Aims and contradictions of cultural diversity policies in the arts: a case study of the Rich Mix Centre in East London

In recent years, the concept of diversity has become prominent in cultural policy, echoing community arts philosophies of the 1960s and 1970s that questioned the notion of universal artistic value and argued for greater recognition of the relationship between cultural identity and inequality. Cultural diversity policies today implicitly challenge the liberal‐humanist discourse of ‘the best’, and emphasise what is ‘relevant’ to particular communities. Official policy rhetoric can often hide contradictions that are only apparent in practice. How does ‘diversity’ shape the way organisations engage with audiences and does this contradict the still present discourse of ‘universalism’, with its emphasis on value judgements? This paper explores this tension through the study of Rich Mix, a multi‐functional arts centre in London's multi‐ethnic East End. It argues that Rich Mix is caught between discourses of universalism and diversity, leading to confusion over the project's rationale and ambivalence amongst artists about how their art is judged.     

Old world,new world: the evolution and influence of foreign affairs think‐tanks

The rise of think‐tanks in the United States, in Europe and around the world has generated considerable scholarly attention in recent years. Much of this interest has been fuelled by the widespread belief that these institutions have come to play an increasingly influential role in shaping both public opinion and the domestic and foreign policy preferences and choices of high‐level decision‐makers. This perception was reinforced when several think‐tanks with close ties to the administrations of President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair advocated a far more muscular posture towards Iraq in the months and years following the events of 9/1ya. As think‐tanks on both sides of the Atlantic continue their efforts to become more entrenched in the policy‐making process, scholars are beginning to pay closer attention to how these institutions, established ostensibly to engage in policy research, have become even more adept at political advocacy. Not surprisingly, as think‐tanks have devoted more resources to affecting policy change, speculation about how much or little influence they wield has become more intense. The purpose of this article is to explore the evolution and transformation of foreign affairs think‐tanks in North America and Europe since the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and to highlight, by relying on specific foreign and defence policy issues, the extent to which a handful of think‐tanks have been able to become important fixtures in the policy‐making community.     

Developmental Stress and Survival among the Mid Upper Paleolithic Sunghir Children: Dental Enamel Hypoplasias of Sunghir 2 and 3

The Sunghir 2 and 3 late juvenile to early adolescent immature skeletons, from the Mid Upper Paleolithic (Eastern Gravettian) of northern Russia, exhibit several episodes of dental enamel hypoplasias. Those of the older male Sunghir 2 relate principally to a stress episode in the third year post‐natal, although subsequent minor stress episodes may be indicated. They are not accompanied by other marked developmental abnormalities. The younger female Sunghir 3 exhibits at least three episodes of pronounced post‐natal stress through the third to fifth years post‐natal, followed by femoral and tibial growth arrest lines that formed shortly before her death at 9–11 years. These first decade post‐natal stress episodes of Sunghir 3 may be related to the same developmental condition that produced her abnormally bowed femora pre‐natally and/or to continued frailty related to that condition. Surviving these stress episodes for different lengths of time, both Sunghir 2 and 3 were awarded the most elaborate Paleolithic burial known. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“All Gone Now”: The Material,Discursive and Political Erasure of Bank and Building Society Branches in Britain

Abstract: This paper examines an apparent anomaly that lies at the heart of processes of financial exclusion within Britain. Given that the branch networks of banks and building societies have shrunk in size by about one‐third since 1989, a period during which the Government has launched a wide‐ranging set of policies to tackle financial exclusion, why is it that the issue of branch closure has been neutralised as a political issue? After providing evidence to show the extent of branch closure in Britain and illustrating the ways in which geographical research in particular has drawn attention to the nature of this problem, we look at the way the issue of physical access to financial services has been discursively and politically marginalised. We undertake a detailed history of public policy in the area, and the ways in which research funded by industry bodies and Government departments has been used and framed to build a pro‐market, neoliberal policy programme that constructs branch closures as natural and inevitable.     

ANALOGUE SWITCH‐OFF

The paper addresses the switch‐off of analogue television in the UK and explores key issues about technology, audiences and communications policy. The main argument is that the characteristics of the “second 50%” are very different from the first half of households that have chosen to adopt digital, and that concerns are as much about content as cost. The paper reports a small, largely qualitative, study of households where analogue television has been switched off – the only place in the UK where this has happened, as a Department of Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) trial. Qualitative data on the transformation of audience behaviour with the arrival of digital is contextualised by an analysis of British government policy on analogue switch‐off. The paper compares and contrasts the discourse of digital TV with viewing expectations and experiences. It reflects on choice, viewing behaviour and the shaping of technology and raises critical questions about government policies on analogue switch‐off.     

Strategizing Britain's role in the world

In recent commentaries on British foreign policy, the New Labour and coalition governments have been criticized for lacking strategic thinking. Academics describe a ‘strategy gap’ and note that old ideas about Britain's role in the world, such as Churchill's 1948 reference to ‘three circles’, continue to be recycled. Parliamentarians bemoan the ‘uncritical acceptance of these assumptions’ that has led to ‘a waning of our interests in, and ability to make, National Strategy’. This article argues that a primary problem has been the lack of consideration of how identity, strategy and action interrelate in foreign policy. Using the insights of role theory, the article seeks to address this by outlining six ideal‐type role orientations that the UK might fulfil in world politics, namely: isolate, influential (rule of law state), regional partner, thought leader, opportunist–interventionist power and Great Power. By considering how variations in a state's disposition towards the external environment translate into different policy directions, the article aims both to highlight the range of roles available to policy‐makers and to emphasize that policy often involves making a choice between them. Failure to recognize this has resulted in role conflicts and policy confusion. In setting out a variety of different role orientations, the author offers a route to introducing a genuine strategic sensibility to policy‐making, one that links identity with policy goals and outcomes.     

The 100 billion dollar brain: central intelligence machinery in the UK and the US

The ‘Five Eyes’ alliance, led by the United States, spends close to 100 billion dollars a year on intelligence. This review article argues that western countries are distinguished by their sophisticated approach to the making of intelligence‐led national security policy. Political leaders and policy‐makers who access this sensitive material are often involved in elaborate systems that constitute part of the core executive and which seek to task and improve the intelligence leviathan. Western intelligence therefore has a ‘central brain’ that devotes considerable energy to both analysis and management. By contrast, in the majority of other states around the world, the orientation of intelligence has often been inward facing, with a high priority given to regime security. Some would suggest that intelligence has been an important component of western power projection, while others would argue that this process has been over‐expensive and has under‐delivered, not least in the last decade. Either way, the debates about development of the central intelligence machinery that supports western security policies are of the first importance and fortunately this discussion has been advanced by the appearance of several valuable new studies: these are discussed in this review article.     

Politically Engaged Geographical Research with the Community Sector: Is It Encouraged by Australia's Higher Education and Research Institutions?

With the application of neoliberal thinking to the higher education sector, measures of research quality and utility have proliferated in efforts to increase academic accountability, innovation, and contributions to public policy. We intend to reignite discussion about community activism and the role of the academic in response to trends in higher education policy and recent debate in Australia about research quality assessment and policy relevance. We challenge the common portrayal of the public sector as the sole locus of policy‐making and argue the case for greater recognition of the role of the community sector and its research partners in policy development and implementation – one that is not given due attention in the discourse on or in measures of research value and impact. Informed by recent literature on governance and interpretative approaches to policy analysis, we draw on our combined experience conducting research with two Australian movements at the forefront of reforms to property rights institutions, legal standards, and norms relating to social and economic equity to outline the institutional tensions and structural impediments facing researchers working with the non‐government sector. The paper documents the progressive roles the academic can play in such work, arguing that institutional change is required within the tertiary sector to support researchers to build closer, more trusting research partnerships in which due attention is given to social impact and relevance.     

ON ISOTOPES AND OLD BONES*

This review charts the developments and progress made in the application of stable light isotope tools to palaeodietary adaptations from the 1970s onwards. It begins with an outline of the main principles governing the distribution of stable light isotopes in foodwebs and the quality control issues specific to the calcified tissues used in these analyses, and then proceeds to describe the historical landmark studies that have marked major progress, either in their archaeological applications or in enhancing our understanding of the tools. They include the adoption of maize agriculture, marine‐focused diets amongst coastal hunter–gatherers, trophic level amongst Glacial‐period modern humans and Neanderthals, and the use of savannah resources by early hominins in Africa. Particular attention is given to the progress made in addressing the challenges that have arisen out of these studies, including issues related to the routing of dietary nutrients. I conclude with some firm, and some more speculative, pointers about where the field may be heading in the next decade or so.     

Industrial policy in the EU: old dilemmas and new options

Industrial policy is highly controversial. Supporters claim it is necessary to address market failures. Critics argue that the danger of government failure is often higher and that such failure may lead to greater welfare loss. The EU justifies its industrial policy by pointing to the existence of transnational problems and to its unique ability to counter them. The EU has the capacity to coordinate national policies, to reduce redundancies, to control and limit national subsidies to industry. It also has a mandate for managing EU foreign trade and competition policy. There are five major industrial policy arenas. Technology policy has been relatively successful in certain fields like telecommunications or traffic‐control systems. In other fields, such as micro‐electronics and computers, the results have been mixed at best. Regional policy has had a limited developmental impact. On foreign‐trade policy, anti‐dumping measures have largely been a failure, though they have stimulated Japanese direct investment. A division of labour between the EU Commission and national, regional and local governments should be advanced with a view to formulating and implementing industrial policy. The regional and local levels should formulate policies aimed at strengthening specialized factors. The EU should concentrate primarily on fostering and shaping new lines of technological development and managing capacity reduction in declining industries.     

Immigrant Inclusion in the Safety Net: A Framework for Analysis and Effects on Educational Attainment

Across states, there is substantial variation in the degree to which immigrants and their children are offered public assistance. We present a theoretical framework for analyzing the effects of policy decisions about immigrant inclusion. We apply the framework to investigate the effect of the state safety net on educational attainment. We focus on the years following welfare reform in 1996, when states gained considerable autonomy over welfare policy, including decisions about the eligibility of immigrant residents. Leveraging state‐level data from before and after reform, we estimate a difference‐in‐difference model to identify the effect of variation in immigrant inclusivity on educational attainment. We find that when states broaden the inclusivity of the social safety net to immigrants, young Latinos are more likely to graduate from high school. This effect is present beyond the group of Latino residents who receive additional benefits, suggesting that policy decisions about immigrants spill over to broader communities and communicate broader messages about social inclusion to racial and ethnic groups. We find similar patterns among Asian youth, but not among black and non‐Hispanic white youth. We conclude that immigrant inclusion has consequences for the life prospects of the growing population of youth in high‐immigrant ethnic groups.     

租购同权”政策对学区房溢价的影响研究——基于空间特征价格模型的广州实证

在公共服务对住房市场的影响研究领域，学校质量的资本化效应一直是重要话题。本文借鉴边界固定效应思路，使用广州市2016和2019年136所重点小学周边学区房与相邻非学区房的配对面板数据，利用空间特征价格模型定量测度了不同质量等级教育资源的资本化效应，使用双重差分模型检验了“租购同权”政策对重点小学学区房房价和租金溢价的影响。研究结果表明：①广州市教育质量已部分资本化于住房价格和租金之中，且教育资源越优质，资本化程度越高。②“租购同权”政策的实施，并未带来学区房房价和租金溢价的显著变化。③“租购同权”政策对不同质量等级的重点小学学区房房价影响存在异质性，政策实施后省级重点小学的学区房溢价上升，区级重点小学的学区房溢价下降。④“租购同权”政策对于不同区域重点小学学区房房价和租金溢价的影响无显著差异。本文的研究结论可以为制定教育资源供给与配置的均衡化和公平性政策提供参考。     

Regional Network for Quality Promotion: A Case-study of the Basque Country

Quality promotion as a means of improving competitiveness is a major objective in many countries. This paper examines successful practices in the Basque Country over an 11-year period, with a view to shedding light on the theoretical literature. Research on policy networks has produced useful results but we are still some way from a plausible, consensus-based theory of policy networks. Based on experience in the Basque Country, an integrated approach to understanding the antecedents and consequences of a regional knowledge-driven network for quality promotion is offered. Other regions in developing countries could use this approach to achieve successful policy networks. Although Total Quality Management implementation in public sector entities has been studied before, evidence about Regional Quality Promotion experiences is scarce.     

Public Managers in the Policy Process: More Evidence on the Missing Variable?

Questions have been posed about the lack of knowledge of the role public managers play in the policy process. In this study, following on the suggestions of Hicklin and Godwin and Meier in this journal, we identify different dimensions of the analyst–manager divide among professional policy workers. Using the results of several recent large‐N surveys of Canadian federal, provincial, and territorial policy workers, we explore the roles each group plays in the policy analytical process and the variations in their behavior in terms of duties and tasks, attitudes, and interrelationships. We also examine these to see the impact of federalism on professional policy practices. The study uncovers three groups of policy workers and policy managers—coordinator‐planners, research‐analysts, and director‐managers. Differences between groups of policy workers are found for their policy‐related work and their perceptions of tools of policy effectiveness, and differences between levels of government are identified for issues of time demands and coordination and tools of policy effectiveness. The implications of these findings for the study of public managers in the policy process are considered in conclusion.     

Cultural policy and evaluation of quality

Based on Danish experiences the article discusses the increasing role that the discourse of “quality” is playing in cultural policy. Throughout the 1990s, from the general cultural debate, this discourse has spread to more instrumental considerations and practices in the field of cultural policy. The article presents this process in a historical perspective and characterises the present tendency towards a technocratisation of the discourse of quality under the auspices of New Public Management and the general trend in modern state policy towards instrumentalising all societal resources in the global economic competition. Opposing this line of development, it is argued that “quality” could serve as a progressive, non‐instrumentalist discourse if it is defined in relation to a modernised understanding of the “rational core” of the cultural policy tradition of the Nordic countries. In this perspective, the article suggests a contextualisation of the concept of quality and possible ways of implementing the discourse in practical cultural policy.     

Policy Punctuations and Issue Diversity on the European Council Agenda

The European Council is the highest political body of the European Union and the main venue for setting the agenda on high politics. Using a new dataset of all content‐coded European Council Conclusions issued between 1975 and 2010, we analyze the policy agenda of the European Council and test hypotheses on agenda change and diversity over time. We find that the theory of punctuated equilibrium applies to the agenda of the European Council, which exhibits a degree of kurtosis similar to that found in policy agendas of other institutions located at the juncture between input and output of the policy process. Throughout the 36‐year period, agenda‐setting dynamics involved both small changes and major shifts but also more frequent medium‐sized negative changes than found elsewhere. Given capacity limits to the agenda, large expansions of attention to topics involved large cuts in attention. Cuts were more often medium in size in order to maintain some level of attention to the topics affected, even though issue disappearance from the European Council agenda has been frequent too. This relates to the functions of the European Council as venue for high politics, with expectations about issue attendance rising with increasing policy jurisdictions throughout the European integration process. Studying dynamics over time, we measured entropy to show how the agenda became more diverse but also displayed episodic concentration in an oscillating pattern. This can be accounted for by the nature of the European Council as a policy venue: increasing complexity of this institution pushed the members to produce a more diverse agenda, but capacity limits and the need to be responsive to incoming information led to concentration at specific time‐points.     

The economic planning advisory council: The reality of consensus

The Hawke federal Labor government continued the process of national reconciliation and consensus‐formation begun by the National Economic Summit by institutionalizing group/government intermediation and consultation within the Economic Planning Advisory Council (EPAC). This paper looks at the development of the policy which led to the establishment of EPAC to determine what was expected of such a body. The objects and functions of the council are then examined to determine whether its operation increases the efficacy of consensus in government policy‐making. The formal institutionalization of interest groups into the policy process opens up questions about the relevance of theories of corporatism to this innovation in the Australian political system and the findings of this paper in regard to EPAC are discussed in this context to ascertain whether there is evidence of corporatism inherent in these arrangements. Finally, consideration has been given to the question of whether EPAC and consensus have changed the relationship between sectional interests and the government in the Australian political system.     

Environmental Performance of the Assembly Plants Industry in the North of Mexico

The northern border of Mexico, a region with great tradition and rooting of the assembly plants industry, outstands by its specialization in the processing of electronic products and automobile parts. Also, this industry outstands by restructuring its techno‐productive capabilities derived from its integration with North America, which has aroused the interest about the resulting environmental problems. As depository of direct foreign investment, this region demands to design efficient mechanisms for an environmental management actively involving all the local actors. The deepness of liberalization of the Mexican economy has not been a condition for Mexico to specialize itself in “dirty” industries because since the North America Free Trade Agreement has taken effect, it is favoring less polluting industries as this is compliant of the environmental regulations, which are determined by the cooperation among companies and government through inspection and promotion of voluntary self‐management programs and through the environmental policy imposed by the corporation to its affiliates by means of quality and environmental international certifications (ISO 9001, 9002, 14001, and 14002). The objective of this work is to analyze the environmental performance of foreign companies operating under the assembly plants industry regime, considering the relationship between industrial upgrading and environmental performance.     

Employers as Mediating Institutions for Public Policy: The Case of Commute Options Programs

Scholars have recently noted the role that employers can play as “mediating institutions” for public policy. Mediating institutions connect the private lives of individuals with public policy concerns by communicating societal norms to members and providing social contexts that encourage a commitment to these norms. Despite the potential importance of employers as mediating institutions for public policy, little scholarly attention has been devoted to employer mediation behavior. Accordingly, this study examines two research questions. What factors influence an employer's willingness to mediate policy problems? And how effective are employers as mediating institutions? The mediation behaviors of interest relate to employer efforts to mitigate traffic congestion and air quality problems by enabling employee “commute options,” which are alternatives to single‐occupancy vehicle commuting to work. Drawing on theories of organization behavior, the study hypothesizes that self‐interest, organizational control, and association membership will affect willingness to provide commute options. The study also hypothesizes that employers providing commute options will have lower percentages of employees that drive to work alone. Both sets of hypotheses are supported by statistical analyses of data from a cross‐sectional mail survey of metropolitan Atlanta organizations.     

Organizing for British national strategy

In December 1968 Ernest May asked how the US government could gain access to ‘long‐headed’ staffers to provide greater strategic depth to foreign policy. The challenge of long‐term strategy persists: how should government be organized to support it, how can the right people be found to staff it and how can political leaders make time for longer‐term policy‐making given the challenge of the immediate? The policy planning staff in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office have traditionally had the task of supporting longer‐range, broader foreign policy. A small group of diplomats—later leavened by externals from the media, non‐profit and private sectors—was meant to generate an improved approach to British interests and policy. As Robert Wade‐Gery recalls of its role in the 1960s, there was a push to forge fresh links with outside thinking. Did it work? Former policy planners can be circumspect about its achievements. One former British planner said he felt like ‘a spare part rattling around in a tin’, while former American planners have written about the challenge of injecting fresh thinking when detached from decision‐making. Other planners were dragged into operational work or speechwriting. Many planners nonetheless enjoyed the opportunity to think more broadly. Policy planning can be intellectually rich without being the source of actionable strategic thinking about the long‐term national interest. This article suggests that a greater focus on people rather than systems might help to foster more strategic, anticipatory and innovative thinking about the national interest.