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This article argues that political participation is shaped by locally distinctive 'rules-in-use', notwithstanding the socio-economic status or level of social capital in an area. It recognizes that the resources available to people, as well as the presence of social capital within communities, are potential key determinants of the different levels of local participation in localities. However, the article focuses on a third factor – the institutional rules that frame participation. Levels of participation are found to be related to the openness of the political system, the presence of a 'public value' orientation among local government managers, and the effectiveness of umbrella civic organizations. Whereas resources and social capital are not factors that can be changed with any great ease, the institutional determinants of participation are more malleable. Through case study analysis, the article shows how actors have shaped the environment within which citizens make their decisions about engagement, resulting in demonstrable effects upon levels of participation.

A world-leading article that anticipated current criminal justice events: This article has been acknowledged by Parks and Crump, a US firm of attorneys representing the family of Martin Lee Anderson, killed by guards at a Florida boot-camp in January 2006, and currently suing for $40m. http://www.nospank.net/anderson.htm An unexplained death in custody represents an important focal point for public scrutiny of the criminal justice system, especially when excess deaths occur in those of minority ethnic descent. Sickle cell anaemia is a serious inherited blood disorder disproportionately affecting minority ethnic groups. Sickle cell trait is the genetic carrier state and not an illness. The evidence suggests that the treatment of sickle cell in the criminal justice system is twofold. Justice authorities have misused sickle cell trait to explain away ten sudden deaths, often associated with forced restraint, of African-Caribbean people in custody. Meanwhile, seven deaths have been attributable to lack of provision of health care for those prisoners suffering from the illness sickle cell anaemia.

The Human Tissue Bill, described in Parliament as a'landmark Bill',' was introduced into the House of Commons on 3 December 2003 by Secretary of State John Reid, was brought to the House of Lords on 29 June 2004, completed its progress through the Upper House on 10 November 2004, and received the Royal Assent on 15 November 2004. It is due to come into force, for the most part, on days to be specified in commencement orders. Full implementation is not anticipated until at least April 2006, although transitional arrangements will be put in place. The Act will repeal in their entirety the Human Tissue Act 1961, the Anatomy Act 1984 and the Human Organ Transplants Act 1989 (except with regard to Scotland), and the Human Tissue Act (Northern Ireland) 1962, as well as making various other smaller and consequential amendments. The Act is principally a response to the furore generated by revelations about practices relating to the retention and use of human tissue in the Bristol Royal Infirmary2 (Kennedy) and Alder Hey Children's Hospital in Liverpool3 (Redfern) Inquiry Reports, and more latterly the Isaacs Report,4 in particular.5 These Reports catalogued local practices resulting in relatives, principally parents of dead children, lacking appreciation of subsequent tissue retention and use for research following (generally coroners')6 post-mortem examinations, often resulting in the burial or cremation of loved ones without the realisation that they were not 'complete', and some further burials or cremations of body parts.' It tran

Almond and Edwards joint lead authors 50:50

Most studies of local autonomy and local democracy fail to distinguish adequately between the two terms. As a consequence, there is an assumed bilateral relationship between them in which changes in one are always deemed to affect the other – particularly in policy formulations. This article develops a stronger analytical distinction between them by considering local autonomy in three separate ways: as freedom from central interference; as freedom to effect particular outcomes; and as the reflection of local identity. Each of these conceptualisations raises different challenges for local democracy and its relationship to broader forms of democratic practice. When used to analyse the recent emergence of the ‘new localism’ as a policy approach within Britain, this separation also shows significant limitations in current policies towards democratic renewal and central policies that are supposedly focused on outcomes rather than processes. Although localities are being afforded some autonomy, most initiatives are not supporting the enhancement of local democracy.

The introduction, via the Local Government Act 2000, of political executives held to account by influential overview and scrutiny committees challenges fundamentally the traditional operations of the party group system. This paper uses evidence from a variety of sources (including the experience of Parliamentary select committees) to explore how councillors are managing the tensions between party group loyalty and the expectation surrounding the operation of scrutiny. Four models of party group behaviour are identified with the group acting as partner, arbitrator, filter and Leviathan respectively. These typologies are then used (together with research evidence) to interpret the circumstances in which effective scrutiny may be aided or hindered by party group dynamics. Three alternative scenarios, which illustrate the impact of different political dynamics on the effectiveness of scrutiny, are identified and explored. It is concluded that the success of the overview and scrutiny experiment is by no means assured and faced with the intransigent nature of most party group behaviour, the future of effective scrutiny hangs in the balance.

Political leadership has become a much more explicit and widespread feature of English urban governance than it was 20 years ago. It has become particularly high profile since the Labour Government came into power in 1997 and sponsored legislation (Local Government Act 2000) which required all English local authorities to replace or modify the existing committee system of decision-making by adopting one of four prescribed options, the thrust of which was to strengthen executive governance. This article considers the legislative drivers for change against the backdrop of long-established cultural traditions, most notably the continued dominance of the party group which, in many ways, is inimical to the exercise of individual political leadership. It is argued that the way local authorities develop new models of executive governance reflects the local political culture. In other words the ‘locality effect’ assumes considerable importance when considering new patterns of executive governance in urban England. This article explores the interplay between the changing operational and institutional context and the resilient traditions of party group behaviour. It concludes that, while over a period of time there is likely to be considerable change in the patterns of urban political leadership, the rate of progress to that end will be highly differential. (English) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Central-local relations have been of particular interest since the Labour government came to power in 1997. Both academics and practitioners have pointed to tensions within the Labour government's reform agenda—between a ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approach; between a drive for national standards and the encouragement of local learning and innovation; and between strengthening executive leadership and enhancing public participation. It is argued that while Labour's modernisation strategy has clear elements of a top-down approach (legislation, inspectorates, white papers, etc) there is also a significant bottom-up dimension (a variety of zones, experiments and pilots, albeit with different degrees of freedom). This article utilises a multi-level governance framework of analysis and argues that, while much of the research using such frameworks has hitherto focused on the EU, recent developments in governance at neighbourhood, local authority, sub-regional and regional levels facilitate its application within a nation state. The central thesis is that, while there is extensive interaction between actors at sub-national level, this should not be seen as a proxy for policy influence. The local political arena is characterised less by multi-level governance than by multi-level dialogue. Sub-national actors participate but they are rarely major players in shaping policy outcomes: the plurality which characterises sub-central governance does not reflect a pluralist power structure.

The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com The study of stress in mental health nurses has almost always focused on factors intrinsic to their job roles and has neglected the interaction between work and home roles, which may also be a source of stress. Moreover, role theory has not provided an adequate account of either personal or occupational change, especially when this results from the experience of stress. Methods. Twenty community mental health nurses agreed to participate in semistructured interviews about the stresses they experienced at work and at home. A grounded theory analysis disclosed the centrality of conflicts between work and home roles in participants' accounts and this provided the focus for subsequent detailed readings of the interview transcripts. Findings. Participants described how difficult and often demanding family situations were integrated with professional careers in a climate of rapid organizational change in the health service. As well as being an ongoing source of strain, these competing role demands were often described as leading to sudden changes for individual workers, such as periods of illness or re-evaluation of their work role. To assist in making sense of this process, the term ˜punctuated equilibria" was adopted to illuminate the build-up of tension between work and domestic lives, which was described by some workers as leading to a sudden reformulation of their relationship to their work roles and employing organizations. Conclusions and limitations. The study was small-scale and relied on retrospective self-reports. Nevertheless, it emphasized the importance of considering all the roles that individuals play and highlights the possibility that, even when staff are apparently coping with their roles at work and home, difficulties may be building up which could lead to a sudden period of absenteeism or disillusionment.

This article focuses upon one particular aspect of new institutionalist thinking – that which analyses the scope for, and constraints upon, deliberate interventions in institutional change. New institutionalist insights are used to illuminate the challenges faced by the British Labour government in its programme for modernizing local government. The focus is upon two core concepts: robustness and revisability – a pairing which highlights the potential contradictions that exist within the new institutionalist approach to design. It is argued that New Labour struggled to achieve a balance between these key design criteria during its first term, with revisability increasingly sacrificed in favour of robustness. In its second term in office (since June 2001), Labour has sought to rebalance robustness and revisability, largely through the principle of ‘earned autonomy’. In this context the values informing the institutional redesign of local government have become less clear and more contested, and there has been a progressive shift from commitment-based to control-based strategies for change.

The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com Traditionally, stigma is seen as something that is the fault of the mental health system, and that involves an individual suffering social disapprobation and reduced life chances as a result of having been given a diagnostic label and an identity as a patient as a result of their contact with psychiatric institutions. The present study, based on focus group discussions conducted with users and mental healthcare workers in a rural setting, suggests that this classic conception of stigma does not readily apply to care in the community. First, workers described themselves as actively trying to challenge stigma at an institutional level, as well as being apt to change their own practice to reduce the stigmatizing effect of mental healthcare on their clients and make their presence less conspicuous. The ideal was to be ˜like a friend going round". However, this view included a somewhat passive notion of clients. By contrast, the present investigation showe! d that clients described themselves in much more active terms as being aware of possible sources of stigma and being inclined to challenge negative attitudes themselves. Future mental healthcare practice could draw upon professionals stock of knowledge as to how their practice could lead to less stigma and could build upon clients's own strengths to achieve stigma reduction.

The embeddedness of ethnic minority business activity is widely accepted, as researchers increasingly eschew ethno-culturalist explanations of the phenomenon. However, despite the importance of urban processes, studies of ethnic minority enterprise are often ‘spaceless’. This article uses Rekers and van Kempen’s urban spatial framework to assess the experiences of South Asian owners in Birmingham’s restaurant industry. One taken-for-granted but evidently important element to which this article draws attention is location, which emerges as one of the key points of differentiation within the ethnic business community. Location is seen to influence individual access to market potential, an unevenly distributed resource largely shaped by local social geography. At the same time, entry into more lucrative market niches is heavily dependent on the possession of other resources such as capital, information and in some instances management skills. Si l’integration d’entreprises creees par des minorites ethniques est largement admise, les chercheurs evitent de plus en plus les explications ethno-culturalistes du phenomene. Par ailleurs, malgre l’importance des processus urbains, les etudes sur ces entreprises n’ont souvent pas de ‘bornes’. Cet article utilise le cadre spatial urbain de Rekers et van Kempen pour evaluer les experiences de proprietaires de restaurants sud-asiatiques a Birmingham. Il attire l’attention sur une composante normale, quoique manifestement importante: le lieu. Celui-ci apparait comme l’un des points de differenciation essentiels au sein de la communauteeconomique ethnique. Il influence l’acces individuel au marche potentiel, ressource inegalement repartie et largement configuree par la geographie sociale locale. Parallelement, une penetration de niches de marche plus lucratives depend considerablement de la detention d’autres ressources, telles qu’un capital, des informations et, dans certains cas, des competences de dirigeant.

This is a two part article which should be read as one (see RAE FAQ: www.rae.ac.uk/faq/default.asp?selcat=4&q=119). The first part is: 'Trends in Public Participation: Part 1 – Local Government Perspectives' PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION 79/1 pp205-222 (DOI 10.1111/1467-9299.00253). The research that it reports provided the baseline against which the Government has evaluated the success of its subsequent local government participation policy. These articles were the two most electronically accessed items in Public Administration in 2001.

This paper argues that 'uncertain identities' are a distinct contributing factor to the residual and intractable level of smoking among young people. Further, it argues that the significance of this factor is increased by the specific social/historical context of late modernity. Findings from research with 15 to 16 year olds in the East Midlands of England are used to explore the role that smoking is perceived to play in constructing a self identity. A voluntaristic perspective is adopted on the use of tobacco, reflecting both the focus on young people's motivation to smoke and the tendency for many young people to perceive smoking as a matter of personal choice. Smoking was found to have a symbolic significance not only in terms of the presentation of self to others but also in terms of the reflexive construction of the self by those involved. The paper analyses the role of smoking in relation to self-image, self-empowerment and self-affirmation and it is concluded that for many young people smoking has certain benefits in terms of coping with uncertain identities.