Something Old, Something New: A Historical Perspective on the Butler Review

Simon Case and Catherine Haddon demonstrate the value of contemporary history by looking at the recent Butler Report into intelligence on weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in its historical context. Intelligence failures form the most visible activity of the intelligence services, yet from the policy-maker's perspective it is important that the intelligence process remains undisturbed so that the intelligence product remains useful. The intelligence effort on Iraqi WMD, as with previous changes in intelligence targets, shows the difficulties in establishing good intelligence on a new threat. Increases in demand and the centrality of intelligence put more pressure on the intelligence services. Butler has set a precedent for public awareness and therefore a desire for accountability that must be internalised by government and the intelligence services. The problems experienced over Iraq show the need for continual reappraisal by both producers and users of intelligence products, particularly in light of defence policy changes and the wider machinery of government.     

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE: THE ROLE OF THE HR FUNCTION IN THE MODERN PUBLIC SECTOR

As the public sector has modernized and sought to become more efficient and cost‐effective, the effective and strategic management of people has received increasing prominence and there have been calls for the Human Resource (HR) function to play a more strategic role. However, not much is known about whether the role of the HR function has changed substantively. In this paper, we present empirical evidence from six matched‐pair public sector organizations in the UK to assess whether HR functional roles have changed, as envisaged, into a model more akin to the private sector. The findings highlight the complex and often contradictory nature of HR functional roles, and suggest that new and more strategic roles have not replaced traditional approaches but, rather, have been grafted on, giving rise to a variety of hybrid HR forms.     

IMPROVING UK PUBLIC SERVICES: A REVIEW OF THE EVIDENCE

Over a number of years in the UK, public service improvement has been at the centre of both Conservative and Labour policy. Keen to make improvements in public services, the current Labour government is pursuing this issue more strongly than any other. This paper examines the concept of improvement and reviews the academic literature which has empirically assessed improvements in a range of public services. Drawn from over 50 studies of improvement, the evidence highlights seven determinants or improvement ‘triggers’ which have been put in place and which have had a positive effect on a public service. These include quality frameworks and public participation forums. The paper reviews the evidence and evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of the studies themselves. The findings of the paper indicate that, despite a political drive to improve public services, there is insufficient evidence available on ‘what works’ in bringing about improvement. The need for sustained research in this area is emphasized and conclusions are drawn on a way forward.     

My Experiences of the Region during the Last Century – with Particular Reference to Sino-British Relations

The author describes his early diplomatic experiences as a Chinese language student during the Cultural Revolution, followed by his first posting to Peking. Hong Kong was then a major issue between China and Britain. He examines the tensions and difficulties of those years and the first signs of better days ahead. He details his involvement in the upgrading of diplomatic relations, and the first ministerial exchanges. His final overseas posting was to Hong Kong, first to head the Trade Commission, and then, importantly, to manage the final four years of detailed negotiations with China over the handover.     

FRONT-LINE WORKERS AND 'LOCAL KNOWLEDGE': NEIGHBOURHOOD STORIES IN CONTEMPORARY UK LOCAL GOVERNANCE

One of the aims of this special issue is to 'decentre' a key facet of governance, namely networks. This article considers in particular the concept 'networked community governance', a key part of New Labour's reforms in local governance and, in particular, around neighbourhood-based working. This article draws on interpretive methods and analysis to explore the everyday work of front-line workers in contemporary local governance through their own stories. The article is based on empirical work in the neighbourhood management system developed in Salford, a local authority in the North West of England. Key to facilitating 'networked community governance', is front-line workers' own 'local knowledge', understood as the mundane, yet expert, understanding front-line workers develop from their own contextual experiences. The article explores the difficulties that front-line workers perceive themselves to face in their everyday work and how they use their 'local knowledge' to develop responsive, entrepreneurial strategies.     

THE LIMITS OF JOINED-UP GOVERNMENT: TOWARDS A POLITICAL ANALYSIS

Joined-up government has featured prominently on the agenda of the New Labour government in the UK. However, the politics of joining-up remain under-explored, with disproportionate emphasis on the technical and managerial dimensions of the challenge. This paper argues that political value conflicts form an essential part of the explanation for the replication of 'silos' within city strategic partnerships, the joining-up institution of choice at the local scale. A study of the local politics of social inclusion in the British cities of Dundee and Hull revealed a strong partnership ethos. However, this ethos sustained only a shallow consensus over abstract goals, at the same time legitimating the avoidance of political value conflicts. Thematic partnerships comprising interest group clusters with different political values therefore tended to replicate silo practices. The paper argues, consequently, that the consensual partnership ethos caused the displacement of value conflicts, in turn causing fragmented governance. It concludes with three propositions for further research.     

INFORMATION‐SHARING AND CONFIDENTIALITY IN SOCIAL POLICY: REGULATING MULTI‐AGENCY WORKING

In recent years, there has been growing concern in the UK that local services aimed at risky or vulnerable people are ineffective, because of agencies’ persistent failure to share information about their clients. Despite considerable national policy effort to encourage better information‐sharing, previous research indicates that there are many cases where information is still not shared when it should be, or where it is shared when it should not be, with potentially devastating results. This article uses data from the largest empirical study of local information‐sharing yet undertaken to examine four policy sectors where multi‐agency working has come to the fore. It shows that variations in their information‐sharing and confidentiality practices can be explained by neo‐Durkheimian institutional theory and uses insights from this theory to argue that current policy tools, which emphasize formal regulation, are unlikely to lead to consistent and acceptable outcomes, not least because of unresolved conflicts in values and aims.     

ECOLOGICAL NETWORKS AND URBAN CRIME: THE STRUCTURE OF SHARED ROUTINE ACTIVITY LOCATIONS AND NEIGHBORHOOD‐LEVEL INFORMAL CONTROL CAPACITY

By drawing on the work of Jacobs (1961), we hypothesize that public contact among neighborhood residents while engaged in day‐to‐day routines, captured by the aggregate network structure of shared local exposure, is consequential for crime. Neighborhoods in which residents come into contact more extensively in the course of conventional routines will exhibit higher levels of public familiarity, trust, and collective efficacy with implications for the informal social control of crime. We employ the concept of ecological (“eco‐”) networks—networks linking households within neighborhoods through shared activity locations—to formalize the notion of overlapping routines. By using microsimulations of household travel patterns to construct census tract‐level eco‐networks for Columbus, OH, we examine the hypothesis that eco‐network intensity (the probability that households tied through one location in a neighborhood eco‐network will also be tied through another visited location) is negatively associated with tract‐level crime rates (N = 192). Fitted spatial autoregressive models offer evidence that neighborhoods with higher intensity eco‐networks exhibit lower levels of violent and property crime. In contrast, a higher prevalence of nonresident visitors to a given tract is positively associated with property crime. The results of these analyses hold the potential to enrich insight into the ecological processes that shape variation in neighborhood crime.