In October 2003, I started a secondment from the London School of Economics (LSE), where I hold the Richard Titmuss Chair of Social Policy, to No 10 Downing Street, where I worked as a senior policy adviser to the Prime Minister, Tony Blair. I began working initially on a specific project: developing policies on extending user choice in public services, with particular reference to health care ...

Politics is not the ghost in the machine of global health policy. Conceptually, it makes little sense to argue otherwise, while history is replete with examples of individuals and movements engaging politically in global health policy. Were one looking for ghosts, a more likely candidate would be democracy, which is currently under attack by a new global health technocracy. Civil society moveme...

International norms governing appropriate conduct in cyberspace are immature, leaving politicians, diplomats, and military authorities to grapple with the challenges of defending against and executing hostilities in cyberspace. Cyberspace is unlike the traditional physical domains where actions occur at specific geographic places and times. Rules governing conduct in the traditional domains eme...

The Governance of Cyberspace arose from a small conference focusing on the political and social implications of the Intemet (p. xii). Held at the University of Teesside, England, in April 1995, the conference's participants ranged from social scientists to science fiction writers (pp. ix-xii). The twelve contributors (thirteen, if we include the editor, Brian Loader, who wrote the introduction)...

The recent development of web-based services that combine spatial coordinates and indexes of online material allows any web user to conduct geographically referenced Internet searches. In this paper we characterize the resulting hybrid space as DigiPlaceöthat is, the use of information ranked and mapped in cyberspace to navigate and understand physical places. We review relevant theories of hyb...

State workers in China have been suffering multiple negative shocks due to state sector reforms and massive lay-offs since the 1990s. One of their responses has been to engage in conventional forms of rightful resistance to assert their rights and benefits. The recent development of such labour resistance, however, has been less studied. This paper examines the recent collective rights action a...

In the 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, a request was made to have the Center for Technology and National Security Policy (CTNSP), National Defense University (NDU), develop a theory of cyberpower. It was noted that there was a need to develop a holistic framework that would enable policy makers to address cyber issues in proper perspective. To satisfy that tasking, CTNSP convened five workshop...

this commentary on the editorial ‘the politics and analytics of health policy’ by professor calum paton focuses on two issues. first, it points to the unclear links between ideas, ideology, values, and discourse and policy, and warns that discourse is often a poor guide to enacted policy. second, it suggests that realism, particularly ‘programme theory’ are useful tools for health policy analys...

This commentary on the Editorial ‘The politics and analytics of health policy’ by Professor Calum Paton focuses on two issues. First, it points to the unclear links between ideas, ideology, values, and discourse and policy, and warns that discourse is often a poor guide to enacted policy. Second, it suggests that realism, particularly ‘programme theory’ are useful tools for health policy analys...