Monthly Archives: December 2014

What impact do mayors have on the cities that elect them?

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David Sweeting, Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies in the School for Policy Studies

David Sweeting, Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies in the School for Policy Studies

Greater Manchester will become the next urban area in the UK to directly elect a mayor, following Bristol who first elected a mayor in 2012. One of the frustrations in the debate around directly elected mayors, however, is the lack of empirical evidence around which to evaluate their impact. Here, David Sweeting presents some early analysis of data from both before and after the introduction of the mayoral system in Bristol.

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British Muslims and polygamy: beyond the headlines

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Dr Katharine Charsley, Senior Lecturer, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies

Dr Katharine Charsley, Senior Lecturer, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies

The Telegraph this week carries an article titled ‘Mass Polygamy in the Muslim Community – Claim’, drawing on a report, ‘Equal and Free? 50 Muslim women’s experiences of marriage in Britain today’, by the West Midlands-based charity AURAT (woman). The article highlights the issue of polygamy – 31 of the 46 married women interviewed reported that their husband had more than one wife. Baroness Cox is quoted as saying: “You can’t extrapolate straight from this but you can make a reasonable assumption that if this is not unrepresentative, this is clearly very widespread, and we are therefore dealing with enormous numbers… The implications for the women are very serious and it violates the fundamental principles of our country that bigamy is illegal and yet polygamy is condoned and allowed to flourish.”

Several points need to be made about the coverage of this report.

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‘You the Man’

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Senior Lecturer, School for Policy Studies

Dr Geetanjali Gangoli, Senior Lecturer, School for Policy Studies

There is increasing interest in the role of bystanders in preventing gender-based violence. You the Man is a 35 minute theatre- production combined with workshop that promotes bystander engagement addressing the themes of: promoting equal and respectful relationships between men and women; promoting non-violent social norms and reducing the effects of prior exposure to violence (especially on children); and improving access to resources and systems of support. The project has been used internationally in the fields of education, workplaces, local government, health and community services and the community.

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Evaluation and research in ‘real world’ policy settings

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Professor Elliot Stern, Visiting Professor in School for Policy Studies

In a policy environment besotted with ‘evidence-based policy making’, evaluation is in vogue.  The promise of objective ‘facts, truth, and precision’ sounds like music to a policy maker’s ear. But it is a false promise. The multiple forces at play in the ‘real world’, the multiple lenses through which we can each see that world, and the multiple truths that come to bear on the creation, success and consequences of a given policy must all be constantly borne in mind. There are no easy answers.

At a recent event at the University of Bristol, Elliott Stern, editor of the academic journal ‘Evaluation’ and Matt Baumann, Principal Research Officer at the Department for Energy and Climate Change, explored the value of evaluation in the face of these many challenges.

Despite its many imperfections, evaluation is probably the best tool we have for assessing the impact of a policy intervention in the ‘real world’.

This blog is a summary of their presentations and the discussions that followed.

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