British Experience Research Articles

PRIMARY MEDICINE FUNDING: REALITIES AND PROBLEMS OF IMPLEMENTATION OF THE BRITISH EXPERIENCE IN UKRAINE

Introduction. In Reforming Ukraine’s health care system involves distinguishing between primary, secondary and tertiary levels of health care, as well as determining the list of services to be provided at each of these levels. Ukraine will have to adapt its chosen model of health care financing to national priorities and ensure the availability of health care. Copying any foreign model without taking into account domestic peculiarities and economic justification will inevitably be accompanied by significant risks and will not lead to the expected results. Taking into account the outlined aspects, the issue of implementation of the British experience of financing primary health care in Ukraine is topical. The purpose of the article is to monitor current trends, identify and analyze problems related to the implementation of the British experience in the system of financing primary health care in Ukraine. Results. The study showed that in the process of reforming Ukraine’s health care financing system, primary health care will undoubtedly be a priority for public funding. The process of implementation of the British model of financing PMD, as expected, has created certain difficulties and problems that require systematic scientific analysis and neutralization of the risks of negative impact on social development. It must be acknowledged that the difficulties in implementing PMD reform are a normal world practice, and budgetary constraints on the financing of the primary care system of Ukraine are an incentive for the NHS to target and rationally allocate budget funds. Conclusions. The cornerstone of the “money follows the patient” reform principle has not been implemented at the primary care level. A problematic aspect of the PHC reform is that in 2018–2020 the NSSU did not perform the function of an organization engaged in strategic procurement of quality primary health care services for the benefit of Ukrainian citizens, but acted exclusively as an organization concluding contracts with medical institutions. We consider debatable the expediency of applying the capitation rate, which clearly does not encourage the family doctor to provide the maximum possible amount of medical care to the patient, but creates a “transfer of responsibility” to narrow specialists. In our opinion, in the logistics of PMD reform, the principle of “money follows the patient” should be replaced by the basic financial model of “money follows services”, which demonstrates the fundamental aspects of the new reform paradigm for public procurement of medical services.

The History of the Search for the Author of the “Count Vorontzov Opinion” in the Context of the Perception of the British Constitutional Experience in Russia in the First Half of the 19th Century

The article is devoted to the analysis of case materials from the funds of the State Archives of the Russian Federation (GA RF) about the long-term, during 1827—1849, and persistent search by gendarmes on the orders of Nicholas I, the author of one of the drafts of the liberal “constitution”. Such actions could not be generated only by the adherence of the emperor to reactionary politics. It is possible that the principal course towards the eradication of the spirit of “English liberty” from the consciousness of the Russian nobility is explained by their desire to use another component of the British experience of state and constitutional building — the priority of evolutionary rather than revolutionary development. Nicholas I was not going to succumb to anyone's pressure, both inside the country and outside. He planned first to create a nation from among the representatives of those social groups that, from his point of view, were important for strengthening the foundations of power, then to grant the nation laws, possibly fundamental ones, and only then, on this basis, to build relationships with law-abiding subjects. The twenty-year search for the author of the criminal “constitution” is proof of this.

Brexit on Stage: Two Verbatim Projects in Progress

The article deals with two post-Referendum projects launched by British national organizations, the National Theatre and the Guardian with Headlong, whose task was to reflect more accurately on a broader range of current British experience. The projects were written in response to questions on whether national artistic institutions, the subsidized “complex culture,” have not been out of touch with the rest of the country, notably the post-Referendum crisis. Both projects set out to research the crisis with documentary and quasi-documentary methods, to involve in an exercise in “listening” and to focus on polarisation, voter fatigue and lack of trust. The article concentrates on the two projects as variants of political theatre and on the ways they use the verbatim method in their attempts to diagnose and understand the crisis arguing, further on, that the effects differ, leading either to populism or to empathetic understanding and reconciliation.

How Much Choice is Enough? Parental Satisfaction with Secondary School Choice in England and Scotland

AbstractGovernments around the world have sought to promote school choice, not just in order to improve educational outcomes, but also because such choice is believed to be intrinsically valuable: parents are believed to want to choice and to feel empowered by it. This article empirically evaluates the intrinsic value of school choice, comparing the attitudes and experiences of parents in England (where expanding choice is an explicit policy goal) and Scotland (where policymakers tend to play down choice), combining an online survey with in-depth interviews. While the overwhelming majority of parents in both countries express a desire for some school choice, only a minority want choice primarily for intrinsic reasons. Rather, most believe it is necessary to avoid negative outcomes for their children. Moreover, while parents in England tend to say they have more choice than their Scottish counterparts, they are no more satisfied with the level of choice that they have. Indeed, they tend to be more cynical, fatalistic and disempowered. Based on the British experience, school choice policies have not been successful in promoting intrinsic value.

Залежність Великої Британії від імпорту з Німеччини. Відповіді на виклики Першої світової війни

The COVID-19 pandemic has become a litmus test for both the resilience of economic systems and the ability of governments to ensure the national economies’ efficiency and security in an emergency. In 2020, EU political leaders recognized the dependency of health care and pharmaceutical production on imports of medicines (drugs), active pharmaceutical ingredients and intermediate goods from China. This is rather a next historical cycle of the situation that occurred 100 years ago – something worthy of attention when looking for answers to modern challenges. In 1914, the UK, as well as some other industrialized countries of Europe and the United States, was shocked to learn about being dangerously dependent on German imports, including synthetic drugs and chemical intermediates. The State, universities and companies joined forces to reduce the vulnerability of the industry and to address external threats. The purpose of the study is to draw on legislation, historical documents and publications in specialized publications to describe the state of the British pharmaceutical industry at the beginning of the World War I; to identify the causes of its dependence on imports; to summarize the policies adopted in response to the new challenges and assess their impact on industry and the economy as a whole. Based on the British experience, a historical and economic rationale was made for the relationship between public assistance mechanisms (in terms of building human resources and intensifying research for industry, providing public financial assistance to industrial enterprises and protecting key industries from imports) and accelerated modernization and development of a self-sustaining pharmaceutical industry. The author systematized policy measures and argued that their implementation had strengthened British companies, reduced dependence on imports, and increased the production of medicines and their components, based on national innovation.

R. W. Van Olsteen and Fight Against American Uniqueness: Historiography of Genesis of US Foreign Policy in 1940s — 1960s

The relevance of the study is due to the low degree of study of the revisionist historian R. W. Van Olsteen views in historiography. The purpose of the article is to concretize the scientist’s views on the genesis of US foreign policy. The scientific novelty of the work lies in the creation of a conceptual framework for the intellectual biography of the researcher and determination of his assessment of the emergence of the United States foreign policy. The methodological complex of research consists of two levels: the first includes the principles of historicism, objectivity, consistency, the second — historical-chronological, historical-biographical, descriptive and prosopographic methods. A tendentiousness in the concept of the scientist is established in the article: throughout his career, he debunked the myth of American uniqueness. In this context, R. W. Van Olsteen considered the emergence of US foreign policy, which he associated exclusively with the British experience. It is proved that initially the scientist based his assessment on political realism (late 1930s — mid 1940s); and in a later period — a synthesis of history, political science and psychology (late 1940s — 1960s). The author revealed the failure of the historian’s theoretical developments and established the secondary nature of his assessment of the emergence of US foreign policy. The research results are focused on their application in the study of the history of the North American state.

Classical Histories, Colonial Objects: The Specimen Table Across Time and Space

This article seeks to contextualise the production, purchase, and display of specimen tables in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, considering their fragmentary forms as a material result of both British neoclassicism and imperialism. Made for an audience of (often British) travellers, collectors, and settler colonists across the British empire and Continental Europe, specimen tables were named after the variety of specimens from which they were made, from pieces of marble (both newly sourced and procured from ancient ruins and monuments) to semi-precious hardstones and inlaid “exotic” woods. Reconceptualising the specimen table as a site that collapsed time and space, the article reads these objects through their fragmentary surfaces to explore how their interconnected forms echo their multitudinous connections across the complex geographies and temporalities of the British experience of travel and empire during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Social efficiency of shadow «autonomous» power: british experience of strategic action formation

Social efficiency of shadow «autonomous» power: british experience of strategic action formation

MATERIAL TURNS IN BRITISH HISTORY: IV. EMPIRE IN INDIA, CANCEL CULTURES AND THE COUNTRY HOUSE

ABSTRACTThis lecture seeks to historicise the so-called cancel culture associated with the ‘culture wars’ waged in Britain in c. 2020. Focusing on empire and on the domestic, British impacts of Georgian-era imperial material cultures, it argues that dominant proponents of these ‘culture wars’ in the public sphere fundamentally distort the British pasts they vociferously claim to preserve and defend. By failing to acknowledge the extent to which eighteenth- and nineteenth-century British men and women themselves contested imperial expansion under the aegis of the East India Company – and decried its impact on British material culture, including iconic stately homes – twenty-first-century exponents of culture wars who rail against the present-day rise of histories of race and empire in the heritage sector themselves erase key layers of British experience. In so doing, they impoverish public understanding of the past.

Explaining divergent National Responses to Covid-19: An Enhanced State Capacity Framework

ABSTRACT We develop a state capacity framework to account for different national responses to Covid-19. Our starting point is the influential idea that neoliberalism has a major role to play in state failure to control the pandemic. By implementing neoliberal reforms, states have ostensibly rendered themselves incapable of preventing or mitigating the viral outbreak. A focus on the British experience lends weight to this perspective. But when viewed in a comparative light, the picture is less straightforward. By comparing the British and Australian cases, we see a similar embrace of neoliberal reforms across the whole of government, yet with strikingly divergent outcomes. How can we account for this dramatic difference? To answer this question, we offer an enhanced state capacity framework to improve our understanding of diverse national responses to Covid-19. Our larger objective is to enrich the existing state capacity literature in two ways. First, we extend the existing state capacity framework by introducing a new category – salutary capacity – to encapsulate a state's ability to correct and counteract the course of a national health emergency. Second, we introduce the idea of political choice to emphasise the importance of agency in offsetting the institutional weaknesses associated with neoliberal reform.

Claire Gheeraert-Graffeuille, and Vaughan, Geraldine (eds). Anti-Catholicism in Britain and Ireland

This collection of essays delves into the way in which expressions of anti-Catholicism have manifested themselves and been negotiated and countered in both discourse and the lived experience of British and Irish people from the early 17th century through to the contemporary period. As the editors explain in the introduction, although broadly influenced by the ‘cultural turn’ in scholarly enquiry, no attempt is made in the volume to square the conclusions reached by the authors with a particu...

Global Britain in the grey zone: Between stagecraft and statecraft

ABSTRACT The United Kingdom’s integrated defense and security review put “grey zone” or “hybrid” challenges at the center of national security and defense strategy. The United Kingdom is not alone: The security and defense policies of NATO, the European Union, and several other countries (including the United States, France, Germany, and Australia) have taken a hybrid-turn in recent years. This article attempts to move the hybrid debate toward more fertile ground for international policymakers and scholars by advocating a simple distinction between threats and warfare. The United Kingdom’s attempts to grapple with its own hybrid policy offer a national case study in closing the gap between rhetoric and practice, or stagecraft and statecraft, before an avenue of moving forward is proposed—informally, through a series of questions, puzzles, and lessons from the British experience—to help international policy and research communities align their efforts to address their own stagecraft-statecraft dichotomies.

Employee Participation Rights During Company Restructuring: Lessons Learned from the “Capability for Voice” in British Law

In the current economic context, marked by a growing number of company restructuring processes as well as a rising unemployment rate, it seems important to address the employee’s issue of job security as well as the need to reduce the negative impacts that some restructuring processes have on businesses and employees. One solution in this regard is to ensure that employees are heard during the restructuring process. Since the Quebec and the federal Canadian legal frameworks on the subject offer insufficient protections, the author’s goal is to find solutions in order to strengthen the existing frameworks as well as to suggest different ways of adopting other legal information and consultation procedures applicable to company restructuring in general. To this end, the author is interested in whether a process of information and consultation of employees in restructuring matters, similar to what exists in the European Union, is possible in Canada, in light of the British experience. In fact, the United Kingdom’s case is particularly interesting for Canada, because this country originally applied a collective laissez-faire approach to employee participation rights during company restructuring which was similar to the North American one. It was only because of mandatory directives of the European Union on the subject that the United Kingdom has set up information and consultation procedures recognized by law. In order to perform this study, we have used the method of comparative law and as a theoretical framework we have applied the capability for voice, developed by Amartya Sen, which provides a method for assessing the impact and relevance of Parliament acts that recognize extended participation rights to employees in regard to a company’s economic decisions. In doing so, we assess the extent that the British statutory instruments, related to the subject matter under study, meet the conditions of the capability for voice, which are prerequisites to pass from the involvement stage of the employees in company decisions to their real influence on such issues.

Lord Loudoun, the Highlands and Imperial Subjecthood in North America

This article provides a comparative analysis of the tenure of John Campbell, fourth earl of Loudoun, as a regional commander in the Scottish Highlands during the Jacobite uprising of 1745–6 and as commander-in-chief of the British forces in North America from January 1756 to December 1757. It challenges historiographical interpretations of Loudoun as an incompetent bully, instead emphasising his attempts to negotiate with local elites in both imperial fringes for the realisation of the state's aims, albeit within the confines of his own understanding of imperial subjecthood. This article argues that Loudoun's experiences of waging war and pacifying the Highlands directly influenced how he approached the challenges he faced in implementing British military strategy in North America. In doing so, it contributes to the growing body of scholarship investigating the role of the army in British imperial policymaking and the direct and indirect influence British army experiences in the Scottish Highlands had on the transatlantic implementation of empire.

University Admissions System in Saudi Arabia, United States, United Kingdom, Singapore: A Comparative Study: نظام القبول بالتعليم الجامعي في المملكة العربية السعودية والولايات المتحدة الأمريكية وبريطانيا وسنغافورة: دراسة مقارنة

The study aims to identify the system of university admission in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the United States, Britain, and Singapore, to monitor the similarities and differences between the admission systems in the countries subject to comparison, and to present proposals that could contribute to the development of the university admission system in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in light of the American, British and Singaporean experience. The descriptive comparative approach was used, as it is appropriate to the nature of the study and its objectives. Based on the study's proposals, a number of proposals have been made to develop the university admission system in Saudi Arabia: Decentralization of admission systems, taking into account psychological and behavioral aspects, and giving preference to highly qualified students who won global awards. The researchers recommend conducting more comparative studies aimed at identifying the admission system for university education in Saudi Arabia in different comparative countries, and conducting a descriptive study of the admission system in Saudi universities.

What is labour exploitation? The Belgian and British experience

The legal understanding of labour exploitation is a grey area. This paper will first outline some of the obstacles in international and regional law and jurisprudence, as to the understanding of exploitation in the context of human trafficking, slavery, servitude and forced labour. Secondly, taking into account recent law reforms in both Belgium and England & Wales, this paper will outline some of the key features that have emerged from the judicial handling of labour exploitation in criminal cases. Drawing on the findings from empirical analysis of criminal cases between 2010-2017 as part of doctoral research, this paper will first of all outline similarities, differences and challenges to ensuring a clear understanding of the meaning of labour exploitation in the context of human trafficking. The findings will provide insight into how to strengthen a harmonised and robust response to human trafficking.

"Maybe I'm just not good enough?": British swimmers' experiences of attempting to qualify for the Olympic Games.

The purpose of this study was to explore the transitional experiences of British swimmers as they attempted to qualify for the Olympic Games and gain a place in the British Swimming World Class Performance Programme. An interpretive phenomenological analysis (IPA) approach was adopted (Smith JA. Psychol Health 1996;11:261-271). Six swimmers (aged 20-25years), one of each of their parents, and four coaches completed interviews leading up to and following Olympic trials over an eight-month period. Audio recordings were transcribed verbatim and analyzed following the guidelines set out by Smith and Osborne (Smith JA, Osborn M. Qualitative psychology: A practical guide to research methods. London: Sage; 2003:51-80). Results indicated that athletes' transition experiences were characterized by a range of demands, which were categorized into five higher-order themes (a) Questioning "Am I good enough?"; (b) Managing and fulfilling expectations; (c) Operating within an environment that is working against them; (d) Lacking support and understanding of self and demands; and (e) Maintaining balance versus being an international swimmer. Overall, the results indicate that this attempted transition is complex, challenging, and unique and largely influenced by self-confidence. Addressing the individual factors impacting on athletes' self-confidence appears critical to enhancing swimmers' transitional experiences at the highest level.

Unproductive Co-production: European Integration, the British Film Industry and the Franco-British Co-production Agreement of 1965

The negotiation of bilateral co-production agreements had a major impact on European film-making from the 1950s to the 1970s. These agreements also provided the basis for the closer integration of Europe's film industries within what was then the European Economic Community (EEC). However, the British government was slow to adopt co-production arrangements and British film-makers tended to be more reticent about using them once they were made available. This article examines the British experience of European co-production during this period, focusing on the negotiation and implementation of the Franco-British co-production agreement of 1965 in the context of broader debates about film production and policy within the EEC. Particular attention is given to Someone Behind the Door (1971), a proposed Franco-British film which was ultimately made as a collaboration between French and Italian production companies after delays on the British side caused the French producer to withdraw from the UK. The correspondence collected by the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) as the proposal for Someone Behind the Door was processed – including input from film union and producer associations – provides a unique insight into the bureaucratic policies and procedures which encumbered European co-production in Britain. While continental film-makers established comfortable habits of cooperation, British co-production was stymied from the outset by a misalignment between the interests of Britain's government, its film unions and its producers.

Africana Cultural Memory in the Afroeuropean Context

With the publication of Black Cultural Mythology (2020), the discipline of Africology and African American Studies has a better resource that answers the call for methodological and theoretical tools to institutionalize Africana cultural memory studies as a robust subfield. This content analysis tests the applicability of the critical framework of Black cultural mythology—which emerges from a study of the African American Diaspora of the United States—with the Afroeuropean Diaspora, namely the Black British experience. A feature of this study’s methodology is evaluating the efficacy of the genre of anthology—in this case Kwesi Owusu’s Black British Culture and Society: A Text Reader (2000)—as a comprehensive source suitable for content analysis and from which to infer a sense of the region’s approaches to cultural memory and memory-adjacent worldviews.

The Warm South: How the Mediterranean Shaped the British Imagination, by Robert Holland

Reviewed by: The Warm South: How the Mediterranean Shaped the British Imagination by Robert Holland Eric R. Dursteler (bio) The Warm South: How the Mediterranean Shaped the British Imagination, by Robert Holland; pp. xiv + 317. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2018, $35.00. Each summer millions of British vacationers disgorge from discount airlines at destinations across the Mediterranean. Some are drawn by the region's rich history and culture, many more by its beaches and nightlife. Few are likely aware that they follow in the footsteps of generations of forebears on a quintessentially British pilgrimage. In his highly erudite and captivating book The Warm South: How the Mediterranean Shaped the British Imagination, Robert Holland explores the deep roots of this British sentiment for the Mediterranean and the role that it has played in British culture. While British connections to the sea date back to at least Roman times, Holland argues that it is only beginning in the mid-eighteenth century that the Mediterranean began to function as a "laboratory for ideological, political and cultural struggles within Britain" (4). Increased interaction and rivalry in this period gave rise to a cultural inferiority complex vis-à-vis France and, to a lesser extent, Germany. Though its political, [End Page 126] industrial, and economic stars were in ascendance, the British gentry felt a nagging suspicion that they were "crude and untutored" and that a glaring cultural gap separated them from their continental kin (5). The Mediterranean provided a prepackaged, esteemed legacy that Britons might co-opt, transfer, and translate into a cultural hybrid that partly filled this void, while also serving as a touchstone for comprehending and living in the modern world. This multi-century instinct was "riveted" into the British national psyche and experience (259). The book is organized in a half-dozen chapters with a straightforward chronological structure and a fluid narrative format. Each follows a set pattern: the primary focus is on Italy, followed by Greece, with Spain usually treated more cursorily. This is a high cultural history in the traditional sense: elite poets, artists, writers, and sculptors own the stage. Indeed, the cast of characters is a who's who of British society: Lord Byron, Mary Shelley, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Benjamin Disraeli, John Ruskin, William Gladstone, John Singer Sargent, and Robert Graves. Everyone who was anyone traveled at the very least to Italy, and many set down roots, usually in British hothouses that isolated them from the uncouth local heirs of these formerly great lands. The book begins in the pivotal period 1740 to 1800: this is when the Grand Tour became an essential element in the finishing school for noble men and a growing number of women. Italy occupied pride of place on the itinerary; Greece, while highly prized, was more distant and thus less often visited; Spain was generally avoided for historical and religious reasons. The eruption of Napoleon onto the scene was profoundly disruptive both politically and psychologically for Britons seeking to parse their standing in the world. The early Victorian period, 1830 to 1860, while on the surface a time of growing power and confidence, was actually characterized by significant "fears of individual and collective decay" (111). During the high Victorian period, 1860 to 1890, the Mediterranean preserved its centrality within what was a fundamentally conservative British culture. Elevation and imitation of the past served as a familiar and reliable aesthetic counterweight to the revolutionary changes that were disrupting and energizing the continent. "Cultural despair" combined with "a sense of national fragility" (192) and the enduring sense of a British "aesthetic void" characterized the years preceding the Great War (193). Some turned to vibrant continental cultural centers for inspiration, but more often modernism was processed through the familiar Mediterranean cult of beauty. In the post-war era, classicism provided a familiar harbor for a healing civilization. During the Second World War the Mediterranean was the most important British front after the homeland, and following the war the region once again became an escape for Britons fleeing the home-front's "cultural deadness" (249) and the enduring "unresolved confusion" about Britain's cultural identity and relevance (262). Beyond simply providing a cultural education, the Mediterranean was profoundly...