Vision and reality: community involvement in Irish urban regeneration

This article examines the processes and outcomes of community involvement in six Irish urban regeneration case studies, three in Dublin and three in Belfast. The findings are part of a wider study using a Complex Adaptive Systems perspective to analyse public sector decision making. Key points included: (1) the community ‘vision’ of the regeneration as an emergent property, which converged towards the vision held by the implementing agencies in the four most successful programmes; and (2) the identification of three features that contribute to non-linear (unpredictable) behaviour: a history of community involvement; the availability of resources; and the intervention of key individuals at crisis points.

Stakeholders and perspectivism in qualitative policy evaluation: A realist reflection

This paper examines the epistemological bases for the inclusion of stakeholders in policy research. While it concedes that the input of stakeholders provides essential expert and experiential knowledge for the understanding of complex policies and programmes, it contends that the approach which assumes that all interpretations of policy including those of stakeholders should be afforded equal validity, which we term relativist perspectivism, undermines the possibility of robust research by allowing power to replace methodological rigour as the primary research dynamic. It is noted that this problem tends to be more acute when the research is qualitative. A study into the gendered effects of Common Agricultural Policy reforms is used as an illustrative example of how research can be compromised by relativist perspectivism. It is argued that realist research methodologies uniquely provide the capacity to maintain epistemological robustness, while also being able to take due account of the perspectives of stakeholders.

Mapping the Governance Reform of Welfare to Work in Britain under New Labour

This article draws on Newman's (2001, 2007) typology of the modernization of governance under New Labor, to examine the development of British welfare to work administration. Concentrating on the delivery of active labor market policy, the article suggests network forms of governance occupy a marginal role in welfare to work delivery. Managerialist and hierarchical forms of governance dominate administration of activation policy. In accordance with UK tradition, a national centralized, top down system exercises control of social security and employment services administration, but increasingly seeks to realize its goals through a market system of delivery.

Education, Education, Education: the Third Way and PFI

In 1997, New Labour set about the task of reforming public services in the United Kingdom through the use of an ideology that became known as the ‘Third Way’. This research examines the context from which this concept emerged, and explores its relationship with the tools of delivery, with particular reference to the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). The paper begins by reviewing the Third Way, before analysing the arguments for and against PFI. Using an example from the Northern Ireland education sector, the paper argues that the characteristics associated with the Third Way are mirrored in the operational tools of public service delivery, such as PFI. The paper concludes that, within the context of the case study reviewed, there is a ‘consistent pragmatism’ in play in relation to how these delivery initiatives are operated and how they relate to their conceptual underpinnings.