Human Rights and Unfair Dismissal: Private Acts in Public Spaces

This article addresses the termination of employment because of the conduct of the employee in her leisure time, in the light of the right to private life. It explores the impact on the retention of employment of activities taking place outside the workplace and outside working hours, and argues that the approach of UK courts and tribunals, which is based on a primarily spatial conceptualisation of privacy, is flawed. A fresh approach to privacy, resting on the idea of domination, is proposed, which is sensitive to the particularities of the employment relationship. Considering the fairness enquiry in dismissal, it argues that off‐duty conduct may lead to lawful termination of employment only if there is a clear and present impact or a high likelihood of such impact on business interests; a speculative and marginal danger does not suffice. It further proposes that a particularly meticulous test is appropriate when certain suspect categories, such as the employees' sexual preferences, are at stake.     

A NATIONWIDE SURVEY OF MANDATORY PARENT EDUCATION*

In an effort to take positive steps toward coping with problems for families and children created by high levels of separation and divorce, ever increasing civil caseloads and the exposure of children to interparental conflict, court‐affiliated educational programs have emerged in the United States for parents separating from their spouse or partner or going through a divorce. This article will provide an overview of the creation of such programs and their development, which includes a discussion regarding the numerous states currently mandating parents to attend. It will summarize some of the research which has been conducted as to the efficacy of the programs and will provide the results of our nationwide research for each state's parent education status. There is a discussion of domestic violence issues and sensitivities in the context of parent education programs and possible future directions for mandatory parent education.     

新经济自由主义研究中应该注意区分的若干问题

在我们学习和借鉴西方市场经济的理论和政策过程中,越来越多的人对西方新自由主义思潮给予关注,并进行了针对性的研究,但其中存在着不同程度的误解和不适当的态度,妨碍着我们正确对待新自由主义思潮.我们要区分新自由主义经济学中的合理因素和谬误成分,区分新自由主义经济学所涉及的利益和立场在不同时间、不同范围、不同对象上的差异,区分理论界与政策决策当局认识的异同、学术界认识与"华盛顿共识"的异同,区分新经济自由主义的国内政策和国外政策的异同,注意新自由主义经济政策与国家干预主义和保护主义经济政策的交替、转换和灵活运用.发展中国家学习和借鉴新自由主义经济学必须注意:要将市场化与市场自由化、全面市场化区分开,将对外开放与对外全面自由开放区分开,将市场化、产权改革与全面私有化区分开,将市场化与快速市场化和快速自由化区分开.     

The effectiveness of NGO self‐regulation: theory and evidence from Africa

Non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) play an increasingly important role in public service provision and policy making in sub‐Saharan Africa, stimulating demand for new forms of regulatory oversight. In response, a number of initiatives in NGO self‐regulation have emerged. Using cross‐national data on 20 African countries, the article shows that self‐regulation in Africa falls into three types: national‐level guilds, NGO‐led clubs and voluntary codes of conduct. Each displays significant weaknesses from a regulatory policy perspective. National guilds have a broad scope, but require high administrative oversight capacity on the part of NGOs. Voluntary clubs have stronger standards but typically have much weaker coverage. Voluntary codes are the most common form of self‐regulation, but have the weakest regulatory strength. This article argues that the weakness of current attempts to improve the accountability and regulatory environment of NGOs stems in part from a mismatch between the goals of regulation and the institutional incentives embedded in the structure of most self‐regulatory regimes. The article uses the logic of collective action to illustrate the nature of this mismatch and the tradeoffs between the potential breadth and strength of various forms of NGO self‐regulation using three detailed case studies. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

SEX EDUCATION LEFT AT THE THRESHOLD OF THE SCHOOL DOOR: STRICTER REQUIREMENTS FOR PARENTAL OPT‐OUT PROVISIONS

Current state law creates the risk that, if sex education is not provided to a child in public school, no similar instruction will be given to the child. Legislatively enacted opt‐out provisions give parents broad control over their child's education by granting them the option to have their child excused from any sex education requirements within a public school's curriculum. Through public school sex education, professionals provide youth information aimed at protecting them from the dangers of pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). A stricter statutory opt‐out provision should be enacted by state legislatures that only allows parents to excuse their child from sex education after a parent attends a 90‐minute STD prevention course and receives the instructional material used in the school's sex education curriculum. Parents should be provided up‐to‐date information and a structural framework designed by the school to encourage them to discuss with their child the many sexual issues addressed within a school's sex education curriculum.     

Free Expression,Pre‐Crime and Counter‐Terrorism Legislation

This article examines the Counter‐Terrorism and Border Security Act 2019 and how this new piece of legislation undermines fundamental human rights, including those protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). It considers in particular how the new act criminalises behaviour with a wide sweep, to include behaviour that is not in itself criminal, but might be indicative of future criminal intent. As a result, the act restricts the right to freedom of speech and to liberty in a manner that is neither necessary nor proportionate.     

Why Right‐Leaning Populism has Grown in the Most Advanced Liberal Democracies of Europe

Immigration and new class divisions, combined with a growing anti‐elitism and political correctness, are often used as explanations for the strong gains for right‐leaning populist parties in national elections across Europe in recent years. But contrary to what we might assume, such parties have been very successful in the most developed and comprehensive welfare states, in nations—such as the Nordic countries—with the best scores on economic equality and social inclusion and long established political and judicial institutions enjoying a high degree of popular legitimacy. As argued in this article, this seems to happen because a duopoly of the centre‐left and centre‐right political establishment has kept issues such as immigration and new class divisions off the public agenda and hence paved the way for right‐leaning ‘disruptor’ populist parties with an anti‐immigration agenda in times of increasing immigration.     

The Quiet Revolution? The Labour Party and Welfare Conditionality

Labour's 2017 general election manifesto contained a pledge to ‘end the punitive sanctions regime’ in the British welfare state. Whilst the specific implications of this pledge were not elaborated, such a policy would nevertheless constitute a profound break with a welfare consensus spanning over twenty years. The depth of the suggested changes on welfare are also evident in the scale of reform proposed to disability benefits, as well as plans—confirmed in August 2018 by the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell—to pilot universal basic income. Collectively, these policies would seemingly be deeply at odds with public opinion on the benefits system, which over the course of the last two decades has significantly hardened. Yet despite the seemingly radical and controversial nature of the policy, it received very little media or public attention during the election campaign. This article explores Labour's ‘quiet revolution’ on welfare, examining whether Labour's new welfare approach is indeed a bold attempt to reshape public opinion on welfare or, alternatively, a mostly pragmatic reaction to changing social attitudes. The argument presented is that whilst there are persuasive explanations that Labour is responding to a change in the public mood, there is also evidence of a more ambitious goal at stake: the aim of reshaping, not simply responding to, public opinion on the welfare state.     

From Merkel to Kramp‐Karrenbauer: Can German Christian Democracy Reinvent Itself?

Germany's Christian Democrats have started preparing for the time after Angela Merkel. After ten years as German chancellor facing a weak opposition, Merkel unexpectedly split the country in late 2015 and early 2016 because of her ‘open border’ policies that allowed more than 1 million refugees and migrants to rapidly enter Germany. Her management of the subsequent crisis was largely considered a failure and her party suffered a series of dramatic election defeats. Reacting to the negative electoral feedback, and in particular the breakthrough of the rightist and anti‐immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Christian Democratic Union organised an intra‐party contest to replace Merkel as party leader. Three candidates with different political profiles, Annegret Kramp‐Karrenbauer, Friedrich Merz and Jens Spahn, contested the election. By voting for Kramp‐Karrenbauer, the CDU membership voiced support for maintaining a large‐scale political coalition based on efforts to find compromises between different party wings and social and cultural interests.     

Building informal knowledge‐sharing relationships between policy makers and academics: Insights from a PM&C engagement project

This article outlines an innovative project to encourage knowledge sharing and engagement between academics and a policy team within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C). The project was designed to enhance policy advice by drawing on a group of academics outside the policy ranks to act as a sounding board, to question, and provide differing perspectives within the policy process of crafting advice to government. External expertise and particularly academic research has the potential to improve evidence‐based policy but often fails to be specific or timely for those at the “pointy end” of policy decision making. An informal knowledge sharing framework has the potential to improve the exchange of information through confidential and targeted conversations between researchers and public servants as one way of overcoming these barriers.