Giving consumers of British public services more choice: what can be learned from recent history?

British Prime Minister Tony Blair announced in the autumn of 2001 that he wanted to extend individual consumer choice in the public services (Blair, 2001). What do we know from recent experience about the conditions under which such policies can be sustained? In this article, the experience of individual consumer choice over the last ten, and in some cases, fifteen years, is compared across nine fields of British public services. The article identifies the policy goals for introducing choice, considers how far they were typically achieved, and identifies problems and unintended side-effects, including distributional problems, inefficiencies and one type of political risk. This provisional evaluation is based on a widely ranging review of literature spanning several disciplines. The principal products of the argument are two detailed tables, setting out, respectively, the degree to which the goals seem to have been achieved for each choice programme, as far as the available literature can tell us, and how far distributional, efficiency and political risk problems have dogged consumer choice in each field. In the discussion section, trends and variations are summarised. Finally, some lessons are drawn from the comparisons, for policy makers who may be considering the further extension of consumer choice in public services

Can policy making be evidence-based?

Ministers are always calling for more evidence-based interventions. Do they apply the same criterion to their own work of making policy? Perhaps surprisingly, policy making is not an evidence-free zone. However, it is important to understand the ways in which policy makers in different situations will use information differently, count different kinds of information as evidence, and so exercise different styles of judgment

Electromagnetic form factors of the baryon octet in the perturbative chiral quark model

We apply the perturbative chiral quark model at one loop to analyze the electromagnetic form factors of the baryon octet. The analytic expressions for baryon form factors, which are given in terms of fundamental parameters of low-energy pion-nucleon physics (weak pion decay constant, axial nucleon coupling, strong pion-nucleon form factor), and the numerical results for baryon magnetic moments, charge and magnetic radii are presented. Our results are in good agreement with experimental data.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figures, to be published in Eur. Phys. J.

It's America, where you stand up to be accountable

This is an extract from The next phase: rewiring local decision making for political judgement, published by the New Local Government Network

Spread of dystonia in patients with idiopathic adult-onset laryngeal dystonia

Background and purpose: Adult-onset laryngeal dystonia (LD) can be isolated or can be associated with dystonia in other body parts. Combined forms can be segmental at the onset or can result from dystonia spread to or from the larynx. The aim of this study was to identify the main clinical and demographic features of adult-onset idiopathic LD in an Italian population with special focus on dystonia spread. Methods: Data were obtained from the Italian Dystonia Registry (IDR) produced by 37 Italian institutions. Clinical and demographic data of 71 patients with idiopathic adult-onset LD were extracted from a pool of 1131 subjects included in the IDR. Results: Fifty of 71 patients presented a laryngeal focal onset; the remaining subjects had onset in other body regions and later laryngeal spread. The two groups did not show significant differences of demographic features. 32% of patients with laryngeal onset reported spread to contiguous body regions afterwards and in most cases (12 of 16 subjects) dystonia started to spread within 1 year from the onset. LD patients who remained focal and those who had dystonia spread did not show other differences. Conclusions: Data from IDR show that dystonic patients with focal laryngeal onset will present spread in almost one-third of cases. Spread from the larynx occurs early and is directed to contiguous body regions showing similarities with clinical progression of blepharospasm. This study gives a new accurate description of LD phenomenology that may contribute to improving the comprehension of dystonia pathophysiology

Volunteering for all? Explaining patterns of volunteering and identifying strategies to promote it

In policy terms in the UK, as elsewhere, volunteering has become increasingly associated with training for the workplace; a view which offers little to individuals ‘beyond’ the labour market because of age, disability or care commitments. Applying a neo-Durkheimian framework to a study of volunteers we examine how far the patterns of volunteering can be explained by the underlying institutional factors of strong and weak social regulation and social integration. This framework can offer insights into a range of possible policy levers for individuals rather than a ‘one size fits all’ emphasis on volunteering for personal gain for the workplace

Remodelling the third sector: advancing collaboration or competition in community-based initiatives?

In the last decade, UK public agencies have increasingly been required to collaborate with non-state providers to deliver welfare services. Third sector organisations are now providers of services from early years to old age, taking a growing role in children and young people's services in socially deprived neighbourhoods. National policy has recognised third sector expertise in working with marginal groups of people. However, changing relationships with the state have drawn community organisations into new, often uncomfortable, organisational arrangements, affecting their work and their roles in relation to service users and community stakeholders. This article examines recent changes from a third sector perspective, drawing on data from a study of community-based organisations providing children and young people's services in deprived localities. It considers the changing environment of ‘new localism’ affecting these organisations, focusing on recent plans for local area commissioning of services. The article identifies some progress in supporting community services in deprived areas but illustrates how the continuing emphasis on competitive contracts and centrally driven frameworks undermines collaborative work and community trust. It argues that such mechanisms may serve short-term state interests but devalue the very community-level work, which is increasingly being promoted to address challenging social problems

Numerical Simulation Of Granular Media Under Horizontal Vibrations.

International audienceSinusoidal horizontal vibrations have been applied to a parallelepiped containing rounded sand grains. To model the granular medium behavior, a commercial software based on Molecular Dynamics has been used. The influence on the rheologic behavior of many process parameters, such as the dimensionless acceleration and the frequency has been studied. The velocity, density, pressure and mass flow fields have been computed, both in dynamic and static modes and compared with experimental results. The correlation between these different parameters has been also examined