Tuesday Topic

Stockbrokers used to say Sell in May and go away. Ministers just publish White Papers, Consultations or Guidelines, leaving those who need to understand and implement them with some weighty […]

Sometimes public policy seems to catch the mood of the moment; often it misses by a mile! What’s about to happen in health and social care in England could emerge

2008 is the year when joined-up consultations will finally take off. It would be great if this extended to the whole public sector, but for the moment let’s accept that

Any analysis of the 99 Topics published by the Institute over the last four years would reveal problems and opportunities in roughly equal measure. The problems are well known, though

A public dialogue is as good as the information upon which it is conducted. So much is self-evident, but observing this mantra is a bit more difficult in the context

It might be easy to dismiss much of the Government’s flashy new “empowerment” agenda1 as yet more spin. But, despite being open to criticism, there are some really significant positives

Direct democracy has many enthusiastic fans. They point out that some questions are just too important for elected representatives to decide; constitutional changes are often cited as classic issues of

Make no mistake; this High Court judgment will have a major impact upon the conduct of public debate in the United Kingdom. It’s not that this is the first time

Many newspapers and even parts of the BBC seem to have decided for themselves that 10 Downing Street’s recent experiments with public participation are nothing but a set of PR

When even Blue Peter has to apologise for misleading callers to its show, and virtually every other broadcaster has had to run for cover lest its practices be placed under