Outsourcing the Business of Development: The Rise of For-profit Consultancies in the UK Aid Sector

While much attention has been paid to the ways in which the private sector is now embedded within the field of development, one group of actors — for-profit development consultancies and contractors, or service providers — has received relatively little attention. This article analyses the growing role of for-profit consultancies and contractors in British aid delivery, which has been driven by two key trends: first, the outsourcing of managerial, audit and knowledge-management functions as part of efforts to bring private sector approaches and skills into public spending on aid; and second, the reconfiguration of aid spending towards markets and the private sector, and away from locally embedded, state-focused aid programming. The authors argue that both trends were launched under New Labour in the early 2000s, and super-charged under successive Conservative governments. The resulting entanglement means that the policies and practices of the UK government's aid agencies, and the interests and forms of for-profit service providers, are increasingly mutually constitutive. Amongst other implications, this shift acts to displace traditional forms of contestation and accountability of aid delivery.     

A Mediaeval Case of Lepromatous Leprosy from 13–14th Century Orkney, Scotland

Erosion in the 1960s resulted in exposure of human skeletal remains from a Norse Christian cemetery at Newark Bay, Orkney, Scotland. One set of remains showed osteological evidence of advanced lepromatous leprosy, but the absence of bones from the lower limbs precluded definitive diagnosis. The aim of the present study was to determine whether Mycobacterium leprae could be detected in bone extracts, as a means of confirming the diagnosis of leprosy. Bone samples were examined from the suspected leprosy case and from a second contemporary burial thought to be free of disease. DNA was amplified by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using primers specific for a repetitive element (RLEP) characteristic of M. leprae. Additional PCR tests specific for Mycobacterium tuberculosis and for amelogenin (a human gene suitable for sex determination) were also applied to the samples. M. leprae DNA was detected only in the skull sample from the suspected leprosy case. The DNA sequence was identical to that found in present day isolates of M. leprae. Positive results were obtained only using a PCR reaction designed to amplify relatively short stretches of DNA (<175 bp), suggesting the microbial DNA had undergone extensive fragmentation. There was no evidence of M. tuberculosis DNA in bones from the leprosy suspect or control individual. The ability to recover ancient samples of DNA provides an opportunity to study long-term evolutionary changes that may affect the epidemiology of microbial pathogens.     

Citizen participation,community resilience and crisis-management policy

This article presents two arguments. The first relates to the relevance of citizen participation vis-à-vis the design and implementation of public policy. More specifically, the article empirically demonstrates how a model of community decentralisation can have a number of practical benefits for crisis-management policy. The second argument relates to a question that has come to characterise studies of citizen participation in public policy. Why is it that there is so much rhetoric in support of participation but so little action in terms of the day-to-day realities of policy implementation? We place this question in a crisis-management context so that we might ask: why is it that crisis-management systems built around the principles of community resilience continue to fail on these very grounds? We find our answer to this question in state-centric governance settings which devolve authority, but do not relinquish it.

本文提出两个观点。第一个观点涉及公民参与对于公共政策设计和实施的意义。具体地说,本文用实证的方法说明社区分权模式如何对危机管理政策产生一系列实际效益。第二个观点涉及公民参与公共政策的问题：为什么对公民参与口头上不吝支持,而日常政策的实施上却不见动静？这个问题可以放在危机管理的语境中重新提问：为什么围绕着社区弹性原则的危机管理体系仍以这样的理由失效？我们的答案是：以政府为中心的治理环境虽然转移但并未放弃权威。     

Single-Degree-of-Freedom Characterization of Multi-Phase Passive Control Systems

A Multi-phase Passive Control System (MPCS) combines two passive control devices in order to offset the individual weaknesses and enhance structural performance, allowing the structure to respond effectively to varying levels of loading. Previous work involving a nine-story frame demonstrated the effectiveness of MPCSs but the fundamental understanding of the system was lacking. In order to more clearly understand the behavior and identify important parameters and parameter interactions, a single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) non-linear dynamic study was performed. The results offer significant insight towards developing structural systems adaptable to multi-objective performance-based design procedures that meet higher performance standards than for ductility-based design.     

New light on the personal identification of a skeleton of a member of Sir John Franklin’s last expedition to the Arctic, 1845

In 1845, an expedition, commanded by Sir John Franklin, set out to try and discover the north-west passage. All 129 men on this ill-fated voyage perished. Over the years, skeletal remains associated with the final throes of the expedition have been located on and near King William Island, Nunavut, in the Canadian arctic. In general, even a tentative personal identification for these remains has proved impossible. An exception is some skeletal remains that were recovered in 1869 and brought back to England and interred beneath the memorial to the Franklin expedition in Greenwich. In the 19th century, these were tentatively identified as of one of HMS Erebus’s lieutenants, Henry Le Vesconte, a conclusion that has been widely accepted in studies of the Franklin voyage. Renovations to the monument in 2009 provided an opportunity for scientific examination of the remains, and to re-evaluate the personal identification made nearly 140 years before. The current work, which is the first modern scientific analysis of a fairly complete skeleton associated with the Franklin voyage, describes the remains and the artefacts interred with them, discusses the pathological conditions present, and evaluates the personal identification using osteological techniques and isotope geochemistry. Results indicate that the remains are of an adult male of European ancestry. Although some writers have suggested that scurvy or tuberculosis may have been important causes of morbidity and mortality on the Franklin expedition, osteological analysis and, in the case of tuberculosis, DNA analysis, provided no evidence for their presence in these remains. Isotopic studies indicate that the personal identification as Le Vesconte is unlikely to be correct. From the isotopic results and forensic facial reconstruction, HDS Goodsir, an assistant surgeon on the expedition, appears a more likely identification, but the results do not allow a firm conclusion.     

A Crisis of Opportunity: Market-Making,Big Data,and the Consolidation of Migration as Risk

Crisis narratives surrounding Europe’s 2015 migration influx fuelled demands for new ways of tracking, mapping and predicting human mobility. We explore how market opportunities for technology firms and data analytics start-ups created by the EU’s Global Approach to Migration led to solutionistic approaches to compiling and analysing migration statistics. We show that initiatives such as the rebranding of existing platforms and services as migration prediction systems are consolidating policy conceptualisations of migration as risk. Despite the promise of greater granularity, this “big data approach” cannot offer greater certainty about who is on the move and why. Instead such approaches are ill-suited to understanding the complex dynamics of migration and to offering protection to vulnerable people. The marketisation of migration statistics through big data offers a key case for advancing progressive approaches to both migration statistics and global data justice.     

A Geographic Network Automata Approach for Modeling Dynamic Ecological Systems

Landscape connectivity networks are composed of nodes representing georeferenced habitat patches that link together based on a species’ maximum dispersal distance. These static representations cannot capture the complexity in species dispersal where the network of habitat patch nodes changes structure over time as a function of local dispersal dynamics. Therefore, the objective of this study is to integrate geographic information, complexity, and network science to propose a novel Geographic Network Automata (GNA) modeling approach for the simulation of dynamic spatial ecological networks. The proposed GNA modeling approach is applied to the emerald ash borer (EAB) forest insect infestation using geospatial data sets from Michigan, U.S.A. and simulates the evolution of the EAB spatiotemporal dispersal network structures across a large regional scale. The GNA model calibration and sensitivity analysis are performed. The simulated spatial network structures are quantified using graph theory measures. Results indicate that the spatial distribution of habitat patch nodes across the landscape in combination with EAB dispersal processes generate a highly connected small-world dispersal network that is robust to node removal. The presented GNA model framework is general and flexible so that different types of geospatial phenomena can be modeled, providing valuable insights for management and decision-making.     

Policy Entrepreneurs,Legislators, and Agenda Setting: Information and Influence

Policy entrepreneurs are thought to be instrumental in agenda change, yet we lack knowledge of how legislators perceive their role in the agenda formation process. Using data from a national survey of state legislators, we examine whether entrepreneurs shape the legislative agenda on disaster preparedness and relief, which types of entrepreneurs are most influential, and what strategies they use in their interactions with legislators. The results indicate that legislators who report contact with policy entrepreneurs are more likely to have introduced related legislation, evidence of the important link between entrepreneurs and policy change. While entrepreneurs utilize a variety of different strategies, the analysis reveals policymakers are particularly receptive to entrepreneurs who provide new and reliable information. This finding suggests the influence of entrepreneurs lies not only in their ability to define problems and build coalitions, but also in their distinctive ability to provide information to elected officials, an important role that has largely been overlooked by existing literature.