Legislating for a Pandemic: Exposing the Stateless State

Initially the subject of widespread consensus, legislative and policy responses to COVID-19 are increasingly provoking predictable reactions. Right and left are united by concern that essential freedoms are being eroded by a state utilizing the opportunity of the pandemic to make a power grab. Focused on the Coronavirus Act 2020, this article takes a more cautious approach, suggesting that the law should be understood not as the product of a hierarchical state but as a demonstration of the ‘statelessness’ of the contemporary state. It examines the Act with particular focus on open justice, adult social care, and Business Improvement Districts. Reading this unique piece of legislation through the lens of the stateless state reveals the complexities, ambiguities, and contestations within contemporary policy making. Dismissing the Act as unnecessarily authoritarian is an insufficiently nuanced response; furthermore, this exploration of the law allows us to develop and complicate scholarship on the stateless state.     

TOWARDS A GENERAL THEORY OF COLLABORATIVE PERFORMANCE: THE IMPORTANCE OF EFFICACY AND AGENCY

Much of what has been written about collaboration treats it instrumentally as a means–ends tool of improvement. However, despite considerable collaborative activity there is little evidence that clearly links collaboration to improvements in service‐user outcomes or reduced inequalities. In this article we draw on literature from critical public policy and governance studies to recast collaboration as an expression of cultural performance associated with a rather different set of values and measures. We argue that understanding collaboration in the round means that we need to pay attention to all dimensions of performance including cultural performance. We argue that this in turn helps to explain the persistent appeal of collaboration amongst policy makers and practitioners.     

GENDER AND CRIMINAL COURT OUTCOMES: AN HISTORICAL ANALYSIS*

Research on gender differences in criminal sanctions generally finds a pattern of more lenient outcomes for female offenders, while noting that the effect of gender varies in relation to a number of contextual influences. As yet, however, little attention has been paid to how the relationship of gender to court outcomes varies across different historical periods. This paper examines this issue, using data on male and female offenders committed to Middlesex County Jail, Ontario, during the Urban Reform Era (1871–1920). The findings reveal an overall pattern of more severe dispositions for female offenders in the past. At the same time, there is considerable variability in the impact of gender across different measures of sanction severity, various offender and offense attributes, and from the late nineteenth to the early twentieth century. The study highlights the need for research in this area to be sensitive to the historically specific nature of the relations among gender roles, formal and informal control mechanisms, and criminal sanctions.     

BYSTANDER REPORTING OF A CRIME:

A field experiment was conducted to study bystander reporting of a crime. The study investigated two primary dimensions upon which most programs which encourage reporting, namely, monetary reward and anonymity. Conditions of anonymity and reward were unobtrusively varied during a bogus interview conducted with shoppers before they entered a supermarket. Neither of these variables affected the reporting of a staged shoplifting. However, preincident behavioral intention to report was significantly correlated with reporting behavior. The findings are discussed with respect to research on intrinsic motivation and deindividuation.     

Mongrels or thoroughbreds: A cross-national look at social security systems

Abstract. This paper reviews the methodological issues raised by different commentators' attempts to categorise countries' social security systems into 'regime types' or 'models'. It is argued that there are two major problems with these categorisations: (1) the difficulty of finding empirical counterparts to the theoretical concepts used; (2) the complexity of actual social security systems, arising in particular from the diversity of benefits within each system. Despite these problems, we argue that it is possible to maintain a theoretically-informed approach to the comparative analysis of social security, by adopting a more flexible methodology. The approach presented in this paper identifies some of the main principles on which social security systems are based, specifies their empirical counterparts, and allows each national system to be analysed in terms of its particular conjunction or combination of principles.     

HOW LOW CAN YOU GO? RATIONALES AND CHALLENGES FOR NEIGHBOURHOOD GOVERNANCE

Associated with innovation in both democratic practice and service design, neighbourhoods are high on policy agendas across Europe. Drawing upon classic debates about size and devolution, the article identifies four distinct rationales for neighbourhood governance: civic, social, political and economic. In England, the ‘new localism’ agenda gets near to developing a comprehensive case for neighbourhood governance, drawing upon all four rationales. Options for institutional design are explored with reference to four ideal types: (1) neighbourhood empowerment; (2) neighbourhood partnership; (3) neighbourhood government; (4) and neighbourhood management. Key challenges for neighbourhood governance are analysed in terms of capacity, competence, diversity and equity. The article argues that the classic democracy/capacity trade‐off associated with small units needs to be re‐thought in the context of the ‘new governance’ (multi‐level, multi‐actor and e‐enabled). Rather than confronting one big trade‐off, institutional designers face a series of questions about the underlying purposes and priorities of neighbourhood governance.