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This paper aims to disrupt assumptions about leadership by arguing those who are ostensibly “followers” may be utterly insouciant towards the existence of people categorised as “leaders”. It contributes to anti-leadership theories.

This article uses an immersive, highly reflexive methodology to explore subjective meanings of leadership at community levels ostensibly governed by local government leaders. It uses a case study of the South Wales Valleys, one of the hubs of the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century but now economically deprived.

Through drawing on their rich and complex history, the author shows how in these communities there is a culture of neo-communitarianism that is anti-leadership and suspicious of attempts to establish hierarchies of superior over inferior. The author explores the complex webs of meaning through which ancient experiences reverberate like dead metaphors, informing contemporary understandings without conscious awareness of such a heritage. This is a history in which “leaders” betrayed or oppressed and exploited the population, which in response turned against hierarchies and evolved practices of self-government that continue today, invisible and unrepresentable within the wider culture.

The study draws on contemporary feminist research methods that emphasise subjectivity, flux and change. These are often not understood by readers not accustomed to stepping out of a positivist onto-epistemological frame.

The paper challenges the universalising tendencies of leadership theories that assume a shapeless mass; “followers” await the advent of a leader before they can become agentive.

The paper offers insights into a day-to-day world that is rarely explored.

The article demonstrates how emerging forms of qualitative research give insights into communities that undermine dominant, universalising theories of leadership, followership and government more generally.

This article aims to identify the different approaches to integrated care taken by separate proposed care services legislation for England and Wales with a view to informing debate on the legislation.

This is a comparative analysis of the proposed legislation.

While there is much common ground between the two pieces of legislation, in other respects the approach taken to integrated care legislation differs across England and Wales.

This is the first published analysis of the different approaches to integrated care legislation reform proposed for England and Wales.

This chapter considers how far political devolution has enabled the government in Wales to develop a distinctive approach to student funding. It examines in particular claims that policy choices in Wales on student funding reflect a commitment to ‘progressive universalism’, a term sometimes used by policy-makers in Wales and elsewhere to describe combining means-tested and non-means-tested benefits. The chapter also explores the growing use of income-contingent loans, arguing that such loans complicate debates about targeting and universalism.

Draws upon recent legislative changes to Wales to provide new evidence and understanding of the way in which government reforms in the UK have impacted upon the promotion of equality of opportunity at government level. Analyses the problems and challenges that this new legislative duty presents for the elected representatives and bureaucrats as well as the civil groups it was designed to help. Points out a wider significance of these changes and engages the debate about the relationship between government, law and the promotion of equality.

There are a number of indicators of academic engagement with the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) that have been used in previous studies, such as analysing journal publications. However, this snapshot survey uses attendance at higher education conferences as a measure. Attendances were analysed at three conferences in the UK between July‐December 2008. The country in which each conference delegate was based and (for Wales only) their institution, was recorded. The results indicate that there were 991 attendances including delegates from 33 countries. The Annual Conference of the Society for Research into Higher Education had the most international delegates (from 32 countries), compared to two conferences run by (or in association with) the Higher Education Academy, both with delegates from seven countries. Delegates from English institutions dominated all conferences, followed by Wales, Australia, Scotland and Ireland. It is estimated that to raise conference attendance by Welsh academics to the same proportion as English academics, an increase of 25 per cent would be required. Of the 11 Welsh institutions analysed, the four ranked top are all regarded as teaching‐focused universities, whilst the tail comprises three universities regarded as research‐intensive. The four remaining Welsh institutions did not have any representation at any of the conferences studied. Although limitations of this study are discussed, the data may be used to inform strategy for further engagement with SoTL in Wales and elsewhere.

The relative performance of manufacturing industry in Wales and the UK is appraised using a range of performance measures related to a number of concepts of efficiency, which are outlined. The four measurement approaches are: productivity analysis and efficiency frontiers; survey results; the Wharton approach; potential efficiency and comparative technology used.

Cardiganshire is relatively poor in public spending funds: there are so few people to tax and no hidden assets outside the tourist industry. But it would not be Wales if education wasn't given the highest priority. As one headmaster put it: ‘What little we have we are prepared to spend on education’. This sentiment re‐iterated by nearly every teacher is indicative of a communal dedication to giving their children the best chances — albeit to leave for England and the South — that is seldom apparent in the rest of the country. Part of this is the result of very close contact between administrators and teachers, and a remarkably unstratified society in which communications are still informal and effective. There is very little of the ‘them‐us’ feeling between teachers and administrators or between teachers, parents and children that you find in similar areas of England, eg the West Riding of Yorkshire where there is a very well meaning but paternalistic attitude evident in the hierachy. In Cardiganshire, and doubtless in Anglesey, Caernarvon, Merioneth, et al, there appears to be a grand communal conspiracy to do, with characteristic Welsh self‐confidence, what every one else seems to find so difficult — and it works. Just because it works so well it is very difficult for an outsider to criticize.

The purpose of this paper is to critically reflect upon the place of rugby union in contemporary Wales where the game is used as an important tool to promote images of the nation. Using Benedict Anderson's conceptualisation of the nation as an “imagined community” the paper aims to locate and analyse the game within and around discourses of Cool Cymru, a term coined in the late twentieth century to promote images of a new vibrant Wales as popularised through its leading music bands.

A critical sociological approach analyses and problematises notions of Welshness as it relates to the national sport of rugby.

The nation is often (re)presented and conceptualised as a monolithic whole where rugby's assumed centrality is rarely questioned. This essay focuses upon the areas of language, geography and gender to demonstrate the situated limits of these (re)presentations. Rugby union and Cool Cymru are also located alongside devolution and are examined further with specific reference to the postmodern sporting celebrity.

This work highlights an increasing primacy afforded to the capital city of Cardiff within a re‐imagining of the nation and the national game.

Examines a study of women’s history in modern Wales. Considers the way in which historians have approached (or failed to approach) the subject before evaluating a current attempt to rectify traditional neglect in this area. Profiles in particular the case of blue books, a report into education in Wales in 1847, which blamed poor standards, in part, on the women of Wales. Questions what the above project (project Grace) has achieved in terms of promoting the growth of women’s history in Wales.