Out of Recession
TL;DR: The authors argues that the underlying and deeply entrenched political conditions which underpinned the crisis, notably bi-partisan encouragement of a 'property-owning democracy' show no signs of abating.
Abstract: Britain is emerging uncertainly from recession. This essay looks at the character of the recession, the financial crisis that inaugurated it and the key issues that will dominate the recovery phase. In particular, it argues that the underlying and deeply entrenched political conditions which underpinned the crisis, notably bi-partisan encouragement of a ‘property-owning democracy’, show no signs of abating. Without such a change, a recurrence of the crisis appears highly likely.
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TL;DR: The authors examined the case for industrial policy using bilateral trade patterns over a 12-year period to measure changes in British industrial competitiveness and found that Germany strengthened its leading position as an industrial European power whereas UK is slowly falling behind because it lacks an active industrial policy.
Abstract: Although industrial policy is promoted as a means of achieving and preserving international competitiveness, the patterns of trade between countries are often ignored in both justifying industrial policies and measuring their impact. This paper examines the case for industrial policy using bilateral trade patterns over a 12-year period to measure changes in British industrial competitiveness. As Germany is widely portrayed as a model of industrial competitiveness, the research addresses the common view that Germany strengthened its leading position as an industrial European power, whereas UK is slowly falling behind because it lacks an active industrial policy. By studying competitiveness using various metrics related to export data, a more subtle and nuanced picture arises of what has happened to the UK vis-a-vis Germany with implications for policy-making. We analyse changes in the structural composition of British and German manufactured exports based on specific trade indices, including the revealed c...
15 citations
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...…strategic objectives *Email: laura.n.haar@mbs.ac.uk Policy Studies, 2014 Vol. 35, No. 3, 221–245, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01442872.2014.886680 © 2014 Taylor & Francis (Lee 2010; Brown and Mason 2012; Froud 2011; Bailey and Cowling 2011; Bailey, Lenihan, and Arauzo-Carod 2011; Tomlinson 2011)....
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Dissertation•
01 Jan 2016
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the tactics and strategies utilised by those conducting (the state), implementing (welfare providers and employers), and recipients (people and employees) of welfare-to-work policies, before considering what adaptations, innovations, co-operation, resistance and coping strategies are being employed by these stakeholders.
Abstract: Following the 2008/9 global financial crisis and ensuing economic uncertainty, the roll out of austerity politics has seen significant welfare retrenchment and a recalibration of the state-citizen relationship which can arguably be characterised by a process of punitive Neoliberalism. Nevertheless, the impacts of austerity politics are proving to be geographically uneven: spatially, there is significant evidence that the northern and western parts of Britain, particularly towns and cities therein, are especially prone to the punitive impacts of neoliberal austerity politics, while socially, some parts of society (e.g. the young, the disabled) find themselves exposed to the worst effects of austerity. Conducted under the period of a Conservative-Liberal Democrat UK Coalition Government (2010-2015) this thesis starts by considering the degree to which punitive austerity policies are economically necessary or driven by political ideology. Alongside this it determines whether austerity politics is a (re)new(ed) approach to welfare provision and the state-citizen relationship. The empirical parts of the thesis examine the tactics and strategies utilised by those conducting (the state), implementing (welfare providers and employers), and recipients (people and employees) of welfare-to-work policies, before considering what adaptations, innovations, co-operation, resistance and coping strategies are being employed by these stakeholders in response to austerity politics. In the final part, I argue that whilst many of the neoliberalised policies devised by the Coalition Government have been a renewal and reinvention of those already in place, this is part of a broader trend which is marked by the emergence of a more punitive Neoliberalism associated with a work-first welfare regime.
3 citations
Cites background from "Out of Recession"
...Furthermore, with the Welfare State now retrenched beyond recognition as a product of the Coalition’s austerity-driven workfarism, it has been portrayed as more of a deepening of the grip of Neoliberalism upon the state and its proletariat citizenship (Taylor-Gooby, 2012a; Peck, 2013); it could be seen as more of a step back to what was experienced in the 1970’s and 1980’s rather than an altogether new entity to be challenged or embraced....
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...It had become clear that the system of welfare provision which had underlain both global and national economies since the inception of the Keynesian Welfare State in the 1940’s was flawed....
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...13 Welfare State retrenchment has been the underlying facet of the majority of Welfare States following the end of the ‘Golden Age’ (Schulze, 2010)....
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...Yet even as the Coalition has sought to rationalise the state and crucially the public sector, the Welfare State is most definitely a stalwart of British society owing to its socio-political and economic ties to the cultural expectations of citizens, 45 particularly for those who are vulnerable to change such as the young and elderly....
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...It also forced politicians and businesses alike to start searching for alternatives to the failed Keynesian Welfare State system....
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01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on two historic moments through the Foucauldian framework of governmentality: the recent financial crises and the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971, and argue that the core policies adopted since 2008 are marked more by continuance than change.
Abstract: This chapter focuses on two historic moments through the Foucauldian framework of governmentality: the recent financial crises and the collapse of the Bretton Woods system in 1971. In so doing, it argues that the core policies adopted since 2008 are marked more by continuance than change. Neo-liberalism still dominates, and the further retrenchment of the state and marketization of the social sphere is readily apparent. The chapter argues that the 1971 crisis heralded enormous changes in the modes of governmentality in the highly industrialized countries, both in terms of governing rationalities (an intensification in the marketization of the social sphere) and the reconstitution of subjectivities. At the regulatory level, rather than adopting the interventionary measures of previous decades a much more hands-off approach was introduced that relied upon the power of the market rather than the state per se. These changes coincided with the shift towards financialization and the rise of global production chains as a result of the restructuring of national economies. However, the second major economic crisis (actualized as a series of crises) in the core industrialized countries has not led to another innovatory restructuring in the actual economy. Instead, we have witnessed the continuing retrenchment of the state and further marketization of the social sphere.
2 citations
References
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Posted Content•
TL;DR: The authors showed that there is a robust empirical association between the extent to which an economy is exposed to trade and the size of its government sector, and that government consumption plays a risk-reducing role in economies exposed to a significant amount of external risk.
Abstract: This paper demonstrates that there is a robust empirical association between the extent to which an economy is exposed to trade and the size of its government sector. This association holds for a large cross-section of countries, in low- as well as high-income samples, and is robust to the inclusion of a wide range of controls. The explanation appears to be that government consumption plays a risk-reducing role in economies exposed to a significant amount of external risk. When openness is interacted with explicit measures of external risk, such as terms-of-trade uncertainty and product concentration of exports, it is the interaction terms that enter significantly, and the openness term that loses significance (or turns negative). The paper also demonstrates that government consumption is the ‘safe’ activity, in the empirically relevant sense, in the vast majority of countries.
2,622 citations
TL;DR: There exists a positive correlation between an economy's exposure to international trade and the size of its government as mentioned in this paper, and the correlation holds for most measures of government spending, in low and high income samples, and is robust to the inclusion of a wide range of controls.
Abstract: There exists a positive correlation between an economy's exposure to international trade and the size of its government. The correlation holds for most measures of government spending, in low‐as well as high‐income samples, and is robust to the inclusion of a wide range of controls. One explanation is that government spending plays a risk‐reducing role in economies exposed to a significant amount of external risk. The Paper provides a range of evidence consistent with this hypothesis. In particular, the relationship between openness and government size is strongest when terms‐of‐trade risk is highest.
2,369 citations
TL;DR: The authors review the main elements of the pre-crisis consensus, identify where we were wrong and what tenets of the framework still hold, and take a tentative first pass at the contours of a new macroeconomic policy framework.
Abstract: The great moderation lulled macro-economists and policymakers alike in the belief that we knew how to conduct macroeconomic policy. The crisis clearly forces to question that assessment. This paper reviews the main elements of the pre-crisis consensus, identify where we were wrong and what tenets of the pre-crisis framework still hold, and take a tentative first pass at the contours of a new macroeconomic policy framework.
1,212 citations
Additional excerpts
...Blanchard et al. (2010)....
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TL;DR: There have now been two successive policy regimes since the Second World War that have temporarily succeeded in reconciling the uncertainties and instabilities of a capitalist economy with democracy's need for stability for people's lives and capitalism's own need for confident mass consumers.
Abstract: There have now been two successive policy regimes since the Second World War that have temporarily succeeded in reconciling the uncertainties and instabilities of a capitalist economy with democracy's need for stability for people's lives and capitalism's own need for confident mass consumers. The first of these was the system of public demand management generally known as Keynesianism. The second was not, as has often been thought, a neo-liberal turn to pure markets, but a system of markets alongside extensive housing and other debt among low- and medium-income people linked to unregulated derivatives markets. It was a form of privatised Keynesianism. This combination reconciled capitalism's problem, but in a way that eventually proved unsustainable. After its collapse there is debate over what will succeed it. Most likely is an attempt to re-create it on a basis of corporate social responsibility.
626 citations
"Out of Recession" refers background in this paper
...(This has been characterised as ‘privatised Keynesianism’ by some authors (Crouch 2008, 2009), but while the phenomenon is important, the nomenclature may be unhelpful, as traditional ‘public Keynesianism’, albeit in part with a new focus, is a striking feature of recent developments in Britain –…...
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Posted Content•
TL;DR: The authors review the main elements of the pre-crisis consensus, identify where we were wrong and what tenets of the framework still hold, and take a tentative first pass at the contours of a new macroeconomic policy framework.
Abstract: The great moderation lulled macroeconomists and policymakers alike in the belief that we knew how to conduct macroeconomic policy. The crisis clearly forces us to question that assessment. In this paper, we review the main elements of the pre-crisis consensus, we identify where we were wrong and what tenets of the pre-crisis framework still hold, and take a tentative first pass at the contours of a new macroeconomic policy framework.
468 citations