The politics of ethical foreign policy::A responsibility to protect whom?

Ethical foreign policy persists as a problem of international relations, especially regarding humanitarian intervention. However, despite apparent international upheavals, the debate about the ethics of humanitarian intervention has remained fundamentally unchanged. To escape the limits of this debate, this article deconstructs British claims to ethical foreign policy since 1997, reading these claims against themselves and against contemporary humanitarian intervention literature. It finds that Britain’s ethical framework, the ‘doctrine of international community’, which justifies interventions in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, is undone by the anomalous, yet exemplary, invasion of Iraq. This demonstrates the politics of ethical foreign policy: first, that any intervention, no matter how ‘ethical’ or ‘right’, produces suffering and death; and, second, that we cannot know for sure whether we are doing the right thing by intervening. Embracing, rather than effacing, the political nature of ethical foreign policy opens up a more intellectually honest and positive potential future for relating to the foreign in a responsible manner.

‘Stakeholders’ views of legal and advice services for people admitted to psychiatric hospital’

This paper describes a study that used a mixed method approach to elicit the views of a range of stakeholders about experiences of compulsory admission to psychiatric hospital, and the use of the Mental Health Review Tribunal (MHRT). The paper begins with an introduction to the background of the study, one that took place in Northern Ireland, a region in the UK with its own mental health legislation and policy. A review of literature is then presented. This highlights some of the disadvantages that service users and carers face when dealing with professionals during and following compulsory admission to hospital. This section concludes with an overview of literature on the MHRT in the UK. A range of methods was used to gather data from the following stakeholders: five service user and carer focus group interviews (n = 44); interviews with four lawyers experienced in Tribunal work; an interview with a legal member of the Tribunal; a survey of solicitors who identified themselves as equipped to carry out Tribunal work; interviews with three managers of organisations that provided patient advocacy services; letters to hospital managers requesting information provided to patients and carers. The findings reveal a number of themes associated with these experiences of compulsory admission to hospital and subsequent use of the Tribunal. Service users and carers generally found it difficult to access relevant information about rights, information provided by hospital managers was uneven and lawyers were often not familiar with processes associated with compulsory admission. There was a range of views about the Tribunal. Most respondents felt that the Tribunal was necessary and mostly satisfactory in the way it carried out its functions, but stakeholders raised a number of issues. Carers in particular felt that they should be more involved in decision-making processes, whereas lawyers tended to be focused on more technical, legal issues. Problems of regrading prior to the Tribunal and in examining medical evidence were highlighted by lawyers. There was an appeal for better information and advice by service users and carers, and recognition of the need for better training and education for lawyers. The paper concludes with a brief discussion about current mental health law in the UK, arguing that, in this context, professionals should more proactively use information and advice that can enable service users and carers to defend their rights. Keywords: compulsory mental health; law; legal and advice services

Local differences, perceptions and IB claimants: implications for policy delivery

Geographical unevenness in labour market and social conditions is one reason why the 'local' has been emphasised increasingly in the delivery of labour market policy in the UK. This article explores the extent to which there are local differences in labour market conditions using the characteristics and experiences of Incapacity Benefit (IB) claimants in Northern Ireland as an example. It then offers some comments on the potential for policy initiatives to cope with these spatial variations. Evidence from a survey of 803 IB claimants is used, supplemented by focus group material derived from discussions with Personal Advisers (PAs). The article shows that whilst there are important variations between areas, largely in the quantity and quality of jobs, and the perceptions that IB claimants hold of their local labour markets, there are also similarities in the general types of labour market barriers they face across areas. There is some evidence, however, to conclude that these barriers in urban areas are particularly pronounced and that some IB claimants in these places face severer obstacles to re-integration in the labour market than those in rural areas. The article also suggests that policy delivery to cope with these geographical differences faces two problems. First, capacity to respond to local differences is limited by strong systemic impulses towards centralisation. Secondly, and paradoxically, local differences erode capacity to respond to severer urban problems because social/institutional capacity within providers and policy-deliverers in these places is limited by high staff turnover and a crowded institutional landscape.