Rural?Urban Migration and Poverty:

Summaries What is the relationship between rural?urban migration and poverty? This article takes up this question, which is by no means new, but about which there is no consensus. The importance of migration for urban as well as for rural areas, for poverty and for poverty alleviation policies is considerable, and the article indicates that more research is needed, particularly taking into account both sides of the migration streams. Rates of urbanisation, which have remained low in countries like India, underestimate the importance of migration. Migrants in cities continue to maintain close links with, and return to, their areas of origin, thus limitiing urban population growth and complicating analyses and policies. The article, focusing on migration to Calcutta but also drawing on all?India survey data and other evidence, discusses the following issues: the role of poverty versus inequality in migration; the migrants' districts of origin; the socio?economic background of migrants; the migrants' income and expenditure, compared to non?migrating groups; and whether migrants are able to improve their income over time

Aquatic food security:insights into challenges and solutions from an analysis of interactions between fisheries, aquaculture, food safety, human health, fish and human welfare, economy and environment

Fisheries and aquaculture production, imports, exports and equitability of distribution determine the supply of aquatic food to people. Aquatic food security is achieved when a food supply is sufficient, safe, sustainable, shockproof and sound: sufficient, to meet needs and preferences of people; safe, to provide nutritional benefit while posing minimal health risks; sustainable, to provide food now and for future generations; shock-proof, to provide resilience to shocks in production systems and supply chains; and sound, to meet legal and ethical standards for welfare of animals, people and environment. Here, we present an integrated assessment of these elements of the aquatic food system in the United Kingdom, a system linked to dynamic global networks of producers, processors and markets. Our assessment addresses sufficiency of supply from aquaculture, fisheries and trade; safety of supply given biological, chemical and radiation hazards; social, economic and environmental sustainability of production systems and supply chains; system resilience to social, economic and environmental shocks; welfare of fish, people and environment; and the authenticity of food. Conventionally, these aspects of the food system are not assessed collectively, so information supporting our assessment is widely dispersed. Our assessment reveals trade-offs and challenges in the food system that are easily overlooked in sectoral analyses of fisheries, aquaculture, health, medicine, human and fish welfare, safety and environment. We highlight potential benefits of an integrated, systematic and ongoing process to assess security of the aquatic food system and to predict impacts of social, economic and environmental change on food supply and demand

Welsh devolution and the problem of legislative competence

With political consensus reached across Wales and Westminster that the current conferred powers model of Welsh devolution should be replaced with a reserved powers model as exists in Scotland and Northern Ireland, this article looks back at the systems instituted under the Government of Wales Act (2006) and compares it with the proposals contained within the draft Wales Bill (2015) and Wales Bill (2016). This involves an in-depth comparison of the consequences for legislative clarity and robustness of the shift in 2011 from Part III of GoWA 2006, which instituted a system for the ad hoc transfer of powers to the National Assembly, to Part IV, which provides the Assembly with direct primary powers over specific policy areas, and the subsequent comparison of the existing system with the draft bill’s proposals. In doing so, two claims are advanced: (i) that the system instituted in Part III of GoWA was actually preferable to that unlocked with the shift to Part IV; and (ii) that this existing system was nevertheless preferable to the proposed reserved power model contained in the draft Wales Bill Ultimately, what the Welsh case illustrates is how constitution building should not be done; and furthermore, that there are inherent problems regarding legislative competence within conferred powers models of devolution, but a reserved powers model is no panacea either

Trials and tribulations : the 'use' (and 'misuse') of evidence in public policy

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are increasingly playing a central role in shaping policy for development. By comparison, social experimentation has not driven the great transformation of welfare within the developed world. This introduces a range of issues for those interested in the nature of research evidence for making policy. In this article we will seek a greater understanding of why the RCT is increasingly seen as the ‘gold standard’ for policy experiments in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), but not in the more advanced liberal democracies, and we will explore the implications of this. One objection to the use of RCTs, however can be cost, but implementing policies and programmes without good evidence or a good understanding of their effectiveness is unlikely to be a good use of resources either. Other issues arise. Trials are often complex to run and ethical concerns often arise in social ‘experiments’ with human subjects. However, rolling out untested policies may also be morally objectionable. This article sheds new light on the relationship between evidence and evaluation in public policy in both the global north and developing south. It also tackles emerging issues concerning the ‘use’ and ‘misuse’ of evidence and evaluation within public policy

The politics of ageing: health consumers, markets and hegemonic challenge

In recent years ageing has travelled from the placid backwaters of politics into the mainstream of economic, social and cultural debate. What are the forces that have politicised ageing, creating a sustained opposition to the supply side hegemony of pharmaceuticals, medicine and state which has historically constructed, propagated and legitimised the understanding of ageing as decline in social worth? In addressing this question, the paper develops Gramsci's theory of hegemony to include the potentially disruptive demand side power of consumers and markets. It shows how in the case of ageing individuals acting in concert through the mechanisms of the market, and not institutionalised modes of opposition, may become the agents of hegemonic challenge through a combination of lifecourse choice and electoral leverage. In response, the hegemony is adapting through the promotion of professionally defined interpretations of ‘active ageing’ designed to retain hegemonic control. With the forces of hegemony and counter‐hegemony nicely balanced and fresh issues such as intergenerational justice constantly emerging, the political tensions of ageing are set to continue

Neoliberalism and the revival of agricultural cooperatives: The case of the coffee sector in Uganda

Agricultural cooperatives have seen a comeback in sub‐Saharan Africa. After the collapse of many weakly performing monopolist organizations during the 1980s and 1990s, strengthened cooperatives have emerged since the 2000s. Scholarly knowledge about the state–cooperative relations in which this “revival” takes place remains poor. Based on new evidence from Uganda's coffee sector, this paper discusses the political economy of Africa's cooperative revival. The authors argue that donors' and African governments' renewed support is framed in largely apolitical terms, which obscures the contested political and economic nature of the revival. In the context of neoliberal restructuring processes, state and non‐state institutional support to democratic economic organizations with substantial redistributional agendas remains insufficient. The political–economic context in Uganda—and potentially elsewhere in Africa—contributes to poor terms of trade for agricultural cooperatives while maintaining significant state control over some cooperative activities to protect the status quo interests of big capital and state elites. These conditions are unlikely to produce a conflict‐free, substantial, and sustained revival of cooperatives, which the new promoters of cooperatives suggest is under way