Download or read book Ideas and Economic Crises in Britain from Attlee to Blair 1945 2005 written by Matthias M Matthijs and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-08-21 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the period from 1945 to 2005, Britain underwent two deep-seated institutional transformations when political elites successfully challenged the prevailing wisdom on how to govern the economy. Attlee and Thatcher were able to effectively implement most of their political platforms. During this period there were also two opportunities to challenge existing institutional arrangements. Heath's 'U-turn' in 1972 signalled his failure to implement the radical agenda promised upon election in 1970, whilst Tony Blair’s New Labour similarly failed to instigate a major break with the 'Thatcherite' settlement. Rather than simply retell the story of British economic policymaking since World War II, this book offers a theoretically informed version of events, which draws upon the literatures on institutional path dependence, economic constructivism and political economy to explain this puzzle. It will be of great interest to both researchers and postgraduates with an interest in British economic history and the fields of political economy and economic crisis more widely.

Download or read book The Political Economy of Crisis Making written by Matthias M. Matthijs and published by . This book was released on 2008 with total page 814 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The political economy of crisis making: The United Kingdom from Attlee to Blair (1945--2005).

Download or read book Neoliberal Thought and Thatcherism written by Robert Ledger and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-12-01 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The premiership of Margaret Thatcher has been portrayed as uniquely ideological in its pursuit of a more market-based economy. A body of literature has been built on how a sharp turn to the right by the Conservative Party during the 1980s - inspired by the likes of Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek - acted as one of the key stepping stones to the turbo-charged capitalism and globalization of our modern world. But how ‘neoliberal’ was Thatcherism? The link between ideas and the Thatcher government has frequently been over-generalized and under-specified. Existing accounts tend to characterize neoliberalism as a homogeneous, and often ill-defined, group of thinkers that exerted a broad influence over the Thatcher government. In particular, this study explores how Margaret Thatcher approached special interest groups, a core neoliberal concern. The results demonstrate a willingness to utilize the state, often in contradictory ways, to pursue apparently more market orientated policies. This book - through a combination of archival research, interviews and examination of neoliberal thought itself - defines the dominant strains of neoliberalism more clearly and explores their relationship with Thatcherism.

Download or read book Disjunctive Prime Ministerial Leadership in British Politics written by Christopher Byrne and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-06-25 with total page 147 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book illustrates the cyclical pattern in the kinds of dilemmas that confront political leaders and, in particular, disjunctive political leaders affiliated with vulnerable political regimes. The volume covers three major episodes in disjunction: the interwar crisis between 1923 and 1940, afflicting Stanley Baldwin, Ramsay MacDonald and Neville Chamberlain; the collapse of Keynesian welfarism between 1970 and 1979, dealt with by Edward Heath, Harold Wilson and James Callaghan; and the ongoing crisis of neoliberalism beginning in 2008, affecting Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May. Based on this series of case studies of disjunctive prime ministers, the authors conclude that effective disjunctive leadership is premised on judicious use of the prime ministerial toolkit in terms of deciding whether, when and where to act, effective diagnostic and choice framing, and the ability to manage both crises and regimes.

Download or read book When Ideas Matter written by Bilal A. Baloch and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-10-07 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Comparativist scholarship conventionally gives unbridled primacy to external, material interests–chiefly votes and rents–as proximately shaping political behaviour. These logics tend to explicate elite decision-making around elections and pork barrel politics but fall short in explaining political conduct during credibility crises, such as democratic governments facing anti-corruption movements. In these instances, Baloch shows, elite ideas, for example concepts of the nation or technical diagnoses of socioeconomic development, dominate policymaking. Scholars leverage these arguments in the fields of international relations, American politics, and the political economy of development. But an account of ideas activating or constraining executive action in developing democracies, where material pressures are high, is found wanting. Resting on fresh archival research and over 120 original elite interviews, When Ideas Matter traces where ideas come from, how they are chosen, and when they are most salient for explaining political behaviour in India and similar contexts.

Download or read book The Oxford Companion to American Politics written by David Coates and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2012-07-12 with total page 1141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides students and scholars with a valuable reference source in the field of American Politics. The Companion will equip readers with a deep understanding of the complex interaction between governmental institutions and processes and the wider American economy and society that they govern.

Download or read book Ideas Political Power and Public Policy written by Daniel Beland and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-04-19 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Through the last couple of decades, scholars on both sides of the Atlantic have increasingly emphasized the importance of political ideas in understanding processes of change and stability in politics and public policy. Yet, surprisingly, relatively little has been done to more clearly and stringently conceptualize the relationship between political power and the role of ideas in public policy and political development. This volume addresses this major lacuna in the policy and political studies literature by bringing some of best scholars in the field, who each write about the relationship between ideas and power in politics and public policy. The contributions frame the concept of ideational power and explore ways in which ideas shape power relations, across a number of distinct countries and policy areas. The topics covered include austerity, coalition building, monetary policy, social policy, tax policy, and macroeconomic indicators. The volume features a short introduction written by the co-editors, and a final, recapitulative essay prepared by Mark Blyth, one of the most cited scholars in the field. This book was previously published as a special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy.

Download or read book Clement Attlee written by John Bew and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 705 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: John Bew explores the intellectual foundations and core beliefs of the man who defeated Winston Churchill and created the england we know today.

Download or read book Handbook of Global Economic Governance written by Manuela Moschella and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-12-17 with total page 534 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the summer of 2007, the world scenario has been dominated by the US sub-prime mortgage crisis and its repercussions on global financial markets and economic growth. As banks around the world wrote down their losses and governments intervened to rescue domestic financial institutions, financial distress severely hit the real economy leading to what has been widely defined as the worst recession since the 1930s. Under these conditions, along with the immediate concern for stemming the effects of the crisis, policy-makers around the world have been debating the long-term measures that have to be adopted in order to reduce the likelihood of future crises and to ensure stable economic growth. Although this debate has not yet produced significant transformations, it indicates a renewed concern about the institutional architecture that is meant to govern the global economic and financial system. This book tackles the issue of what the governance of the global economic and financial system looks like and what the prospects for its reform are. Specifically, the book will address the following three main themes: Governance: What is governance in the international economic system? What forms does it take? How did it come about? How can we study it?; Functions of governance: What are the functions of global economic governance? Who performs them? What are the rules and mechanisms that make global governance possible? Problems and prospects of governance: What are the problems in global economic governance? Is there a trade-off between legitimacy and efficiency? What are the prospects for reform of global economic governance in the aftermath of the global financial crisis? This book will: _ Provide a thorough analysis of the issues at stake in designing international rules and institutions able to govern the global economy; _ Illustrate and analyze virtually all the main institutions, rules, and arrangements that make up global economic governance, inscribing them within the function these institutions, rules, and arrangements are meant to perform; _ Discuss the problems that affect today’s global economic governance and assess alternative proposals to reform the international financial architecture.

Download or read book A neoliberal revolution written by Hugh Pemberton and published by Manchester University Press. This book was released on 2024-07-09 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the Thatcher government’s attempt to revolutionise Britain’s pensions system in the 1980s and create a nation of risk-taking savers with an individual stake in capitalism. Drawing upon recently-released archival records, it shows how the ideas motivating these reforms journeyed from the writings of neoliberal intellectuals into government and became the centrepiece of a plan to abolish significant parts of the UK’s welfare state and replace these with privatised personal pensions. Revealing a government that veered between political caution and radicalism, the book explains why this revolution failed and charts the malign legacy left by the evolutionary changes that ministers salvaged from the wreckage of their reforms. The book contributes to understanding of policy change, Thatcherism, and international neoliberalism by showing how major reforms to social security could reflect neoliberal thought and yet profoundly disappoint their architects.

Download or read book Austerity from the Left written by Bremer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023-05-25 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Austerity became the predominant fiscal policy response to the Great Recession in Europe. After a brief period of 'emergency Keynesianism' from 2008 to 2010, even the centre-left abandoned plans for deficit spending and accepted austerity as the dogma of the day. In this book, Björn Bremer explains how this came about and explores its political consequences, combining qualitative and quantitative methods and drawing on a wide range of empirical evidence to study both the demand- and supply-side of politics. Based on this evidence, the book argues that a complex interaction of electoral and ideational pressures pushed social democratic parties towards orthodox fiscal policies. As government debt became a taboo following the Greek sovereign debt crisis, social democratic parties endorsed austerity to increase their perceived economic competence and fiscal credibility. This decision was legitimized by economic ideas inspired by supply-side economics, which had become popular among social democrats at the end of the twentieth century. Although the book shows that social democratic austerity was not inevitable, powerful feedback effects of the Third Way thus trapped and divided the centre-left during the crisis. This undermined the ability of social democratic parties to oppose austerity and eventually contributed to their electoral crisis in the shadow of the Great Recession.

Download or read book The Political Economy of the Special Relationship written by Jeremy Green and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 364 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How America's global financial power was created and shaped through its special relationship with Britain The rise of global finance in the latter half of the twentieth century has long been understood as one chapter in a larger story about the postwar growth of the United States. The Political Economy of the Special Relationship challenges this popular narrative. Revealing the Anglo-American origins of financial globalization, Jeremy Green sheds new light on Britain’s hugely significant, but often overlooked, role in remaking international capitalism alongside America. Drawing from new archival research, Green questions the conventional view of international economic history as a series of cyclical transitions among hegemonic powers. Instead, he explores the longstanding interactive role of private and public financial institutions in Britain and the United States—most notably the close links between their financial markets, central banks, and monetary and fiscal policies. He shows that America’s unparalleled post-WWII financial power was facilitated, and in important ways constrained, by British capitalism, as the United States often had to work with and through British politicians, officials, and bankers to achieve its vision of a liberal economic order. Transatlantic integration and competition spurred the rise of the financial sector, an increased reliance on debt, a global easing of regulation, the ascendance of monetarism, and the transition to neoliberalism. From the gold standard to the recent global financial crisis and beyond, The Political Economy of the Special Relationship recasts the history of global finance through the prism of Anglo-American development.

Download or read book Shareholders and Stakeholders written by Joanne F Sonin and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2023-09-07 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores the evolution of the shareholder in post-war Britain within the context of changing legal, political, economic, and social conditions. It examines how the post-war transformation of the shareholder body influenced relationships amongst stakeholders, impacting corporate behaviour and the legal and political efforts to govern industry and financial markets. The book addresses a number of themes, including: 1) how the movements for democratisation influenced the treatment of shareholder interests and the calls for stakeholder representation; 2) how the rhetoric of change created a narrative that deflected from the lack of systemic legal reforms and protected the status quo; 3) how, in the post-war consensus environment, political positions on equity ownership de-radicalised, which proved unsustainable against a background of increasing political polarisation and industrial unrest; and 4) how the institutionalisation of the post-war shareholder body had profound effects on industry, the financial markets, and the economy. With these themes as a foundation, the evolutionary arch of the post-war shareholder is examined, focusing on developments that influenced the treatment and perception of shareholder and stakeholder interests, including nationalisations, shareholder democracy, corporate purpose, and industrial democracy. The book further considers how these post-war changes contribute to the post-1979 legal treatment of shareholder and stakeholder interests, including subsequent changes to the Companies Act and the development of corporate governance codes. Parallels to contemporary movements for stakeholder capitalism, corporate purpose, and ESG are drawn. The historical analysis of the post-war shareholder provides a framework for considering current questions on shareholder primacy and the demands for systemic legal reforms. These missed opportunities for meaningful changes to the treatment of shareholder interests in UK company law serve as useful precedents for evaluating subsequent periods.

Download or read book Bengal Industries and the British Industrial Revolution 1757 1857 written by Indrajit Ray and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2011-08-09 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book seeks to enlighten two grey areas of industrial historiography. Although Bengal industries were globally dominant on the eve of the industrial revolution, no detailed literature is available about their later course of development. A series of questions are involved in it. Did those industries decline during the spells of British industrial revolution? If yes, what were their reasons? If not, the general curiosity is: On which merits could those industries survive against the odds of the technological revolution? A thorough discussion on these issues also clears up another area of dispute relating to the occurrence of deindustrialization in Bengal, and the validity of two competing hypotheses on it, viz. i) the mainstream hypothesis of market failures, and ii) the neo-marxian hypothesis of imperialistic state interventions

Download or read book Labour Finance and Inequality written by Suzanne J. Konzelmann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-03-15 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the 2008 "global" financial crisis, the viability of globalised financial capitalism was called into question. The resulting fear and uncertainty produced a momentary return to "Keynesian" policies. But as soon as emergency stimuli – and bank bail-outs – appeared to stabilise the situation, there was a sharp reversal; and successive British governments and the financial sector have since attempted to return to business as usual. Historically, much smaller shocks have been able to produce dramatic change, with the 1978 "Winter of Discontent" providing a catalyst for the election of Margaret Thatcher, the ultimate abandonment of the post-war Keynesian consensus, and the ushering-in of neoliberalism. Nor is apparent success a guarantee against change, with Winston Churchill being swept from office by the first majority Labour government in 1945 – at a point which should have marked his greatest triumph. In this book, these apparently inexplicable shifts in the conventional wisdom and the accompanying policy paradigm are explored through the lens of the interest groups that have jostled for position since the second industrial revolution. In this context, inequality, poverty, free market capitalism and the social welfare state have interacted in an uneasy, dynamic dance – the "insecurity cycle". The authors explore these interactions, their impact on the relationship between society and the economy, and the possible implications of Brexit and a re-energised political left. Written in an engaging and accessible style, Labour, Finance and Inequality will be a key resource for academics and students of social and political economics as well as public policy. It will also offer considerable insight to policy makers and a more general non-specialist audience.

Download or read book Social Finance written by Neil Shenai and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-09-19 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do market participants construct stable markets? Why do crises that seem inevitable after-the-fact routinely take market participants by surprise? What forces trigger financial panics, and why does uncertainty lead to market volatility? How do economic elites respond to financial distress, and why are some regulatory interventions more effective than others? Social Finance: Shadow Banking during the Global Financial Crisis answers these questions by presenting a new, economic conventions-based model of financial crises. This model emerges from a theoretical synthesis of several intellectual traditions, including Keynesian epistemology, Hyman Minsky’s asset market theory, economic sociology, and international relations theory. Social Finance uses this new paradigm to explain instability in the global shadow banking system during the global financial crisis. And it presents the results of interviews with some of the world’s leading investors – who saw over $2 trillion in annual order flows and managed over $160 billion in assets – to provide first-hand accounts of markets in crisis. Written in accessible prose, Social Finance will appeal to a broad audience of academics, policymakers, and practitioners interested in understanding the drivers of financial stability in the twenty-first century.

Download or read book A Green History of the Welfare State written by Tony Fitzpatrick and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2017-03-16 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Environmental problems – particularly climate change – have become increasingly important to governments and social researchers in recent decades. Debates about their implications for social policies and welfare reforms are now moving towards centre stage. What has been missing from such debates is an account of the history of the welfare state in relation to environmental issues and green ideas. A Green History of the Welfare State fills this gap. How have the environmental and social policy agendas developed? To what extent have welfare systems been informed by the principles of environmental ethics and politics? How effective has the welfare state been at addressing environmental problems? How might the history of social policies be reimagined? With its lively, chronological narrative, this book provides answers to these questions. Through overviews of key periods, politicians and reforms the book weaves together a range of subjects into a new kind of historical tapestry, including: social policy, economics, party politics, government action and legislation, and environmental issues. This book will be a valuable resource for students and scholars of environmental policy and history, social and public policy, social history, sociology and politics.