The ongoing revolution in the field of genome editing (GE) has ignited intense debate around new genomic techniques (NGTs) in Europe. Their societal and ecological implications underscore their critical importance. However, the development and implementation of NGTs present significant challenges from a democratic perspective. Amid calls for democratizing NGTs governance, democratic innovations have been proposed as potential solutions. This paper investigates the efficacy of democratic innovations in democratizing NGT governance within the European context. Employing an assemblage democracy approach, we conduct an in-depth analysis of online documents and activities related to two important public engagement processes addressing NGTs in France and the United Kingdom. Our findings reveal context-specific challenges in each country and propose potential remedies to enhance democratization efforts. This research contributes to the ongoing debate on science governance and participatory democracy in Europe, offering insights for scholars engaged in the intersection of emerging technologies and democratic processes.

This article critically appraises the UK Labour government’s early approach to parental leave reform following the 2024 election, comparing pre-election promises with post-election policy directions. Drawing on Daly’s conceptualisation of care as a policy good (Daly, 2002), we analyse Labour’s reforms across three overlapping dimensions central to their pre-election pledges: access and pay levels, leave design and entitlements, and inclusion of diverse families. We argue that Labour’s current approach adheres to liberal welfare principles, with market-oriented reforms prioritising economic productivity over care provision, perpetuating implicit maternalism while systematically excluding working-class, minority ethnic, and self and precariously employed families. In contrast, care-centred approaches pioneered elsewhere in Europe demonstrate that gender equality, social inclusion, and economic productivity are mutually reinforcing rather than competing objectives. Echoing calls from the Women and Equalities Committee for transformative change, we argue that Labour’s incremental approach cannot achieve reforms that work for parents or the economy without embracing care-centred policies.

Lameness remains an ongoing challenge to the health and welfare of UK sheep flocks. Whilst effective recommended practice exists in the UK in the form of the five-point plan (5PP), it is not always used or used effectively, particularly in relation to culling. A more in-depth understanding of farmer lameness management behaviours and decision-making is crucial for driving positive change. Behaviour change frameworks offer useful tools to do this, specifically the Behaviour Change Wheel and its central tenets of capability, opportunity and motivation (COM-B). This research sought to explore on-farm management practices surrounding lameness, particularly focused on the 5PP and culling in relation to COM-B. Findings are drawn from five online focus groups with UK farmers (n = 19) and one with veterinarians (n = 4). Thematic analysis led to the identification of themes in relation to the role of capability, opportunity and motivation to enact the steps of the 5PP, particularly culling. Culling, alongside prompt treatment, were the only tools used by all participants. Yet, culling practices did not always follow recommended advice. Factors that influenced behaviours included those self-controlled by farmers, e.g. records kept; outside of their control, e.g. space available, and those controlled by other actors, such as market prices. Considerations of the individual farm and the wider UK sheep sector context were important. Findings suggest a need for interventions aimed at encouraging good record-keeping, collective industry action against lameness and opportunities for vet-farmer interactions. These should be pursued together to achieve the goal of reducing lameness and subsequently improving sheep welfare.

In 2024, the Women and Equalities Select Committee in the UK Parliament published a report entitled Misogyny in Music. It included the recommendations that ‘music colleges, conservatoires and other educational settings need to do more to address the gendering of instruments, roles and genres and improve the visibility of and support for female role models’. While there is a dearth of policy levers available to implement this recommendation, this article critically analyses three existing policy/regulatory frameworks that could be used for its implementation in England. The article also highlights a significant limitation of the report – its exclusion of trans and non-binary musicians.

In a time of polycrisis, internal contestation, and strained transatlantic relations, European identity is timelier and more relevant than ever. Do EU public policies operating in a multilevel governance system contribute to European identity-building, and what can jeopardise the process of identity formation at the level of policy elites? The article adopts a social constructivist and discursive approach and brings to the fore the lacking process of EU socialisation via discursive practices as a key reason leading to failed identity-building. Focusing on EU Cohesion Policy in Wales (UK), Crete (Greece), and Silesia (Poland), the analysis employs primary data and grey literature sources, along with 64 semistructured elite interviews, to show that, despite key differences among the three cases, Cohesion Policy has not contributed significantly to European identity-building among policy elites at different government levels and among the public. This is because the coordinative discourse about EU policies is dominated by ideas about economic goals and practical aspects of policy-making, while the respective communicative discourse is controlled by domestic political elites and the media and is ultimately determined by broader national/regional political cultures about the purpose and limitations of EU membership. Overall, the article contributes to the literature on European identity-building, EU socialisation, and discourse by arguing that the way EU public policies are designed, implemented, and communicated do not favour the achievement of political goals, such as the cultivation of a shared European identity.

Charitable status is inherently linked in many jurisdictions with the requirement that an entity must be established for public benefit. But, until recently the public benefit principle had relatively little impact on the operations of most established charities. However, in England and Wales, reforms linked to the Charities Act 2006 led to a new requirement for public benefit reporting in the trustees’ annual report (TAR) of every registered charity. This new narrative reporting requirement had the potential to affect the understanding of accountability by charities. The paper investigates the impact of that requirement through a study of over 1,400 sets of charity reports and accounts and subsequent qualitative work with trustees and others involved in preparing TARs.

This article reviews recent non-statutory attempts at charity fundraising regulation in the UK and Ireland. It explores the definition of success for each regime and examines whether broader policy lessons for fundraising regulation may be learnt from these implementation experiences to date. To this end, the article compares the UK framework for fundraising regulation (via the Fundraising Standards Board) with recent Irish proposals for non-statutory regulation. It also identifies the key challenges facing each regime. The article draws upon current Canadian, Dutch and American regulatory experiences and benchmarks these alternative non-statutory efforts against the Anglo-Irish models by way of comparative analysis. The article tackles the broader question of how we measure success in regulatory terms and argues for better identification of the constituency to be regulated, thereby enabling prioritisation of the salient performance indicators that should be included in any non-statutory framework.

Racism and xenophobia are no longer isolated issues affecting only small portions of a society. Rather, these issues are now at the forefront of debate and have assumed a position on the frontlines of political warfare. In 2016, both the UK and the USA found themselves embroiled in bitter battle, a battle wherein the citizens themselves became their own worst enemies. The Leave/Stay campaigns in the UK and the 2016 US presidential campaign precipitated a rebirth of nationalism, reinvigorating entire populations and charming even the casual observer into political action and discourse. Yet in both cases, what began as an endeavour to serve the needs of the citizenry morphed into a battleground of derision and division. As this article reveals, the parallels between campaigns are not merely provocative they are disarming.

While numerous accounts of policy frameworks associated with country-level support for social enterprise activity exist, explanations for when, why and how policy interventions in support of social enterprise have been adopted have been, to date, much more thin on the ground. This paper aims to contribute to addressing this perceived gap by presenting the case of Scotland, recently hailed by First Minister Alex Salmond as “the most supportive environment in the world for social enterprise”. Historical Institutionalism is used to explain how such a ‘supportive environment’ might have come about and, looking at, in turn, when, why and how the conditions for social enterprise in Scotland have developed, we attempt to contribute to the ongoing international debate concerning the importance of the policy environment to fostering the conditions for social enterprise activity not only to emerge, but also to thrive.

The marketisation of social sector organisations or social marketisation emerged and spread around the world in the past three decades. In contrast with existing literature which claims that social marketisation makes social sector organisations reduce their efforts on advocacy and thus harms a civil society, this research argues that social marketisation is positively contributed to the influence of third sector organisations on government policies, and thus it strengthens civil society, rather than erodes it. Based on the National Survey of Charities and Social Enterprises in the UK, the results of regression analyses indicate clearly that, when other factors are equal, the two indicators of social marketisation, social entrepreneurship and achieving government contracts for purchasing services, are both statistically significant in estimating the level of policy influence of third sector organisations. The contribution of this research is that it finds a positive, instead of a negative, relationship between social marketisation and the perceived policy influence of third sector organisations.

While there has been significant academic focus on social enterprise policy for a number of years now, the links between policy and the practice of social enterprise have received comparatively less attention. Scotland is recognised as having a particularly supportive environment for social enterprise; the Scottish Government has publicly endorsed social enterprise and made considerable investment into the sector. Based upon an in-depth qualitative analysis of the perceptions of social enterprise practitioners and stakeholders across Scotland, we explore whether the rhetoric of support matches practitioners experience of ‘doing’ social enterprise. Reviewing emerging issues and reflecting upon the complex nature of the Scottish context, including in relation to welfare reform, we find that in contrast to the claims of politicians, the attitude of local authorities in Scotland, coupled with a lack of understanding of the needs and requirements of social enterprise at the local authority level, has led to a rather more ‘patchwork’ picture than the rhetoric would seem to suggest. While some local authorities recognise the potential of social enterprise for their local economies and privilege and encourage cooperation, others are less inclined to openly support social enterprise, particularly those that are small in scale. Underpinning these contentions, we argue, are unrealistic expectations about the prospects of social enterprises being able to become ‘sustainable’, and how this could be achieved.

The ‘social investment market’ in the United Kingdom is a growth area due to the governments’ focus upon building up the supply-side element of the market over the last decade, often through the direct financing of ‘Social and Investment Finance Intermediaries’ (SIFIs). However, this ignores problems that can occur on the demand-side of the social investment market, such as a lack of ‘investment readiness’ amongst social enterprises seeking investment. Indeed, whilst there is now a significant body of policy-based and practitioner research exploring the social investment market, there remains a paucity of empirical academic research. The research reported in this paper sought to explore SIFI perceptions of what constituted investment readiness in the social investment market. Semi-structured interviews were held with the fund managers (or relevant personnel) at 15 SIFIs in order to explore what they believed constituted investment readiness and how they assessed this. The results indicate that the conception of investment readiness in the social investment market is similar to that held in mainstream financial markets. The results are discussed in relation to the prior literature and theories of the social investment market.

Elaborately zoned blue–grey tourmaline from the Dorothy China Clay Pit, St. Austell, Cornwall, UK reveals a history of hydrothermal activity in an open system. At least five distinct generations of tourmaline are identified within a single crystal. They are characterised by complex replacement textures displaying dissolution and reprecipitation features and compositional variations identified using optical microscopy, BSE-imaging and EPMA. The Li-rich, alkali-poor rossmanite core of the grain is considered as generation 1 tourmaline. Generation 2 tourmaline comprises a more Na-rich species, especially elbaite. Generation 3, partially replacing the core, is richer in Fe, and is mostly schorl and foitite. Generation 4, primarily Fe-rich dravite, forms an Mg-enriched rim around generations 1–3. Generation 5 fluor-schorl replaces all previous tourmaline generations and parts of the quartz matrix. Each generation corresponds to a chemically distinct fluid event suggested by dissolution textures and compositionally differing overgrowths. Infiltration of B-bearing, neutral-to-acidic fluids facilitated the growth of tourmaline. These fluids contained varying amounts of major elements reflected in the changing tourmaline composition. Dissolution probably occurred because of an increase in fluid pH or a change in major cation abundances. Generation 1 tourmaline crystallised in equilibrium with a Li-rich, Na-poor granitic host rock. From generations 1 to 3, fluids generally increased in Na and Fe while decreasing in Al and Li. Fluids increased in F at generation 3, followed by the influx of more oxidising, Mg-enriched fluids at generation 4. The final generation 5 represents a return to compositions richer in Fe and F. The episodic changes in fluid composition preserved by each generation of tourmaline records fluid infiltration. These differing compositions might reflect, in part, progression of kaolinisation of the host granites or changes in the magmatic–hydrothermal fluids. The St. Austell kaolinite deposits formed from hydrothermal alteration of the preexisting granite through multiple stages of reactive fluid infiltration as recorded in tourmaline.