Prevention is an attractive idea to policymakers in theory, particularly in health where the burden of spending and care is increasingly taken up by complex and chronic conditions associated with lifestyle choices. However, prevention in general, and preventive health in particular, has proven hard to implement in practice. In this paper, we look to one tangible legacy of the recent rise of the prevention agenda: agencies with responsibility for preventive health policy. We ask how this form of institutionalizing preventive health happens in practice, and what consequences it has for the advancement of the prevention agenda. We draw on qualitative data to compare the trajectories of newly formed agencies in Australia, New Zealand and England. We find that building and maintaining legitimacy for such agencies may come at the expense of quick progress or radical action in service of the prevention agenda.

With the systemic turn in deliberative democratic theory, there is renewed and broadened emphasis on the inclusion of all affected by a political decision in the making of those decisions. The key enabler of inclusion at a system level is transmission: theoretically, a deliberative system is more democratic if it can foster the transmission of claims and ideas across different sites, especially between informal sites of public deliberation and the more formal institutions of political decision-making. Yet little is known about the mechanisms of transmission in deliberative systems. How, and to what effect, is transmission facilitated in practice? This paper draws on case studies of three promising mechanisms of deliberative transmission: institutional, innovative and discursive. We discuss the key factors that enable or hinder different forms of transmission, and reflect on the ways in which they might be strengthened in deliberative systems. Our analysis suggests that the systemic turn in deliberative democracy should go hand-in-hand with a nuanced understanding of how transmission occurs across different sites. As such, our discussion has important implications for deliberative scholars and practitioners as they go about conceptualizing, studying and steering deliberative democracy at the large scale.

An ophthalmic system (100) having an ophthalmic cassette (104) for operative engagement with an ophthalmic apparatus (102) is disclosed. The ophthalmic cassette (104) includes a cassette body (108) having a manifold (124) defining an inlet port (180) in fluid flow communication with first and second fluid pathways (120/122) which are in selective fluid flow communication with respective first and second storage chambers (116/118) such that fluid enters either the first storage chamber (116) or the second storage chamber (118). The ophthalmic apparatus (102) is operable to permit alternate fluid flow communication between the inlet port (108) and either the first storage chamber (116) or the second storage chamber (118) during operation of the ophthalmic system (100).

Disenchantment with politics appears to be proliferating throughout contemporary liberal democracies, as outlined in the growing literature on anti-politics. Overwhelmingly, this literature has focused on the disaffection citizens express towards the policy process. Here, using policy-making on the issue of obesity in Australia and Britain as a case study, we show that disenchantment is not limited to citizen outsiders; the elite policy actors at the core of the process are cynical, too. Indeed, we unveil an elite cast of stoic democrats' who see little reward for their continual efforts. We also point to the limits of stoicism highlighted by this extreme' case, as some elites begin to challenge the legitimacy of formal policy processes, subvert their norms, or ignore them altogether, all in search of more direct impact. We conclude that the literature on anti-politics would benefit from paying greater attention to the potential challenge elite cynicism presents to democratic governance.

Disenchantment with politics appears to be proliferating throughout contemporary liberal democracies, as outlined in the growing literature on anti-politics. Overwhelmingly, this literature has focused on the disaffection citizens express towards the policy process. Here, using policy-making on the issue of obesity in Australia and Britain as a case study, we show that disenchantment is not limited to citizen outsiders; the élite policy actors at the core of the process are cynical, too. Indeed, we unveil an élite cast of ‘stoic democrats’ who see little reward for their continual efforts. We also point to the limits of stoicism highlighted by this ‘extreme’ case, as some élites begin to challenge the legitimacy of formal policy processes, subvert their norms, or ignore them altogether, all in search of more direct impact. We conclude that the literature on anti-politics would benefit from paying greater attention to the potential challenge élite cynicism presents to democratic governance.

John Boswell is a lecturer in politics at the University of Southampton. His interests include democratic governance, health policy, political narrative and interpretive research methods. His work is published in journals such as Political Studies, Policy Sciences and Public Management Review. He also co-edited with Jack Corbett, a special issue of the Australian Journal of Public Administration titled ‘Interpretation and the Study of Australian Politics and Policy’. Jack Corbett is a research fellow at Griffith University’s Centre for Governance and Public Policy. His work has appeared or is soon to appear in journals such as Comparative Political Studies, Politics and Gender, and Democratisation. He recently published Being Political: Leadership and Democracy in the Pacific Islands (University of Hawaii Press) and co-edited with John Boswell, a special issue of the Australian Journal of Public Administration titled ‘Interpretation and the Study of Australian Politics and Policy’.

In this paper, we explore the connections between intepretivism's core and its peripheries in both geographical and epistemological terms, by tracing the relationship between interpretivism and Australian political scholarship. In this task, we draw on some of the most celebrated and influential work on Australian politicsby political scientists but before them historians and anthropologiststo show how the approach typically undertaken by these researchers echoes key tenets of interpretivism, especially through an interest in subjective beliefs and experiences, a desire to uncover and bring to life richly contextualised detail, and a commitment to the abductive linking of theory and practice. As such, we suggest that the spread of this counter identity to interpretive researchers in Australia risks manufacturing a sense of methodological antipathy, marginalising the work of interpretivists from mainstream political scholarship.