Decline of the “Little Parliament”: Juries and Jury Reform in England and Wales

Lloyd-Bostock and Thomas take a historical look at the English jury and place the jury and jury reform in the context of the English legal and political system

The UK recession in context — what do three centuries of data tell us?

The Quarterly Bulletin has a long tradition of using historical data to help analyse the latest developments in the UK economy. To mark the Bulletin’s 50th anniversary, this article places the recent UK recession in a long-run historical context. It draws on the extensive literature on UK economic history and analyses a wide range of macroeconomic and financial data going back to the 18th century. The UK economy has undergone major structural change over this period but such historical comparisons can provide lessons for the current economic situation.

Innovation in Student Affairs: The Influence of Individual and Organizational Factors on Programmatic and Technological Change

The purpose of this paper was to explore the influence individual and organizational factors exerted on technological innovations, programmatic innovations and combined technological and programmatic innovations. Student affairs divisions in Comprehensive I colleges and universities constituted the administrative unit examined. The two types of program innovations examined were substance abuse prevention/education programs and retention/academic support programs. The technological innovations examined were financial aid computerized award calculation and computerized career counseling. The individual factors examined were professionalism, gender and age of the chief student affairs officer. The organizational factors were vertical, horizontal and combined vertical and horizontal complexity, centralization and size. Size was measured as student body size, a combined staff size within the four units examined and combined student body and staff size. The method of study was survey. One hundred chief student affairs officers were surveyed for responses about their institutions\u27 innovations and the factors of professionalism, age, gender, centralization, complexity and size. The findings were: (1) There was a significant relationship between professionalism and technological innovation. The more professional the chief student affairs officer was, the more technological innovation was reported. (2) There was a significant relationship between age and combined programmatic and technological innovation. The higher the age of the chief student affairs officer, the lower the level of combined technological and programmatic innovation was reported. (3) There was a significant relationship between complexity and programmatic innovation. The more complexity present, the more programmatic innovation was reported. This significance held across the three different measures of horizontal, vertical and combined complexity. (4) There was a significant relationship between complexity and combined technological and programmatic innovation. The more complexity, the more combined technological and programmatic innovation was reported. This significance held across vertical and combined measures for complexity. (5) There was a significant relationship between the size and programmatic innovation. The larger the size, the more programmatic innovation was reported. This significance held for staff size and combined size measures. The major conclusion was that different factors may impact programmatic innovation differently than technological innovation or combined programmatic and technological innovation. Future study of innovation should consider these differences

Emotional homework: a systematic literature review of patients’ intersession experiences.

Patients’ processing of therapy between sessions can be planned and deliberate (homework) or spontaneous and incidental (intersession experiences). Aiming to inform clinical practice and future research, this review synthesizes empirical findings relating to intersession experiences, including their types, prevalence, and associations with patient characteristics, therapeutic processes, and outcomes. Searches of electronic databases identified 781 journal articles, 14 met the inclusion criteria of investigating adult psychotherapy patients’ unplanned between-session experiences relating to their therapy and therapist, a further 4 were identified through hand searches and contact with authors. All 18 articles included in the review were written in either English or German language, 17 used quantitative and 1 qualitative methods. Their methodological quality was assessed using tools developed for the purpose of this review. Most patients report a range of intersession experiences, including recreating therapeutic dialogue, imagining interactions, images and dreams. Intensity and type were associated with patient personality, diagnosis, phase of therapy, alliance and outcome. Study limitations included small sample sizes, the exploratory nature of some designs, and the limited generalizability of results. Clinical implications include the potential of intersession experiences to provide information about the therapeutic relationship, and their association to treatment outcomes and possible post-therapy gains

Partnership Funding in flood risk management: multi-level stakeholder engagement - a question of roles and power

The paper examines the new flood risk policy discussion in England and Wales. The summer floods in England in 2007 caused large damages to the environment, economy and humanity. Following this key flood event, the Government has started to redefine the national flood and coastal risk management policy in England and Wales. The key issue in the new policy agenda is to encourage the responsibilities of local authorities and reduce the central role of flood risk management. This decentralisation in flood risk management has a series of consequences in the development of new governance structures. The main reason for this shift from central to local level is the belief that local authorities deal with public administration tasks in a more efficient way. Nevertheless, the main problem is the gap between the delegated tasks and the lack of transfer of resources, especially the issue concerning funding is still unclear and unresolved. This constraint will go with fiscal and administration cuts. The consequences will be (1) ‘hollowing out’ of the Government with the downscaling of the responsibility towards local actors and (2) without proportional transfer of resources to local authorities they will not be able to deal with new tasks. Therefore, in practice there are many limitations, barriers and concerns with the new policy direction