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This paper addresses policy change in Britain since 2010 across the three fields of domestic welfare, migration and asylum, and analyses the association between welfare, conditionality and control through the lens of civic stratification. Drawing on the work of Richard Munch and Mary Douglas, it moves beyond existing literature in this area to show that the more complex the classification in play, and the more severe its boundary implications, the more likely the emergence of contestable margins. Informed by Munch's 'battlefield' approach, it provides a discussion of contestable margins in each of the three policy fields and outlines the nature and source of challenges that emerge within the 'institutional battlefield'. A concluding section reflects on what is revealed by viewing welfare, migration and asylum within the same conceptual frame, identifying an emergent welfare paradigm that displays recurrent problems across all three fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Long-range temporal choices are built into contemporary policy-making, with policy decisions having consequences that play out across generations. Decisions are made on behalf of the public who are assumed to give much greater weight to their welfare than to the welfare of future generations. The paper investigates this assumption. It briefly discusses evidence from sociological and economic studies before reporting the findings of a British survey of people's intergenerational time preferences based on a representative sample of nearly 10,000 respondents. Questions focused on two sets of policies: (i) health policies to save lives and (ii) environmental policies to protect against floods that would severely damage homes, businesses and other infrastructure. For both sets of policies, participants were offered a choice of three policy options, each bringing greater or lesser benefits to their, their children's and their grandchildren's generations. For both saving lives and protecting against floods, only a minority selected the policy that most benefited their generation; the majority selected policies bringing equal or greater benefits to future generations. Our study raises questions about a core assumption of standard economic evaluation, pointing instead to concern for future generations as a value that many people hold in common. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The core of this paper' is a case study of how a District Health Authority (Paddington and North Kensington, now Parkside DHA following a recent merger with Brent DHA) in Inner London responded to a major new health care issue of the 1980s-Aids, but the paper also seeks to locate this case study material within wider debates. What theories are there of organisational change which could be used to illuminate policy and service change in the health care sector? How, indeed, do we best study change in health care organisations? The paper is thus in three parts. In the first section we identify some streams of literature which act as a frame of reference defining our initial research question and discuss implications for methodology. The second section presents the case itself, while the last section discusses some emerging findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Leaving the European Union (so-called ‘Brexit’) is a ‘critical moment’ for health policy reform which can pave the way to different pathways, including, a ‘critical juncture’. Given that Brexit cannot be undone without a second referendum, it opens up opportunities to elude European constraints for reform along the lines of equity, employment rights and patient choice. Brexit deepens the financial crisis of the National Health Service (NHS) by increasing hiring costs and imposing new transaction costs to accommodate patient cross-border mobility and international public health needs. Given the weak sustainability of the NHS, it could lead to major system reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of political agents, institutions, circumstances, and ideas in the development of public health policies in Britain. The first part attempts to define public health. The second section of the article looks at the experience of the Victorian public health movement. The final part considers the re-emergence of the public health perspective. The underlying theme of the article is that an awareness of the political dimension, both contemporary and historical, improves our under- standing of developments in the field of public health. The main conclusions reached are: first, that given the formidable political obstacles which exist, public health reform will only succeed if the reformers themselves operate with full awareness of the political dimension; second, that the modern public health debate is unlikely to be resolved in the short term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]