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Public Administration Vol. 82 No. 2, 2004 (235–248)© Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street,Malden, MA 02148, USA.

SYMPOSIUM ON IMPLEMENTING PUBLIC POLICY: LEARNING FROM THEORY AND PRACTICEINTRODUCTION

JILL SCHOFIELD AND CHARLOTTE SAUSMAN

The initiative for this symposium issue arose out of a series of five ESRC seminarscalled ‘Implementing Public Policy: Learning from Each Other’. The aim of the seminarswas to revitalize interest amongst public policy researchers about implementationstudies, to advance the development of ideas about public policy implementationand to assess the relevance of academic models of public policy implementation tothose who deliver public services.

An understanding of how and why public policy is put into effect can be concept-ualized under the heading of Implementation Theory, which tends to take as a startingpoint for scholarly concern the work of Pressman and Wildavsky 1973. The benefitsof an implementation perspective are such that they allow the policy analyst to transcendthe distinction between politics and administration. Such a distinction has had a ten-dency to be polarized between either political science research or public administra-tion and general management research. The creation of the ESRC seminar group aimedto create an interdisciplinary group that would bring together researchers from thesedisciplines. It was also timely because of the British Government’s renewed emphasisupon policy implementation and delivery (Schofield and Sausman 2002).

The papers that are presented here reflect the themes that were explored in theseminars, later more fully developed and subsequently synthesized by the authorsand editors. These themes are:

1. Is it time for a revival in implementation studies: did they ever go away?2. What is the role of knowledge, learning and capacity in ensuring that policy is

enacted?

Jill Schofield is Senior Lecturer in Health Care and Public Management in the Department of PublicManagement at Aston Business School Aston University, Birmingham. Charlotte Sausman is VisitingResearch Associate of the Judge Management Institute, University of Cambridge.

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3. What is the utility of theoretical models of implementation?4. What is the importance of context?

Certainly, implementation studies have waxed and waned and while weare not making the case for a resurgence for its own sake, we hope thatthe papers provide a basis for renewed critical thinking and continuingdebate about this very specific aspect of the policy process (Harrow 2002).

IMPLEMENTATION STUDIES: TIME FOR A REVIVAL?

One of the questions being addressed in the papers published here iswhether implementation studies need to be revived at all, or whether otherconcepts and ideas such as regulation, innovation management and evalu-ation adequately take their place. There may be useful things that the studyof implementation highlighted that these newer ideas ignore. Another argu-ment is that the relative decline in public policy implementation researchmay be explained by fashion. Fashions amongst the policy analyst commu-nity come and go and implementation studies may have either lain dormantor been called something else throughout the past 15 years.

Framing her analysis in terms of a personal reflection that stems frombeing one of the joint authors, with Colin Fudge, of Policy in Action (1981),Barrett’s paper opens the symposium. In it she traces three decades ofimplementation studies with a wide-ranging review of policy change withinthe British public sector and how the ‘lens’ of implementation studies hasboth reflected and refracted these changes. Barrett argues that implementa-tion studies have never really gone away, even though, as others have sug-gested, they have been downgraded, maybe even neglected and sidelined(Harrow 2002).

Barrett suggests that perhaps implementation studies were at their mostunfashionable in the 1990s, when one contributory factor could have beenthe advent of the new public management and its associated managerialism.In turn this lead to the adoption of other disciplinary approaches to thestudy of policy implementation. Thus, the study and the use of techniquesfrom strategic management, organizational change and organizationalculture served to complement and maybe to also obscure implementationstudies. However, as Barrett argues, while there are certainly advantages intaking a scholarly multidisciplinary approach, this occurred, and is stilloccurring, against an ideological backdrop. She suggests that there is thedanger that the processes of implementation are once more seen as no morethan a consideration of performance (that is, why does policy fail or suc-ceed?) and, as such, performance is in turn equated to conformance withpolicy targets.

O’Toole’s paper also has the benefit of scholarly hindsight; both he andBarrett were part of one of the earliest groups of scholars to be involved instudying implementation. He too assesses the field and reflects upon theliterature, mainly from North America, where it has also been suggested

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that there has been a diminishing interest in conducting implementationresearch. He begs to differ and argues that implementation research hasbeen reconceptualized ‘along a number of parallel lines’ and that it is nothelpful to have such a ‘narrowly literal’ definition or homogenous method-ological approach to implementation.

It seems to be clear therefore, from this symposium at least, that an inter-est in implementation is alive and well and may in fact be called somethingdifferent and adopt concepts from other disciplines. Indeed, the publicationof a recent synthesizing volume on the subject by Hill and Hupe (2002)would appear to support such an assertion.

THE ROLE OF KNOWLEDGE, LEARNING AND CAPACITY

The focus of research and publication on implementation studies has beenmainly to identify either the variables or processes that are involved. Muchmore attention has been given to the study of variables than processes, nodoubt because of the extreme difficulty of designing and gathering empir-ical data on organizational and political processes. Where the question ofcapacity has been raised, research has tended to focus more upon resources –normally fiscal – and rarely upon intellectual capacity, talent, knowledge ortime or especially the need for ‘spare’ capacity for public services organ-izations to pursue developmental work.

The concept of individual and organizational learning is an example ofboth a capacity issue and a process. In many ways knowledge has beenimplicitly dealt with by some authors on implementation, such as Browneand Wildavsky (1984), and Heclo (1974), who discussed what he calledpolitical learning. Added to which, Sabatier’s Advocacy Coalition Frame-work model (1993) embraced wholeheartedly the concept of learning.Schofield’s paper tackles the issue of learning head on and utilizes some ofthe approaches and theories from organizational and individual learning.The paper focuses upon the operational end of the policy process – wherepublic policy meets professional and managerial skill and decision-makingability. It also picks up some of the points that much of the implementationstudies reflect – that of discretion and street level bureaucracy. She takes amix of six variables and processes – learning, structure, bureaucracy, motiv-ation, time and detail – and integrates these into a grounded theory oflearning which addresses how public managers enacted a new policy initia-tive in the British National Health Service.

While not explicitly addressing learning, the Exworthy and Powell paperalso draws upon empirical data from British health policy: in particular, thepolicies for addressing health inequalities. In this case health managers andclinicians had to learn new things and find new solutions, although theywere not the technical solutions discussed in Schofield’s paper. Conversely,the actors in Exworthy and Powell’s paper had to learn how to deliverpolicy initiatives in the new and changing structural frameworks of multi-level governance.

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All four of the papers, and indeed the ESRC seminars themselves, havedealt either directly or indirectly with the relationship between knowledgeand action. The significance of the role that knowledge can play in policy-making, while self evident, appears to have been adopted as a policy in itselfand is an example of the determined way in which the British government,at least, is intent on the following:

developing a new approach to policy-making based on the latest tech-niques of knowledge management

with

a new interface between policymakers and knowledge producers.(Amman 2000, p. v)

Thus the concepts of evaluation- and evidence-based practice have now tobe incorporated into policy analysis. The adoption of the language of busi-ness management and organizational studies in respect of the use of theterm ‘knowledge management’ is not without significance. Ministerialdepartments in Britain have been encouraged to adopt an ideal type policy-making model, one of professional policy-making (Cabinet Office 2000,2001), which has borrowed a great deal from the Business ExcellenceModel.

The rise of evidence-based practice in the UK can be seen in all branchesof public services and in some areas, such as healthcare, it is both moreadvanced and formalized. One of the consequences of the evidence-basedmovement has been a restatement of the importance of research and criticalappraisal skills within the policy process, although public policy scholars inthe United States, such as Weiss (1992, 1998) have long recognized the roleof evidence and research in the policy-making process.

Davies et al. (2000) suggest that this tendency has the potential to lead to aresurgence in the rational model of policy-making, possibly at the expenseof ignoring the highly political and incremental nature of the policy-makingand implementation processes.

The case studies that Exworthy and Powell describe in their paper describethe local implementation of a health inequality reduction programme. They,too, refer to how good practice was spread locally and how the ‘centralexhortations of evidence-based medicine’ had been adopted at a local level.However, even in the light of improved access to specialized knowledgeabout how to deal with health inequalities, there was no discernable directimprovement in the health status of the populations under observation. Nordid this rational model of the policy process based upon improved infor-mation and knowledge, reduce the managerial difficulties and tensions ofcomplex co-ordination that Exworthy and Powell describe at the locallevel.

While this perspective about knowledge and learning is a very useful wayto conceptualize the idea of policy becoming practice, it begs the question

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that knowledge is itself socially constructed and as such makes whatappears to be a very attractive link between thought and action even morecomplicated. This is because of the different worlds and assumptions thatnot only theorists themselves occupy but also that theorists and practition-ers occupy (Dawson 2001). It is precisely this point that O’Toole emphasizesin his paper when he explores the not-very-well-understood relationshipbetween theory and practice. In particular he warns us against the homogen-ization of practitioners, each of whom has different demands to make oftheory. He argues that ‘the theory–practice nexus’ is not a simple link insome conveyor belt that translates thought into action. This would certainlyseem to be worth bearing in mind in the light of some of the over-simplisticclaims made for changes to the practice of public management as a result ofthe enthusiasm for evidence-based practice and policy-making.

One area of implementation that does appear to have benefited from theencouragement of evidence-based policy design is that of experimentationor the test bedding of new policy initiatives using pilot sites. Obviously, theutility of such pilot sites is a function of their subsequent evaluation andthe dissemination of the knowledge derived from them in order to alter thepolicy design. Certainly, in the area of criminology, there is evidence thatthe findings from some pilot sites are being used for policy design (Maguire1997; Nuttall et al. 1998). Schofield refers to this idea of testing out newpolicy initiatives as a way of trying to deal with this issue of ‘what is thedegree of allowable risk’ that society should allow in respect of not knowingthe consequences of policy initiatives once they have been actioned. Shesuggests that not only should public sector organizations give themselvesthe capacity to learn about how to implement new policy initiatives, but alsothat they need to look at the capacity issues involved in dealing with boththe intended and unintended consequences of new public policies.

THE UTILITY OF THEORETICAL MODELS OF POLICY IMPLEMENTATION IN PRACTICE

Exworthy and Powell have sought to understand the implementation of thehealth inequality initiatives using three models of the policy process and it isto this consideration of the utility of theoretical models both for scholars andfor practitioners that we now turn. In his book, Theories of the Policy Process(1999), Sabatier addresses the need for better theories and he reviews seventheoretical frameworks that deal with the policy process. However, what isunclear is who exactly needs better theories of government? Is it govern-ment itself, the citizen, practitioners or policy analysts? Sabatier appears tobe addressing the policy analyst community. O’Tooles’s paper deals directlywith this problem in respect of the application of implementation theory topractice. His paper combines a philosophical discussion of the nature ofknowledge with a discussion of the very real difficulties of the applicabilityof knowledge in the social sciences per se combined with a wide-rangingreview of what implementation theory has achieved so far.

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Unlike much of the discussion about the taken for granted ‘improving’agenda of evidence-based practice and policy, O’Toole draws our attentionto normative differences about knowledge and its use, pointing out thatimplementation studies are not value free. O’Toole describes three areas for‘normative complications’ in the utility of theory debate. Firstly, theassumption that efforts to improve the conversion of policy into actionshould be meaningful when, in fact, attention may be better lavished uponissues of the nature of the actual regime or other aspects of the policy pro-cess. Secondly, that doing implementation ‘better’ could carry a clear neoconservative implication. Thirdly, the desire to focus upon implementationcould imply a bias towards this aspect of the policy process over others.

O’Toole’s paper makes the reader acknowledge theoretical complexityand also the complexity of the real world problems facing the public andprivate sectors. While acknowledging the importance of all the efforts madetowards a form of theoretical synthesis within the analysis of public policy,O’Toole also offers a way forward for the theory–practice nexus. His wayforward is one that would use the assistance of a more deductive approach.He cites not only his own work but also that of Meier et al. (Meier and Kai-ser, 1996; Meier and Gill 2000; Meier and O’Toole 2001). This work uses arange of techniques, including a modified multiple regression and statisticaltechnique that has subsequently become known as ‘Substantively WaitedAnalytical Techniques’ (SWAT). Other techniques that are suggested in thisanalytical repertoire are multivariate analysis, reversible logic, game theoryand what O’Toole calls contextual interaction theory (Bressers, Klok andO’Toole 2000).

Exworthy and Powell’s approach is one of theoretical synthesis. They usea fusion of models, namely: agenda setting (Kingdon 1995), policy failure(Wolman 1981) and policy streams (Webb and Wistow 1986). While notadvocating a direct link between their theoretical synthesis and the practiceof reducing health inequalities, they do use it to explain the need to co-ordinatepolicy activity. They suggest that this co-ordination needs to be conceptual-ized along the two-by-two dimensions of horizontal and vertical flowsbetween the centre and periphery. Certainly, the conclusions of all fourpapers in this symposium and from the ESRC seminars advocates more notless theoretical synthesis.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT

All four papers reflect upon the importance of, not only the content of thepublic policy to be implemented, but also its context. Throughout the ESRCseminars there was a suggestion that maybe there is an argument for an ‘oldand a new’ implementation perspective that reflects changing public policyconcepts. There are many typologies for these changes that are perhapsmore accurately conceptualized as new and emerging political ideas andimperatives rather than as a new form of political philosophy. In Britainthese emerging political philosophies have attracted the title the Third Way

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and manifest themselves in public policy under the title of a ‘modernizing’agenda, (Boyne et al. 2001).

While it would be stretching the point to claim that there is such a thing asa Third Way political ideology, it is justifiable to assert that there is a thirdway political strategy (if such a strategy is defined in terms of policy direc-tion and policy inclination). Such an inclination includes concepts such associal inclusion, community responsibility and equality of opportunity. Ithas resulted in public policies that purport to encourage area-based zonalpartnerships between sectors, asset-based egalitarianism, such as ‘stake-holder pensions’ and co-ordinated activity between agencies of both state,private and third sector to produce a concept of ‘joined-up government’.

Not only are national changes in context important to the processes ofimplementation, but so too are international changes. No longer can policyanalysts look at nation state solutions and contextual variables withinimplementation. Sibeon (2000) gives us an account of the changing role ofthe modern European state, from one of hierarchical political accountability,to one of post-modern fragmentation which is ordered by diverse forms ofgovernance coupled with its subsequent impact upon the mechanisms ofpublic management and in turn the implementation of policy.

For the purposes of the arguments presented here, three contextualchanges to the ‘old’ implementation are suggested: firstly, the ideas of postnational governance; secondly, the fuller development of new ways oforganizing and structuring public services organizations; and, finally,changes in the linkages between government and the public.

Post-national governanceTwo concepts of post national governance are helpful here. Firstly, the ideaon a domestic scale of an increasingly regulatory state along the lines of thatdefinition used by Rose and Miller (1992) wherein power and policy initia-tives are spread out beyond a parliamentary model and towards third sectorand quasi autonomous governmental agencies (Pollitt and Talbot 2003). Asecond conceptualization of post national governance is that of the end ofthe nation state (Held 1991) and its subsequent ‘hollowing out’ in terms ofthe growth of supra national and federalist power institutions together withthe increase in importance of sub national and regional institutions. Cer-tainly, in Britain the devolution of power to regional assemblies in NorthernIreland, Wales and Scotland supports these changes. However, it is import-ant, for British scholars at least, to remind themselves that such changes arenot quite as new when seen in a broader European context. The same can besaid in the context of the United States, where, because of its federal system,implementation issues have always been greatly influenced by the need forcomplex co-ordination and bargaining.

Using the example of the regulation of the financial services market andthe British Financial Services Authority, Woodward (2001) demonstratesthe difficulties of coming to terms with the new spatial dimensions of

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implementing international public policies in the host nation state. Heemphasizes that the incorporation element of implementation is possible butthat the enforcement aspects of implementation are much more difficult.

While not referring to post national examples of implementation per se,Barrett does emphasize in her paper the importance of culture, context anddifferent policy environments and how they impact upon the implementa-tion process. How much more difficult, then, for us to begin to understandthe variables and processes of implementation on an international scale.

New ways of organizing and structuring public services organizationsThe organizational response to this ‘hollowed out state’ and the contempo-rary promulgation of joined-up government within Britain has been theproliferation of managing within and via networks. To suggest that networkmanagement poses a particular challenge to policy implementation is notnew. O’Toole specifically addressed this issue in 1997 and 2000 when,considering the changes to implementation consequent upon a move frommonocratic bureaucracy towards network structures, he made the pointabout bureaucracy no longer being ‘the standard contextual’ as the structurefor policy implementation.

It is possible that those who study the implementation of public policyhave much to learn from network scholars, not only those involved in policyanalysis, but also from the organizational sciences. The ‘Dutch School’(Kooiman 1993; Kickert et al. 1997; Kooiman and Van Vliet 2000) of policynetworks and network management has developed as one of the intellectualcentres for the analysis of horizontal multi-party relations in public policy.In so doing it has encouraged the crossover from the sociological analysis ofnetworks in terms of social integration, towards a system integrationapproach that suggests the possibility of much easier links with politicalscience (Sibeon 1997).

While other influential authors such as Marsh and Rhodes (1992),Richardson (1996), Rhodes (1997) and Marsh (1998) had also developedcoherent arguments about the impact of networks in the management ofBritish public services, only latterly have analysts acknowledged the primacyof the work on inter-organizational theory by organizational scientists suchas Levine and White (1961), Aldrich (1979) and perhaps above all Benson(1982). The challenges of working collaboratively have for some time alsobeen addressed by authors such as Huxham (1996 and 2000), who hasstudied more organizational process issues. She deals, for instance, withsuch issues as group behaviour within multi-actor collaborations wherejoined-up activities to address such cross-cutting problems as poverty areneeded.

What then are the challenges to policy implementation in a system thatadvocates a system of policy networks? Increased structural complexity canlead to an increase in difficulties with communication. In turn, this can exa-cerbate existing differences in policy comprehension and understanding

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between agencies and sectors. Exworthy and Powell demonstrate somethingof this in their paper: Using Skelcher’s term of the ‘congested state’ (2000), todescribe the increasing pressures on public managers in trying to implementin multi-organizational structures, they point especially to the increasingproblems of the requirement for joint working between different profes-sions, agencies and sectors (Cabinet Office 1999a).

In addition, there is the problem of, and an alteration to, the degree ofbureaucratic discretion available to the constituent members of the network.While within a public manager’s own organization the latitude of his or herdiscretion may be clear, it is likely to be less so on an inter-organizationalbasis. As Schofield’s paper demonstrates, the use of discretion was funda-mental to not only how public managers learnt to implement new policyinitiatives, but also why they were motivated to do so. The majority of ourunderstanding of Lipskean discretion has been developed from work donein hierarchies and there is a pressing need to refine this understandingwithin new contexts.

Changes in the linkages between government and the publicImplementation theorists have traditionally conceptualized the relationshipbetween government and the public in terms of the mechanisms of repre-sentative democracy within a broadly command and control systemwhether it is structured via a hierarchy or a network. However, it is possibleto reconceptualize this relationship in terms of focused citizen pressure andcommunity democracy, as well as corporate public governance.

Obviously, governments, intent as they are on their policies being imple-mented, have always had to deal with interest or pressure groups (Inglehart1977). What appears to be more apparent today is the adoption by some ofthese pressure groups of a new form of legitimation defined in terms of pro-moting civil society. Such a philosophy is one that rests well with the con-cepts of social capital, a hollowing out of the state and communitarianism,that is, the strengthening of non-political relationships. If this argument isthen added to those of new social movement theorists, then it is easier tounderstand the growing reduction in political affiliation and the increasedcommitment by people to interest groups (Ashford and Timms 1992; Nye1997; Baggott 1995 and the move towards more direct action, particularly inrespect of environmental issues and specifically in respect of geneticallymodified crops, Third World debt and anti-global capitalism (Beck 1992).

Some authors have suggested that the concept of community democracymay be a way to encompass this focused citizen pressure into the politicalsystem. Montin (2000) describes the Swedish context, where there appearsto be a more explicit endorsement of the links between local self-governmentand democracy. Jenei and Vari (2000) link this discussion about communitydemocracy to one about collaborative governance. They provide a usefulexample of collaborative strategic planning in Hungary, using decisionconferencing between local government and community and business

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representatives. Dale (2000) also addresses this form of more facilitativegovernance, as opposed to strategic governance, on the part of the state.

What then are the challenges of the recasting of the links between citizensand the state for implementation? Perhaps the greatest challenge is in termsof the unpredictability, both of the policy outcome downstream of policydesign, as well as the unpredictability of the pressure that may be exerted todesign or modify policy as a consequence of bottom-up activism. Nor is it inthe interests of some pressure groups, particularly those that have an adver-sarial relationship with government, to provide any feedback to policy-makersabout the impact of the policy on the ground. Consequently, the result couldbe a reduction in policy learning by government itself.

Another challenge is the addition of further steps in the issue-attentioncycle, both in terms of pressure groups and more community based activi-ties. Demands can be exerted by pressure groups for more consultation,more documentation and more justification from the state to support theirpolicies. These challenges are cumulative because they occur on top of thepoints made previously about networks. Interest groups will use brokersand lobbying. New implementation actors are, therefore, introduced intothe scenario, each of whom needs to be able to equally access the networkand to participate in the interest group.

Bottom-up scholars such as Hjern have never believed that the statepossessed sole control of policy implementation. Just as we can no longerassume that the standard implementation structure is a bureaucracy, wecannot assume that the standard implementing actor is a public manager oradministrator. While none of the symposium papers deal directly with theseissues, their consideration does emphasize the significance of O’Toole’squery about theory and for whom it is generated. Discussion to date hasassumed the theory–practice transfer is for practitioners. Maybe analystsnow have to consider the role that theory could play in terms of citizenenlightenment.

Rhodes’s coining of the phrase the ‘Differentiated Polity’ in 1997 encom-passes many of the previous points made in this introduction about thefragmentation of public services delivery and the inclusion of institutionsoutside of the state to deliver them. One approach that could be used toaddress such fragmentation is to ensure ‘good’ governance. Dunsire (1996)addressed this idea, good governance, within self-governing systems whenhe defined ‘good’ in terms of whether a system is transparent, accountable,participative, true, law-abiding and broadly consensual. The literature oncorporate public governance also contains more generic concepts ofaccountability and control that can assist our understanding. The work ofRouse and Smith (1999) and Power (1997) falls into this category. Powerneatly links the concept of audit and governance within a framework of con-trol akin to corporate governance. This framework links together the tenantsof the NPM and the use of internal and external audit systems to develop apublic sector regulatory framework, all mixed up with a contemporary dose

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of quality management. Other authors have also succinctly described thisform of corporate governance as a model of conformance and performance(see Hilmer and Tricker 1990; Harrison 1998).

Examples of the imposition of this philosophy within the United Kingdomcan clearly be seen in the ‘Best Value’ initiatives in local government (Martin1999). Perhaps one of the most important points which Power makes aboutthe regulatory state, which operates via audit and ‘monitor of last resort’(Power 1997, p. 67), is that audit and inspection are a replacement for theconduct of politics by other means and that the processes of policy evalu-ation are in danger of being replaced by instrumental assurance. Indeed, onemight go as far as to say that even the scrutinizing capacity of parliament isat times in danger of being marginalized (Cowley 2000).

One of the consequences for policy implementation of corporate publicgovernance organized via a system of assurance is the danger of implement-ing policy for compliance means only. This can be interpreted as compliancewith the prescribed audit tools, rather than for the solution of the policyproblem. What happens then is a form of regulatory capture, thus ‘whatcounts becomes what matters’, rather than, ‘what matters counts’. Theaccountability system that follows from this is one that is more likely tomeasure output rather than outcome. It is precisely this point that Barrettmakes in her paper. Under such a system questions about implementationbecome questions about compliance and performance rather than problemsolving.

Another challenge for policy implementation under these conditions isthe possibility of actually losing knowledge and accepting a sub-optimizingsolution to the policy problem simply because the need to comply with whatcan be measured. Partly, this is because the regulatory agencies have thepotential to act as another non-bureaucratic network of influence, but also toact with the power of an elite because of their power and control overknowledge. This should be constructed as not just professional resentmentby those unable to access the policy elites; rather, it concerns something thatis at the very heart of policy implementation and that is the differencebetween policy intention and reality. The reality of policy initiatives isexperienced by the front-line professionals and public servants who do notgenerally make up the policy elites. If the elite system has no feedbackmechanism by which to monitor and access the policy reality, the wholearena of knowledge capture based on experience is lost. In an attempt tocontinue to capture knowledge, we hope that in this collection of papers westimulate debate and a continued, if not renewed, interest in the implemen-tation of public policy.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The seminars upon which the papers in this symposium issue are basedwere funded under the ESRC Seminar Programme, project numberR35126494199, ‘Implementing Public Policy: Learning from Each Other’.

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Acknowledgement is made to each of the contributors to all of the fiveseminars.

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Date symposium papers received 24 September 2003. Date accepted 8 October 2003.