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This chapter discusses the reintegration of the need for Humanities Research Council back onto the public agenda and into the policy stream of the UK government. The issue of the Research Council for the humanities came into public and governmental attention when it was fastened to the dilemmas of financing higher education, which itself was tied to the uncertainty of the UK economy. In May 1996, the Secretary of State for Education and Employment together with Secretaries of State for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland appointed Chairman Ron Dearing to create a body that would inquire into the higher education system of the UK. In 1997, the committee produced a report, Higher Education in a Learning Society, or the Dearing Report. The report charted a course for higher education in the UK for the next twenty years. This so-called intellectual capital called for a higher quality of teaching and the need for researchers and research facilities. It offered 93 specific recommendations, among which was a recommendation advocating the immediate establishment of a new Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). In 1998, the government recognized the need for the establishment of a research council for humanities and announced the provision of £8M in 1998–1999 for arts and humanities research, albeit after lengthy considerations.

In the age of governance, political leadership is a multi-level activity. Multi-level governance research shows that policy-making at national, transnational, and subnational levels of governance is increasingly tangled, interconnected, and overlapping. Political leadership research has mainly focused on how politicians perform political leadership at a single level of governance, however. Chapter 8 develops a concept of multi-level political leadership, which aims to capture how political leadership involves efforts to affect decisions made by politicians appointed at other levels of governance. The conditions and opportunities for performing multi-level political leadership vary between politicians authorized at transnational, national, and subnational levels of governance. Community sentiments are not equally strong among all citizens; politicians at different levels do not have the same type and amount of NATO resources; public attention varies; and the impact and influence that national, transnational and sub-national politicians are expected to have differ. In light of these differences, expectations are that transnational and subnational politicians are more likely to embrace a multi-level leadership approach than national politicians will.