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Professionals' accounts of working in challenging service environments bring into relief the tensions they experience in their work. An ethical dilemma where the wellbeing of a severely or profoundly learning disabled (LD) and highly dependent person is at stake is conceptually and emotionally challenging to those responsible for finding some resolution. This report develops the findings of empirical research described in an earlier paper on professionals' experiences of addressing serious ethical issues within their work with people with LD. We attempt to make clear how the ethical and policy frameworks to which they are accountable, their personal desire to improve the lives of people with LD and the relational aspects of their work raises strong feelings that make the work, at times, intolerable and at other times richly rewarding. Regardless, being in relation to the person with LD is prerequisite to making changes in their lives; therefore, the relational as well as procedural aspects of services provided by professionals need to be theorised. We offer a critique of these professionals' perspectives based on a distinction between instrumental and substantial rationalities, the latter being relatively absent in the managerial and scientific discourses within the NHS. This absence risks dehumanising clients and professionals and neglecting what is core to their work: the privilege of being with unique others, bearing witness to their histories and supporting them to live their lives.

People with intellectual disabilities commonly come into contact with the criminal justice system as victims, witnesses or suspects. Their intellectual disabilities may make them disadvantaged in relation to all components of the criminal justice system, including police interviews, fitness to plead and stand trial, capacity to give evidence in court, and issues to do with criminal responsibility and sentencing. The focus in this paper is on police interviews and the capacity of adults with intellectual disabilities to give evidence in Court. Research into the types of vulnerability seen by people interviewed by police have focused on interviewees' understanding of the Oath and their legal rights, suggestibility, acquiescence, compliance and perceptions of the consequences of making self‐incriminating admissions. The essential components of any interview and testifying in court require that the person can communicate effectively and give reliable answers and accounts of events. Research into police interviews has highlighted the importance of taking into account the interviewee's vulnerabilities and providing appropriate support, and suggests a more humane approach to interviews and when vulnerable people testify in Court.

The purpose of this paper is to present reflections on the contradictions between structure and agency in theories of the Bolivian Revolution, 2000-2005. Most studies into the trajectory and outcomes of the revolutionary period in Bolivia between 2000 and 2005 tend to emphasise on the primary role of structural factors or social movements in shifting the terrain of political debate. This paper argues this represents a false dichotomy and discounts the value of this debate. In doing so, it seeks to highlight the need for research that focuses on the role of institutional variables that mediate between structure and agency.

The paper uses theories of the Bolivian Revolution, which occurred between 2000 and 2005, to highlight the way theory shapes – and is shaped by – the political organisations that espouse it. This constructivist thesis is applied to conceptions of neoliberalism and Katarismo, an ideology of indigenous liberation, based in Andean-Aymara history. The intellectual and political projects of each approach are demarcated. Theories that privilege either the intellectual project or political project in their narrative of the Bolivian Revolution are then queried.

As a consequence of this analysis, the paper concludes by emphasizing the need for political organisation and theory to be considered dialectically along the lines of Gogol (2012). It argues that further research into institutions is required to appreciate why some post-neoliberal projects flourish while others fragment.

The paper proposes a modified understanding of the interplay between structure and agency in conceptions of the Bolivian Revolution (2000-2005) and suggests an original approach to resolving the underlying questions that motivate these debates.

During the 2020 election cycle, 2,276 super PACs spent over $2.1 billion in federal elections. This chapter argues that changes made to the US campaign finance system brought about by the Citizens United v. FEC (2010) and SpeechNow.org v. FEC (2010) cases have destabilized the American political system by fueling tensions between right-wing and left-wing populist factions and by contributing to congressional corruption. By moving away from the political corruption standard and toward the free speech standard in Citizens United, polarizing wealthy mega-donors and dark money sources have come to play a dominant role in congressional elections. These cases also helped to contribute to a two-tiered campaign finance regulatory structure that distinguishes between campaign contributions given directly to federal candidates and political money contributed to super PACs to support or oppose federal candidates. In the 2020 congressional elections, PACs and super PACS outspent both major party candidates combined in 35 House and Senate races. Super PACs are serving as “shadow parties” by targeting competitive races for the purpose of swaying partisan control of Congress. This study also shows that an exceedingly high percentage of super PAC money is spent on negative advertising that further divides rather than unifies the nation. This chapter also highlights the corrupting influence of congressional leadership PACs and examines how super PACs have enabled foreign and dark money sources to illegally influence congressional campaigns.

In years past, when life seemed simpler and the Law much less complicated, jurists were fond of quoting the age‐old saying: “All men are equal before the Law.” It was never completely true; there were important exemptions when strict legal enforcement would have been against the public interests. A classic example was Crown immunity, evolved from the historical principle that “The King can do no wrong”. With the growth of government, the multiplicity of government agencies and the enormous amount of secondary legislation, the statutes being merely enabling Acts, this immunity revealed itself as being used largely against public interests. Statutory instruments were being drafted within Ministerial departments largely by as many as 300 officers of those departments authorized to sign such measures, affecting the rights of the people without any real Parliamentary control. Those who suffered and lost in their enforcement had no remedy; Crown immunity protected all those acting as servants of the Crown and the principle came to be an officials' charter with no connection whatever with the Crown. Parliament, custodian of the national conscience, removed much of this socially unacceptable privilege in the Crown Proceedings Act, 1947, which enabled injured parties within limit to sue central departments and their officers. The more recent system of Commissioners—Parliamentary, Local Authority, Health Service—with power to enquire into allegations of injustice, maladministration, malpractice to individuals extra‐legally, has extended the rights of the suffering citizen.

This paper attempts an overview of the literature on issues relating to the electronic provision of health information for the consumer, to provide a context for current work being undertaken by the Internet Studies Research Group (ISRG) examining the impact of various electronic platforms. Reasons why there has been an increase in interest and demand for health information and issues such as information need, take‐up and use, are elicited from the literature, and discussed with regard to previous research and the findings from the group’s own studies. Problems inherent in electronic provision, such as the dissemination of unregulated information, and barriers to information take‐up, are examined in depth. The review concludes with an outline of the implications of the issues for both the current and future work of the ISRG and the wider research community.

This paper brings insights from accounting scholarship to the measurement and reporting challenges of metagovernance approaches to sustainable development. Where scholarship on metagovernance—the combination of market, hierarchical and network governance—proposes deductive approaches to such challenges, we contend that a historically informed “abductive” approach offers valuable insight into the realpolitik of intergovernmental frameworks.

The paper adopts a Foucauldian “archaeological–genealogical” method to investigate the inclusion of climate change as a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG). It analyses more than 100 documents and texts, tracking the statement forms that crystallise prevailing truth claims across the development of climate and SDG metagovernance.

We show how the truth claims now enshrined in the Paris Agreement on Climate Change constrained the conceptualisation and operationalisation of SDG 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. The paper thereby reframes recent measurement and reporting challenges as outcomes of conceptual conflicts between the technicist emphasis of divisions within the United Nations and the truth claims enshrined in intergovernmental agreements.

This paper demonstrates how an archaeological–genealogical approach may start to address the measurement and reporting challenges facing climate and SDG metagovernance. It also highlights that the two degrees target on climate change has a manifest variability of interpretation and shows how this characteristic has become pivotal to operationalising climate metagovernance in a manner that respects the sovereignty of developing nations.

This register of current research in social economics has been compiled by the International Institute of Social Economics. The register does not claim to be comprehensive but is merely an aid for research workers and institutions interested in social economics. The register will be updated and made more comprehensive in the future but this is largely dependent on the inflow of information from researchers in social economics. In order to facilitate this process a standardised form is to be found on the last page of this register. Completed forms, with attached sheets as necessary, should be returned to the compiler: Dr Barrie O. Pettman, Director, International Institute of Social Economics, Enholmes Hall, Patrington, Hull, N. Humberside, England, HU12 OPR. Any other comments on the register will also be welcome.