Beyond Policy Community — the Case of the GP Fundholding Scheme

The paper examines the conception, implementation and abolition of the GP fundholding scheme, all within 10 years, for evidence of a changed style of health care policy-making. A health care policy community, in which the interests of the medical profession were prominent, existed between 1948 and the mid-1980s. The paper highlights the important factors in the breakdown of the policy community and traces the effect through to the negotiation, implementation and abolition of the GP fundholding scheme. In particular, the role of evidence in health care policy-making has changed significantly. A consequence of the collapse of the policy community has been that a 'folk psychology' rather than evaluative evidence has guided some aspects of health care policy since the 1990s.     

Intraprofessional Competition and Earnings Inequalities Across a Professional Chasm: The Case of the Legal Profession in Québec,Canada

Intraprofessional rivalry has a long history. This article examines earnings disparities as a dimension of intraprofessional competition among avocats and notaires in the civil law system of Québec, Canada. Drawing on two large‐scale surveys and in‐depth interviews with legal professionals, I examine three competing perspectives of earnings inequalities: human capital, social‐symbolic capital, and organizational‐structural explanations. Through this analysis I seek to examine whether similar causal processes shape earnings across the two spheres of legal practice in Québec. The findings of this study clearly demonstrate that these two professional groups are equipped with differential stocks of capital, and conversion rates differ drastically. Avocats receive greater exchange on their investments in human and social‐symbolic capitals. These disparities are most pronounced in sectors of the profession where jurisdictional frictions abound: among notaires and avocats working as solo practitioners and in small firms within competitive urban contexts. The article concludes with a discussion of theoretical extensions and future directions for the study of legal professionals in civil law systems and blended jurisdictions.     

Senthorun Sunil Raj: Feeling Queer Jurisprudence: Injury,Intimacy, Identity

Feminist Legal Studies -     

Vietnam Rising Dragon: Contesting Dominant Western Masculinities in Ho Chi Minh City's Global Sex Industry

Scholars have produced a substantial body of literature on the lives of female sex workers in the commercial sex industry in developed and developing countries around the world. This literature on heterosexual relations has focused overwhelmingly on the experiences of female sex workers, neglecting to examine the significance of male clients (Chapkis 1997; Prasad Sociological Perspectives 42(2):181–213, 1999; Weitzer Annual Review of Sociology, 35(1), 213–234, 2009). The limited studies that do address male clients focus exclusively on Western men who participate in romance or sex tours. No study has examined sex work as a site for the performance and production of specific masculinities for the increasing number of local, non-Western, business elites in the new global economy. Drawing on 15 months of ethnographic research conducted between 2009 and 2010 and informal interviews with 25 clients, 25 sex workers, and three madams in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, I illustrate how local Vietnamese and Asian businessmen enact their masculinity in relation to other men through the medium of hard cash. Local elites' participation in local hostess bars allows them to capitalise on Vietnam's rapid economic restructuring in the context of the 2008 global economic crisis in order to assert their place as major players in the world order. In doing so, wealthy local Vietnamese and Asian businessmen deconstruct dominant Western ideals to assert their place in the global order.     

A tribute to Willem Assies (1954–2010): reflections on his contribution to peasant and indigenous studies

This article discusses the manifold contributions of Willem Assies to the social sciences and Latin American studies. It focuses on his writings on agrarian and peasant studies, social movements, and indigenous peoples. In particular, he made important contributions to our understanding of multicultural citizenship, the multiethnic state, and plurinational democracy. His writings had a major impact on those working on rural and indigenous peoples' issues, although the Dutch academic establishment largely failed to appreciate his exceptional talents. It is argued in this article that he never wavered from his early recognition of the importance of class in social analysis, while acknowledging its limitations. In his view, one of the central challenges facing the indigenous peoples' social movements was how to link indigenous issues to general national problems. To what extent had they met this challenge? His premature death prevented him from exploring this key issue further, but hopefully other scholars will take up the baton and continue to debate his ideas.     

Here Versus There: Creating British Sexual Politics Elsewhere

This reflection draws upon two recent ‘moments’ in British sexuality politics—a series of Parliamentary debates on Global LGBT rights and Brighton Pride’s campaign to ‘Highlight Global LGBT Communities’. It contrasts these two moments in order to demonstrate how, at a time when LGBT rights have ostensibly been ‘won’ in the UK, there is an increasing tendency to shift focus to the persecution of SOGI minorities elsewhere in the world. This shift in focus sets up a binary of here versus there that is politically persuasive but ultimately limited and limiting. By reflecting on the way that this growing trend of creating sexual politics elsewhere occurs in two very different locations in British politics and activism, we seek to begin a conversation about the relational affects of placing sexual politics ‘elsewhere’.     

Policy feedback and pathways: when change leads to endurance and continuity to change

Policy Sciences - The policy feedback literature was initially concerned with explaining how positive feedback could lead to self-reinforcing policy trajectories. More recently, policy scholars...