Government Rhetoric Research Articles

From sandbox to pandemic: Agile reform of Canadian drug regulation

Public health urgency for emerging COVID-19 treatments and vaccines challenges regulators worldwide to ensure safety and efficacy while expediting approval. In Canada, legislative amendments by 2019 Omnibus Bill C-97 created a new "agile" licensing framework known as the "Advanced Therapeutic Pathway" (ATPathway) and modernized the regulation of clinical trials of drugs, vaccines, and medical devices. Bill C-97′s amendments are worthy of attention in Canada and globally, as health product regulation bends to COVID-19. The amendments follow reforms elsewhere to accommodate health product innovation, however, the Canadian ATPathway is broader and more flexible than its counterparts in other jurisdictions. In addition, Bill C-97 informed Canada's COVID-19 response in important ways, particularly in relation to clinical trials. The measures adopted by the drug regulatory authority, Health Canada (HC) during COVID-19 may become the new norm in Canadian regulatory practice insofar as they help achieve the amendments introduced by Bill C-97. Finally, despite government rhetoric of transparency, the agenda-setting, formulation, and implementation of the amendments have occurred with little opportunity for scrutiny or public engagement.

Why We Can't Wait.

In January 2020, the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) announced its intention to report the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) Step 1 score result as pass/fail, rather than its previous numeric score. In doing so, the FSMB acknowledged that the USMLE was never intended to help rank physicians in training, nor has the score been shown to correlate with clinical performance. The new pass/fail reporting process is not scheduled to take effect until at least January 2022, 2 years after the initial announcement.2Since then, our country has faced a reckoning with racialized violence, a pandemic that has laid bare the health disparities faced by racial and ethnic minorities, and governmental rhetoric that has failed to denounce white supremacy. In late spring, Chicago medical student Jasmine Solola wrote a compelling letter laying out the disproportionate burden being shouldered by Black medical students who were preparing for and taking the examination in the wake of civil protests ignited after the murder of George Floyd by Minnesota police. She wrote:Her letter—the full text of which is provided as online supplementary data—calls for an earlier enactment of the FSMB's decision to report USMLE Step 1 as pass/fail. As program directors at the University of Chicago Medicine, we support this call, and we pledge to enact the spirit of this call even without an FSMB timeline adjustment. This pledge acknowledges the inordinate burden of sorrow and its impact on cognitive load, and the mental and physical health of our Black students especially.3While this burden would be sufficient reason to enact an earlier change to the utilization of USMLE scores, there are many other reasons to proceed more quickly: restitution for the discriminatory practices of the American Medical Association,4 for the profession's complicity in the forced sterilization of black and brown bodies, for experimentation without consent, and for our profession's role in pathologizing non-conforming genders and sexualities. Compelling, as well, is the crucial role played by diversity in successful management of pressing complex medical issues,5 like the current COVID-19 pandemic, widespread health inequities, and the understandable mistrust we face from any number of marginalized communities. Our patients suffer from these long-standing injustices on a daily basis. Further delay is not acceptable.We acknowledge that there is value in medical licensing examinations; students should be able to demonstrate sufficient medical knowledge prior to licensing. However, performance below an arbitrarily selected scoring threshold should not automatically disqualify students from consideration in the specialty of their choice. As argued in a recent New England Journal of Medicine article by Drs Youmans, Essien, and Capers,6 reducing our reliance on this examination in selecting and ranking residency applicants not only acknowledges its poor predictive quality, it also reinforces our commitment to building a diverse workforce of physicians. Rather than pretending that each standard deviation above the mean USMLE score predicts a more competent resident, we should review applicants holistically. Beyond passing licensing examinations, we should also look for the skills that truly make exceptional residents—evidence of service, leadership, tenacity, advocacy, and a dedication to advancing the field of medicine.We should all seek to “serve as allies during this racial crisis,”7 and we call on all our colleagues to adopt an accelerated timeline to justice. Beginning with the 2020 recruitment season, we pledge to consider only pass/fail status for USMLE Step 1, and our pediatrics program pledges the same for Step 2 as well. We will mask these scores in our decisions to interview and rank applicants. We urge our fellow program directors to join us in this effort. Our patients and our nation's health care workforce cannot afford to wait. Justice cannot wait.Signed,Jasmine Solola, MA, Alisa McQueen, MD, Rochelle Naylor, MD, Victoria Okuneye, PhD, Monica Vela, MDEndorsed by Program Directors: Chrissy Babcock, MD (Emergency Medicine); Adrianne Dade, MD (OB/GYN); Yasmin Hasan, MD (Radiation Oncology); Kammi Henriksen, MD (Pathology); John McConville, MD (Internal Medicine); Edwin Ramos, MD (Neurological Surgery); Kevin Roggin, MD (General Surgery); Adena Rosenblatt, MD (Dermatology); Rita Rossi-Foulkes, MD (Medicine-Pediatrics); and Deborah Spitz, MD (Psychiatry).

Brussels – boss, bully or the big brother?

According to political realism, conflict is an immanent feature of world politics (Morgenthau 1948/1973). Drawing on this basic premise, it can be expected that the conflict frame is routinely exploited by politicians to explain and justify their foreign policy (Musolff 2016). Conflict is especially prevalent in populist narratives, where the “pure people” are juxtaposed with the “corrupt elite” (Mudde 2004). Accordingly, we hypothesized that the current Hungarian populist government would also frame its turbulent relationship with the EU by metaphorically conceptualizing it as a violent conflict. Drawing on a discourse dynamics approach to metaphor identification (Cameron et al. 2009; 2010), we analysed the metaphorical framing of the term Brüsszel (‘Brussels’) found in articles published on official government websites between 2015 and 2017. Our results indicate that explicit manifestation of the conflict frame in the form of violent conflict (such as a military operation) is less prevalent in contemporary government rhetoric, as opposed to the eu as person frame. This latter conceptualization, however, is manifested by metaphorical scenarios that evoke conflictual relations with varying degrees (and thus feed into populist narratives) by making sense of the EU as an authority figure, a partner in a joint venture, a bully, and an opponent in a battle.

Demonetization and digitalization: The Indian government's hidden agenda

The Indian demonetizations of November 2016 came at an entirely new scale to those of January 1946 and January 1978. This time around, the Narendra Modi government's measures applied to 86.4% of the banknotes and coins in circulation, the equivalent to 11% of GDP. Much analysis has been undertaken on the demonetization. This has largely been critical because of its disastrous consequences on local populations and the most deprived among them. Our paper adopts a different angle: it argues that demonetization has had a key impact on the digitalization of payments. We use data from the Reserve Bank of India from 2014 to 2020 to show that the demonetization period brought about a decline in Automatic Teller Machines (ATM) withdrawals. It equally boosted the adoption of digital means of payments, via Point of Sale Terminals (POS) and mobile banking. Since October 2016, the number of POS transactions has risen almost threefold, while the number of ATM transactions has decreased by almost one-fifth. The current government's rhetoric is to promote digitalization as a means of both formalizing the economy and protecting the poor. Its claim is unfortunately highly debatable.

Shining a light on care homes during the COVID 19 pandemic in the UK 2020

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the link between age discrimination and the injustices that have taken place in our care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic in this country. It seeks to show how destructive age discrimination is to those who live in our care homes and attempts to shake up our attitudes to older people, as the pandemic continues. It is hoped that shifts in attitude would lead to a societal revolution in care and support for older people as the pandemic shows us how the current system is breaking down. Design/methodology/approach This is a personal insight into the plight of the care home sector during the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK. The writer has worked in the field of social care and older people’s services for many years and felt compelled to share her learning and observations. This led to venturing more deeply into understanding why those who live, work and visit care homes have been so neglected and “cast into the shadows” in the face of such desperate danger. Whilst tracking the media narrative during the first wave, she attempts to apply her knowledge, in particular gained from working for Help the Aged (now Age UK) as a policy manager for Quality Care, but also draws on experiences as a social worker, commissioner and care provider from the 1980’s to the present. By “shining a light” on care homes, revealing that the darker practices that have taken place contravene the Human Rights Act 1998, it is hoped that the recognition of age discrimination will happen at every level and become better known in its application. The paper observes how deeply rooted it is in us all. Findings Having highlighted some shocking examples of bad practice from the authorities relating to care homes, the article concludes that Government policy on care homes from March to July 2020 was discriminatory and questions how far lessons have been learned. The legislation is in place in the form of the Human Rights Act 1998 to protect older people in care homes but is not being widely implemented at regional policy level. Government rhetoric remains far from reality Instead of redressing the gap and admitting mistakes, there is evidence at a high level of continued denial and the projection of blame on to the care homes themselves. Originality/value The author’s professional background includes meeting the founder of the Gray Panthers, Maggie Kuhn, in the United States in the 1988. This was a defining moment that gave her an original insight into age discrimination and influenced her entire career. It eventually led to her working in national policy for one of the most influential charities for older people at the turn of the millennium, Help the Aged. Here, she co-founded the My Home Life Programme (promoting quality of life in care homes). The paper offers a unique insight into why it is so challenging to achieve quality of life for older people needing care and should be of interest to policymakers, clinical commissioning groups, local authorities, older people’s care providers and carer and user organisations.

Стратегии деятельности неправительственных организаций Венгрии в условиях миграционного кризиса

The general purposes of this research are attempts to trace the changes in migration policy and government rhetoric in Hungary, and their impact on the non-governmental organizations’ activities (NGOs) in the sphere of migrants’ integration. As a result of this research work, it is revealed that the initiation of anti-migration state rhetoric, has led to a number of NGOs having to adapt their activities to the new political conditions, while continuing to help migrants, and starting to respond to it with an anti- government information campaign.

The ideological justifications of the Smart City of Hamburg

This article analyzes rhetoric as a mean of ideology reproduction on the base of digital public rhetoric of Hamburg's government on smart city agenda. With the aim to grasp ideology behind the technological optimist rhetoric about smart city and research its effects and functions, an interpretative analysis of empty signifiers was conducted. Interpretations of Horkheimer and Adorno, Žižek and Lacan serve as background for the research, which are introduced to enrich an existing (mainly Foucauldian) set of smart city critique. Inspired by critical theory, this analysis shows that ideology is reproduced by culture industry and indicates tendencies to implement instrumental reason, to harmonize the existing social and economic contradictions and mainly reproduces economic interests. Since the researched rhetors are as politicians in power to materialize their ideological convictions, the mystification of technology plays a crucial role as disciplining and controlling measure, which aims to stabilize and justify status quo and maintain the existing inequalities. Derived rhetoric elements, which indicate categorization of citizenship and reductionism of environmental issues demonstrate the high societal relevance of the study and emphasize the urgent need for critique on progressing urban digitalization.

Killing a Constitution with a Thousand Cuts: Executive Aggrandizement and Party-state Fusion in India

Abstract Many concerned citizens, including judges, bureaucrats, politicians, activists, journalists, and academics, have been claiming that Indian democracy has been imperilled under the premiership of Narendra Modi, which began in 2014. To examine this claim, the Article sets up an analytic framework for accountability mechanisms liberal democratic constitutions put in place to provide a check on the political executive. The assumption is that only if this framework is dismantled in a systemic manner can we claim that democracy itself is in peril. This framework helps distinguish between actions that one may disagree with ideologically but are nonetheless permitted by an elected government, from actions that strike at the heart of liberal democratic constitutionalism. Liberal democratic constitutions typically adopt three ways of making accountability demands on the political executive: vertically, by demanding electoral accountability to the people; horizontally, by subjecting it to accountability demands of other state institutions like the judiciary and fourth branch institutions; and diagonally, by requiring discursive accountability by the media, the academy, and civil society. This framework assures democracy over time – i.e. it guarantees democratic governance not only to the people today, but to all future peoples of India. Each elected government has the mandate to implement its policies over a wide range of matters. However, seeking to entrench the ruling party’s stranglehold on power in ways that are inimical to the continued operation of democracy cannot be one of them. The Article finds that the first Modi government in power between 2014 and 2019 did indeed seek to undermine each of these three strands of executive accountability. Unlike the assault on democratic norms during India Gandhi’s Emergency in the 1970s, there is little evidence of a direct or full-frontal attack during this period. The Bharatiya Janata Party government’s mode of operation was subtle, indirect, and incremental, but also systemic. Hence, the Article characterizes the phenomenon as “killing a constitution by a thousand cuts.” The incremental assaults on democratic governance were typically justified by a combination of a managerial rhetoric of efficiency and good governance (made plausible by the undeniable imperfection of our institutions) and a divisive rhetoric of hyper-nationalism (which brands political opponents of the party as traitors of the state). Since its resounding victory in the 2019 general elections, the Modi government appears to have moved into consolidation mode. No longer constrained by the demands of coalition partners, early signs suggest that it may abandon the incrementalist approach for a more direct assault on democratic constitutionalism.

Implementation of Cigarette Plain Packaging: Triadic Reactions of Consumers, State Officials, and Tobacco Companies-The Case of Saudi Arabia.

Objectives: In August 2019, Saudi Arabia started implementing plain packaging for cigarettes. Three months later, an opposing campaign on twitter using an Arabic hashtag “the new smoke” gained momentum amongst smokers. The purpose of this study is to document this opposing campaign’s timeline and describe consumers, government, and tobacco industry rhetoric. Methods: We created a timeline of the campaign events then performed online social listening of Arabic twitter hashtags related to the campaign. Results: Campaigners mainly complained of an unfavorable new taste in cigarette packs with plain packaging. The messaging developed to accusations to government entities and neighboring countries, and then after threats to boycott tobacco companies. The campaign received a significant amount of media coverage and elicited an official response from a number of Saudi government bodies, such as the Saudi Food and Drug Authority and Ministry of Commerce and Investment. Conclusion: This case points at a need for risk communication training, possible tobacco industry manipulation, and a need to gain consumer trust with evidence-based messaging techniques. The case of cigarette plain packaging adoption in Saudi Arabia serves as an example to other countries of potential consumer interaction, tobacco industry interference, and state official counter-reactions.

‘Marginalised formalisation’: an analysis of the in/formal binary through shifting policy and everyday experiences of ‘poor’ housing in South Africa

This paper contributes to global debates over the in/formal binary through an analysis of the South African state’s provision of formal housing to residents previously living informally or insecurely. Focusing on cases within the cities of eThekwini and Msunduzi, it uses a mix of empirical data from housing beneficiaries and government officials alongside an analysis of documents to examine the processes and experiences of housing formalisation. The paper makes two key contributions. The first is to argue for a stronger focus on the processes of dichotomisation of the in/formal binary. It illustrates the significance of a processual analysis by examining shifts in South African housing policy and residents’ expectations of housing gain, noting a situation of hyperbole, where informal housing is regarded as unacceptable, to one of waning, where policy statements acknowledge a greater role for informality. The second contribution is to direct analysis to the idea of formal housing and processes of formalisation, as these have arguably received less attention in wider debates. The paper proposes the concept of marginalised formalisation to articulate both the shortcomings experienced by residents living in formal housing and also the misrepresentation of housing policy and government rhetoric of the benefits of formalisation. Marginalised formalisation is contextualised within ongoing urban poverty which frames this reality.

Jumping the queue? The queue-jumping metaphor in Australian press discourse on asylum seekers

The article examines the use of the queue-jumping metaphor within the Australian press at three key points of asylum seeker arrivals. As a diachronic study, it investigates the development of the metaphor and its utilisation. The article finds that while the metaphor developed at the intersection of political and news discourse, its usage was far from straightforward, often acting as a focus for arguments opposing government policies and rhetoric. Yet the success of the metaphor in shaping the narrative around asylum seekers can be understood through its structuring of a deserving/undeserving dichotomy, aligned with quintessential Australian values, which led to both pro- and anti-government positions being articulated through the context of queue-jumping.

The Securitization of the European Migrant Crisis - Evidence From Bulgaria and Hungary (2015-2017)

Conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria over the past fifteen years have produced the largest waves of displaced people and refugees since World War II. As European Union (EU) leaders braced for an influx of thousands of people fleeing from these conflicts, they faced pressures to revisit and modify legal rules that left countries in Southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean unable to cope with a crisis of unprecedented proportions in the twenty-first century. While the logistical challenges of this humanitarian disaster threatened to undermine Southeastern and Mediterranean states’ capacity, multiple terrorist attacks across Europe magnified the security concerns of EU leaders. This paper compares how two of the European Union’s newest member states – Bulgaria and Hungary – have tackled the migrant crisis and assesses the impact of security concerns on their refugee policies. Some of the responses of these countries’ governments were similar – both governments mandated the erection or extension of physical barriers to impede migrants’ entry on their countries’ territory. While the Bulgarian government took cues from the rhetoric and actions of key EU leaders such as Angela Merkel, the Hungarian government continuously antagonized EU leaders and declined to cooperate with their proposed multi-lateral strategies of handling the migrant crisis. Decisions taken by the two governments were, to some extent, dictated by security concerns. The rhetoric of the Hungarian government, however, contained stronger nationalist overtones than that of the Bulgarian government. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán and his right-wing government led an anti-migrant and anti-refugee campaign that sought to exclude foreign nationals due to the patent incompatibility of their cultural values with those of Hungary’s nationals. On the other hand, the rhetoric of Bulgaria’s Prime Minister – Boiko Borisov – was more dualistic and contradictory. His policy statements to the foreign press or at EU summits reflected the general sentiment of the top EU brass, whereas statements made to the Bulgarian media focused more specifically on security concerns and were far more critical of the foreign nationals attempting to enter Bulgaria’s territory. Moreover, the security-focused rhetoric and actions of the government became more strident immediately before and after the Bulgarian presidential elections of November 2016, which led to the resignation of Borisov’s cabinet. Political parties in Bulgaria, including Borisov’s GERB party have increasingly become critical of refugees living in Bulgaria’s admission centers. Borisov’s government even extradited a group of Afghan asylum seekers due to their involvement in a riot at one of the refugee admission centers. This study is based on a content analysis of statements made by Bulgarian and Hungarian government officials and media coverage in several Bulgarian and Hungarian news publications between 2015 and 2017.

Hadi Ahmadi - and the Myth of the 'People Smugglers' Business Model'

The case of Hadi Ahmadi is one of the highest profi le prosecutions of people smuggling in Australia. Convicted in August 2010 for bringing over 500 asylum seekers to Australia, Mr Ahmadi's case is one of only a small number of prosecutions involving an organiser of migrant smuggling ventures - unlike the hundreds of cases before Australian courts which involve Indonesian captains and crew working on migrant smuggling vessels. This article explores the case of Mr Ahmadi to shed light into the so-called 'people smugglers' business model', which successive Australian Governments from both sides of politics are determined to 'crush'. The article examines the facts of Mr Ahmadi's offending, the criminal proceedings against him, and draws comparison to other organiser cases and to the general patterns of people smuggling prosecutions in Australia. Findings of this research cast doubt over the Government's rhetoric and its strategies to prevent and suppress migrant smuggling.

La narración de los datos estadísticos como subestimación de la víctima oriental en la geografía nominal

El presente artículo parte de la premisa de que la práctica discursiva sobre la muerte oriental, iniciada por las agencias de saber, puede corresponder a una subestimación narrativa de los territorios y de las personas presentes en un espacio polisémico llamado MENA. La hipótesis investigada, a través de la comparación de diferentes fuentes estadísticas secundarias (2001-2017), muestra que la mayoría de las víctimas del terrorismo no se sitúan en el área geográfica occidental, sino en la región de Oriente Medio y África del Norte. Esta interpretación de los datos estadísticos presupone que el número de las muertes, manipuladas en una clave positivista, participa en el proceso más general de "esencialización racial" del espacio. Por lo tanto, lo que nos proponemos hacer es reflexionar sobre la narración de "datos" que alimenta cierta retórica gubernamental de MENA. Metodológicamente, la comparación de diferentes datos aclara que existe una "subestimación geográfica" relacionada con una "sobrenarración" del evento terrorista, descrito como una amenaza oriental. Esta "sobreexposición" tiene el efecto de subestimar a la víctima local, puesto que la inscripción geográfica del MENA, comprendida como un espacio de terror, arrebata la dignidad de la muerte a las poblaciones orientales.

“Ask for More Time”: Big Data Chronopolitics in the Australian Welfare Bureaucracy

Since 2016, welfare recipients in Australia have been subject to the Online Compliance Intervention (OCI), implemented through the national income support agency, Centrelink. This is a big data initiative, matching reported income to tax records to recoup welfare overpayments. The OCI proved controversial, notably for a “reverse onus,” requiring that claimants disprove debts, and for data-matching design leading frequently to incorrect debts. As algorithmic governance, the OCI directs attention to the chronopolitics of contemporary welfare bureaucracies. It outsources labor previously conducted by Centrelink to clients, compelling them to submit documentation lest debts be raised against them. It imposes an active wait against a deadline on those issued debt notifications. Belying government rhetoric about the accessibility of the digital state, the OCI demonstrates how automation exacerbates punitive welfare agendas, through transfers of time, money, and labor whose combined effects are such as to occupy the time of people experiencing poverty.

Authoritarian Audiences, Rhetoric, and Propaganda in International Crises: Evidence from China

AbstractHow do government rhetoric and propaganda affect mass reactions in international crises? Using two scenario-based survey experiments in China, one hypothetical and one that selectively reminds respondents of recent events, we assess how government statements and propaganda impact Chinese citizens’ approval of their government's performance in its territorial and maritime disputes. We find evidence that citizens disapprove more of inaction after explicit threats to use force, suggesting that leaders can face public opinion costs akin to audience costs in an authoritarian setting. However, we also find evidence that citizens approve of bluster—vague and ultimately empty threats—suggesting that talking tough can provide benefits, even in the absence of tough action. In addition, narratives that invoke future success to justify present restraint increase approval, along with frames that emphasize a shared history of injustice at the hands of foreign powers.

Plantation: Its Process in Relation to Scotland's Atlantic Communities, 1590s–1630s

The article sets the Scottish and British Crown's colonizing measure vis-a-vis the Scottish communities of the North Atlantic arc within a broader imperial framework. Underlying such course of action was the articulation of a rhetoric as a vital linguistic tool for its plantations' raison d'etre. The study delineates key aspects in the major plantation schemes of Scotland that were implemented between the 1590s and 1630s. Both the internal colonizing project of Lewis and the external ones of Ireland, briefly, and Nova Scotia, will be primarily assessed from the bottom-up perspective of the maritime communities of the northern Highlands. Distancing themselves from the governmental rhetoric, these ventures helped reconfigure clan allegiance and dynamics in the Lewis case, and reposition the role and identity of these far-northerners in the Irish and Nova Scotia plans as well as in redefining these enterprises' nature.

Reconceptualising early years teacher training: policy, professionalism and integrity

ABSTRACTThis paper seeks to identify the impact of the undergraduate Early Years Initial Teacher Training (EYITT) qualification on the emerging professional identity of a group of undergraduate students. The research explored the practical and academic self-concepts of the trainee practitioners together with wider societal perspectives gained through an examination of the associated policy context. The research data was transcribed and a process of sorting, coding and analysis was undertaken at several levels to form constructs, a thematic framework was then utilised to organise the data. Findings indicate that, in failing to establish full parity between those who hold the title ‘Early Years Teacher Status (EYTS)’ and school teachers with ‘Qualified Teacher Status (QTS)’, the government has restricted the potential employability of EYTS, and their access to equality in pay and conditions, which causes confusion as to the status and role of the EYT. These factors, together with the absence of a related professional body, and a persistent government rhetoric which implies deficiencies in the quality of the ECEC workforce, have the potential to cause a dichotomy between the perceptions of professionalism in policy, theory and practice.

Killing a Constitution with a Thousand Cuts: Executive Aggrandizement and Party-State Fusion in India

Many concerned citizens, including judges, bureaucrats, politicians, activists, journalists and academics, have been claiming that Indian democracy has been imperilled by the current government in power at the Union level since 2014. To examine the claim, the paper sets up an analytic framework for accountability mechanisms liberal democratic constitutions put in place to provide a check on the political executive. The assumption is that only if this framework is being dismantled in a systematic manner can we say that democracy itself is in peril. This framework helps distinguish between actions that one may disagree with ideologically but are nonetheless permitted to an elected government from actions that strike at the heart of liberal democratic constitutionalism (the first set of actions are reversible when political opponents come to power, the second set of actions make it harder, if not impossible, for such opponents to come to power). Liberal democratic constitutions typically adopt three ways of making accountability demands on the political executive: vertically by demanding electoral accountability to the people, horizontally by subjecting it to accountability demands of other state institutions like the judiciary and fourth branch institutions, and diagonally by requiring discursive accountability to the media, the academy and civil society. This framework assures democracy over time -- i.e. it guarantees democratic governance not only to the people today, but to all future peoples of India. While each elected government has the mandate to implement its policies over a wide range, seeking to reduce the effectiveness of these modes of accountability is legitimately understood as an effort to entrench the ruling party's stranglehold on power in ways that are inimical to the continued operation of democracy. The paper finds that the Modi government has indeed sought to undermine each of these three strands of executive accountability. Unlike the assault on democratic norms during India Gandhi's Emergency in the 1970s, there is no evidence of a direct or full-frontal attack today. The BJP government's mode of operation has been subtle and incremental, but systemic. Hence, the paper characterises the phenomenon as 'killing a constitution by a thousand cuts'. The incremental assaults on democratic governance have typically been justified by a combination of a managerial rhetoric of efficiency and good governance (made plausible by the undeniable imperfection of our institutions) and a divisive rhetoric of hyper-nationalism (which brands political opponents of the party as traitors to the state). Unlike paradigmatic examples of the recent wave of democratic deconsolidation -- Poland and Hungary -- India's relatively long experience with democracy has enabled robust, and often successful, opposition to many of these moves. And yet, many democratic norms and mechanisms have been seriously undermined. The direction of travel is unmistakably towards a 'guided' or 'managed' democracy which will structurally ensure the political dominance of the ruling party.

The power of creative learning through the arts: Economic imperative or social good?

This article uses data generated through qualitative methods and discourse analysis to explore how ‘creative learning’ is articulated in the current educational context in Wales. The research focused on the Arts and Wellbeing in Education (AWE) professional learning programme for primary and secondary schools, delivered by ‘Arts Champions’ through one of the Regional Arts and Education Networks. The Networks were created to support the Welsh Government / Arts Council Wales Creative Learning through the Arts Action Plan (Welsh Government, 2015). The analysis applies a poststructural framework, influenced by the work of Foucault, to examine the circulating discourses around the ‘benefits’ and ‘value’ of creative learning, and the arts. The discussion reveals the underlying structures and ideological project that in/form the policy context, and the resultant practice. The findings describe how the Welsh Government rhetoric describes a broadly democratic, economic value of the arts, while the case study Network D emphasises the benefit of the arts as a ‘social good’. Within this context, AWE functions as a local revolution extending, enhancing and personalising the ‘social good’ so that the benefits centre on wellbeing through mindful approaches to creativity, the value of which is decided by the individual.