Stable isotope ratios as a tool in microbial forensics--Part 2. Isotopic variation among different growth media as a tool for sourcing origins of bacterial cells or spores

Since the anthrax attacks of 2001 the need for methods to trace the origins of microbial agents has become urgent. The stable isotope ratios of bacteria record information from both the nutrients and the water used to make their culture media and could potentially be used to provide information about their growth environment. We present a survey of carbon (C), nitrogen (N), and hydrogen (H) stable isotope ratios in 516 samples of bacteriological culture media. The observed variation was consistent with expected isotopic variation in the plant and animal products upon which the media are based. The variation is sufficient to translate into substantial isotope variation in cultures grown on different batches of media, and thus to allow investigators to determine whether seized media could have been used to produce seized bioweapons agents.     

Mapping legislative socialisation

Abstract Legislative socialisation has long been an important force for political deradicalisation in capitalist democracies worldwide. It remains barely explored, however, in large part because it is a process very difficult to track by conventional observational or survey methods. We circumvent these problems by taking advantage of an unusually propitious vote on televising the proceedings of the British House of Commons to chart the institutional deradicalisation of its Labour members. Socialisation effects are shown to be non–linear and, while the difference is not statistically significant, to be marginally stronger among Members of Parliament (MPs) with frontbench experience. The somewhat greater conservatism of frontbenchers, however, cannot be explained by anticipatory socialisation. Rather, it seems to be a function of doing well under 'rules of the parliamentary game' threatened by proposals for institutional reform.     

Mapping legislative socialisation

Legislative socialisation has long been an important force for political deradicalisation in capitalist democracies worldwide. It remains barely explored, however, in large part because it is a process very difficult to track by conventional observational or survey methods. We circumvent these problems by taking advantage of an unusually propitious vote on televising the proceedings of the British House of Commons to chart the institutional deradicalisation of its Labour members. Socialisation effects are shown to be non–linear and, while the difference is not statistically significant, to be marginally stronger among Members of Parliament (MPs) with frontbench experience. The somewhat greater conservatism of frontbenchers, however, cannot be explained by anticipatory socialisation. Rather, it seems to be a function of doing well under 'rules of the parliamentary game' threatened by proposals for institutional reform.     

Paradise Paved? Reflections on the Fate of Social Citizenship in Canada

The aim of this paper is to assess the potential of the concept of social citizenship for articulating progressive policy development in Canada. I argue that the revisioning of social citizenship is hampered by a recent notion that it is part of the superseded welfare policy paradigm of the past. Many analysts characterize a shift in the objectives of Canadian social policy as a move away from a 'golden age' policy paradigm, which emphasized the social rights of citizenship, to a neo-liberal paradigm promoting market citizenship. I suggest that there is an overstatement in the current literature of the extent to which social citizenship rights were ever realized, or even pursued, in Canada. There are two tendencies toward over-generalization in the literature that obscure a more complex picture of social policy development in Canada. The first concerns the relationship between social policy and the social rights of citizenship. The blurring of these two concepts underlies some of the overstatement in the literature about the past implementation of social citizenship rights. The second tendency to over-generalization relates to the observation of a paradigm change in social policy orientation. While things may be shifting, there are grounds to believe that this is largely a within-paradigm intensification--from mean and lean, to meaner and leaner. Finally, I suggest that the conceptual foundations of the social rights of citizenship must be re-worked in a way that acknowledges contestation over the terrain and quality of the 'social' and that challenges the distinctness and priority of the 'market'. There is a continuing need to strengthen and promote the social rights of citizenship as a discursive and practical challenge to neo-liberal interpretations of the 'good' society as a 'market' society. This would involve contesting the claim that the market is the arbiter of the quality of life, and claiming the market itself as a social arena.     

The fertile soil for policy learning

Early in the 20th century, both Japan and the United States adopted isolation as the primary policy for leprosy victims. Medical science had, by mid-century, arrived at a near consensus that isolation was inappropriate. This new information filtered into the policy making soil of both nations and slowly led to the abandonment of isolation. Conceptualizations from the literature offer the bases of a policy learning model centered on the characteristics of a fertile soil for policy learning. The model considers the nature of the problem, the nature of the information, and the nature of the debate as critical factors shaping the learning of new information. Each factor added to the understanding. The problem, complex and characterized by negatively constructed targets, was not amenable to policy learning, especially in Japan with more victims, more hospitals, more researchers, and more stigmatization. It took considerable time to wrap the information in scientific integrity. In Japan the process was slowed by the war which separated researchers from professional fora at a critical time. Head on, confrontational debates in both nations failed. Success came only when strategies that moderated debate were adopted.     

Privatization of public-sector services in theory and practice

The last ten years have seen a marked increase in the analysis and implementation of private-sector alternatives to the production of public-sector services. The impetus for privatization has two sources: (1) opposition to further growth of the public sector, and (2) the belief that the private sector would be a more efficient producer. Yet as privatization moves beyond the acquisition of intermediate goods and services (payroll processing and housekeeping services, for example) to more complex public outputs (such as education, social security, public safety, the postal system, for example), it is subject to increasing challenge on both efficiency and equity grounds. Nonetheless, private alternatives to public production are finding increased acceptance.