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Healthcare providers in the English National Health Service: public, private or hybrids?
In recent years it has been noted that boundaries between public and private providers of many types of welfare
have become blurred. This paper uses three dimensions of publicness to analyse this blurring of boundaries
in relation to providers of healthcare in England. The authors find that, although most care is still funded
and provided by the state, there are significant additional factors in respect of ownership and social control
which indicate that many English healthcare providers are better understood as hybrids. Furthermore, the
authors raise concerns about the possible deleterious effects of diminishing aspects of publicness on English
healthcare. The most important of these is a decrease in accountabilit
ICTs for empowerment? Disability organizations and the democratizing potential of Web 2.0 in Scotland
In recent years, voluntary organizations and advocacy groups have become increasingly influential in the British political landscape as intermediaries between institutions and citizens. Amongst those, disability organizations constitute an important example because they seek to represent a group which has traditionally been excluded from politics. However, concerns remain with regard to the representativeness and accountability of these bodies, and therefore with the legitimacy of their role in governance. This chapter sets out to understand whether disability organizations can use the internet, and especially Web 2.0 features, to develop a more participatory relationship with disabled people1, thus becoming better democratic actors. In particular, this issue is addressed through the results of an empirical study of Scottish disability organizations’ websites. Whilst the internet seems to possess great potential against disabling barriers, findings for this study are controversial, and disabled users seem at best to be mobilized around a pre-determined agenda rather than genuinely engaged as participants