Unravelling the United Kingdom’s climate policy consensus : The power of ideas, discourse and institutions

As climate change policies and governance initiatives struggle to produce the transformational social changes required, the search for stand out case studies continues. Many have pointed to the period between 2005 and 2008 in the United Kingdom as a promising example of national level innovation. With strong cross-party consensus and a first-of-its-kind legislation the UK established itself as a climate policy leader. However, early warning signs suggest that this institutionalised position is far from secure. Through a novel application of discursive institutionalism this article presents a detailed analysis of the role of ideas in unravelling this ambition under the Conservative-Liberal coalition administration (2010–2015). Discursive interactions among policymakers and other political actors were dominated by ideas about governmental responsibility and economic austerity, establishing an atmosphere of climate policy scepticism and restraint. By situating this conspicuous and influential process of bricolage within its institutional context the importance of how policymakers think and communicate about climate change is made apparent. The power of ideas to influence policy is further demonstrated through their cognitive and normative persuasiveness, by imposing over and excluding alternatives and in their institutional positioning. It can be concluded that despite innovative legislation, institution building and strategic coordination of different types of governance actors the ideational foundations of ambitious climate change politics in the UK have been undermined

Governing turbulent transitions: the politics of climate change and low-carbon transitions during austerity in the UK, 2006-2016

Addressing the causes and consequences of anthropogenic climate change is one of the most pressing challenges facing the world. A range of social and technical responses to this challenge have been proposed, which – if successfully mobilised – can limit dangerous climate warming through a transition to a low-carbon and resilient society. The role of the nation state in governing such a large-scale transition is often presumed, but it is in fact highly uncertain. At a time when political and economic trends in Western Europe have made government intervention and investment in climate policies particularly difficult, this thesis offers a timely analysis of the politics of climate change in the UK. Drawing on extensive qualitative data this thesis addresses four questions. First, to what extent do current approaches to describing and prescribing low-carbon transitions adequately address their social and political dimensions? Second, how have the fundamental ideas of climate change politics and economics changed during 2006-2016? Third, what impact have these changes had on climate and energy policy outputs? And finally, where are the governance innovations coming from and what is government’s role in empowering them? Multiple analytical frameworks are used to answer these questions in four distinct, but related, articles. The first article offers a critical review of popular academic and governance approaches to sustainability transitions. The following three articles explore these theoretical claims through empirical analyses of: the fluctuating nature of institutionalised discourses, the rationalisation of renewable energy policy retrenchment, and the ambiguous role of the state in facilitating a more polycentric approach to climate governance. This thesis argues that the complexity of climate change as a political issue is a double-edged sword, which provides opportunities for mobilising multiple sources of agency on the one hand, but which also diffuses responsibility and creates unhelpful trade-offs between various interests and policy goals on the other. It provides new theoretical tools for analysing this paradox, as well as new empirical insights into the UK case study and beyond

Justice discourses and the global environment: diverse perspectives on an uneven landscape

This chapter engages with each of the social and environmental discourses and reflects upon how they have influenced Global Environmental Politics (GEP) and International Relations (IR) over the past twenty years. Twenty years ago, an explicit discourse of justice was largely absent from GEP research. Much IR scholarship suggests that by bringing as many nation-states together as possible, international institutions can address the increasingly globalised nature of human-environment relations and the governance challenges they pose. A political ecology approach reunites politics, economics and justice with deep green thought to produce a new environmental justice discourse. Feminist theory can offer vital and directly applicable insights for achieving environmental justice. Although not always explicitly couched in terms of justice, they highlight the need for an analysis of power and for understanding how structures of domination systematically reproduce environmental degradation. The environmental justice literature is rightly celebrated as a flexible and progressive agenda capable of problematising existing approaches to IR and the environment

Digital volume correlation can be used to estimate local strains in natural and augmented vertebrae: An organ-level study

Digital Volume Correlation (DVC) has become popular for measuring the strain distribution inside bone structures. A number of methodological questions are still open: the reliability of DVC to investigate augmented bone tissue, the variability of the errors between different specimens of the same type, the distribution of measurement errors inside a bone, and the possible presence of preferential directions. To address these issues, five augmented and five natural porcine vertebrae were subjected to repeated zero-strain micro-CT scan (39 μm voxel size). The acquired images were processed with two independent DVC approaches (a local and a global one), considering different computation sub-volume sizes, in order to assess the strain measurement uncertainties. The systematic errors generally ranged within ±100 microstrain and did not depend on the computational sub-volume. The random error was higher than 1000 microstrain for the smallest sub-volume and rapidly decreased: with a sub-volume of 48 voxels the random errors were typically within 200 microstrain for both DVC approaches. While these trends were rather consistent within the sample, two individual specimens had unpredictably larger errors. For this reason, a zero-strain check on each specimen should always be performed before any in-situ micro-CT testing campaign. This study clearly shows that, when sufficient care is dedicated to preliminary methodological work, different DVC computation approaches allow measuring the strain with a reduced overall error (approximately 200 microstrain). Therefore, DVC is a viable technique to investigate strain in the elastic regime in natural and augmented bones

Instabilities in crystal growth by atomic or molecular beams

The planar front of a growing a crystal is often destroyed by instabilities. In the case of growth from a condensed phase, the most frequent ones are diffusion instabilities, which will be but briefly discussed in simple terms in chapter II. The present review is mainly devoted to instabilities which arise in ballistic growth, especially Molecular Beam Epitaxy (MBE). The reasons of the instabilities can be geometric (shadowing effect), but they are mostly kinetic or thermodynamic. The kinetic instabilities which will be studied in detail in chapters IV and V result from the fact that adatoms diffusing on a surface do not easily cross steps (Ehrlich-Schwoebel or ES effect). When the growth front is a high symmetry surface, the ES effect produces mounds which often coarsen in time according to power laws. When the growth front is a stepped surface, the ES effect initially produces a meandering of the steps, which eventually may also give rise to mounds. Kinetic instabilities can usually be avoided by raising the temperature, but this favours thermodynamic instabilities. Concerning these ones, the attention will be focussed on the instabilities resulting from slightly different lattice constants of the substrate and the adsorbate. They can take the following forms. i) Formation of misfit dislocations (chapter VIII). ii) Formation of isolated epitaxial clusters which, at least in their earliest form, are `coherent' with the substrate, i.e. dislocation-free (chapter X). iii) Wavy deformation of the surface, which is presumably the incipient stage of (ii) (chapter IX). The theories and the experiments are critically reviewed and their comparison is qualitatively satisfactory although some important questions have not yet received a complete answer.Comment: 90 pages in revtex, 45 figures mainly in gif format. Review paper to be published in Physics Reports. Postscript versions for all the figures can be found at http://www.theo-phys.uni-essen.de/tp/u/politi

Involving the public in mental health and learning disability research: Can we, should we, do we?

INTRODUCTION: Patient and public involvement (PPI) is integral to UK health research guidance, however implementation is inconsistent. There is little research into the attitudes of NHS health researchers towards PPI. AIM: This study explored the attitude of researchers working in mental health and learning disability services in the UK towards PPI in health research. METHOD: Using a qualitative methodology, semi-structured interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of eight researchers. A framework approach was used in the analysis to generate themes and core concepts. RESULTS: Participants valued the perspective PPI could bring to research, but frustration with tokenistic approaches to involvement work was also evident. Some cultural and attitudinal barriers to integrating PPI across the whole research process were identified. DISCUSSION: Despite clear guidelines and established service user involvement, challenges still exist in the integration of PPI in mental health and learning disability research in the UK. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICE: Guidelines on PPI may not be enough to prompt changes in research practice. Leaders and researchers need to support attitudinal and cultural changes where required, to ensure the full potential of PPI in mental health and learning disability services research is realized. RELEVANCE STATEMENT: Findings suggest that despite clear guidelines and a history of service user involvement, there are still challenges to the integration of PPI in mental health and learning disability research in the UK. For countries where PPI guidelines are being developed, attention needs to be paid to cultural factors in the research community to win “hearts and minds” and support the effective integration of PPI across the whole research process

Can national policy blockages accelerate the development of polycentric governance? Evidence from climate change policy in the United Kingdom

Many factors can conspire to limit the scope for policy development at the national level. In this paper, we consider whether blockages in national policy processes − resulting for example from austerity or small state political philosophies − might be overcome by the development of more polycentric governance arrangements. Drawing on evidence from three stakeholder workshops and fifteen interviews, we address this question by exploring the United Kingdom’s recent retrenchment in the area of climate change policy, and the ways in which its policy community have responded. We identify two broad strategies based on polycentric principles: ‘working with gatekeepers’ to unlock political capital and ‘collaborate to innovate’ to develop policy outputs. We then empirically examine the advantages that these actions bring, analysing coordination across overlapping sites of authority, such as those associated with international regimes, devolved administrations and civic and private initiatives that operate in conjunction with, and sometimes independently of, the state. Despite constraining political and economic factors, which are by no means unique to the UK, we find that a polycentric climate policy network can create opportunities for overcoming central government blockages. However, we also argue that the ambiguous role of the state in empowering but also in constraining such a network will determine whether a polycentric approach to climate policy and governance is genuinely additional and innovative, or whether it is merely a temporary ‘sticking plaster’ for the retreat of the state and policy retrenchment during austere times

The detection of carotid plaque rupture caused by intraplaque hemorrhage by serial high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging: a case report.

BACKGROUND: Plaque rupture is believed to be a critical event that leads to thromboembolic complications in atherosclerotic carotid artery disease. Intraplaque hemorrhage can also cause fibrous cap disruption and may be related to the progression of atherosclerosis. However, the mechanism that leads to fibrous cap disruption is not well defined, and there have been few reports in the literature that carotid plaque rupture could be clearly visualized by serial high-resolution MRI. CASE DESCRIPTION: We describe a case of a 79-year-old man who presented with minor ischemic stroke. On diffusion-weighted image, new multiple embolic spots were detected. Plaque rupture caused by intraplaque hemorrhage could be clearly detected by serial high-resolution MRI of the cervical carotid artery. The patient underwent carotid endarterectomy, and an atheromatous plaque was extracted intact for histologic analysis. In the histologic section corresponding to the MRI slices, plaque rupture caused by intraplaque hemorrhage was demonstrated. CONCLUSIONS: This case represents a valuable example of artery-to-artery embolisms from a carotid plaque rupture secondary to intraplaque hemorrhage. High-resolution MRI may have important applications in natural history studies and in clinical trials of carotid plaques

Challenges to undertaking randomised trials with looked after children in social care settings.

BACKGROUND: Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are widely viewed as the gold standard for assessing effectiveness in health research; however many researchers and practitioners believe that RCTs are inappropriate and un-doable in social care settings, particularly in relation to looked after children. The aim of this article is to describe the challenges faced in conducting a pilot study and phase II RCT of a peer mentoring intervention to reduce teenage pregnancy in looked after children in a social care setting. METHODS: Interviews were undertaken with social care professionals and looked after children, and a survey conducted with looked after children, to establish the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention and research design. RESULTS: Barriers to recruitment and in managing the intervention were identified, including social workers acting as informal gatekeepers; social workers concerns and misconceptions about the recruitment criteria and the need for and purpose of randomisation; resource limitations, which made it difficult to prioritise research over other demands on their time and difficulties in engaging and retaining looked after children in the study. CONCLUSIONS: The relative absence of a research infrastructure and culture in social care and the lack of research support funding available for social care agencies, compared to health organisations, has implications for increasing evidence-based practice in social care settings, particularly in this very vulnerable group of young people