No Sex Scandals Please,We’re French: French Attitudes towards Politicians’ Public and Private Conduct

The notion of distinct ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres underpins much normative and practical engagement with political misconduct. What is less clear is whether citizens draw distinctions between misdemeanours in the ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres, and whether they judge these in systematically different ways. This paper explores attitudes to political misconduct in France. French citizens are often said to be particularly relaxed about politicians’ private affairs, but there has been little empirical evidence for this proposition. Drawing on original survey data, this paper demonstrates clearly that French citizens draw a sharp distinction between politicians’ public and private transgressions, and are more tolerant of the latter.     

Paternity Testing Commission of the International Society of Forensic Genetics: recommendations on genetic investigations in paternity cases

The International Society for Forensic Genetics (ISFG) has established a Paternity Testing Commission (PTC) with the purpose of formulating international recommendations concerning genetic investigations in paternity testing. The PTC recommends that paternity testing be performed in accordance with the ISO 17025 standards. The ISO 17025 standards are general standards for testing laboratories and the PTC offers explanations and recommendations concerning selected areas of special importance to paternity testing.     

Matilda sturge: ‘renaissance woman’ 1

Abstract

This article notes the virtual exclusion of women from accounts of the ‘Renaissance’ within late nineteenth-century British Quakerism. A focus upon a hitherto neglected figure, Matilda Sturge (1829-1903), author and Quaker minister, reveals her long-standing involvement in the aspects of Quakerism crucial to the Quaker Renaissance and as an active participant in the debates which preceded it. But Matilda Sturge also was active in the Home Mission movement, a project of Evangelical Friends, which has generally been represented as antithetical to the liberals of the Quaker Renaissance. Foregrounding women's experience introduces new perspectives on late nineteenth-century British Quakerism.     

Discretion drift in primary care commissioning in England: Towards a conceptualization of hybrid accountability obligations

In the context of welfare delivery, hybrid organizations mix public and ‘new’ market, social, and professional types of mechanisms and rationales. This article contributes to our understanding of accountability within hybrid organizations by highlighting how accountability obligations can become hybrid, simultaneously formal and informal. Instead of seeing accountability as hybrid only in the sense of the coexistence of types of organizational mechanisms and structures (i.e., the prevalence of both state and market types), we examine accountability arrangements governing a hybrid model—primary care commissioning in England—and interrogate the relationships between accountability actors and their accountability forums. We conceptualize ‘hybrid accountability obligations’ as a state whereby the nature of obligation underpinning accountability relationships is both formal-informal and vertical-horizontal concurrently. The article concludes by highlighting the consequences of this kind of hybridity, namely how it extended discretion from welfare delivery to the domain of welfare governance.     

Those who Wear the Crown Wield the Knife: the Brutality of Recent Takeover Reshuffles

Recent ‘takeover’ Prime Ministers have tended to conduct relatively brutal Cabinet reshuffles immediately after taking office. Liz Truss dismissed and moved large numbers of ministers after becoming Prime Minister in September 2022, and Rishi Sunak did the same after succeeding Truss in October 2022. This article locates the tendency towards brutalism in the broader context of British Cabinet reshuffles. It compares the scale of takeover reshuffles with other types of reshuffles and demonstrates how incoming takeover Prime Ministers in the twenty-first century have reconstructed their Cabinets more extensively than their predecessors. The article argues that the use of all-member ballots in party leadership elections has been a key driver of brutalism, and it further identifies several reasons why future Prime Ministers might want to resist the tendency.     

Review essay: Chattopadhyaya's Marxian interpretation of Indian philosophy,history, and society

Abstract

Although the Calcutta philosopher and historian of science Debiprasad Chattopadhyaya has been the major twentieth-century Indian Marxist philosopher, he has never received the recognition in Indian philosophical circles commensurate with his scholarly contributions. Such lack of status and recognition is an indication of the nature of Indian academic philosophy, of those who have had the power to define the profession and the discipline.