Beyond tokenism? Community-led planning and rational choices: findings from participants in local agenda-setting at the neighbourhood scale in England

The article confronts some key issues raised in the literature on public participation via a series of interrogatory questions drawn from rational choice theory. These are considered in relation to the design and process of public participation opportunities in planning and wider processes of local governance at the neighbourhood scale. In doing this, the article draws on recent research that has looked in some depth at a form of community-led planning (CLP) in England. The motives and expectations of participants, the abilities of participants, as well as the conditions in which participation takes place are seen as important factors. It is contended that the issues raised by rational choice theory are pertinent to emerging efforts to engage communities. As such, the article concludes that advocates of public participation or community engagement should not be afraid of responding to the challenges posed by questions of motive and reward of participants if lasting and worthwhile participation is to be established. Indeed, questions such as 'what's in it for me?' should be regarded as legitimate, necessary and indeed standard, in order to co-devise meaningful and durable participation opportunities and appropriate institutional environments. However, it is also maintained that wider considerations and capacity questions will also need to be confronted if participation is to become embedded as part of participatory neighbourhood-scale planning.

Provider diversity in the English NHS: a study of recent developments in four local health economies

Objectives: The overall objective of the research was to assess the impact of provider diversity on quality and innovation in the English NHS. The aims were to map the extent of diverse provider activity, identify the differences in performance between Third Sector Organisations (TSOs), for-profit private enterprises, and incumbent organisations within the NHS, and the factors that affect the entry and growth of new private and TSOs. Methods: Case studies of four Local Health Economies (LHEs). Data included: semi-structured interviews with 48 managerial and clinical staff from NHS organizations and providers from the private and Third Sector; some documentary evidence; a focus group with service users; and routine data from the Care Quality Commission and Companies House. Data collection was mainly between November 2008 and November 2009. Results: Involvement of diverse providers in the NHS is limited. Commissioners’ local strategies influence degrees of diversity. Barriers to the entry for TSOs include lack of economies of scale in the bidding process. Private providers have greater concern to improve patient pathways and patient experience, whereas TSOs deliver quality improvements by using a more holistic approach and a greater degree of community involvement. Entry of new providers drives NHS Trusts to respond by making improvements. Information sharing diminishes as competition intensifies. Conclusions: There is scope to increase the participation of diverse providers in the NHS, but care must be taken not to damage public accountability, overall productivity, equity and NHS providers (especially acute hospitals, which are likely to remain in the NHS) in the process.

Statebuilding and governance: the conundrums of legitimacy and local ownership

The chapter explores the role of legitimacy in statebuilding. It first explores the concept of legitimacy and why it matters for successful statebuilding; it surveys how international statebilding efforts have tried to strengthen the legitimacy of post-conflict states; and examines the practices of local ownership in statebuilding, and how they relate to legitimation efforts.

An exact local conservation theorem for finite-amplitude disturbances to non-parallel shear flows, with remarks on Hamiltonian structure and on Arnol'd's stability theorems

Disturbances of arbitrary amplitude are superposed on a basic flow which is assumed to be steady and either (a) two-dimensional, homogeneous, and incompressible (rotating or non-rotating) or (b) stably stratified and quasi-geostrophic. Flow over shallow topography is allowed in either case. The basic flow, as well as the disturbance, is assumed to be subject neither to external forcing nor to dissipative processes like viscosity. An exact, local ‘wave-activity conservation theorem’ is derived in which the density A and flux F are second-order ‘wave properties’ or ‘disturbance properties’, meaning that they are O(a2) in magnitude as disturbance amplitude a [rightward arrow] 0, and that they are evaluable correct to O(a2) from linear theory, to O(a3) from second-order theory, and so on to higher orders in a. For a disturbance in the form of a single, slowly varying, non-stationary Rossby wavetrain, $\overline{F}/\overline{A}$ reduces approximately to the Rossby-wave group velocity, where (${}^{-}$) is an appropriate averaging operator. F and A have the formal appearance of Eulerian quantities, but generally involve a multivalued function the correct branch of which requires a certain amount of Lagrangian information for its determination. It is shown that, in a certain sense, the construction of conservable, quasi-Eulerian wave properties like A is unique and that the multivaluedness is inescapable in general. The connection with the concepts of pseudoenergy (quasi-energy), pseudomomentum (quasi-momentum), and ‘Eliassen-Palm wave activity’ is noted. The relationship of this and similar conservation theorems to dynamical fundamentals and to Arnol'd's nonlinear stability theorems is discussed in the light of recent advances in Hamiltonian dynamics. These show where such conservation theorems come from and how to construct them in other cases. An elementary proof of the Hamiltonian structure of two-dimensional Eulerian vortex dynamics is put on record, with explicit attention to the boundary conditions. The connection between Arnol'd's second stability theorem and the suppression of shear and self-tuning resonant instabilities by boundary constraints is discussed, and a finite-amplitude counterpart to Rayleigh's inflection-point theorem noted

Dietary supplementation with Bifidobacterium lactis NCC2818 from weaning reduces local immunoglobulin production in lymphoid-associated tissues but increases systemic antibodies in healthy neonates

Weaning is associated with a major shift in the microbial community of the intestine, and this instability may make it more acquiescent than the adult microbiota to long-term changes. Modulation achieved through dietary interventions may have potentially beneficial effects on the developing immune system, which is driven primarily by the microbiota. The specific aim of the present study was to determine whether immune development could be modified by dietary supplementation with the human probiotic Bifidobacterium lactis NCC2818 in a tractable model of weaning in infants. Piglets were reared by their mothers before being weaned onto a solid diet supplemented with B. lactis NCC2818, while sibling controls did not receive supplementation. Probiotic supplementation resulted in a reduction in IgA (P,0·0005) and IgM (P,0·009) production by mucosal tissues but had no effect on IgG production (P.0·05). Probiotic- supplemented pigs had more mast cells than unsupplemented littermates (P,0·0001), although numbers in both groups were low. In addition, the supplemented piglets made stronger serum IgG responses to fed and injected antigens (P,0·05). The present findings are consistent with B. lactis NCC2818 reducing intestinal permeability induced by weaning, and suggest that the piglet is a valuable intermediate between rodent models and human infants. The results also strongly suggest that measures of the effect of probiotic supplementation on the immune system need to be interpreted carefully as proxy measures of health benefit. However, they are useful in developing an understanding of the mechanism of action of probiotic strains, an important factor in predicting favourable health outcomes of nutritional intervention.

Norepinephrine ignites local hot spots of neuronal excitation: how arousal amplifies selectivity in perception and memory

Arousal sometimes enhances and sometimes impairs perception and memory. In our Glutamate Amplifies Noradrenergic Effects (GANE) model, glutamate at active synapses interacts with norepinephrine released by the locus coeruleus to create local ‘hot spots’ of activity that enable the selective effects of arousal. This hot spot mechanism allows local cortical regions to self-regulate norepinephrine release based on current activation levels. In turn, hot spots bias global energetic delivery and functional network connectivity to enhance processing of high priority representations and impair processing of lower priority representations.

Amnesty international's language strategy put into practice: a case study of the translation of press releases

This paper investigates the language strategy and translation policies of Amnesty International by discussing the translation of a press release from a textual as well as an institutional point of view. Combining textual analysis with ethnographic methods of data collection and ideas from organisation studies, the paper aims to illustrate how the strategic use of language and translation play a vital role in mediating the NGO’s message and in contributing to its visibility and success. The findings of the textual analysis are contextualised within data collected at the local office of Amnesty International Vlaanderen to come to a better understanding of why particular translation strategies are being applied. The idea of an NGO spreading one consistent message is questioned by showing how different translation strategies apply to different languages and sections, thereby addressing the difficulty of defining translation in the context of news translation.

Local vs. global pragmatics

In 'Local pragmatics in a Gricean framework', Mandy Simons argues that, contrary to the received view, it is possible to accommodate local pragmatic effects utilising just the mechanisms for pragmatic reasoning provided by Grice. Although I agree with this overarching claim, this paper argues that we need to be careful in our understanding of 'what is said', and the nature of communicated content in general, when deciding between local and global accounts of pragmatic effects.

A new method for the characterisation and verification of local spatial predictability for convective scale ensembles

The use of kilometre-scale ensembles in operational forecasting provides new challenges for forecast interpretation and evaluation to account for uncertainty on the convective scale. A new neighbourhood based method is presented for evaluating and characterising the local predictability variations from convective scale ensembles. Spatial scales over which ensemble forecasts agree (agreement scales, S^A) are calculated at each grid point ij, providing a map of the spatial agreement between forecasts. By comparing the average agreement scale obtained from ensemble member pairs (S^A(mm)_ij), with that between members and radar observations (S^A(mo)_ij), this approach allows the location-dependent spatial spread-skill relationship of the ensemble to be assessed. The properties of the agreement scales are demonstrated using an idealised experiment. To demonstrate the methods in an operational context the S^A(mm)_ij and S^A(mo)_ij are calculated for six convective cases run with the Met Office UK Ensemble Prediction System. The S^A(mm)_ij highlight predictability differences between cases, which can be linked to physical processes. Maps of S^A(mm)_ij are found to summarise the spatial predictability in a compact and physically meaningful manner that is useful for forecasting and for model interpretation. Comparison of S^A(mm)_ij and S^A(mo)_ij demonstrates the case-by-case and temporal variability of the spatial spread-skill, which can again be linked to physical processes.