The Penal Voluntary Sector in England and Wales: Adaptation to Unsettlement and Austerity

This article draws on some findings from research which investigated penal voluntary sector adaptation to the mixed market in criminal justice services. The article firstly reprises the main trends for aligning state relationships with the voluntary sector from the 1980s to the present. We then outline some findings about adaptive experiences, situations and practices of the voluntary sector in criminal justice resettlement in the light of considerable upheaval. The research found that service providing voluntary sector organisations (VSOs) either outwardly comply with, or, in a minority of cases, actively embrace, competitive marketised models of service delivery. Secondly, the sector has normalised commercial approaches to organisational efficiency as well as aligned with bureaucratic practices common to the statutory sector. Despite charges that they are effectively co‐opted by both state and market interests, many have reported conflicts between prioritising long‐term financial viability with their founding ‘ethos and values’. We conclude that while many VSOs have successfully adjusted to market and bureaucratic norms, aspects of that repositioning have been at a cost to their traditions of relative autonomy, localism and distinctiveness, to the possible detriment of a vigorous civil society.     

The Limits of a Commitment? Public Responses to Asylum Policy in Sweden over Time

It is hardly an exaggeration to claim that one of the most turbulent political areas in recent years has been asylum policy, which has disclosed a rapidly increasing inflow of asylum seekers, and, in many countries, has been followed by fierce media discussion and political controversies. In Sweden, this development has been heated as the Swedish self‐image is one of providing generous policies, which is also reflected in terms of strong refugee policy. The article uses this example to explore assumptions about public responsiveness in previous policy feedback literature and to examine the link between citizens' attitudes towards immigration and changes in asylum policy output, measured as asylums granted, over time in the period 1990–2015. It focuses especially on the link through which citizens become aware of policy output, operationalized as media visualization, and find that including media reveals a suppressed relationship between policy output and public attitudes. The relationship is negative and thus confirms the assumptions of the thermostatic models. Second, the article shows that feedback is mediated by political orientation: People defining themselves politically as right‐oriented respond with negative feedback when the number of granted asylums increases, while left‐oriented people do not change their attitudes. Based on these findings it is concluded, first, that analyses of democratic responsiveness need to incorporate a clear measure of the link by which exogenous factors become visible. Second, the importance needs to be stressed of considering important cleavages in the population in order to display responsiveness processes fairly.     

Relational Leadership,Storytelling, and Narratives: Practices of Local Government Chief Executives

This article examines the storytelling and narrative practices of an elite group of public administrators in the United Kingdom: local government chief executives. The authors do so through the lens of relationality, exploring the collective dimensions of leadership. The focus on leadership and stories embraces the narrative turn in public administration scholarship. It responds to calls for research examining the distinctive settings of everyday leadership action. The contribution to theory is a qualitative understanding of the relational ways in which stories and narratives are used in the practices of public administration leaders. The article analyzes four ways in which such leadership is accomplished: inviting an emotional connection and commitment to public service, making sense of organizational realities, provoking reflections on practices and assumptions, and managing relations with politicians. The authors offer an appreciation of how relational leadership influence can be generated by expressive narratives and storytelling rather than stemming from bureaucratic authority.     

Interrogating the Interface of Partisan Public Security Forces,Cynical Electorate,and the Hazards of Electioneering in Nigeria

Elections in Nigeria are usually ferociously contested. Thus the risks of violence are always high, particularly for the electorate. Violence becomes such a seeming permanent feature of political competition in the country that electioneering is seen as the equivalent of war and political gladiators as combatants. The intervention of public security forces to enforce sanity in the process appears counterproductive because of their level of partisanship. The voters become victims in such circumstances such that they are precariously hooked in between the choice of endangering their lives in a country riddled with impunity or exercising their voting rights for good governance and a better future. The essay argues that as much as the relevance of security forces in electioneering may not be underestimated, their presence often undermines the process, fueling an atmosphere of violence. The article submits that a more civil approach/strategy should be factored into their operations with a view to ensuring a level playing ground and safety for all stakeholders in the electoral process.     

From 'Political' to 'Human' Economy: The Visions of Harriet Martineau and Frances Wright

The marginalization or exclusion of women from economic theory has a long and distinguished pedigree. Michele A. Pujol, in her groundbreaking study Feminism and Anti-Feminism in Early Economic Thought (1998), wryly observes that whilst Adam Smith devotes an entire page to the question of women's economic activity in his Wealth of Nations , women 'are nowhere mentioned in Ricardo's Principles of Political Economy and Taxation and in Malthus's Principles of Political Economy ' (Pujol 1992:17-23). In similar fashion Groenewegen, in Feminism and Political Economy in Victorian England (1994), notes that 'there have been few women contributors to … economic literature' (Groenewegen 1994:16). Indeed, as far as the first half of the nineteenth century is concerned, only two women - Jane Marcet and Harriet Martineau - seem to have written on political economy. Both wrote as expositors and popularizers of existing theoretical knowledge, content to repeat rather than challenge established orthodoxies, and as a result neither has commanded much more than a footnote in the history of economic thought. Martineau enjoys somewhat more of an enhanced reputation in the field of literary studies but even here attention tends to focus on A Manchester Strike at the expense of her other economic fictions. The present discussion, then, attempts to expand the field of vision with regard to Martineau by examining four of her economic tales: The Rioters (1827), The Turn-Out (1829), The Hill and the Valley (1832) and A Manchester Strike (1832). The first two of these were written prior to Martineau's 'conversion' to political economy, whilst the latter two appeared as part of Illustrations of Political Economy (a series of twenty-three tales published in twenty-five monthly parts between 1832 and 1843). As a way of exploring the disjuncture between economic theory and narrative events within these tales, the narratives themselves are read as implicit commentaries on (as well as 'illustrations'of) aspects of political economy, thereby allowing Martineau to emerge as a much more complex and problematic writer than is usually acknowledged. Also under examination here are the economic ideas of Frances Wright, another early nineteenth-century woman writer, particularly her critique of the existing economic order (which sharply differentiates her from Martineau) and her proposals for a new 'feminine' economy. The intention is to show that women writers on economics were not confined to the role of 'dutiful intellectual daughter, repeating … the words of her intellectual fathers' (David 1987:35)--to borrow Deirdre David's characterization of Martineau in Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy --but were capable of articulating a thoroughgoing critique of existing theoretical models.