Whatever happened to the Nolan principles? Sleaze in the government of Boris Johnson

The responses by the Prime Minister and ministers to the current spate of allegations of sleaze are illustrative of a longstanding problem in British political life which was meant to have been resolved 25 years ago with the Nolan Committee. Martin Bull argues that a return to Nolan is needed if we are to have any hope of recovering trust in British politics

Draghi may be a banker, but there is a significant political realignment taking place behind his government’s technocratic façade

Much of the response to Mario Draghi’s appointment as Prime Minister of Italy has focused on the technocratic nature of his government. Martin J. Bull argues that while Draghi may be a technocrat, his programme is already generating a significant realignment within Italian politics

The 'Revolution from below' : the Italian Communist Party, the state and regional devolution (1944-1970)

Defence date: 21 September 1987Supervisor: Vincent WrightFirst made available online: 3 November 201

Introduction : towards a better understanding of corruption and anti-corruption

Despite widespread interest in corruption and how to root it out, the problem continues to grow. Anti-corruption strategies and methods have proved ineffective in achieving lasting reductions in corruption. Anti-corruption academic research has not been free of criticism, and part of the problem is its emphasis on macro-level analysis. The case studies in corruption and anti-corruption in this symposium focus on specific areas that have received surprisingly little attention in the literature: the effectiveness of political finance supervisory bodies; the impact of European Union post-conditionality on anti-corruption efforts; and the increased use of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA) in shaping the way that corruption is conceptualised and combated on a global scale. Together, the articles in this symposium offer some novel insights and approaches to the issue of how best to understand and assess different ways of addressing corruption in specific sectors which have received insufficient attention in the literature to date

The domestication of the probiotic bacterium Lactobacillus acidophilus

Lactobacillus acidophilus is a Gram-positive lactic acid bacterium that has had widespread historical use in the dairy industry and more recently as a probiotic. Although L. acidophilus has been designated as safe for human consumption, increasing commercial regulation and clinical demands for probiotic validation has resulted in a need to understand its genetic diversity. By drawing on large, well-characterised collections of lactic acid bacteria, we examined L. acidophilus isolates spanning 92 years and including multiple strains in current commercial use. Analysis of the whole genome sequence data set (34 isolate genomes) demonstrated L. acidophilus was a low diversity, monophyletic species with commercial isolates essentially identical at the sequence level. Our results indicate that commercial use has domesticated L. acidophilus with genetically stable, invariant strains being consumed globally by the human population

Does status have more influence than education on the decisions midwives make.

Hollins Martin [Social influence effects on midwives’ practice. Presentation at the British Psychological Society Social Psychology Section Annual Conference, 10th–12th September, 2003: London] developed the Social Influence Scale for Midwifery (SIS-M) to measure social influence of a senior midwife on a junior midwife’s decisions. First, midwives were asked to answer SIS-M questions in a postal survey. Second, in interviews, a senior midwife attempted to influence SIS-M responses in a conformist direction. The results of the Hollins Martin (2003) study showed that a senior midwife was able to significantly influence change to many midwives decisions, F(1,57) = 249.62, p = 0.001. The present study aims to ascertain whether decision changes were caused by social components of the relationship between interviewer and interviewee, or education shared during discussion. This is achieved by removing social influence of the senior midwife at interview. For this purpose, a workbook was devised that replicated the exact content of interview. This workbook was posted to a differing group of 60 midwives, who had also previously completed a private postal SIS-M. Overall, analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed no significant difference between the postal workbook scores and the private SIS-M scores, (F(1,57) = 0.31, p = 0.58). In other words, participants gave similar responses to the SIS-M questions in the workbook as the private postal condition. Results exclude possibility that education during the Hollins Martin (2003) interviews adjusted participants’ schema in relation to decisions made. Furthermore, this indicates that the social relationship, in part, caused the large social influence effect during interviews. The implications for practice are: first, that a senior midwife is profoundly capable of influencing decisions that junior midwives make; second, educational content plays little part in this process. Moreover, many of the SIS-M decisions should not be the choice of a senior midwife, but the preference of the childbearing women

Open access and academic associations in the political and social sciences : threat or opportunity?

Academic associations are a vital part of the academic community, facilitating the interaction of researchers and production of knowledge, yet the impact of Open Access on their future has been too often regarded as marginal to the main discussion. Open Access presents an evident threat to those associations which have become dependent upon a sizeable proportion of their income coming from owned journals published in conjunction with publishers. Yet, Open Access also presents opportunities, and academic associations should be bold in using a combination of their expertise, prestige and experience in publishing to ensure their futures in a newly emerging market

What features of the maternity unit promote obedient behaviour from midwives?

The aim of this paper was to present a comprehensive picture of characteristics within a maternity hospital which promote obedient behaviour from midwives. The overall objective was to assess midwives’ views about their own acquiescent behaviour. A sensitive qualitative analysis appraised midwives’ views gained from semi-structured interviews conducted within the seven maternity units of North Yorkshire in the UK. Participants included a stratified sample of 20 (7E, 7F, 6G grade) practicing midwives aged between 21–60 years. Taking a post-positivist approach, inductive thematic analysis was used to interpret the data. Two themes of “situational factors that promote obedient behaviour” were derived; “an obligation to follow hospital policies” and “fear of consequences from challenging senior staff”. The key conclusion is that midwives are frequently placed in unenviable positions of relative powerlessness. It was clear that some actions and strategies that midwives use serve to reinforce the fundamental power structures and “status quo”. Quite clearly, midwives are sometimes presented with conflict between a drive to agree with authority and supporting the safe, evidence-based choices of childbearing women in their care. Raising awareness of the processes involved in obedient behaviour and exercising sharing of power may be helpful to midwives in asserting not only their own professional capacity to influence, but also the autonomy of the women they seek to empower