scholarly journals Interview with Simon McNorton, Better Delivery Team Leader, UK Department for International Development, British Embassy Beirut

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fania Jean

Simon McNorton lives in Beirut, Lebanon, where he works for the UK's Department for International Development (DFID). McNorton heads a team that ensures effective delivery of the UK's £90m bilateral aid package to Lebanon. He has held roles with DFID as a researcher and evaluation adviser based in East Africa and in the UK, following two years as a Senior Research Officer at the UK's Department for Work and Pensions. McNorton graduated from the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration in 2013 with a MasterÕs in Public Policy and a concentration in International Development and Program Evaluation. His capstone team delivered an evaluation framework for Teachers Without Borders global disaster response education. During his graduate study and earlier in his career, McNorton worked for the National Gay and Lesbian Chamber of Commerce in DC as a Senior Policy Fellow, and spent two years in the Public Affairs Team at Stonewall, the UK's leading lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender rights charity. Immediately prior to his graduate study, McNorton spent a year working on social justice programs in Rajasthan, India. He completed his undergraduate study at the University of Salford in Manchester in the UK in 2006. In February 2020, Fania Jean interviewed McNorton for Policy Perspectives.

Somatechnics ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 198-215
Author(s):  
Robert McRuer

Theorists of neoliberalism have placed dispossession and displacement at the centre of their analyses of the workings of contemporary global capitalism. Disability, however, has not figured centrally into these analyses. This essay attends to what might be comprehended as the crip echoes generated by dispossession, displacement, and a global austerity politics. Centring on British-Mexican relations during a moment of austerity in the UK and gentrification in Mexico City, the essay identifies both the voices of disability that are recognized by and made useful for neoliberalism as well as those shut down or displaced by this dominant economic and cultural system. The spatial politics of austerity in the UK have generated a range of punishing, anti-disabled policies such as the so-called ‘Bedroom Tax.’ The essay critiques such policies (and spatial politics) by particularly focusing on two events from 2013: a British embassy good will event exporting British access to Mexico City and an installation of photographs by Livia Radwanski. Radwanski's photos of the redevelopment of a Mexico City neighbourhood (and the displacement of poor people living in the neighbourhood) are examined in order to attend to the ways in which disability might productively haunt an age of austerity, dispossession, and displacement.


1983 ◽  
Vol 37 ◽  
pp. 13-13
Author(s):  
Avery Leiserson

This essay addresses the problem of teachers and students who have reached the point of trying to find a common ground for perceiving (seeing) politics. This may occur almost any time during any social science course, but it cannot be assumed to happen automatically the first day of class in government, citizenship, or public affairs. Hopefully, the signal is some variant of the question: “What do we mean by politics, or the political aspect of human affairs?” A parade of definitions — taking controversial positions on public policy issues; running for elective office; who gets what, when and how; and manipulating people—is not a mutually-satisfying answer if it produces the Queen of Hearts’ attitude in students that the word politics means what they choose it to mean and nothing more.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 185-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jude Fransman

The past decades in the UK have witnessed renewed interest by policymakers, research funders and research institutions in the engagement of non-academic individuals, groups and organizations with research processes and products. There has been a broad consensus that better engagement leads to better impact, as well as significant learning around understanding engagement and improving practice. However, this sits in tension to a parallel trend in British higher education policy that reduces the field to a narrow definition of quantitatively measured impacts attributed to individual researchers, projects and institutions. In response, this article argues for the mobilization of an emerging field of 'research engagement studies' that brings together an extensive and diverse existing literature around understandings and experiences of engagement, and has the potential to contribute both strategically and conceptually to the broader impact debate. However, to inform this, some stocktaking is needed to trace the different traditions back to their conceptual roots and chart out a common set of themes, approaches and framings across the literature. In response, this article maps the literature by developing a genealogy of understandings of research engagement within five UK-based domains of policy and practice: higher education; science and technology; public policy (health, social care and education); international development; and community development. After identifying patterns and trends within and across these clusters, the article concludes by proposing a framework for comparing understandings of engagement, and uses this framework to highlight trends, gaps and ways forward for the emerging field.


2005 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-54 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robina Goodlad ◽  
Sheila Riddell

Social justice is a policy aim of the UK Labour government. This paper considers the applicability of the concept to disability, seeking to establish principles for conceptualising social justice and disability and considering the nature of the challenges for public policy and society posed by this conceptualisation. The paper considers how disability is implicated in two types of claims about the source of social injustice: those concerned with socially constructed differences between people; and those arising from material inequalities. Appropriate values underpinning alternative conceptions of social justice are discussed and tensions in policymaking considered.


2015 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 184-198 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Button ◽  
Chris Lewis ◽  
David Shepherd ◽  
Graham Brooks

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore the challenges of measuring fraud in overseas aid. Design/methodology/approach – The research is based on 21 semi-structured interviews with key persons working in the delivery of aid in both the public and voluntary sectors. It uses the UK Department for International Development as a case study to applying more accurate measures of fraud. Findings – This paper shows there are significant challenges to using fraud loss measurement to gauge fraud in overseas aid. However, it argues that, along with other types of measures, it could be used in areas of expenditure in overseas governments and charities to measure aid. Given the high risk of such aid to fraud, it argues helping to develop capacity to reduce aid, of which measuring the size of the problem is an important part; this could be considered as aid in its own right. Research limitations/implications – The researchers were not able to visit high-risk countries for fraud to examine in the local context views on the challenges of measuring fraud. Practical implications – The paper offers insights on the challenges to accurately measuring fraud in an overseas context, which will be useful to policy-makers in this context. Social implications – Given the importance of as much aid as possible reaching recipients, it offers an important contribution to helping to reduce losses in this important area. Originality/value – There has been very little consideration of how to measure fraud in the overseas aid context, with most effort aimed at corruption, which poses some of the same challenges, as well as some very different challenges.


Author(s):  
James Herbert

This chapter discusses the developments in terms of research grants and research funding of the newly established AHRB. By 2002 to 2003, during its fifth year, the AHRB's total budget had increased from £17.9 million to £64.8 million. During this period, non-programmed costs were capped at five per cent. Putting aside its administrative costs, the AHRB in its fifth year had programmatic expenditures of £61.7 million, a 20 per cent increase from the initially predicted expenditure. Of the £61.7 million, £9 million was allocated to the operation of museums and galleries of English institutions and the rest was equally divided between postgraduate awards and research awards throughout the UK. As funding rose, intellectual ambitions also increased. Several ambitious projects were initiated such as the editing of Francis Bacon's works, the creation of public policy concerning the film and television of Britain and Europe, the pursuing of the long-delayed multinational Romanian project, and several other projects. During this period, the AHRB garnered a distinct sense of direction and momentum. Over three years, the applications of research funding increased to 58 per cent. The applications for the postgraduate awards increased to 20 per cent in a year and the four year doctoral submission rate for arts and humanities students increased to 78 per cent.


Author(s):  
Mark Liptrott

This chapter evaluates the UK government strategy to promote electronic voting through the public policy process as an integral part of the e-government agenda to enhance participatory democracy. It argues that the formulation of the present policy is flawed as it lacks a diffusion strategy to enhance the likelihood of policy adoption. The electoral modernisation policy arose from concerns regarding the falling voter turnout at elections and is being introduced via local authorities through a series of voluntary pilot schemes. If issues influencing local authority pilot participation are not resolved e-voting may be permanently rejected by local elected representatives and so will not be available to citizens. This author identifies variables influencing pilot participation and suggests a revised public policy model incorporating selected diffusion concepts at the formulation stage of the linear policy process. The model is used to propose recommendations to enhance the likelihood of voluntary adoption of a policy introduced by central government for voluntary implementation by local government.


Author(s):  
Robert Merkin ◽  
Séverine Saintier

The Casebook series provides a comprehensive selection of case law that addresses all aspects of the subject encountered on undergraduate courses. A contract may be deemed illegal or void on grounds of public policy. This chapter examines the illegality of contracts under English law, contracts prohibited by statute (express prohibition), and contracts that are illegal in their performance. It considers contracts that are void on grounds of public policy, focusing on contracts in restraint of trade, covenants between employer and employee, exclusive dealing agreements, exclusive service agreements, and severance of the objectionable parts of covenants. The chapter also discusses the recovery of money or property transferred under an illegal contract, along with the UK Law Commission’s proposed reform of the law governing illegal contracts and the supreme court decision of Patel v Mirza over controversy concerning the nature of illegality, the basis for intervention in illegal contracts and the ability to recover under an illegal contract.


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