The Board of Trade and the regulatory state in the long 19th century, 1815–1914

How does regulatory statehood develop from the regulatory work which governments have always done? This article challenges conventional views that regulatory statehood is achieved by transition to arm's length agencies and that it replaces court-based enforcement or displaces legislatures in favor of less accountable executive power. To do so, we examine the major 19th-century surge in development of micro-economic regulatory statehood in Britain, which had followed more gradual development in early modern times. We show that when the transformation of the Board of Trade is understood properly, a richer appreciation emerges of how regulatory statehood is institutionalized generally and of British state-making in particular. To demonstrate this, we introduce a novel conceptual framework for analyzing and assessing change on multiple dimensions of regulatory statehood, distinguishing depth of regulatory capacity and regulatory capability along six dimensions

Partnership and privacy – tension or settlement? The case of adult mental health services

Mental health is a good example of a field where imperatives for partnership or collaborative working can be in tension with those for client confidentiality. Both imperatives have been reinforced by additional regulation in recent years, in response to major inquiries. Professionals face the dilemma that either sharing clients’ or patients’ information or not sharing it could lead to outcomes for which they might be blamed; any rule adopted risks one or other type of error. This article examines two cases from a larger interview-based study of how local organisations are trying practically to reconcile these competing pressures

Information sharing and confidentiality in social policy: regulating multi-agency working

In recent years, there has been growing concern in the UK that local services aimed at risky or vulnerable people are ineffective, because of persistent failure to share information about their clients. Despite considerable national policy effort to encourage better information-sharing, previous research indicates that there are many cases where information is still not shared when it should be, or where it is shared when it should not be, with potentially devastating results. This article uses data from the largest empirical study of local information-sharing yet undertaken to examine four policysectors where multi-agency working has come to the fore. It shows variations in their information-sharing and confidentiality practices can be explained by neo-Durkheimian institutional theory and uses insights from this theory to argue that current policy tools, emphasising formal regulation, are unlikely to lead to consistent and acceptable outcomes, not least because of unresolved conflicts in values and aims

Data sharing and personal privacy in contemporary public services: the social dynamics of ethical decision making

Amongst some of the most important and interesting ethical dilemmas facing street level bureaucrats in contemporary public services are those arising from conflicting imperatives in the use of personal data. On the one hand, public services are coming under pressure to retain and share more data about identifiable individuals, in order better to deal with their problems or to protect communities against the risks they pose. This pressure appears to conflict – at least to some degree - with confidentiality norms embedded in the codes of practice of public service professions as well as with privacy laws stemming from the European Data Protection Directive and the European Convention of Human Rights. Furthermore, the ethical dilemmas associated with these conflicting imperatives may be growing more acute, as a result of changes in the political and social environment in which public servants work. Firstly, there is a widespread perception that information and communication technologies can support the extensive networking of public service data systems: this perception is giving rise to pressures to achieve service improvements and cost savings associated with the pooling, re-use and exchange of personal data. Secondly, there is a growing view that many of problems experienced by individuals, families and very small neighbourhoods can best be addressed by multi-agency interventions: this view implies that agencies will share data about these individuals, families and neighbourhoods to a greater degree than hitherto. Thirdly, growing pressures on public services associated the influence of communitarian ideas about the management of risks may be leading to tendencies to favour the public good over individual rights, especially in such fields as policing, child protection, mental health and public health. If so, we would expect these pressures to lower thresholds for sharing personal data between agencies. This paper presents some provisional findings from a major research project funded by the UK’s Economic and Social Research Council. The project has collected qualitative data from over 200 interviews with street level professional workers, managers and information systems managers in 12 cases of local multi-agency arrangements (MAAs) in England and Scotland. The data presented in the present paper is from the 8 English cases, comprising 138 interviews. These cases were chosen from four policy fields, namely: • health and social care for the elderly • health and social care for the mentally ill • public protection arrangements managing risks associated with violent criminals and sex offenders; and, • crime and disorder reduction partnerships, which include organisations concerned with planning interventions against prolific offenders, domestic violence and drug-related crime. These fields have been chosen, for two main reasons. First, in all of these fields, decisions about what data to share, when to share them, who to share them with and how to interpret them and use them involve serious risks: the decisions made by individual workers may result in the abuse or death of a child, the loss of parole for a prisoner, the stigmatisation of a family or the refusal of employment for a job applicant. Decision-making in these fields therefore poses ethical problems with potentially serious outcomes for individual clients. Second, in the UK, all these fields are currently subject to central government initiatives designed to encourage greater sharing of personal data to support more effective multi-agency working. They are all fields, then, in which tensions with privacy are coming to the fore. The data collected for this project will eventually provide the most comprehensive, detailed evidence yet available about the ways in which street level professional workers cope on a day to day basis with the tensions between imperatives to share data about needy and risky people, and imperatives to respect their confidentiality and personal privacy. The data will also provide evidence about the ways in which the coping strategies of such workers may be changing under the influence of changes in the political environment outlined above. A particular facet of the analysis will be concerned with the intended and unintended behavioural consequences of the growing use of data sharing protocols and other ethical instruments. These instruments are designed to govern the practices of street level professionals, and in so doing to protect the privacy of clients, patients, offenders, victims, witnesses and other individuals who come into contact with public services in these fields. The overarching hypothesis framing this research is that individual decision-making will be shaped by the organisational, cultural dynamics in which it takes place. We are using neo-Durkheimian institutional theory as the analytical framework for a series of systematic comparisons: between MAAs in the four 3 different policy fields: between types of organisation (for example, police, health and social work agencies), between organisations that comprise these MAAs and between actors from different professions. These comparisons will enable us to assess the nature and influence of organisational dynamics in these fields, and to understand the ways that different mixes of institutional forms impinge on data sharing practices in different organisations and among different kinds of professional workers. We will also compare the ways in which risks to privacy are perceived and managed, and the ways organisational dynamics shape coping mechanisms adopted by individuals to manage the fear of blame. In turn, this analysis will help us understand the social influences on complex decision making by street level workers in policy fields that that are riven with important ethical issues

Opportunistic decision-making in government: concept formation, variety and explanation

The notion of opportunism is too often used loosely in policy and administrative research on executive decision-making: its various meanings are too rarely clearly distinguished. To make it useful for explanation, this article presents fresh concept formation work, clarifying the concept to recognize different kinds and degrees of opportunism. To illustrate the use of the refined concept, the article examines key decisions by British cabinets and core executives between 1945 and 1990. It proposes that neo-Durkheimian institutional theory can help to explain why different kinds of opportunism are cultivated in differently ordered administrations, so providing new insight into decision-making.This work was supported by the Leverhulme Trust (grant number: F01374I

Elementary forms and their dynamics: revisiting Mary Douglas

Mary Douglas's oeuvre furnishes the social sciences with one of the most profound and ambitious bodies of social theory ever to emerge from within anthropology. This article uses the occasion of the publication of Fardon's two volumes of her previously uncollected papers to restate her core arguments about the limited plurality of elementary forms of social organisation, about the institutional dynamics of conflict, and about conflict attenuation. In reviewing these two volumes, the article considers what those anthropologists who have been sceptical either of Douglas's importance or of the Durkheimian traditions generally, will want from these books to convince them to look afresh at her work. It concludes that the two collections will provide open-minded anthropologists with enough evidence of the creativity and significance of her achievement to encourage them to reopen her major theoretical works. An internal critique of some aspects of Douglas's handling of her arguments is offered, before the conclusion identifies the wider significance of her arguments for the social science

How Does Participation Work? Deliberation and Performance in African Food Security

Participation is considered an important tool of development. Two mechanisms of participation are distinguished - deliberative and performative. Deliberative participation is vulnerable to capture by elites. A postwar agricultural reconstruction project in Sierra Leone experimented with a performative approach to participation, Technological dynamics served to focus attention on alternatives to patrimonial value systems. The article advocates further experiments in linking deliberative and performative participation

Learning from Communities: The Local Dynamics of Formal and Informal Volunteering in Korogocho, Kenya

Taking the Korogocho community as its starting point, this article explores the respective roles, dynamics and relationship between formal and informal volunteering. Following an overview of the research's participatory systemic action research (SAR) methodology, the article outlines how the widespread use of stipends and allowances by external development organisations has blurred the distinction between formal volunteerism and low?paid work – something that disincentivises volunteering through local organisations who lack the resources to pay allowances. It examines informal volunteering, such as mutual aid and self?help groups, and highlights how they add significant value when they emerge in response to a directly experienced community need. Finally, it discusses the risks and opportunities associated with formal and informal volunteering. Issues include how volunteering can be used in complementary ways to address community needs, the scales at which they are most effective, and their potential in promoting greater inclusion and more equitable gender roles

Developing the knowledge base about carers and personalisation: contributions made by an exploration of carers’ perspectives on personal budgets and the carer–service user relationship

This qualitative study aimed to explore an under-researched issue within the emerging body of research about carers and personalisation – the carer–service user relationship. It was carried out across 11 English local authorities between 2011 and 2012 and focused on the impact of a change in the service user’s social care arrangements to a personal budget on this relationship. Using purposive sampling and explicit inclusion criteria, data were gathered through semi-structured in-depth interviews with 23 carers in long-term dyadic relationships with an adult in receipt of social care who had changed to a personal budget. The interviews explored carers’ perceptions of the carer–service user relationship before and after the advent of the personal budget and changes that had occurred. The findings were thematically analysed and reflect the fact that in addition to the effects of the move to a personal budget on the carer–service user relationship, the interviewees talked at length about a range of other effects of this move. Just over half of those interviewed felt that the personal budget had enhanced the carer–service user relationship. The other effects were both positive and negative. Three quarters reported positive outcomes, such as feeling happier, healthier and having more control over their lives. Although two thirds experienced negative feelings about having less involvement in the service user’s care, these feelings eased over time and if they had confidence in the quality of the care. Over half found administering the personal budget stressful. Further analysis of these findings showed the study contributes not only to existing knowledge about the carer–service user relationship within personalisation but also to knowledge about the effects of personalisation on carers more generally. It therefore simultaneously develops the emergent knowledge base about carers and personalisation. Recommendations based on this analysis are made about future practice and research

Contribution analysis of a Bolivian innovation grant fund: mixing methods to verify relevance, efficiency and effectiveness

We used contribution analysis to verify the key assumption in the intervention logic of an innovation fund in Bolivia directed to economic farmer organisations to develop value-added activities. We focused the research on three sub-components of the intervention logic: relevance of the farmer groups for local economic development, effectiveness of the fund in strengthening these group, and efficiency of the grant allocation mechanism. We used a case-based comparative analysis to assess effectiveness: improved market access for members, strengthened organisational capacities and the capacity to pay organisational costs. We showed that the grants to already well-endowed organisations were particularly unsuccessful