PUBLIC MANAGEMENT REFORM IN THE UK AND ITS CONSEQUENCES FOR PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATION: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

It is often assumed in the literature on public management reforms that radical changes in values, work and organization have occurred or are under way. In this paper our aim is to raise questions about this account. Focusing on three services in the UK, each dominated by organized professions – health care, housing, and social services – significant variations in the effectiveness of reforms are noted. The available research also suggests that these outcomes have been inversely proportional to the efforts expended on introducing new management practices. The most radical changes have been in housing, where, paradoxically, successive UK governments focused least attention. By contrast, in health and social services, management restructuring has been less effective, despite the greater resources devoted to it. This variation is attributed to professional values and institutions, against which reforms were directed, and the extent to which different groups became locked either into strategies of resistance or accommodation.     

Building Bridges for Babies in Foster Care: The Babies Can't Wait Initiative

In 2001, the New York State Permanent Judicial Commission on Justice for Children, chaired by New York State's Chief Judge Judith Kaye, developed the Babies Can't Wait Initiative to maximize the well‐being and permanency prospects of infants in foster care. This court‐based innovation became a path to healthy development for babies in foster care, a bridge to unprecedented collaboration among the New York City Family Court, child welfare system, and service providers and merged knowledge about child development with court and child welfare practice. This article tells the story of the Babies Can't Wait Initiative—its creation, implementation, successes, and lessons.     

Protection, Parity, or Promotion: Public Attitudes to Cohabitation and the Purposes of Legal Reform

Cohabitation law reform may be informed by different purposes. Three are considered in this paper: protection of parties at risk when relationships break down, parity of treatment between different forms of partnership, and the promotion of particular family forms. These are considered in relation to the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006 in the context of recent evidence about public attitudes towards cohabitation. Public attitudes and the approach adopted in the 2006 Act are juxtaposed, raising questions about the alignment of public attitudes and the direction of law reform on cohabitation.     

Kant and the Transnational Order: Towards a European Community Jurisprudence*

Abstract. This paper seeks to suggest a jurisprudential grounding for the European Community, and seeks to do so by using a specifically Kantian philosophy of law. Kant's observations on the nature of transnational orders, like so much of his political theory, have tended to be overlooked. To do so is to overlook one of the great political and jurisprudential treasures in modern western thought. It will be suggested that a proper understanding of a Kantian normative order, and the application of such a model to the European Community will serve to dispel much of the confusion and sometimes near histrionic commentaries which have characterised recent attempts to understand the jurisprudence of the Community.