Category Archives: Uncategorized

Towards a global parliament of mayors?

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Professor of Public Policy and Head of the School for Policy Studies

Alex Marsh, Professor of Public Policy and Head of the School for Policy Studies

How should a world characterised by increasingly complex interdependence be governed? If most of the major challenges we face have no respect for the artificial borders marking out nation states, how can we identify and deliver effective solutions?

The answer Benjamin Barber offered in his stimulating presentation at the Bristol Festival of Ideas on Monday night is that we need to look to cities. More specifically, we need to look to mayors. His case is in part rooted in the fact of an increasingly urban future. But it is also based upon the characteristics he identifies as distinctive to mayoral governance. This is an argument developed at greater length in his new book If mayors ruled the world: Dysfunctional nations, rising cities (Yale University Press).

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40 years of Policy & Politics: critical reflections and strategies for the future

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Dr Sarah Ayres, Senior Lecturer in Policy Studies, School for Policy Studies and Co-Editor of Policy & Politics Journal

Dr Sarah Ayres, Senior Lecturer in Policy Studies, School for Policy Studies and co-editor of Policy & Politics Journal

Editorial by Sarah Ayres, co-editor of Policy & Politics. The full version of this blog was published this month in Policy & Politics volume 41, number 4, available free until the end of November 2013.

This special issue is based on a selection of papers presented at the 40th anniversary Policy & Politics conference, held in Bristol in 2012. Policy & Politics published its first issue in 1972 and has since become one of the leading international journals in the field of public and social policy. In that time the nature of policy and politics has undergone significant transformations. Recent changes include the increasing importance of global governance, a reframing of the state in delivering public services and the global economic downturn and associated austerity measures. These have been combined with rising public expectations about choice and quality of public services and the transition from government to governance, epitomised by the inclusion of non-state actors in the policy process.

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Policy & Politics 2013 Conference

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Dr Sarah Ayres, Senior Lecturer in Policy Studies, School for Policy Studies

Dr Sarah Ayres, Senior Lecturer in Policy Studies, School for Policy Studies

Policy & Politics held its 2013 Conference in Bristol last month. This year’s theme was ‘Transforming Policy and Politics: the Future of the State in the 21st Century’.

160 scholars from eighteen countries discussed different aspects of public and social policy in relation to recent and future changes to the state, politics and public services. Discussions were focussed at a global and local level across a range of sectors, including health, housing, welfare and economic development.

Professor Matthew Flinders, Department of Politics, University of Sheffield

Professor Matthew Flinders, Department of Politics, University of Sheffield

The conference hosted four fantastic plenary speakers: Professors Liesbet Hooghe (University of North Carolina), Bob Jessop (Lancaster University), John Keane (University of Sydney) and Eva Sorensen (Roskilde University). The plenary speakers drew on examples from around the globe to illustrate recent transformations to the state and their implications for policy and politics. Panel sessions included world leading scholars in their fields with many discussions leading to plans for future work, including joint or group publications.

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Violence against women – in the arts

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Dr Emma Williamson, Senior Research Fellow, School for Policy Studies

Dr Emma Williamson, Senior Research Fellow, School for Policy Studies

Alongside regular media enquiries, my colleagues from the Centre for Gender and Violence Research and I are regularly contacted by artists, writers, and directors asking for guidance on how to appropriately and sensitively represent issues of violence against women. Recent examples include the play Our Glass House by the Common Wealth Theatre Company which dealt with the issue of domestic violence and was set in a real house, on a real street, here in Bristol. This was an innovative play. Through our discussions the production team were put in contact with local service providers and service users to ensure that the play recognised the potential impact on the audience and reflected both the damaging impacts of abuse as well as how victims can, with support, move on to survive and thrive.

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Getting research through the doors of Westminster

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Dr Pauline Heslop, Norah Fry Research Centre, School for Policy Studies

Dr Pauline Heslop, Norah Fry Research Centre, School for Policy Studies

Telling acquaintances that you are part of a team reviewing the deaths of people with learning disabilities can stop a conversation in its tracks. Most people glaze over, make excuses and beat a hasty retreat. So how could we encourage the Government to listen to, and commit to addressing the issues?

The Confidential Inquiry into premature deaths of people with learning disabilities (CI) was commissioned by the Department of Health as a three-year project to assess the extent of premature deaths in people with learning disabilities and offer guidance on prevention. In March 2013 we reported our findings to the Department of Health and shared them nationally through a series of media interviews, public conferences and events. We also engaged with Parliament in a number of ways – including giving evidence at a House of Lords Select Committee, addressing an All Party Parliamentary Group meeting, and briefing peers for a debate in the House of Lords.

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School meals and packed lunches: how important is government policy?

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Research Associate, Centre for Market and Public Organisation

Dr. Stephanie von Hinke Kessler Scholder,  Centre for Market and Public Organisation

Last month’s government-commissioned school food review showed that the nutritional quality of school food has improved substantially since 2005, when Jamie Oliver started its campaign to improve the nutritional value of school meals. Nevertheless, take-up of school meals remains low, at 43%. In other words, 57% of children are not eating school lunches, but bring a packed lunch, have snacks, or buy their food elsewhere. The report shows that the majority of these meals are unhealthy. In fact, in contrast to what most parents think, only 1% of packed lunches meet the nutritional standards.

In addition to affecting child health, there is substantial evidence that poor nutrition affects cognitive performance. Michèle Belot and Jonathan James show in their study that the Jamie Oliver campaign led to a significant increase in children’s test scores in primary schools (Key Stage 2), as well as a drop in authorised absences (i.e. those that are mostly linked to illness and health).

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Learning from the sharp end: Education for sustainable development in small states

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Terra Sprague, Research Fellow, Graduate School of Education

Terra Sprague, Research Fellow, Graduate School of Education

Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are quickly finding themselves at the sharp end of global climate change, yet they often get overlooked when it comes to international policy deliberations and decisions. So, why should we listen, and what can we learn?

When it comes to global policy deliberations about internationally agreed education targets and goals, such as the Education for All (EFA) goals and the education-related Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), small states have often found that their priorities are largely overlooked.

Michael Crossley, Professor of Comparative and International Education

Michael Crossley, Professor of Comparative and International Education

At the Education in Small States Research Group in the Graduate School of Education (GSoE), our recent research focuses upon the educational policy priorities of Commonwealth small states, and others with populations of up to 1.5 million. There are 32 of these states within the Commonwealth alone, generally concentrated in the Caribbean and Pacific regions, but with some additional members such as Botswana and Namibia. These states often share common factors such as isolation, remoteness, and susceptibility to natural disaster shock, but they are extremely diverse in terms of their cultures, languages, human development indicators and gross domestic product (GDP).

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Women’s parliamentary friendships: a personal and political resource

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Professor of Politics and Gender

Sarah Childs, Professor of Politics and Gender

In 1997 an unprecedented number of women MPs – 120 – were elected to the UK House of Commons; 101 of these came from a single party. So ‘what difference’ did women’s presence make?’ An easy question to ask, but one that is now widely recognised to hide more than it reveals. Politics is not like physics – there is no magic point (critical mass) where women MPs are suddenly able to transform (or in more academic language) ‘feminise’ politics.  Looking back over the New Labour years in Government, it is evident that Labour’s women MPs entered a House not only over-represented by men but one which was famed for its historic traditions dominated by masculinised structures and norms. The new women MPs arriving in Westminster in 1997 found themselves negotiating a ‘gendered institution’.

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Making thin air solid: the politics of Thatcherism today

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Jamie Melrose, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies

Mr Jamie Melrose, School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies

Lady Thatcher is no longer with us: the ideological project that bears her name, Thatcherism, is still alive, despite premature obituaries. Re-reading The Politics of Thatcherism[1] (PoT), an edited collection of essays as responsible as anything for Thatcherism’s definition, is rather relevant. If Thatcherism is still with us, it would make sense for the conclusions of PoT to be so too.

In some of the condemnatory criticism of Margaret Thatcher’s transformation of British political culture, there is a surprising political subtext: a grudging respect for how successful Thatcherism has been. Just as the Prime Minister admired his partisan rival, Tony Blair, critics such as Slavoj Žižek come to bury and praise Thatcher. Left-wing critics of Thatcherism look on in awe at that most difficult of tasks: hegemony in a pluralist demos.

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