There is growing evidence for the effectiveness of choice architecture or ‘nudge’ interventions to change a range of behaviours including the consumption of alcohol, tobacco and food. Public acceptability is key to implementing these and other interventions. However, few studies have assessed public acceptability of these interventions, including the extent to which acceptability varies with the type of intervention, the target behaviour and with evidence of intervention effectiveness. These were assessed in an online study using a between-participants full factorial design with three factors: Policy (availability
vs
size
vs
labelling
vs
tax) x Behaviour (alcohol consumption
vs
tobacco use
vs
high-calorie snack food consumption) x Evidence communication (no message
vs
assertion of policy effectiveness
vs
assertion and quantification of policy effectiveness [e.g., a 10% change in behaviour]). Participants (
N
= 7058) were randomly allocated to one of the 36 groups. The primary outcome was acceptability of the policy. Acceptability differed across policy, behaviour and evidence communication (all
p
s < .001). Labelling was the most acceptable policy (supported by 78%) and Availability the least (47%). Tobacco use was the most acceptable behaviour to be targeted by policies (73%) compared with policies targeting Alcohol (55%) and Food (54%). Relative to the control group (60%), asserting evidence of effectiveness increased acceptability (63%); adding a quantification to this assertion did not significantly increase this further (65%). Public acceptability for nudges and taxes to improve population health varies with the behaviour targeted and the type of intervention but is generally favourable. Communicating that these policies are effective can increase support by a small but significant amount, suggesting that highlighting effectiveness could contribute to mobilising public demand for policies. While uncertainty remains about the strength of public support needed, this may help overcome political inertia and enable action on behaviours that damage population and planetary health.
The work of the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci has had a significant impact upon the study of International Relations (IR) over the past fifteen years. Despite the emergence of a distinct 'Italian School' in IR, however, there have been few assessments of the utility of Gramsci's concepts in this area. Our purpose here is to engage with the work of the new Gramscians. We begin by specifying the theoretical attractions of using Gramsci in IR, and then subject the key foundational claims of the new Gramscians to critical analysis. Our principal conclusions are that the Italian school's appropriation of Gramsci is far more conceptually problematic than they acknowledge, and that their use of his framework is difficult to sustain with respect to the scholarship devoted to his ideas. If Gramsci is to be used effectively within IR, closer attention must be paid both to the historical meaning of his work and to the problems raised by it. In short, Gramsci and his ideas must be more thoroughly historicized if his work is to be used to comprehend the multiple dynamics of world order today.
Relatively little research has explored whether there is a systemic urban-rural divide in the political and socioeconomic attitudes of citizens across Europe. Drawing on individual-level data from the European Social Survey, we argue that there are strong and significant differences between the populations in these different settings, especially across western European countries. We suggest that this divide is a continuum, running on a gradient from inner cities to suburbs, towns and the countryside. The differences are explained by both composition and contextual effects, and underscore how a firmer appreciation of the urban-rural divide is integral to future place-based policy responses.
Memory is a major theme in contemporary life, a key to personal, social, and cultural identity. Philosophers have long regarded continuity of memory as an essential quality of personhood. But personal and collective identity are intimately linked. Classical works such as Maurice Halbwachs's The Collective Memory, and Sir Frederick Bartlett's Remembering highlight the social nature of what we usually take to be individual memory, an insight reinforced by research on the historical consciousness of non-literate peoples. 1 Here I will explore, in comparative perspective, the social processes through which personal memory becomes collectivized and collective memory is instantiated through autobiographical recollection. My interest in this topic is shaped by personal involvement with the "false memory" controversy: an acrimonious debate about the validity of certain forms of psychotherapy in restoring memories of forgotten traumatic events, such as childhood sexual abuse. 2 This is a dispute over the nature and boundaries of a processual self rooted in time and determined by history; it is framed by an idiom of betrayal and trauma heavily influenced by the rhetoric of "survivorship." A complex and disastrous episode involving European Jewry has become a model for construing the histories of other disadvantaged and "trau-420
Brexit and the coronavirus pandemic have put relationships between the UK government and its devolved counterparts under growing strain. Tensions generated by both of these developments have exposed the inadequacies of the existing, under‐developed system for bringing governments together in the UK. The limitations of the current system include the ad hoc nature of intergovernmental meetings, and their consultative rather than decision‐making character. Drawing upon an analysis of how intergovernmental relationships are structured in five other countries, the authors offer a number of suggestions for the reconfiguration of the UK model. They explore different ways of enabling joint decision making by its governments, and argue against the assumption that England can be represented adequately by the UK administration. Without a serious attempt to address this dysfunctional part of the UK’s territorial constitution, there is every prospect that relations between these different governments will continue to deteriorate.
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