The Euro as an International Currency: explaining puzzling first evidence from the foreign exchange markets

This paper presents evidence that the bid-ask spreads in euro rates increased relative to the corresponding bid-ask spreads in the German mark (DM) prior to the creation of the currency union. This comes with a decrease in transaction volume in the euro rates relative to the previous DM rates. The starkest example is the DM(euro)/yen rate in which the spread has risen by almost two-thirds while the volume decreased by more than one third. This outcome is surprising because the common currency concentrated market liquidity in fewer external euro rates and higher volume tends to be associated with lower spreads. We propose a microstructure explanation based on a change in the information environment of the FX market. The elimination of many cross currency pairs increased the market transparency for order flow imbalances in the dealership market. It is argued that higher market transparency adversely affects the inventory risk sharing efficiency of the dealership market and induces the observed euro spread increase and transaction volume shortfall.

'Foreign' Terror? London Bombings, Resistance and the Failing State

The British government's response to the London bombings sought to make the terror of that day foreign, even though it appeared largely domestic. This helped construct it as unusual, contingent, part of the uncontrollable ‘otherness’ of the ‘foreign’. However, it also drew the response into the arena of British foreign policy, where the ‘failing state’ has been the dominant conceptualisation of insecurity and terrorism, especially since September 11th. When the bombings are examined through the ‘failing state’ disturbing and important problems are uncovered. Primarily, the ‘failing state’ discourse deconstructs under the influence of the terrorism in London, revealing that Britain itself is a ‘failing state’ by its own description and producing a generalisation of state ‘failure’. It thereby reveals several possible sites for responding to and resisting the government's representation.

No Easy Way Through: Black Workers and Race Leadership at the Nadir

It is difficult, even excruciating, to imagine the staggering descent from high optimism to despondency experienced by many African Americans who lived between emancipation and the dawn of the twentieth century. For historians living in the post–civil rights era, recapturing the scale, velocity, and brutality of that dramatic fall has been hampered by two conceptual problems. The first of these, undergirded by prominent trends in the formerly “new” social history, is a widely shared enthusiasm for illuminating those hidden corners of daily life where men and women on the receiving end of Jim Crow continued to wield a degree of control. “Agency” has been the buzzword for a generation of scholarship that emphasizes the staying power and persistence of black Southerners in the face of relentless assaults on their social and economic status, their civil rights, and even, at times, their collective existence. This is, in many ways, an understandable reaction to an earlier consensus that relegated black historical initiative to the margins of a national fable cleansed of unseemly violence and sharp social conflict, but it can also be problematic.

Reterritorialising Canada: Arctic ice’s liquid modernity and the imagining of a Canadian archipelago

Studying mobile actor networks of moving people, objects, images, and discourses, in conjunction with changing time-spaces, offers a unique opportunity to understand important, and yet relatively neglected, “relational material” dynamics of mobility. A key example of this phenomenon is the recontinentalization of Canada amidst dramatically changing articulations of the meanings and boundaries of the Canadian land-ice- ocean mass. A notable reason why Canada is being re-articulated in current times is the extensiveness of Arctic thawing. The reconfiguration of space and “motility” options in the Arctic constitutes an example of how “materiality and sociality produce themselves together.” In this paper we examine the possibilities and risks connected to this recontinentalization of Canada’s North. In exploring the past, present, and immediate future of this setting, we advance the paradigmatic view that Canada’s changing Arctic is the key element in a process of transformation of Canada into a peninsular body encompassed within a larger archipelagic entity: a place more intimately attuned to its immense (and growing) coastal and insular routes.

Textualising British Politics: Deconstructing the subject of British foreign policy

British politics has been described as a sub-discipline crying out for methodological and ideational cross-fertilisation. Where other areas of political science have benefited from new ideas, British politics has remained largely atheoretical and underdeveloped. This has changed recently with the rise of interpretivism but the study of British politics would also benefit from more serious engagement with poststructuralism. With this in mind, I examine how the thought of Jacques Derrida and deconstruction could be useful for thinking through the foundations of British politics, re-examining what appears natural or given and revealing the problematic and contradictory status of these foundations. After suggesting the need to 'textualise' British politics', I illustrate how deconstruction operates in a specific context, that of British foreign policy since 1997. This exploration reveals how certain decisions (such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003) became possible in the first place, and how their basis in an idea of an 'us' and a 'them', a coherent, autonomous subject separate from its object, is deeply problematic. Such a critical reading of British politics is impossible within the dominant interpretivist framework, and opens up new possibilities for thought which form an important supplement to existing ways of studying the field.

An audit of assessment and reporting by Approved Social Workers (ASWs)

This paper examines the routine practice of Approved Social Workers (ASWs) in adult mental health services in Northern Ireland. It begins with a review of existing literature on the ASW role before describing how a retrospective audit, using a mixed methods approach, was used to collect data on eighty-four assessments carried out to determine whether compulsory admission to hospital was needed. Respondents were also asked to consider how such assessments might be affected by proposed changes to the law in this field. The key findings highlighted a number of areas of practice that may be improved. There were inconsistencies in how the assessments were recorded and an uneven distribution of workloads across ASWs. Some problems were identified with interagency working and, in a quarter of the assessments, the ASW reported having felt afraid or at risk. The authors make a number of recommendations, which include: the use of a standard reporting procedure; that organisations should consider how to deliver a more even distribution of ASW workload; that protocols should be developed that ensure that ASWs are not left alone in potentially risky situations; and that joint assessments with General Practitioners should be required, rather than just recommended.

Coercion in the Community: A Situated Approach to the Examination of Ethical Challenges for Mental Health Social Workers

Increasingly, mental health social workers in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the world are employing coercive interventions with clients. This paper explores this trend in the context of community-based settings, using national and international research literature on this subject. It begins with a discussion about the complex, contested nature of ideas on coercion. The authors then explore debates about how coercion is perceived and applied in practice. They choose two forms of coercion*/informal types of leverage, and the legally mandated use of Community Treatment Orders*/to highlight the range of ethical problems and dilemmas that confront practitioners in this field. The authors conclude by developing a tentative, explanatory model to explain how and why mental health social workers should consider a more holistic, situated approach to help deal with ethical concerns about the use of coercion.

Decision making by senior social workers at point of first referral

In the United Kingdom there has been difficulty in implementing the family support provisions contained in the 1989 Children Act, largely because of continued emphasis on child protection activity by local authorities. There is an observable international tendency for child-care referrals to receive investigative response, resulting in families being traumatized and children's needs left unmet. There has been a lack of research into how child-care referrals are initially categorized by senior social workers. This paper reports on research undertaken in two Health and Social Services Trusts within Northern Ireland to ascertain if it might be possible to treat more initial referrals as 'child-care problem enquiries' as opposed to 'child protection investigations'. Results demonstrate that, while such potential may exist, a preoccupation with the management of risk could lead to the development of child-care problems receiving quasi-child protection responses. Consequently, changes in initial decision making may not have the full intended effects in terms of the organizational release of resources for family support or a lessening of the traumatic impact upon families.