Natalie Byrom explains how the Legal Services Act 2007 (LSA 2007) aimed to reform legal services in England and Wales to enhance consumer protection and access to justice. However, its focus on professional titles and reserved activities created complexity and hindered innovation, especially for low-income individuals. Public funding cuts in 2013 worsened the situation, leading to increased self-representation and strain on the judiciary. In response, the Ministry of Justice and Senior Judiciary launched a £1.3bn digital reform in 2014 to modernize court operations. However, by 2023, only twenty-four out of forty-four projects were completed, with key initiatives like the Online Solutions Court abandoned due to delays and COVID-19 disruptions. In November 2023, a new vision proposed a public–private partnership for digital justice, leveraging technology to streamline processes and support from private sector services. This raises questions about market readiness, incentives for data sharing, and necessary regulatory adjustments to ensure fair access to justice. Addressing these challenges is crucial for improving legal service delivery and access to justice.

Chapter 8 highlights the paradoxes of American and German housing policymaking amid surging house prices during the 2010s and early 2020s. American housing programs reinforced demand-led growth but also fueled financial bubbles and economic turmoil. In the post-2008-2009 period, this pattern persisted as policymakers continued stimulating housing-based growth, which simultaneously contributed to skyrocketing house prices, fears of a housing bubble, and an affordability crisis. In contrast, German policymakers retrenched housing programs that once supported the country's export-oriented growth regime by deflating housing costs. Consequently, they deprived themselves of the tools to respond to rapidly rising housing costs and affordability problems of recent years that risked fueling inflation and wage demands detrimental to export competitiveness. The conclusion of this book extends the broader lessons beyond the United States and Germany to such countries as Austria, Canada, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom, illustrating how these countries' different growth regimes channel housing policymaking in different directions.

Drawing on four historical case studies, this chapter develops a picture of the paths toward civil service reform by interrogating the motivations of reformers, searching for clues as to whether they believed the merit system to be a democratizing reform or not. The first part of the chapter thus trains its sights on the period prior to reform in the United States and the United Kingdom. Whether reformers achieved their goals is a separate question. The second part of this chapter thus focuses on the distributional and representational consequences of civil service reform, looking at two different cases: China and India. In China, the merit system introduced during the seventh century was, in comparison to what preceded it, a democratizing reform, enabling ambitious office-seekers from regional hinterlands to share in power. India's brief interlude with unmediated meritocratic recruitment while under British colonial rule, meanwhile, was not democratizing and was ultimately criticized for effectively shutting the door to government representation among the less well-to-do.

This chapter examines the War Department’s role in the formation of US policy toward the European war and the growing crisis in the Pacific between the Fall of France in June 1940 and the Pearl Harbor attacks in December 1941. This chapter argues that the War Department played a pivotal role in shaping American policy and actions in both the Atlantic and the Pacific, but in different ways. In the Atlantic, the War Department was a primary impetus within the Roosevelt administration for increasingly interventionist policies. It consistently pushed President Roosevelt to act and influenced the politics of his decision-making at several crucial junctures. The War Department provided the crucial nexus between the executive branch, Congress, and outside pressure groups as the US moved toward war. In the Pacific, the War Department pressed for a firm stand against Japan but helped muddle Far Eastern policy by working to undermine the State Department’s more cautious stance. This bureaucratic warfare made it difficult to foster consensus around US deterrence actions and contributed to worsening relations between Washington and Tokyo, setting the stage for the Pacific War.

This chapter examines how US officials responded to their ultimately unsuccessful attempts to shape Anglo-American grand strategy during 1942 by changing their approach to these debates in 1943. It argues that War Department civilian and military officials led this effort by overhauling US strategic planning processes and forcefully criticizing British strategy and policy as antithetical to American political objectives. Army planners tactically used their position within the US foreign policy process to craft a hostile narrative about British military aims to shape how their superiors approached US–UK strategy formation and to prioritize their own conceptions of America’s geopolitical ambitions. These efforts hardened US officials’ determination to advance Washington’s wartime goals above London’s and helped forge a strong level of political coordination between the War Department and the JCS for ensuring this occurred. The result was that American defense officials were able to convince President Roosevelt to back their strategic views and to shun Britain’s Mediterranean approach for defeating Germany.

United Kingdom emergency departments (EDs) are subject to complex national performance targets and the recent development of Acute Medicine as a subspeciality branch of general medicine that deals solely with the first 12-72 hours of care of the medically unwell patient. The ‘four-hour rule’, introduced in 2003/4, mandated that 98% of patients presenting to an ED must be seen, treated and then admitted or discharged in under four hours. As a result, many EDs have ED-led observation units (OUs). Given that many UK EDs remain relatively understaffed, OUs tend to be small and take very well-defined low-risk patients. Although the St. Thomas Hospital OU offered a high standard of care, its smooth functioning was often challenged by the demands of the four-hour target, with the OU seen as an option to avoid patients ‘breaching’ their ED length of stay target. In 2012, the model of care was changed, with a focus on goal directed outcomes, for both admission and discharge. Eight beds within the new emergency medical unit (EMU) are now dedicated to goal-directed therapy, with the remainder for rapid goal-directed discharge.

This introductory chapter sets out the enduring food security crisis that the UK has faced over the post-War period and positions it in relation to how the UK is situated with respect to global value chains of food supply, labour provisioning and the adoption of new technology. It introduces the core concept of the ‘total ecology’ as a way of understanding attempts to enhance food security through glasshouse agrifood production, but highlights the fragilities of this system of food production.

We are currently in the era of great power competition, and many states are grappling with how the future may unfold. Coalition warfare will be a key consideration in any flare-up. This chapter analyses the complexity of coalition warfare in the twenty-first century through the prism of the British Army’s experiences in the United Kingdom–led Multi-National Division (South East) and in Basra in the Iraq War. Any future wars in which Australia participates will most likely be as part of a coalition effort. Australia is unlikely to be the leading partner and will need to assess how best it will serve as a supporting participant in future coalitions.

The First World War was the first large-scale industrial war which saw its belligerents grapple with modernity. By the beginning of 1918 the British were faced with a particularly challenging strategic picture. Their Russian partners had withdrawn from the war and were negotiating a settlement with the Central Powers. The French were recovering from a series of strikes which fuelled British concern over how worn out the French Army might be. The Italians were regrouping after a devastating attack by the Central Powers at Caporetto. While the United States had entered the war on the side of the Entente, they were arriving too slowly to reassure their partners that they could tip the balance of the war in the Entente’s favour in the near term.

The chapter outlines Dayan’s transition from commanding the Southern Command to becoming the Chief of Staff, emphasizing his strategic vision and operational command. The document delves into Dayan’s approach to military training, his participation in advanced command courses, and the unique leadership style he exhibited during his command of the Northern Command. Additionally, it sheds light on Dayan’s role in shaping Israel’s security doctrine, particularly through the implementation of reprisal actions to address ongoing security threats. The content elucidates Dayan’s belief in the importance of readiness for both routine security challenges and high-intensity conflict, as well as his deep-seated conviction in the necessity of an reprisal operations for maintaining Israel’s deterrence posture that is necessary for Israel’s survival. Furthermore, it provides insights into Dayan’s perception of the conflict through his famous eulogy for a fallen officer, which underscores his complex sentiments towards peaceful coexistence and the harsh realities of conflicts in the region. Overall, the chapter highlights Dayan’s multifaceted leadership, military strategy, and the evolving nature of Israel’s security challenges during his tenure.