Joining it up? Health and Wellbeing Boards in English Local Governance: Evidence from Clinical Commissioning Groups and Shadow Health and Wellbeing Boards

Statutory responsibility for health care and social care has long been separated between National Health Service (NHS) bodies and local government authorities. Repeated policy attempts to promote service integration through collaboration between such authorities have achieved little. The latest of such policy interventions are the Health and Wellbeing Boards (HWBs) established by the 2012 Health and Social Care Act (HSCA) alongside a range of other organisational innovations, including Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs). These organisations await full legal and operational status but have begun to develop structures and processes. HWBs are intended to lead the integrated assessment of local needs to inform both NHS health and local authority social care commissioners. We undertook detailed qualitative case studies in eight CCGs during 2011–2012 and here report observational and interview data related to CCGs’ perspectives and observations of early HWB developments. We found that developing HWBs vary greatly in their structure and approach, but we also identified a number of significant issues that are familiar from earlier research into health and social care integration. These include heavy dependence on voluntary agreements to align the strategic plans of the many different new statutory bodies; a significant role for mundane organisational processes in determining the extent of effective co-operation; and problems arising from factors such as size and the arrangements of local boundaries.     

Collateral damage: do gender quotas undermine party discipline?

Quotas are the most disputed instrument to promote equal representation of women. Today, political parties in more than 90 democracies apply them. Essentially, gender quotas are a manipulation of the electoral rules. Scholars of legislative politics have created an impressive knowledge of the effect of electoral rules on political behaviour. So far, this literature remains unconnected to the literature on gender quotas. Our study contributes to closing that research gap.     

试论民国政府对贵州少数民族的调查

民国时期,曾出现对西南少数民族调查的热潮。民国政府自上而下对贵州少数民族进行了8次调查,对民族名称、分布地区、人口数目、教育情况、生活习惯、语言文字、宗教、民族源流及土司情况等都做了调查,它是民国时期贵州少数民族情况的真实记录与反映。同时,贵州“民俗研究会”和“边胞文化研究会”等机构,也对贵州少数民族开展过调查。本文根据有关档案史料,就民国政府对贵州少数民族调查的情况及成果做初步研究。     

对雅加达华人中生代的考察与分析--兼论各次文化群体在"印尼华人文化"建构中的作用与使命

本文运用文化学、社会学的理论和方法,坚持从印尼华人的实际出发,通过实地考察、访谈调查和资料重释的途径,具体剖析了雅加达华人中生代这一印尼华人重要的次群体,展示了印尼华人在印尼独立后的自我调适情况,分析了印尼华人今后的发展趋势及其在印尼社会重构和印尼民族重组中的地位和作用.     

The violence work of transnational gangs in Central America

Abstract

According to international relations scholars, an important change taking place in the post-Cold War context concerns the lethality of non-state armed groups (NSAGs). Underlying this observation is the conventional assumption that non-state violence is intrinsically illegitimate. This article shifts the analysis of violence away from the terrain of legitimacy, which tends to moralise the difference between state and non-state forces, and towards the terrain of work, where their violence features as part and not separate from a shared political economy. I propose the notion of violence work as a resourceful analytic into the dialectics of everyday violence and the complex processes of value production in social life. Against the background of the extreme cruelty attributed to transnational gangs in Central America, I argue that their violence work is expressive of prevailing modes of accumulating wealth in the region. Drawing on multi-sited fieldwork in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Mexico, I show how gang violence work animates a system of economic cooperation that engages a wide array of subjects who traverse state/non-state and legal/illegal divides.     

中国社会转型过程中的利益失衡与风险成本

改革的过程必然是一个利益重新分配的过程,随着中国改革开放的不断深入,不同的利益集团不断分化,并出现了两极分化的趋势。这一趋势应引起我们的高度关注和足够重视。因为,严重的利益失衡将使处于转型期的社会面临高风险,并有可能最终导致改革失败。     

菲律宾政治集团在南海问题上的共识、分歧及成因

菲律宾国内各政治集团对菲律宾南海政策的制定产生程度不一的影响。基于维护本国利益的国家本位意识和立场,菲律宾各政治集团在南海问题上的共识有:坚持菲律宾所占据的南海岛礁的“主权”;要求以《联合国海洋法公约》为依据来解决南海争端;坚持南海仲裁“裁决”,等等。而硬实力的不足、美国安全承诺的不确定、中国在南海问题上的克制与和平立场以及菲律宾民情等因素导致菲律宾各政治集团在一定程度上达成通过和平方式解决南海问题的共识。除了对策略手段运用的不同理解导致的分歧,菲律宾各政治集团在南海问题上的分歧主要体现在对于菲美同盟及菲美双边军事协议存在着认同与强烈反对的不同声音,其深层原因来自于要求独立自主的反美民族主义与菲律宾国家安全需要之间的矛盾。菲律宾后续仍可能试图以南海“仲裁”结果对中国进行“软”抗争;菲美军事安全合作仍有强化的可能;中菲南海双边谈判以及共同开发协议有可能会随着菲律宾国内政治形势的变动而受到影响,存在较大变数。     

关于应对国际金融危机的弱势群体社会保障权问题研究

针对社会转型期涌现出特殊社会群体,文章提出了改革中弱势群体社会保障权概念,分析了我国弱势群体社会保障权存在主要问题,论述了完善弱势群体社会保障权的措施,得出解决改革中的弱势群体生存问题应强化社会保障制度建设,完善弱势群体社会保障权是社会稳定和国家长治久安的重要保证的结论。     

Surviving (thriving) in academia: feminist support networks and women ECRs

In this paper, we reflect upon our experiences and those of our peers as doctoral students and early career researchers in an Australian Political Science department. We seek to explain and understand the diverse ways that participating in an unofficial Feminist Reading Group in our department affected our experiences. We contend that informal peer support networks like reading groups do more than is conventionally assumed, and may provide important avenues for sustaining feminist research in times of austerity, as well as supporting and enabling women and emerging feminist scholars in academia. Participating in the group created a community of belonging and resistance, providing women with personal validation, information and material support, as well as intellectual and political resources to understand and resist our position within the often hostile spaces of the University. While these experiences are specific to our context, time and location, they signal that peer networks may offer critical political resources for responding to the ways that women's bodies and concerns are marginalised in increasingly competitive and corporatised university environments.     

转型期中国社会劣势群体问题——析21世纪中国社会政治发展进程中的一道难题

中国社会正处于一个重大的转型时期。在这个转型期中出现了较为明显的社会不同阶层群体的分化。使社会劣势群体问题突现出来。面对社会劣势群体问题的严重化,我们必须加强对策思考并在实践中采取有效措施,才能化解21世纪中国社会政治发展进程中的这道难题。