Designing Health Service Organization in the UK, 1968 to 1998: from Blueprint to Bright Idea and ‘Manipulated Emergence’

Four sets of reforms of the National Health Service are employed to illustrate the changing character of policy making in this sector over a thirty year period, from the production of a carefully developed technocratic blueprint for its organization to the promulgation of a series of bright ideas accompanied by incentives for local actors to develop them into concrete organizational arrangements consonant with these ideas. We term this latter approach ‘manipulated emergence’ and relate it to the literatures of organizational culture and of post-Fordism. The approach adopted by the 1997 Labour government is largely, though not wholly consistent with this, and it remains to be seen whether the high-water mark of manipulated emergence has passed.     

Protecting Intellectual Property on The Internet. Experience and Strategies of Trade Mark Owners in a Time of Chance

It is often stated that the protection of names, brands and trade marks on the Internet is a critical issue for intellectual property (IP) owners. However, while tales of infringement abound, there have been few court cases. IP specialists looking to establish a policy for the protection of names on the Internet need to assess the scale of the problem. What evidence of infringement or abuse exists? How are trade marks at risk-just in the domain name system or on other parts of the Internet? Can the courts or registration authorities be relied upon to support intellectual property owners? Is affordable net protection a myth or a reality for trade mark owners? This article attempts to quantify the risk of infringement or abuse of intellectual property, to examine measures of control proposed by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) and to suggest policies that can be adopted to minimise the risk of infringement and to maximise the chance of successful action against infringers.     

Taking Fact-Checks Literally But Not Seriously? The Effects of Journalistic Fact-Checking on Factual Beliefs and Candidate Favorability

Political Behavior - Are citizens willing to accept journalistic fact-checks of misleading claims from candidates they support and to update their attitudes about those candidates? Previous studies...     

What Interventions Work Best for Families Who Experience Homelessness? Impact Estimates from the Family Options Study

What housing and service interventions work best to reduce homelessness for families in the United States? The Family Options Study randomly assigned 2,282 families recruited in homeless shelters across 12 sites to priority access to one of three active interventions or to usual care in their communities. The interventions were long‐term rent subsidies, short‐term rent subsidies, and transitional housing in supervised programs with intensive psychosocial services. In two waves of follow‐up data collected 20 and 37 months later, priority access to long‐term rent subsidies reduced homelessness and food insecurity and improved other aspects of adult and child well‐being relative to usual care, at a cost 9 percent higher. The other interventions had little effect. The study provides support for the view that homelessness for most families is an economic problem that long‐term rent subsidies resolve and does not support the view that families must address psychosocial problems to succeed in housing. It has implications for focusing government resources on this important social problem.     

Implementing Public Utility Commission Web Sites: Targeting Audiences, Missing Opportunities

Research demonstrates that some government agencies are more accomplished than others when it comes to e-government. More generally, various scholars suggest that e-government is moving forward at a relatively slow pace, especially in relation to the sophistication of government Web sites. With these issues in mind, this research utilized interviews with state public utility commission staff members to explore their agencies' experiences with staffing, funding, coordinating, and prioritizing their e-government efforts, particularly their Web site activities. Assessing such efforts in both quantitative and qualitative terms, this research found that a mix of various factors, including financial resources, knowledgeable staff, and administrative oversight, related to better performance. Moreover, although public utility commissions have a clear mission to serve both consumers and regulated utilities, this research indicates that the commissions are focusing more of their e-government efforts on industry rather than citizens.     

Food or Thought? Assessing Internal and External Factors Affecting Evaluations of Instructor Effectiveness

Within the broader literature concerned with potential bias in student measures of instructor effectiveness, two broad types of bias have been shown to operate in a course: internal and external. Missing is an assessment of the relative influence of each bias type in the classroom. Do internal or external types of bias matter more or less to student measures of instructor effectiveness? This question is of interest to those who recognize that many forms of bias operate in the classroom simultaneously and to great effect on course evaluations. Through the combination of quasi-experimental and survey methods, we attempt to do something not done before — simultaneously measure and compare the effects of one internal and one external type of bias to which we refer, following convention in the literature, as an internal factor and an external factor. Our findings indicate that, while both factors studied are important, perception of instructor partisanship (internal factor) is more influential on student course evaluations than our external factor (experimental treatment — literally a chocolate treat). The upshot is that American government instructors should be especially careful stating partisan positions in class.     

Fostering uptake: lessons from climate change vulnerability assessments in Africa and Latin America

Findings from climate change vulnerability assessments can inform decision-makers in their evaluation of options to reduce the negative impacts of climate change. Certain attributes of an assessment can improve the use or uptake of its results. The science policy literature describes three characteristics – credibility, salience, and legitimacy – as being necessary for the uptake of scientific results for decision-making. We draw from the experiences of eight climate change vulnerability assessments conducted in Africa and Latin America for USAID (United States Agency for International Development) to explore the practical application of these three characteristics to fostering uptake of the assessment results.