scholarly journals Leading citizen-driven governance : Collective regional and sub-regional leadership in the UK

Author(s):  
Joyce Liddle

Globally there are many innovative, citizen driven initiatives at grass roots level which are aimed at invigorating local politics and improving public service provision (www.oneworldaction.org/indepth/project. jsp?project.209). There has also been recognition that civil society rather than public bureaucracies are capable of providing public services and satisfying social needs. Devolving leader ship and innovation from bureaucrats to grassroots individuals willing to create and lead projects or organisations to solve social problems and fulfil public purposes is becoming a key feature in many states (Van Ryzin, Burgrud and Di Padova, 31st May, 2007). Indeed the Sloan Foundation in the US since 1997, at least , has sponsored numerous citizen driven projects to foster interactions between citizens, municipal managers and elected officials to assess and improve their own communities ... There are examples worldwide of strategic plans being developed by citizens driving the systems to achieve desired results, by performance reporting of council municipalities and service contractors and making them more accountable for service provision (Epstein and Fass Associates, New Jersey, 2007).

This book provides an in-depth analysis of the NHS reforms ushered in by UK Coalition Government under the 2012 Health and Social Care Act, arguably the most extensive reforms ever introduced in the NHS. Contributions from leading researchers from the UK, the US and New Zealand examine the reforms in the contexts of national health policy, commissioning and service provision, governance and others. Collectively, the chapters presents a broader assessment of the trajectory of health reforms in the context of marketisation, the rise of health consumerism and the revelation of medical scandals. This is essential reading for those studying the NHS, those who work in it, and those who seek to gain a better understanding of this key public service.


Author(s):  
Anne Wren

This chapter focuses on the role of skill formation, wage-setting, and public service provision in shaping different national growth strategies in a post-industrial context, taking the cases of Germany, Sweden, and the UK as detailed examples and making use of data from the EU-KLEMS Growth and Productivity Accounts Database (2008). It highlights the role played by skills policy in shaping patterns of specialization in high productivity, traded sectors, which are important engines of growth even in “consumption-led” regimes. It shows that Sweden’s ability to compete in less price-sensitive, high-end services (and manufacturing) markets rests on the availability of a workforce with high levels of tertiary skills. Germany’s reliance on more traditional manufacturing sectors is rooted in its well-established system of firm-based vocational training and its limited tertiary sector. In the UK, the expansion of domestic demand has, in part, been debt-driven, although it has also, as in the Swedish case, been facilitated by rising real wages. Nevertheless, a key driver of rising real wages in the UK has also been productivity growth and the expansion of trade in high-end, ICT-intensive services. The chapter confirms that welfare state policies (including the protection of relative wages, public service provision, and, above all, strategies of skill formation) are critical to the outcomes observed in the context of deindustrialization and technological change. The development of sustainable strategies for growth and employment creation in a context of deindustrialization, and of revolutionary changes in ICT, rely on the creation of a capacity to expand into ICT-intensive, high value-added sectors, and especially in dynamic services sectors.


2007 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-346
Author(s):  
DAVID WILSFORD

As the American right wing’s control of national (and local) politics implodes in the United States, there is the inevitable hope wafting in the air as policy specialists and other political activists on the other side of the divide anticipate capturing the US presidency at the end of 2008 to go with the center-left’s majorities won in the US Congress at the end of 2006. And so, health care reform is once again on the march! Alas, if Max Weber was wise to have observed that ideas run upon the tracks of interests, implying clearly that some good ideas die their death because they do not find the right track of interests, while some tracks of interests go nowhere for lack of the right idea, the health policy debate still provides a Technicolor demonstration that the mish and mash of this and that is not yet pointing the country in any particular direction, regardless of election outcomes in 2006 and 2008. Worse yet, in spite of the great sociologist Reinhard Bendix’s demonstration in his masterwork Kings orPeople (1978) that non-incremental transformations often occur at critical junctures of a nation’s history due to the diffusion effects of ideas from abroad, there is no evidence in the current (or past) American debate that the country has ever learned anything at all or thinks it has anything at all to learn from the way these problems are grappled with, and more successfully, elsewhere. (Oh, let’s just take Japan, France, Germany, Spain, Canada, the UK, and a handful of other countries as quick examples.)


2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 518-537
Author(s):  
Tania Arrieta Hernandez

This article examines the changing landscape of public service provision in the UK during austerity. Austerity is presented through the notions of retrenchment, decentralisation and shifts in governance. The analysis shows that retrenchment and decentralisation eroded the capacity of public institutions to protect the provision of vital public services. This is revealed through the reduced provision of non-statutory services and the reinforcement of inequalities in service provision. Shifts in governance have led to mixed outcomes in the quality of services. This article also addresses how austerity influenced many of the problems observed in service provision during the COVID-19 pandemic. Vital public services in the UK faced the pandemic with a diminished resource base, heightened inequalities and significant fragmentation in service provision.


2014 ◽  
Vol 23 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-388 ◽  
Author(s):  
Euan Hague ◽  
Alan Mackie

The United States media have given rather little attention to the question of the Scottish referendum despite important economic, political and military links between the US and the UK/Scotland. For some in the US a ‘no’ vote would be greeted with relief given these ties: for others, a ‘yes’ vote would be acclaimed as an underdog escaping England's imperium, a narrative clearly echoing America's own founding story. This article explores commentary in the US press and media as well as reporting evidence from on-going interviews with the Scottish diaspora in the US. It concludes that there is as complex a picture of the 2014 referendum in the United States as there is in Scotland.


2008 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-158
Author(s):  
Vytis Čiubrinskas

The Centre of Social Anthropology (CSA) at Vytautas Magnus University (VMU) in Kaunas has coordinated projects on this, including a current project on 'Retention of Lithuanian Identity under Conditions of Europeanisation and Globalisation: Patterns of Lithuanian-ness in Response to Identity Politics in Ireland, Norway, Spain, the UK and the US'. This has been designed as a multidisciplinary project. The actual expressions of identity politics of migrant, 'diasporic' or displaced identity of Lithuanian immigrants in their respective host country are being examined alongside with the national identity politics of those countries.


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