Jim’s current personal research agenda is focused on two sites. Firstly, that of European Essential Services of General Interest: an area in which Jim provides commentary as a recognised expert in the field through analytical and critical research. This site of interest has a focus on services of general interest that may be either economic or social in character, and that embrace the provision of essential network services and the provision of welfare goods and services. Of particular interest is the increasing reliance on the private provision of end user services in social sectors, and the evolution of universal and public service obligations.
Jim’s second and overlapping area of research interest is concerned with issues of citizenship, individual rights and responsibilities and the operation of private law in what were once public spaces. It is a site of interest concerned with the developing role of individuals and of civil society in an increasingly global economy. It provides a focus on the normative influences that provide for individual rights and that create individual responsibilities. It asks questions of what we may mean by citizenship in the context of supranational, global and technologically developed market economies.