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Copyright of Policy & Politics is the property of Policy Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Policy & Politics is the property of Policy Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Policy design has returned to the centre of discussions of public policy, both for academics and practitioners. With that interest in policy design has come an interest in organisations and institutions that will do the designing, with much of the interest being in structures such as policy laboratories that attempt to foster innovation. These organisations tend to exist outside government hierarchies and support collaborative designing with stakeholders and citizens. This paper examines the potential of these structures from an organisational perspective. Although they do offer great promise as sources of innovation they also confront a number of institutional barriers and dilemmas. This paper focuses on those barriers and dilemmas, as well as some possible means of overcoming them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Responding to the need for innovation, governments have begun experimenting with 'design thinking' approaches to reframe policy issues and generate and test new policy solutions. This paper examines what is new about design thinking and compares this to rational and participatory approaches to policymaking, highlighting the difference between their logics, foundations and the basis on which they 'speak truth to power'. It then examines the impact of design thinking on policymaking in practice, using the example of public sector innovation (PSI) labs. The paper concludes that design thinking, when it comes in contact with power and politics, faces significant challenges, but that there are opportunities for design thinking and policymaking to work better together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about how processes of 'expert' control interact with or move towards collaborative models of regulation. This paper focuses on a critical example of such an apparent shift: customer engagement in price-setting in water regulation in Scotland and England/Wales. By drawing on original interview and documentary analysis, the paper demonstrates a neglected rationale for and usage of 'collaborative regulation': regulators introduced customer engagement to incentivise regulated firms into further efficiencies. This points towards an increasing hybridisation of the contemporary regulatory state, in which collaborative regulatory processes are used to advance 'econocratic' objectives of expert regulators. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reviews governance and public governance related to an emerging area of policy interest – social innovation. The European Commission’s White Paper on European Governance (2001) focused on openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence in public policy as characteristics of good governance. The EC has prioritised social innovation to address policy problems. Yet, the extant literature and research on social innovation is sparse. The paper questions whether it is a new mode of governance which contributes to good governance or a continuum of neoliberal reforms of the state which alters the relationship between the state, market and civil society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on policy implementation studies, which seek to explain how policies undergo some form of ‘translation’ from general policy guidelines to implementation in practice at the local level. The paper makes two contributions to the policy implementation literature. First, it draws on the concept of ‘local universality’ to suggest that the translation of policy by central actors is not simply transmitted but is iteratively transformed through multiple distributed agencies including local actors, infrastructure, data sets and organisational practices. Second, empirical findings show how structural policy design features influence implementation and (re)shape policy content by incorporating knowledge from practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper combines the evidence-based policy making and 'policy as translation' literatures to illuminate the process by which evidence from home or overseas contexts is incorporated into policy. Drawing upon focus groups with Department for Work and Pensions officials, a conceptual model of 'evidence translation' is introduced, comprising five key dimensions which influence how evidence is used in policy: the perceived policy problem, agenda-setting, filtration processes, the policy apparatus and the role of translators. The paper suggests the critical role of 'evidence translators' throughout the process and highlights the perceived importance of methodology as an evidence selection mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with analysing potential negative effects of mediatisation of university governance in Germany. Among others, mediatisation reflects a change in expectations on how higher education institutions (HEI) should relate to the public. We start with an exploration of two sets of developments that spawned this change of expectations. On the one hand, the policy idea of a trend to a knowledge society affected what public contributions are expected of HEI. On the other hand, reforms to decentralise HEI-governance compelled universities to orient themselves more directly towards the demands of external stakeholder. Both developments reinforce each other, both are associated with extended needs for actor intermediation, and for consolidating means of orientation. Since performance figures and competition solely allow for a partial mapping of society's demands and needs, HEI and state administrators alike can be expected to make additional use of the public discourse to evaluate comparatively a multitude of demands and expectations. This results in what we call a model of mediatised university governance. Since the media discourse on higher education is strongly biased towards news values, this type of governance bears a potential for unintended side effects. In the second part of the paper, two empirical illustrations of side effects are discussed. First, the role of media attention in accidentally reinforcing a reputational mismatch of teaching and research is investigated. For a second case, we focus on an overstretching of the information value of media-effective rankings for decision making. The cases draw upon survey data, semi-standardised expert-interviews and content analysis of news media coverage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances a novel theoretical perspective on the determinants of immigrant occupational attainment in western Europe. Previous research has not accounted for the process of legal status transition or the implications of this for migrants. A new measure of the conditionality attached to legal status transitions is advanced and its hypothesised role in the determination of migrant outcomes in interaction with other features of legal status policy is tested utilising large-scale European microdata for 14 countries in the context of multilevel modelling. Results support the hypothesis and the paper concludes by discussing implications for policymakers and for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We use theories of formal and informal networks of care, within a local governance system, to interpret networks supporting older people during extreme weather events. Drawing on international literatures about network governance and emergency management this paper outlines an approach which considers the views of older people and service providers to explore resilience of infrastructures and service agencies. During emergencies, links between different networks of care are important to avoid discontinuities that could endanger older people's health and well-being. This paper explores the scope to draw on local knowledge and local caring networks to inform preparedness for extreme weather. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this article is to explore the impact of localism on vulnerable minorities like Gypsies and Travellers. This paper draws on the literature on social contract, with particular reference to Hobbes, Rawls and Habermas. The key findings of this paper indicate that localism can impede equality but also that statist forms of centralism can be counterproductive to the achievement of equality. The insights in this paper contribute to the literature on equality by proposing a policy framework which fuses the participatory and deliberative practices associated with forms of localism with the safeguards and protection of centralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses policies of 22 European Union member governments, designed to encourage corporate social responsibility (CSR) between 2000 and 2011. It categorises these policies by their regulatory strength and identifies the range of issues to which CSR policies are directed. The paper argues that Northern European, Scandinavian and UK governments are reconstructing their respective institutional structures to embed CSR concerns more explicitly therein. It concludes that these government CSR initiatives are converging, particularly around their increased regulatory strength and the broadening of their issue application. Policies in Mediterranean and the former communist countries do not reflect increasing institutionalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In public service institutions occupational gender segregation persists. These institutions are often gendered with predominantly masculine organisational cultures. The lack of passive and active representation of women has implications for public policy outcomes. This paper suggests a normative typology of the passive and active representation of women in bureaucracies, vis-à-vis institutional strategies to address the under-representation of women. The typology is based on: a theoretical discussion of representative bureaucracy; and a critical discussion of strategies to improve the representation of women. A key feature of the paper is the development of a typology with a suggested concinnity of institutional strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the relationship between strategies to manage poverty and the mobilisation of collective action. Focusing on the period 1979-93, the paper describes how the British Conservative government employed a combination of supportive and punitive interventions to manage homelessness in London. In the process, the paper finds, the government also effectively managed the mobilisation of collective dissent by containing the disruptive effects of visible homelessness while channelling opposition into conventional routes of political power. The paper integrates recent research on poverty management with insights from social movement theory, and explores the implications of these findings for contemporary homeless politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Premised on the assumption that depoliticisation is a crucial aspect of neo-liberal governmentality, this paper attempts to synergise these two, previously disparate, concepts. Borrowing from Foucault's theorisation of governmentality and drawing from inclusive definitions of politics/ the political, this paper argues for a reformulation of our understanding of depoliticisation and politicisation. The paper contends that depoliticisation is best understood as a technique of governing which works to legitimise neo-liberalism as the dominant political rationality. As such, we argue that depoliticisation acts as a tool for masking the 'rolling forward' of the state and the proliferation of new forms of neo-liberal governmentality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coordination has been a continuing challenge to governments. This paper examines the nature of those challenges, and proceeds to consider the possibilities for a theory of coordination. In particular the paper considers means of overcoming the collective action problems involved in coordination through means other than hierarchy. Several alternative mechanisms for producing greater coordination in policy are examined, and then situated in their broader political and organisational contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the problem of how to engage with the politics of public policy in the current period of cuts, austerity and retrenchment. It explores current strategies of divestment, design and decentralisation, assessing the scope within each for creative enactments and alternative pathways. It then explores 'public-making' as a means of countering the affective consequences of austerity, and shows how practitioners mediate and manage the tensions that result through multiple forms of 'border work'. Finally the paper explores the troubled relationship between progressive policy enactments and neoliberal appropriations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is increasing debate about the role that public policy research can play in identifying solutions to complex policy challenges. Most studies focus on describing and explaining how governance systems operate. However, some scholars argue that because current institutions are often not up to the task, researchers need to rethink this 'bystander' approach and engage in experimentation and interventions that can help to change and improve governance systems. This paper contributes to this discourse by developing a design science framework that integrates retrospective research (scientific validation) and prospective research (creative design). It illustrates the merits and challenges of doing this through two case studies in the Netherlands and concludes that a design science framework provides a way of integrating traditional validation-oriented research with intervention-oriented design approaches. We argue that working at the interface between them will create new opportunities for these complementary modes of public policy research to achieve impact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, design approaches to policymaking have gained popularity among policymakers. However, a critical reflection on their added value and on how contemporary 'design-thinking' approaches relates to the classical idea of public administration as a design science, is still lacking. This introductory paper reflects upon the use of design approaches in public administration. We delve into the more traditional ideas of design as launched by Simon and policy design, but also into the present-day design wave, stemming from traditional design sciences. Based upon this we distinguish between three ideal-type approaches of design currently characterising the discipline: design as optimisation, design as exploration and design as co-creation. More rigorous empirical analyses of applications of these approaches is necessary to further develop public administration as a design science. We reflect upon the question of how a more designerly way of thinking can help to improve public administration and public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The meaning of democracy is complex and contested (Gaventa, 2006: 21), and yet at its heart lies a simple and commonly understood idea. Similarly, participation is a deceptively simple notion in principle but in practice seems to be understood in many different ways. This paper interrogates these two concepts and attempts to clarify the relationship between them. As a Thematic Review paper , it focuses on debates relevant to interpreting and enacting democracy and participation, such as that on alleged 'democratic deficits'. For reasons of brevity, the paper examines political decision making without reference to the different scales (local, national, etc) on which such decision making occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reflects on public service behaviour surrounding the early post-implementation period of the 2002 Freedom of Information [Scotland] Act. Drawing from research completed in September 2007 it examines the extent to which freedom of information (FOI) is generating new arrangements for managing information, thereby supporting government's broader modernisation agenda. By showing how FOI is managed within Scottish public bodies the paper also casts light on the practice of democratic government. It shows, too, how in three key aspects -- administration, modernisation and democratisation -- the delivery of FOI is infused by political behaviours and constrictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on determinants of the duration of national policy making derived from large-scale national transposition records in nine member states, this paper demonstrates that a mixed-method approach, including the so-called fuzzy set technique, can shed helpful light on scholarly findings of the European Union implementation literature. Whereas regression analysis is concerned more with the 'effects of a cause', the diversity-oriented fuzzy set method allows for asking under which assumptions a given causal factor might be necessary for the outcome. This paper also identifies four conditions that are usually necessary for the timeliness of legally, administratively and politically motivated national transposition processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Policy & Politics is the property of Policy Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Policy & Politics is the property of Policy Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Policy & Politics is the property of Policy Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Traditional scholarship on political engagement has emphasised political parties, interest groups and social movements as ways to influence public policy. This paper highlights the particular role of advocacy coalitions as another conduit for political engagement. Drawing from scholarship associated with the Advocacy Coalition Framework, we offer a way to think about political contexts through coalitions, policy subsystems and political systems, and the attributes of politically engaged actors. It is one of the first attempts to draw practical lessons about the theory of coalitions and, thus, to facilitate better governance and politics as well as the advancement of scholarship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the nature of policy which government seeks to implement and then focusses on the ways in which central departments communicate a new policy to the local level. Having suggested a theoretical model of the implementation process, the paper goes on to discuss a part of this process within the context of the national policy on equal opportunity, derived mainly from the Race Relations Act of 1976. It draws on research which the author is undertaking on the implementation of equal opportunity policy at central and local government level. This includes a study of different government departments as well as of 2 London boroughs with contrasting characteristics and very different experiences of immigrant and ethnic minority communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to suggest possible future approaches to the study of social policy making. The paper's main argument is that students of social policy who are interested in policy making could usefully draw on concepts and theories from the developing field of policy analysis. Social policy and policy analysis have so far developed separately as fields of study, yet they share some common concerns. In particular, both are concerned with the processes of policy making and policy implementation, and it is on this common ground that students of social policy may gain insights from policy analysis. The paper is divided into three parts. In the first part a typology of traditions in the study of social policy is put forward. This is followed by a review of approaches to the study of social policy making, which examines critically the work of a number of writers who have contributed to this area of work. Then, in the third part of the paper, some suggestions are made for the closer linking of policy analysis and social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At present, Swedish procedures for environmental impact assessment -- EIA -- are under close scrutiny and debate. Should foreign (i.e. US) procedures be adopted, or should indigenous procedures be developed or refined? After presenting existing procedures for EIA of individual projects, this paper analyses present proposals to change and redirects these provisions in order to cover not only projects but also programmes and policies. Special attention is given to an analysis of the compatibility of these proposals with existing structural and procedural peculiarities of the Swedish political and administrative system, as compared to the institutional and procedural consequences of adopting foreign EIA procedures. Indigenous solutions presented in the paper seem to strike the most favorable balance between the need for an integrated, comprehensive, and participatory EIA process on the one hand, and administrative efficiency on the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Section 12 of the Social Work (Scotland) Act 1968 gave social work departments in Scotland the power to offer financial aid to any member of the community to 'promote social welfare'. Although a major break with past practice and theory, it seems that these new powers have been used to different extents by social work departments. The aim of this paper is to show how an explanation of these variations might be attempted. First. the paper reviews such ways of accounting for the variations as the extent to which financial aid is used as a substitute for payments by the SBC, the possibility that financial aid is being used as a substitute for other services, and the way that decisions are made in social work departments and variations in staffing. Secondly, it looks at the correlation between variables which might be seen as a measure of these items and variations in the provision of financial aid. In conclusion, it is suggested that a fairly high proportion of the variations in the provision of financial aid can be explained by two variables: the total expenditure on social work by the authority and the number of children under eighteen multiplied by the proportion of the authority's population in Socio-Economic Grouping II. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of local political recruitment has received little attention in Britain. This paper begins with a justification for research in this area along with a discussion of the concept of political recruitment. From this examination the paper proceeds towards specifying those aspects of political recruitment which need to be investigated if we are to understand it as a dynamic process. Finally, some preliminary findings are presented of the factors associated with the political recruitment of Labour Councillors and the implications of the type of Councillor for political attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An earlier paper traced the effects of political pressures upon the structural arrangements of public bureaucracies. Contrary to expectations such pressures were found not to associate with various measures of bureaucratization. The present paper pursues the same set of hypotheses but makes a number of conceptual and methodological changes. The results of the analysis demonstrate that parts of the public bureaucracies are affected by political pressures but in specific rather than general ways. The thrust of the original hypothesis is thus supported but not the details. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents comments on citizen preference on public policy decisions papers. The author focuses on the Tideman paper and the Clark paper, claiming that both give specific criteria for evaluating different public decision rules. He added that situational distinctions among the dimensions of public policy and citizen attitudes are especially illuminating. Tideman's original criticism was that under Clark's procedure, each voter is virtually made a monopolist seller of changes in the levels of public activities, and therefore can be expected to sell each unit at a price that gives him the whole surplus from it.

If the 1960s represented the era of a dramatic attention to massive urban crises, the 1970s sets its sights lower, focusing increasingly on the production and consumption, distribution and delivery, and equity and efficiency issues in urban public services. As Yates remarks, `it is difficult to see how a government can solve its dramatic problems if it cannot solve its routine ones,' and the distribution of public services represents a critical issue in policy analysis and judicial policy. The case of Hawkins v. Town of Shaw inaugurated litigation to redress discrimination in the distribution of public services. The resuscitation of equalitarian issues, prompted in part by the educational output literature, points up the normative, as well as the constitutional issues in service delivery questions. The most commonplace hypothesis in the discussion of urban public services is the underclass hypothesis, the suspicion that service provision is a function of the racial, class or political traits of particular neighbourhoods. Evidence, though still limited in time and place, is beginning to appear on the underclass hypothesis, and it is less than definitive. In this paper, the hypothesis is tested in a city, San Antonio, Texas, whose attributes make it propitious for a useful test. Heavily minority, and quite poor, it also exhibits a pattern of highly centralized political power. The paper examines data on the intra-municipal distribution of two services, fire protection and parks. Though the results of the analysis show that distributions may be described as 'unpatterned inequality', they are not clearly associated with variations in neighbourhood underclass concentrations. Such analysis raises, though, some fundamental questions about the larger concept of equality as a normative standard for distributing urban services. These questions, including the problem of operationalizing equality and some constitutional issues in service equalization, are also addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Policy & Politics is the property of Policy Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Policy & Politics is the property of Policy Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Policy & Politics is the property of Policy Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Policy & Politics is the property of Policy Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Policy & Politics is the property of Policy Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper examines some of the key inter- relationships between policies of urban renewal and processes of local economic development in Britain. The paper considers a crucial, yet curiously neglected, area of study, the direct distributive costs of urban regeneration strategies. We develop the argument that contemporary urban policy not only fails to address many of the strategic issues connected to the distributive consequences of policy, but is implicated in creating and extending socio-economic divisions in British cities. We illustrate, and develop, these themes by presenting a case study of urban regeneration in Cardiff, South Wales. In particular, we focus on how the regeneration plans of Cardiff Bay Development Corporation are altering the operational environment and conditions of small businesses in Cardiff's most important manufacturing area. The research supports an emerging literature which suggests that the development and delivery of urban policy is partial, divisive, and often insensitive to the needs of a range of local community groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that UK insurance companies should abandon their policy of charging differential premiums and offering differential benefits to women and men on the basis of gender specific morbidity and mortality tables. The 1975 Sex Discrimination Act (SDA) permits such practices, although subsequent legal judgments, particularly in the European Court, have challenged aspects of them. However, the spirit of the SDA, as of recent European community legislation, is to outlaw unequal treatment which arguably reflects unfair, culturally-based or outdated stereotypes about the capabilities and the needs of either sex. First, this paper considers the contemporary legal and statutory context, as regards differential treatment of women and men, in which the British insurance companies operate. Secondly, it discusses certain conflicting views as to whether such differentiation is either 'fair' to the insured or commercially necessary for the continued viability of the insurance industry, drawing on the debates in this country and the United States. The paper concludes with some suggestions as to how changes might be introduced, on a legislative or voluntary basis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at performance assessment in the management of public housing in Britain within the context of the liberalisation of housing policy undertaken in the last decade. In particular, the focus is on the impact of appraisal systems on the accountability of housing management. The paper concludes that appraisal systems have enhanced accountability to government but done little to enhance the legitimate accountability to the consumer of the management service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the notion of integration in the five main migrant receiving countries of the European Community, namely, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. I argue that the term `integration' is used in these countries primarily as a political concept of convenience to manage migrant relations. The result has been the diverse application of the term from one country to another. This is illustrated at the economic level by different degrees of economic integration, different strategies to develop social cohesion and politically through different arrangements for consultation and political participation. The paper then argues that integration also involves a longer term and universal process of adaptation. It is suggested that nation states might more usefully build their integration policies around the latter processes and identifies a number of minimum conditions for integration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1980s home ownership in Britain expanded rapidly under the impact of central government policy. From some perspectives this expansion has meant the unproblematic achievement of a variety of objectives. But the nature and significance of home ownership, and the objectives which it can fulfill, are no longer what they were in 1980, and the actors in the market no longer face the same market conditions. This is particularly so at the onset of the 1990s when the market is very depressed with falling prices, decreasing numbers of transactions and widescale default. This paper identifies ways in which two of the principal actors — households and building societies — are adapting their behaviour not only to the specific conditions at the start of the present decade, but also to other developments in the previous one. The paper also speculates about the political significance of these developments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper relates commonly held models of ageing to the assumptive worlds of policy makers and service providers. Different models of old age are related to culture (class and ethnicity), gender and the age of the beholder. The common western European view that old age is a time of inevitable and increasing dependence is mirrored by a system of service provision that emphasises dependency rather than rehabilitation. A 'terminal drop' model is closer to the majority experience of ageing today, but it does not appear to be part of the assumptive worlds of policy makers or service providers, or even of old people themselves. The paper concludes with a brief assessment of the possibilities for change in assumptive worlds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In policy terms Resource Management (R M) is something of an exception. At a time when the government has attracted criticism both for the substance of its health service policies and for its reluctance to proceed by formal experiment, RM has attracted widespread (if guarded) support and has been the subject of a three year experiment. This paper, which is based upon an interim evaluation of the RM experiments in acute hospitals in England, examines the nature of RM. It is suggested that its origin shows the influence of a number of distinct strands that appeal to different constituencies within the health service. Each of these strands presents its own specific characteristics and issues as RM is implemented. These are considered in turn before suggesting that RM can usefully be thought of as a management process that combines and integrates the different strands. The paper concludes by examining how the changes associated with introducing RM are being handled and why the process of change is taking longer than first thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]