BEYOND POLICY NETWORKS: POLICY FRAMING AND THE POLITICS OF EXPERTISE IN THE 2001 FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE CRISIS

For the past decade, the policy community/issue network typology of pressure group interaction has been used to explain policy outcomes and the policy‐making process. To re‐examine the validity of this typology, the paper focuses on the UK government's response to the 2001 Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) crisis, and in particular the decision to pursue contiguous culling rather than vaccination to overcome the epidemic. Rather than illustrating the emergence of an issue network in agricultural policy, the decision‐making process of the FMD outbreak demonstrates continuity with prior crises. In addition, the politicization of scientific expertise is identified as an emerging trend in crisis management. Policy framing is used to explain the impetus behind the contiguous cull decision, concluding that the legacy of previous policy choices conditioned the crisis response to a far greater degree than contemporaneous pressure group action.     

VALUE FOR MONEY IN PFI PROPOSALS: A COMMENTARY ON THE UK TREASURY GUIDELINES FOR PUBLIC SECTOR COMPARATORS

The Private Finance Initiative (PFI), introduced to Britain in 1992, has become a major means of procuring public sector infrastructure. It involves long‐term contracts whereby private sector suppliers construct and own capital assets and provide services for which they are paid on the basis of availability or use. This paper focuses on the early stages of a PFI procurement, the decision to use the PFI rather than any other form of procurement. In 2004 and 2006, the UK Treasury issued new Guidance as to how this should be done. There are two stages to this Guidance: qualitative and quantitative assessments. This paper comments on some of the key issues in the quantitative assessments: the treatment of risk, of residual and life‐time costs, of tax, of rates of return and of the appropriate use of discounted flow techniques when finance is a constraint for an investing agency.     

CONTROLLING CORPORATE DEVIANCE

The effectiveness of sanctions applied to corporate offenders has not been adequately studied, in part because of the absence of any appropriate research strategy. This absence stems from the tendency. since Sutherland, to conceptualize corporate crime as individual rather than organizational behavior. This article outlines a research procedure based on the organizational nature of corporate crime and uses it to evaluate the impact of prosecutions under Australia's Trade Practices Act. The article concludes that the sanctions applied have considerably reduced the likelihood of corporate recidivism.     

VIOLENCE AND POOR READING

Poor reading achievement, long linked to delinquency. also proved related to a history of violent offenses among male and female. Anglo and non-Anglo, juvenile offenders. Reading was measured by the Wide Range Achievement Test. adjusted for Wechsler Verbal IQ; the Violence Scale specified the degree of violence of each child's most serious offense.