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Concern that children are not engaging in enough physical activity (PA) to bring about health benefits is a crisis globally. This paper aims to examine primary school-based PA initiatives from with...

Primary physical education is quickly becoming an area of academic interest with a particular focus on new entrants into the profession. This study adopts a Personal Construct methodology to identi...

After two decades of political interest in primary Physical Education (PE) and school sport, the London 2012 Games (and its promised legacy) ushered in a new wave of government investment. To date,...

Previous studies have reported that generalist primary teachers lack the confidence and competence to teach Physical Education (PE). In response, schools have outsourced PE to external prov...

This chapter provides an overview of the Physical Education (PE) curriculum at Key Stage 1, with practical examples to support curriculum planning for physical development. It highlights some of the contemporary challenges facing teachers in meeting the subject’s expectations. Key Stage 1 frames a child’s first formal experience of the National Curriculum and of PE and must, therefore, set the tone and ambition of what it means to be physically educated. The education of the physical self can create spaces where children learn about themselves, how to be healthy and invite social interaction. The chapter describes a lesson where Key Stage 1 children were involved in a pirate themed treasure hunt, finding and solving clues in small groups. The environment and context for learning will shape the child’s movement experience, which at this stage should be characterised by mastery, opportunity, exploration and practice.

This article discusses older women's participation in local political parties in the London area. Its analytical framework draws on intersectionality as a perspective together with feminist political science and political gerontology. Empirically, it refers to research in seven parliamentary constituencies, based primarily on semi-structured interviews, focusing on roles, activities and contribution; underlying motivation; and experiences of marginalisation or exclusion. A complex picture emerges with effects of gender and age-mediated, especially by political party and location. Experiences are found to differ in different stages of old age, but there is no simple pattern of cumulative disadvantage for older women.

This chapter examines the role of institutions and how institutionalism is applied in the analysis of politics in the developing world. It begins with a discussion of three main strands of institutionalism: sociological institutionalism, rational choice institutionalism, and historical institutionalism. It then considers political institutions in developing countries as well as the interrelationship between formal and informal institutions. Three cases are presented: the case from sub-Saharan Africa illustrates the salience of neo-patrimonial politics and competing informal and formal institutions, the second case relates to campaign clientelism in Peru and the third is concerned with electoral quotas in India. The chapter concludes by addressing the question of the extent to which the new institutionalism is an appropriate tool of analysis for developing countries.

This edition examines the changing nature of politics in the developing world in the twenty-first century, with emphasis on the complex and changing nexus between state and society. It analyses key developments and debates, and this is illustrated by current examples drawn from the global South, tackling a range of issues such as institutions and governance, the growing importance of alternative politics and social movements, security, and post-conflict state-crafting. The text also discusses the Arab Spring and South–South relations and offers new case studies of Syria and the Sudan as well as China, India, and Brazil. This introduction considers the question of the meaningfulness of the Third World as an organizing concept, whether politics is an independent or a dependent variable, and a number of major interconnected global trends that have resulted in a growing convergence in the developing world. It also provides an overview of the organization of this edition.

This chapter explores the relationship between women/gender and political processes in the developing world. It begins with a discussion of the social context and ‘construction’ of gender, as well as the ways in which the state and politics have shaped women’s experience. It then considers the women’s movement, with case studies based in Brazil, Pakistan, and South Korea, along with women’s political representation and participation. It also examines the development and impact of feminism and women’s movements before concluding with an analysis of factors affecting policy related to women, focusing on issues such as abortion and girls’ access to education.

Women’s activism in Africa is an edited volume that focuses on the experiences of the African women’s movement. It provides case studies based in eight African countries – Ghana, Kenya, Morocco, Si...

There are many reasons to be optimistic about the study of British politics, not least the excellent intentions of its leading figures. Some grounds for concern nonetheless remain. Most obvious are threats posed by the worsening funding situation, which underline the need to demonstrate research relevance and ensure readability. In addition, given that British politics research needs to provide depth of explanation, it is regrettable that perspectives of political sociology and Marxism have tended to be sidelined. Although the value of diversity is recognised in theory, there is significant under-representation both of female and especially BME voices in the discipline, as well as insufficient focus on the dimension of age in substantive research. Finally, studies of British politics need to take the long view, which means giving greater emphasis in particular to environmental issues.

This article focuses on the contribution, actual or potential, of political parties to the project of a ‘democratic developmental state’. In the classic developmental state, individual hegemonic parties often, though by no means always, played a key role. However, on the available evidence, parties make a very limited contribution to the emergence of new democratic developmental states, in terms of either democracy-building or policy-making, recruitment, ensuring accountability or policy implementation. Reasons include weak institutionalisation and the prevalence of clientelism. External assistance, nevertheless, is likely to be limited in impact and, given the importance of autonomous party development, should ideally be indirect.

This article is concerned with explaining the relatively disappointing results of the Labour government's National Childcare Strategy to date, with particular emphasis on the role of the EYDCPs (Early Years Development and Childcare Partnerships). After briefly describing and assessing childcare policy under Labour, it suggests that limited outcomes partly reflect the constraining legacy of previous policy and provision, but must also be related to the way childcare has fitted into the wider government agenda, and ‘third way’ discourse. This has affected not only policy content but the chosen means of implementation. In this context the article focuses in particular on the local EYDCPs: both their rationale and the part they have played in practice.

This article argues that, while the notion of a ‘Third World’ retains relevance and usefulness in the context of geopolitical analysis, generalisations about Third World politics are no longer helpful or justifiable. It begins by reviewing the historic rationales for the notion of the Third World together with criticisms made of these arguments. It then considers reasons why the term may retain some value at a geopolitical level: in signalling a major axis of inequality, providing a symbolic basis for collective action and, possibly, as an alternative to less attractive perspectives. The article then turns more specifically to the field of comparative politics, suggesting that in the past the notion of a Third World could be justified pragmatically as a response to the insularity of Western political science and because there was, up to a point, a common paradigm of Third World politics. Such justifications have been undermined by the growth in specialist knowledge of individual Third World countries or r...

English The government's new child daycare policy, based on local ‘partnerships’, must reckon with tremendous local diversity of provision. This article draws on case studies of six English local authorities – Barnet, Kensington and Chelsea, Leeds, Manchester, Oxfordshire and North Tyneside – first to characterise more fully this variation of local daycare regimes and second, to explore the role played in shaping and modifying these regimes by local party and gender politics. The conclusion considers implications for local responses to recent national childcare initiatives.

(2002). Introduction: The Contribution of Parties to Democracy and Democratic Consolidation. Democratization: Vol. 9, No. 3, pp. 1-10.

The literature on democratisation emphasises the contribution of political parties, and in that context the importance of party institutionalization. But this concept remains relatively unexplored. Our article first considers the relationship between party institutionalization and party system institutionalization, pointing out that they are not necessarily convergent. We then review the existing literature on party institutionalization, indicating weaknesses and contradictions, before offering our own analytic model. In the final section we identify some of the key considerations arising when this model is applied to the particular circumstances of democratic transition in the Third World.