The Limits of Cloning

If the 20th Century was the century of physics, the 21st Century is the century of cybernetics, biology and ecology. Technological advance has both crossed new frontiers and discovered old limits. Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine broke new ground with his understanding that nature, including its human component, seeks to establish order out of chaos by “self‐organizing,” not only according to pre‐determined laws, but through random creative choices as well that are responsible for the endless novelty and potentiality of being. The technologically‐armed purposive role of humans in the Anthropocentric Age thus takes on a new significance: “What we do today depends on our image of the future rather than the future depending on what we do today” as Prigogine puts it. “The equations of the future are written in our actions as well as in nature. Time becomes construction.” Nowhere is this truer than in the new science of genomics, which touches the soul, and in the effort to preserve the ecological balance that has enabled humanity to flourish within the narrow band of earth's livable climate. In this section we bring together leading thinkers, scientists and technologists of our age to address these issues of mankind's fate.     

Consultation in Local Government: A Case Study of Practice at Devon County Council

This paper provides an evaluation of consultations undertaken by Devon County Council and is based on interviews with over 40 managers. Information is supplied about the details given to consultees, the methodological expertise of council employees, the extent to which consultations were co-ordinated across the authority and the results/impact of the consultations. This evidence is used to identify issues with a widespread application.     

Understanding the Local Government Review: A Retrospective Analysis

Reorganizations have provided fertile ground for researchers and practitioners seeking to draw lessons about the nature of public administration. The review leading to the reorganization of British local government in 1991-96 sustains the tradition. In an extraordinary unfolding of events key features of the policy and political system are laid bare. This article provides a background analysis of the review, examines the main turning points in the process, assesses the performance of key players and concludes with a judgement about the sustainability of the settlement that ultimately emerged. A number of lessons are drawn about the nature of the British political system as revealed through the impact of the challenge of a large-scale structural review of local government.     

Health and Local Government Partnerships: The Local Government Policy Context

This article explores partnerships between health and local government from the local government perspective; placing developments between the two sectors within the wider context of the Local Government Modernisation agenda. A number of commentators have argued that developments since 1997 – in particular the emphasis on community leadership and the new power of well-being – have provided local authorities with an exciting opportunity to reclaim a more pivotal role in shaping the health agenda at the local level. Such a role would be based on promoting well-being and a good quality of life, in keeping with the social model of health. In the longer run this reclaimed role could produce a shift in what has become the main boundary between health and local government: the health–social care boundary. The article reviews developments in three key areas: the health–social care boundary; the core components of the Local Government Modernisation Agenda; and the relationship between regeneration and health. The paper concludes that although progress has been made in regeneration and health and there is potential in elements of the Modernisation Agenda that these do not equate to a paradigm shift in local government's perspective on health. Instead, the social care boundary continues to dominate local government's vision of health. Central to this picture of modest progress is the substantial barrier to more radical change provided by the performance management frameworks governing both sectors.     

The Politics of Institutional Choice Across Sub-Saharan Africa: Presidential Term Limits

During the transitions to multipartyism that began in the late 1980s, presidential term limits were adopted into the constitutions of a majority of sub-Saharan African states. Yet, a sizable minority of African governments resisted implementing such restrictions on executive power. How can this variation be explained? This article proposes an expanded strategic choice approach that posits that the degree of electoral uncertainty affects institutional choice in cases of controlled, unilateral constitutional revisions (which were common across Africa) just as much as it shapes institutional choice in situations of cooperative constitution-making through bargaining and pact-making. Based on this logic, I argue that term limits were adopted as an electoral insurance mechanism in all cases where constitutional drafters perceive the degree of future electoral uncertainty to be high, regardless of whether the constitutional review process is cooperative or controlled. Alternatively, term limits are eschewed in cases where one unified party fully controls the constitutional review process and also perceives that they will win elections into the foreseeable future. The argument is tested through a statistical analysis of the determinants of term limit choice across all relevant sub-Saharan cases.