the UK rural social economy is described as an appropriate context in which rural food hubs develop. Through an empirical study of Local Industrial Strategies of the English Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), local area policies are found to provide a sympathetic social economy framework for such development. Rural food hubs are described. A distinction is drawn between producer and community hubs as a means of exploring the second of these more fully. Community hubs are found to address a number of market failures of the growth economy in the areas of community cohesion, voluntary effort, locality, the environment, food waste, health and food poverty. Despite some positive policy signals, dominant national economic policy in the areas of rural GVA productivity, the reform of the LEPs and a national rural strategy, is considered to limit the potential of rural community food hubs because of its 'growth' orientation. In this context, conclusions are drawn about survival strategies for such hubs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brought to fame by a 1994 World Bank report, the idea of pension pillarization has become part of the orthodoxy of pension reform. Yet scholars have neglected both the national origins and the pre-1994 diffusion of the ‘three-pillar doctrine’. This article presents a critical history of the transnational diffusion process that led to the adoption of this concept at the World Bank. My analysis retrieves the Swiss roots of the doctrine during the late 1960s, as well as its gradual adoption and mainstreaming during the 1970s and early 1980s by a transnational epistemic community of life insurers and pension consultants. By 1990, the doctrine was widely used without reference to its national origins: a Swiss trademark had become a generic reform idea that framed controversies on the future shape of old-age provision. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Heat waves and cold spells pose ongoing seasonal risks to the health and well-being of vulnerable individuals. Current attempts to address these risks in the UK are implemented through fuel-poverty strategies and heat-wave planning. This paper examines evidence from the UK on whether heat waves and cold spells are addressed differently by public policy in the UK given that risks are mediated by similar perceptions that shape behavioural responses by vulnerable individuals. It is based on a review of UK policies and on a qualitative interview study of risk perceptions of elderly people as a primary identified vulnerable group to these weather extremes. The study involved in-depth repeat interviews with fifteen elderly respondents in summer 2007 and winter 2008 in Norwich (UK). Results suggest that neither heat risks nor cold risks are perceived as personal risks and therefore planned preventive measures by individuals are largely elusive. Cold risk policy reduces vulnerability; policy related to heat relies on early warning and public information programmes and does not reduce underlying vulnerability. Both types of policies largely ignore public perceptions of risks and could benefit from a more cohesive approach, supporting similar measures to reduce seasonal vulnerability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to specify the dynamics of the democratisation of expertise by analysing public bioethics as a form of deliberative democracy. Public bioethics refers to the whole range of bodies and procedures, such as national ethics councils, parliamentary ethics commissions or public consultations on ‘ethical issues’, which are meant to inform and guide political decision making with respect to ethical considerations. The article draws from empirical research on three UK public bioethics bodies (the Human Genetics Commission, Nuffield Council on Bioethics and the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority). The article will show how public bioethics addresses some established problems of expert domination and rejects the aim of revealing substantial ethical unity in favour of facilitating and preparing public debate by representing the range of ethical positions on a particular issue, and as such seems to resemble more closely the ‘mixed’ discursive spheres advocated by Hendriks. However, the article argues that problems of expertise are transformed but not removed. By assuming the authority to categorise different publics and arrange them in a hierarchy, and framing ethical questions such that some kinds of concerns appear legitimately ethical while others are merely political or transient matters of public concern, public bioethics may be reproducing problems of expert domination at the more rarefied level of the construction of ethical positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research has documented high levels of public concern for risks relating to nuclear power, with opposition to nuclear energy particularly being linked with general environmental concern. However recent UK energy policy, and other debates worldwide, has led to a repositioning of nuclear power as a ‘low carbon’ electricity source with potential benefits for mitigating climate change. Whilst many previous studies have examined perceptions of climate change and nuclear energy separately, this large British public attitude survey explores relationships between the two as well as with perceptions of other energy sources. Both general environmental concern and concerns about climate change were linked with positive evaluations of renewables and negative evaluations of nuclear power. We conclude that, despite the policy positioning of nuclear power as a low carbon electricity source, most people concerned about climate change continue to perceive nuclear negatively, something partially explained by general environmental concerns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid increasing interest in participatory forms of environmental appraisal and decision making, the actors shaping these new governance spaces remain understudied. This paper seeks to refocus accounts of public engagement in science onto these participatory appraisal experts, or 'experts of community', through drawing on in-depth empirical research that followed them through networks building up around participatory appraisal practice in the UK environmental-risk domain. A mapping of the general nature and character of this emerging epistemic community provides the context within which to analyse how it has evolved and has begun to influence policy processes in the area of radioactive waste. Prospects for studying networks of public engagement experts at the science - policy interface and wider implications for deliberative democracy under uncertainty are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the importance of community involvement in the siting of hazardous industry in Great Britain. The effect of the European Union Seveso II Directive, which addresses the siting of hazardous industry, on British legislation is described. Problems of inter-agency coordination and the development of effective safety measures is discussed in terms of a 2005 explosion at the Buncefield Oil Depot in Great Britain.

Unlike most foods, milk is produced fresh at least twice every day, thus recreating, over 700 times a year, a commodity 'designed' by the combination of nature, commerce, and law. The paper is a study of the ontogenesis of this commodity in Britain since 1800, stressing the emergence of two new objectivities: dairy science and the law on adulteration. In the words of Christopher Hamlin, what mattered was the "manufacture of certainty, however flimsy that certainty might later be shown to be." This was achieved by the collection of samples, the generation of facts by the deployment of the laboratory technologies of physics and chemistry, and a semimonopoly over the truth-power of dairy science that was gradually built up by the large commercial companies. A foundation of state- sponsored regulation provided an official legitimation of compositional standards that suited the interests of capital but ignored 'natural' variations in quality and often pilloried innocent producers. The public eventually became accustomed to the regulated quality of the milk in its 'pinta' and assumed it to be natural. Even the standardization of composition since 1993 has caused very little disquiet among the consuming public, although milk is now a fully constructed commodity like any other dairy product. Mechanical modernity has at last triumphed over a century of 'milk as it came from the cow'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we argue that the emerging new systems for subnational plans and spatial strategies represent a highly contested policy terrain over which battles are being played out about what constitute the appropriate scale, scope, and process of strategic planmaking activities. Significantly, these debates are being played out in different ways in different parts of the postdevolutionary UK state. The approach adopted here engages with and develops existing work on state restructuring and sociopolitical rescaling. In doing so we bring struggles over spatial planning to the centre of the analysis, addressing calls for increasing integration across different sectoral policy domains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risk assessment can be thought of as the lens through which we anticipate the consequences of research and the impact of the actions of researchers. The way in which risk of harm is managed in research is strongly influenced by the surrounding social and political environment, leading to differences in national and local styles of regulation and review. Different research studies carry different risks, so systems for review and approval must adapt to the question being asked and the nature of the study. Researchers can never wholly guarantee safety in any research but participants and researchers must be offered reasonable protection within any study, with appropriate arrangements in place should something go wrong. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proposed new legislation in England and Wales on domestic violence and abuse—the "Domestic Abuse Bill"—is underpinned by changes to criminal law, specifically the introduction of coercive and controlling behavior as set out in the Serious Crime Act 2015. The new Bill commits the British government to four main objectives with, it is claimed, prevention and protection at their heart. What is notable, however, is the rubric shift from "violence" to "abuse" in the proposed new legislation and its subscription to a gender symmetry paradigm that suggests a "watering down" of the government's response to gendered violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers whether recent legislation increasing the surveillance and control of sex offenders constitutes discrimination. Recent provisions, including the Sex Offenders Act 1997, the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and the Criminal Justice and Court Services Act 2000 are reviewed. The question of whether sex offenders have been unfairly selected for special treatment is considered as well as the issue of whether the provisions are rightly characterised as punitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the possibility that aspects of recent thinking on governmentality could be applied to the delimitation of rights and elaboration of controls in the policy and practice of British immigration over the period of Conservative rule. First, the complex of external strategies which interact to control and inhibit migration, including the discursive assertion of sovereign boundaries in the face of moves towards a frontier-free Europe are reviewed. Then, turning to official expressions of concern over public funds, the centrality of this rationale in the drive for correspondence between benefit regulations and immigration rules is documented. This drive, it is argued, is a key tactic in the development of internal controls, both as a basis for interagency cooperation and the means by which service providers can be encouraged to police migration. Finally, the paper shows how the rationality dictating these changes has itself been questioned and further elaborates the limits of "governmentality" in practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]