Cassilis

Week 6 on the Think Tank Roundup and a varied selection this week. I'm probably going to change the format slightly (see below) but as ever please flag anything worthy you think I might have missed...

The Institute for Public Policy Research

• Plenty of comment around today on Lord Goldsmith Citizenship paper and the IPPR has a research paper it contributed to the review. Entitled "Beyond Naturalisation: Citizenship policy in an age of super mobility" it looks at how "how a government committed to progressive notions of citizenship might respond to the fact that fewer people are willing to take up British citizenship or able to establish long-term roots within communities" (PDF of full publication)
• A call from the IPPR for Alastair Darling to focus his attention today on lifting the working poor out of poverty. According to research "half of all children in poverty now live in a working household" and "Wednesday’s Budget is the Government’s last chance to make significant changes to meet the 2010 target to reduce child poverty; it is currently 1.1 million short of its pledge"

Demos

• On the Demos blog Duncan O'Leary weighed in on the row over John Hutton's speech to progress on city salaries. According to Duncan " markets produce wage inequality, so the political decision is when – and to what extent – this inequality is acceptable or should be redressed through the state"
• Also on Demos a short think piece by Jamie Bartlett on how western security services regularly misunderstand the appeal of violent Islamic extremism. "Most work written on the subject attributes the rise of violent extremism to broad structural factors such as foreign policy, societal discrimination, and a lack of local leadership. While important, this tends to ignore another vital aspect: that for some young people, al-Qaeda and al-Qaeda inspired groups are glamourous and exciting"

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation

• Interesting paper from JRF on the apparent disjoin in government policy between 'person' focused policies and location focused ones. "While the Government has sought to tackle disadvantage across a number of fronts since 1997, person- and place-based policies have mostly developed separately and often in isolation from each other. This separation does not reflect the relationships between places and the poverty and disadvantage of people who live in them."
• Also on JRF a thorough review of policy & practice in Scotland on tackling anti-social behaviour, with a particular focus on the challenges that face social housing associations.

The Centre for Social Cohesion \ Civitas

• On the Civitas-aligned Centre for Social Cohesion blog David Conway adds his thoughts to the wealth of comment on Margaret Hodge's speech on the Proms - according to David "The musical celebration of Britain offered by the last night of the Proms is no less inherently inclusive than is the Notting Hill Carnival. That fewer non-Caucasian faces are to be found among the audience there than Caucasian faces are to be found in the crowds at the Carnival probably has as much as anything else to do with the fact that the former event makes an admissions charge, whilst attendance at the latter event is free"
• Also on the CSC blog James Brandon flags the Home Office study that estimated the alarming statistic that 3,000 women are forced in marriage every year in the UK .

I use a feed reader to monitor output from the think tanks and then construct this post each week. I still intend to flag particularly worthy or interesting pieces as above but will probably also add another more succinct list of things I spotted that might interest others e.g.

• The Heritage Foundation on Gordon Brown's surrender of sovereignty.
• Council on Foreign Relations on Hugo Chavez exploiting FARC
• Chatham House on the rules of the Global Economy

Labels: Think Tank Roundups