Americanising Brexit Britain's Welfare State?

Will the British welfare state revert to an Americanisation trajectory or retain features of the European model after April 2019? After a period of historically prolonged austerity and substantial working age welfare reform, with the UK facing yet another renegotiation of the social contract in a post‐Brexit world, the question of whether there remains space for an alternative to the ‘American’ model is of crucial importance. We argue that there has been a blurring of differences across the American and European welfare states in terms of working age benefits, as most countries have adopted aspects of work‐based conditionality reforms, which attach the receipt of benefits to the active pursuit of work and, to varying extents, the underlying politics of US welfare reform, where there are large coalitions supportive of more punitive policies towards low‐income adults and minorities. These trends are taking place against the backdrop of a second major shift: increasing restrictions on benefits for immigrants. This double narrowing of the welfare state, making benefits conditional for citizens and excluding those who are not citizens, seemingly sets the agenda for a more restrictive post‐Brexit welfare state. The experience of the last two decades suggests, however, that the adoption of the American model has not been wholesale; steering a middle path between punitive conditional American benefits and more traditionally generous universal benefits is on the agenda across advanced welfare states.     

Implementing children’s right to be heard: Local attenuations of a global commitment

A critical challenge for human rights and human security alike turns on diminution of subject audibility and voice and the reduction of rights-bearing subjects to mere referent objects of security. Owing in part to inadequate theorization of child/youth subjecthood, this problem is especially acute where the rights and security of young people are at issue. Though the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child makes specific provision for recovery of the voices of children and youth, this may be frustrated at implementation in local settings. Moving beyond the Global South, where this problem has been more readily acknowledged, this article inquires into practices that undermine child/youth rights by reinforcing the subject/object positions of protector/protected in ways that disallow young people’s articulations of their best interests and security needs. Spurious presumptions about young people’s (in)capacity for independent subjecthood as well as emergent rhetorical technologies of silencing and voice-denial are identified.     

IMPLEMENTING PRIVATE SECTOR STRATEGIES IN EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING PROGRAMS

This paper examines efforts to increase the role of the private sector in employment and job training programs mandated by the Private Sector Initiative Program (PSIP) and the Job Training Partnership Act (JTPA). In particular it will examine whether the emphasis on the private sector participation has led to a greater development of and reliance upon private sector strategies for training and placing the unemployed, as well as an exploration o f the relationship between public and private sector officials involved in program implementation.     

Teaching criminal investigation: A critical thinking approach

The purpose of this paper is to explore the “critical thinking” approach to teaching and develop those concepts into meaningful instructional activities in the classroom. The authors offer practical suggestions based on the critical thinking philosophy for implementing an active learning approach. The case study method serves as the foundation for an investigative process course and lead-up activity to the simulated preliminary and follow-up investigation. The instructor presents the critical thinking process and content information that enables students to perform five basic progressions: (1) case studies; (2) the preliminary investigation; (3) follow-up; (4) suppression hearing; and (5) moot court criminal justice simulations.     

Productive power in the Papua New Guinea church partnership programme

This article analyses the strategy of partnership governing the Papua New Guinea Church Partnership Program (CPP). Using a governmentality lens that sees power as having a productive aspect, it focuses on how the technologies of financial management and planning, monitoring, and evaluation (PME) are taken up by the churches. Fieldwork research reveals how, in conforming to the discipline of these technologies to fulfil the partnership requirements, skilful and pragmatic individuals utilise the same technologies to empower their churches to enact their theology on development. For partnerships to work, the space must be created for such productive power to flourish.