Help-seeking from public authorities: Who arrives at the agency door?

For ordinary citizens, political life is increasingly characterized by a request for a check, not a trip to the polls. Yet for all their frequency, very little is known about help-seeking encounters. This article asks the question “Who gets to the agency door?” or, more formally, “How do individuals decide to apply for public social benefits or services, and what does that decision signify?” Three topics are explored. The first defines help-seeking as a type of political participation. The second conceptualizes the process by which individuals decide to seek help from public social agencies. The third presents an agenda for research and action on the politics of help-seeking.     

Capacity building at mid-programme: an international education development programme in Malawi

This article reports on a case study of a mid-programme capacity building evaluation within a large education aid programme collaboration between non-governmental educational organisations in Malawi and US university literacy faculty. The article outlines the programme context and its formal and informal capacity building inputs. Analyses of data collected on capacity building at the midpoint of the programme are offered. The authors argue that capacity is built along the life of large programmes, and evaluating capacity building development (and understanding its challenges) before the end of the programme can help cross-national teams of administrators and implementers in modifying programme operations.     

Global perspectives on scientists’ roles in legislative policymaking

Policy Sciences - The question of how scientists should engage in policymaking has spurred both pragmatic and philosophical debates for decades. Scant empirical research addressing how experts...     

Austerity's Wasted Years

Austerity has become the norm of economic management in the EU, Britain and the USA. In each it is offered as the answer to different problems but everywhere the result is cuts in public spending, higher unemployment and low growth, none of which helps recovery from recession. Labour's response should not be to endorse or continue austerity but to initiate a Keynesian expansionary stimulus based on borrowing and spending on a huge programme of building public housing for rent. This should be accompanied by a competitive exchange rate, an industrial policy to boost the manufacturing sector and a National Investment Bank, the aim being to expand the production base so that it can pay the nation's way in the World and support the structure and the improvements Labour needs. This makes the choice at the next election the issue of what kind of Britain the electorate wants to see: a low wage, mean economy or a determined attempt to rebuild a stronger nation with a more powerful economy.