Partnerships, Power and the "New" Politics of Community Participation in British Health Care

Multi–sectoral approaches to health improvement in its broadest sense have entailed an emphasis by the British government upon partnership working in and around community involvement in planning processes. New service planning and delivery organizations in the health service—primary care groups and primary care trusts—thus have to ensure that public and patient involvement strategies reflect a coordinated, if not integrated, multi–sectoral approach to such involvement. But how are these enforced partnership arrangements shaping the approach taken by primary care groups and trusts to the issue of public and patient involvement? More particularly, is the traditional dominance of health service managers and the medical profession in decision–making processes under challenge? This article draws on a study of primary care groups and trusts in three districts in order to gauge perceptions and calculations with regard to partnerships for involvement. Results appear to suggest that health service managers and practitioners continue to exercise considerable influence in comparison to that of patients and citizens. But, if the findings are viewed in the broader contexts of government managerialist strategies of surveillance and accountability and the growth of service–user and advocacy organizations, partnerships may offer significant scope for “lay” challenges to managerial and medical power.     

Sterilization: Whose Right to Choose?

As there is presently no safe, freely available and fully effective mode of contraception, voluntary sterilization remains a matter of importance in this sphere. The legal right to such a choice has slowly evolved and it now seems clear that there is no legal barrier to such a choice by a competent adult. Yet, at a practical level, it seems that hospitals and medical practitioners will not readily accede to a request by an individual for such an operation and usually insist on the consent of the spouse if the person is married. The disparity between the law and existing practice is examined. It is argued that an adult individual should basically have a right to determine what shall be done with his own body, and that the onus is heavily on those who exceptionally seek to justify intervention.     

A Characterization of the Normal Family of Distributions Based on the Bias of the Maximum Likelihood Estimator

This paper characterizes the family of Normal distributions within the class of exponential families of distributions, via the structure of the bias of the maximum likelihood estimator Θ _n of the canonical parameter Θ . More specifically, when E _θ ( Θ n ) – Θ = (1/ n ) Q ( Θ ) + o (1/ n ), the equality Q ( Θ ) = 0 proves to be a property of the Normal distribution only. The same conclusion is obtained for the one-dimensional case bt assuming that Q ( Θ ) is a polynomial of Θ .     

The Divergent Paths of the Ethnic Parties in Post-Communist Transitions

This article provides a comparative analysis of the evolution of ethnic parties in the three most important ethnically divided societies in post-communist Europe (not including the former Yugoslav republics): Bulgaria, Romania and Slovakia. The starting point of the analysis is the fall of communism, when ethnicity re-emerged as a salient issue in each of these three states and a potential source of conflict. In these contexts, the ethnic parties formed by each of the most important minorities in these states became crucial actors of transition, but also highly relevant at the level of highly volatile party systems. In contrast with the wide majority of the literature, which focuses on single case studies, this exploratory study allowed for a comparative multi-dimensional account of the development and evolution of several ethnic parties, paying attention to the national contexts. Rather than reaching major conclusions that can be generalized for ethnic parties in general, this article provides a good base for further comparative studies on ethnic parties as crucial actors in divided societies.     

On a confidence interval about a parameter estimated by a ratio of normal random variables

A confidence interval is geometrically constructed about a parameter estimated by the ratio of bivariate normal random variables. The resulting confidence interval is equivalent to that of Fieller's theorem. The geometric construction shown that such intervals are conservative. Bioassay examples are used to demonstrate the technique.