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The purpose of this paper is to consider the impact of mental capacity legislation when applied to parents with learning difficulties who lack capacity within childcare and family law proceedings in England and Wales.

The paper relies on a range of material including reports published by independent mental health foundations, official inquiries and other public bodies. It also refers to academic and practitioner material in journals and government guidance.

The paper critically reviews the application of the guidance when assessing mental capacity legislation as applied in England and Wales and offers by way of illustration several case examples where psychological assessments, and the enhancement of capacity, have assisted parents who were involved in childcare and family law proceedings.

There has been little published research or governmental reports on the number of cases when parents involved in childcare and family law proceedings have been found to lack capacity. No published prevalence data are available on the times when enhancing capacity has resulted in a change of outcome in childcare and family law proceedings.

The duty is on the mental health practitioners assessing mental capacity that they do so in a structured and supportive role adhering to good practice guidance and follow the guiding principles of mental capacity legislation assuming that the individual has capacity unless it is established that they lack capacity. Guidance and training is needed to ensure that the interpretation of the Mental Capacity Act (MCA) and its application is applied consistently.

For those who are considered to lack mental capacity to make specific decisions, particularly within childcare and family law proceedings, safeguards are in place to better support such individuals and enhance their capacity in order that they can participate more fully in proceedings.

While the MCA legislation has now been enacted for over ten years, there is very little analysis of the implications of capacity assessments on parents involved in childcare and family law proceedings. This paper presents an overview and, in places, a critical analysis of the new safeguarding duties of mental health practitioners when assessing for, and enhancing capacity in parents.

Did the expansion of democratic institutions play a role in determining central government spending behavior in the 19th and 20th centuries? The link between democracy and increased central government spending is well established for the post-Second World War period, but has never been explored during the first “wave of democracy” and its subsequent reversal, that is 1870–1938. The main contribution of this paper is the compilation of a dataset covering 24 countries over this period to begin to address this question. Utilizing various descriptive techniques, including panel data regressions, we explore correlations between central government spending and the institutional characteristics of regimes. We find that the data are consistent with the hypothesis that democracies have a broader need for legitimization than autocracies as various measures of democracy are associated with higher central government spending. Our results indicate that the extension of franchise had a slight positive impact on central government spending levels, as did a few of the other democracy variables. We also find that early liberal democracies spent less and monarchies more than other regimes; debt increases spending; and participation in the Gold Standard reduced government spending substantially.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the Americanization of European advertising in the post‐war years as a phenomenon of cultural transfer and it aims to explore the interaction between the USA and Italian advertising traditions during the 1950s and the 1960s.

The analysis is in two parts. First, the role of those cross‐cultural mediators who contributed to changing marketing communication strategies of many Italian companies during the 1950s and the 1960s is studied. Second, the ways in which US advertising rules and patterns are combined with the local tradition in order to fit the Italian context of the post‐war years are looked at. The research is based on a study of the main USA and Italian marketing and advertising literature of the post‐war years, and on an analysis of press campaigns and TV commercials.

This research shows that during the 1950s and the 1960s, the conflict between the American approach and the Italian approach to advertising did not prevent interaction and negotiation. In the post‐war years, the USA know‐how and practices, are re‐interpreted through the process of transfer to Italy, creating original, and unexpected solutions.

Although some research has been conducted on the Italian advertising scene during the post‐World War II years, the few existing contributions did not focus on the interaction between the imported American model and the local traditions. This paper provides a good overview of the ways in which notions, methodologies, and strategies coming from the USA are implemented.

Enterprise education (EE) is a growing educational phenomenon. Despite its proliferation globally, there is little critical research on the field. In particular, the ideological potential of EE has been ignored by education scholars. This paper is the first to review the history of the Enterprise New Zealand Trust (ENZT) (known as the Young Enterprise Trust from 2009), as the largest and oldest organisation for the delivery of EE in New Zealand. It examines the activities of the ENZT and its networks in the context of the ascent of neoliberalism including its cultural manifestation in the form of a national “enterprise culture”. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the precise nature of the proximity between the ENZT and neoliberal ideology.

This paper uses document analysis, internet searches and interviews to reconstruct aspects of the history of the ENZT. Historical examination of the ENZT is in part obstructed by a lack of access to direct source material prior to the 1990s, as publications and materials of the ENZT are only available in archives from the early 1990s. The ENZT was, however, important to broader historical networks and actors, such as employer associations and think tanks, who left behind more robust records. Unlike the ENZT itself, these actors are given significant attention in literature which can be drawn upon to further enhance understandings of the ENZT and its relationship to neoliberalism.

This paper reveals that the ENZT has been a major conduit for enterprise culture and neoliberalism since its inception. It has been explicitly concerned with the development of enterprise culture through activities targeting both school students and the general public. Its educational activities, though presented in non-ideological terms, were designed to inculcate students in neoliberal or free market capitalist principles, including amenability towards private ownership of goods and services, private investment, private finance of public projects, free markets and free trade. These findings might serve to encourage critical attitudes among researchers and policy actors as to the broader ideological role of EE on a general scale.

EE on the whole requires closer examination by critical education researchers. The overwhelmingly majority of existing research is concerned with enhancing the practices of EE, while deeper questions regarding its ideological implications are ignored. Perhaps as a result, EE as a conceptual category lacks definitional clarity, as researchers and policy actors grapple with its meaning. If it can be established that EE schemes are not merely “neutral” or non-ideological educational projects, but rather are serious purveyors of ideology, this should have implications for future research and particularly for policy actors involved in the field. A review of the history of the ENZT may be illuminative in this respect, as it reveals the organisation’s record of deliberate political or ideological messaging.

This paper is the first to review the history of the ENZT as the largest provider of EE in New Zealand. EE has become a global phenomenon in recent decades. Non-existent in New Zealand before the 1970s, it is now a staple of the school system, its principles enshrined in the national curriculum document. Within a decade of the ENZT’s inauguration in 1986, eight out of ten secondary schools were using its services. Despite this, the ENZT is all but absent from existing historical literature. Analysing the history of the ENZT allows for enhanced understanding of an important actor within New Zealand education, whose history has been overlooked, as well as provides insight into the broader ideological implications of EE.

This article seeks to demonstrate a technique for using a Geographic Information System (GIS) to analyze US Census data to better understand potential library users and improve library service planning.

A GIS was used to link variables such as age, race, income, and education from the 2000 US Census with service area maps of two proposed branch libraries. Thematic maps were created for each of the census variables to display demographic information about potential library users within a three‐mile radius of the proposed libraries.

The GIS maps and their associated attribute data enhanced the ability to analyze and compare the demographics of potential users in the two library areas and identify significant differences. The data on age, race, education and income for residents in the two areas were combined with known library use indicators to help plan library services with the potential to attract different populations in the local community.

Provides practical information about downloading US Census data into a GIS to be able to present demographic data about potential library users both visually and quantitatively.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how culture affects economic development on Native American reservations by examining how culture directs the attention of entrepreneurs and interacts with formal governance institutions.

This paper combines theoretical insights from economic sociology, market process economics and institutional economics as a basis to evaluate entrepreneurship and economic development on Native American reservations. Culture, as a web of social meanings, shapes what opportunities entrepreneurs are alert to, influences how they perceive transaction costs and determines whether institutions achieve their intended ends. Historical and contemporary case studies are used to build analytical narratives to corroborate the theoretical approach.

The federal government has imposed many formal institutions on reservations, which have disrupted traditional governance and property rights structures. If formal institutions do not comport with the underlying culture, those institutions do not facilitate positive entrepreneurship and economic growth. Despite the barriers, entrepreneurs across several reservations have leveraged their cultural and social ties to create robust informal economies. In some cases, imposed institutions have fostered rent-seeking and have given rise to a culture of rent-seeking.

This paper looks at Native American entrepreneurship and institutions in the broadest sense. However, there is a large amount of diversity within the cultural and governance structures of Native American communities. Future research could examine specific tribes or reservations in more detail.

This paper elucidates cultural and institutional barriers to productive entrepreneurship on Native American lands. Policymakers must understand these root causes if they are to facilitate economic growth.

This paper’s combination of theoretical perspectives helps explain the widespread economic development issues on Native American lands.