Moral Panics and Punctuated Equilibrium in Public Policy: An Analysis of the Criminal Justice Policy Agenda in Britain

How and when issues are elevated onto the political agenda is a perennial question in the study of public policy. This article considers how moral panics contribute to punctuated equilibrium in public policy by drawing together broader societal anxieties or fears and thereby precipitating or accelerating changes in the dominant set of issue frames. In so doing they create opportunities for policy entrepreneurs to disrupt the existing policy consensus. In a test of this theory, we assess the factors behind the rise of crime on the policy agenda in Britain between 1960 and 2010. We adopt an integrative mixed-methods approach, drawing upon a combination of qualitative and quantitative data. This enables us to analyze the rise of crime as a policy problem, the breakdown of the political-institutional consensus on crime, the moral panic that followed the murder of the toddler James Bulger in 1993, the emergence of new issue frames around crime and social/moral decay more broadly, and how—in combination—these contributed to an escalation of political rhetoric and action on crime, led by policy entrepreneurs in the Labour and Conservative parties. \u

Composite superconducting MgB2 wires made by continuous process

Previously developed manufacturing technology of a low-cost composite single core MgB2 superconductive wires has been investigated in details using monel sheath and titanium diffusion barrier. In this process Mg and nano-sized B as well as SiC dopant powders were fed continuously to a "U" shaped me-tallic sheath titanium, and subsequently monel sheath. Resulting wires were assembled in "6+1" configuration cable constructed from six 0.75 mm Monel/Titanium/(MgB2+10 wt%SiC) and Monel/Titanium/MgB2 wires and one central copper wire with two twist pitch arrangements: 13 mm and 26 mm. Undoped and SiC doped wires were compared in respect of their Ic(B,T) characteristic. Wires were sintered at 700°C for different times and subsequently have been initially tested in a dedicated helium force vapour cooling system at temperatures 20-35K at 1 T. Systematic and statistic Ic(B,T) measurements of the wires and cables in LHe were conducted at high external magnetic flux density up to 9T. It was shown that wire feeding, sealing, reduction and forming technology enable virtually unlimited conductor lengths as well as in-line processing control simultaneously ensuring a high degree of reproducibility and consistent quality of the MgB2 superconductor. Such generic single core MgB2 conductors enable manufacture of multifilamentary MgB2 conductors with desired configurations (e.g. twist pitch for transient losses and AC applications)

Characterization of hyperbranched glycopolymers produced <i>in vitro</i> using enzymes

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