Search

This article offers a critical evaluation of recent ‘active labour market policy’ (ALMP) initiatives in the UK, focusing on the coalition government's Work Programme and its immediate antecedents. ALMP exemplifies a supply-side employment strategy, reorienting the state away from supporting labour demand and towards promoting the ‘employability’ of individuals within existing labour market structures. The article locates the rationale for this policy agenda within the wider politics of economic growth. Belying its status as a pioneer of ALMP, the UK spends very little on supply-side labour market interventions relative to other European countries. This can be explained with reference to the type of ALMP interventions prioritised in the UK, which in turn is explained by the growth model that ALMP is designed to sustain. The UK's growth model requires an abundance of low-paid jobs in the labour-intense and volatile services sector. Ostensibly, ALMP fulfils this requirement by ensuring that individuals are immediately available for work, marginalising concerns about pay and job quality. Moreover, ALMP also serves to inculcate the desirability of certain behaviours at the individual level. The coalition government's approach demonstrates an intensification rather than transformation of previous practice, indicative of its support for resurrecting the UK's pre-crisis growth model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary examines gendered and spatial inequalities that are increasing under a regime of austerity in the United Kingdom. It is concerned with how inequalities intersect and interact across space and populations. A sense of urgency is vital when discussing the effects of austerity on regions and local communities; five years of cuts have had devastating effects on many deprived areas. An examination of the specific risks to women under austerity is essential. The commentary will be of interest to geographers concerned with the intersections of gender, economy and place. This paper proposes a feminist political economy perspective for the analysis of austerity and place, to acknowledge the centrality of gendered political economy, absent from many geographical studies of austerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the journal "Edinburgh Review." The journal focused on Scottish Enlightenment political economy to engage with public debate. This approach helped the publication to achieve sustained pre-eminence in British cultural life. According to the author, journals played a significant role in creation of print culture in eighteenth century Great Britain.

Scholars of democratic theory and international political economy often disagree over the effects of globalization on state autonomy. Yet, each approach pays minimal attention to the contributions of the other to their common object of study. In an effort to remedy this situation, I identify the premises and procedural habits of each approach which tend to make it appear irrelevant to the other, and then adjust them to remove the appearance of irrelevance without impairing the integrity of each approach. The argument is illustrated by observations from Britain, France and Sweden in recent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An essay is presented on the economic thought of British political philosopher, economist, and member of Parliament Edmund Burke. It examines what Burke meant by the term political economy and the differences between Burke's interpretation and that of standard schools of economic thought in the 18th century. The author also discusses Burke's thoughts on the moral nature of political economy and what the author asserts as Burke's distance from laissez-faire economic theory.

In this article the author comments on an issue arising from international political economy (IPE), a discipline which analyzes international relations and global economics in a social science framework with reference to social, historical and cultural factors. The central focus of the article is the author's analysis of the division of IPE into a British school of thought, that defines itself in terms of quantitative research, and the American, that is concerned with hypotheses and empirical methods.

In this article the author discusses the subject of international political economy (IPE), a discipline which analyzes international relations and global economics in a social science framework with reference to social, historical and cultural factors. The article is written from the point of view of the author who considers himself not associated with the British school of the discipline, which defines itself in terms of quantitative research, or the American school, that is concerned with hypotheses and empirical methods.

in this article the author discusses an aspect of international political economy (IPE), a discipline that analyzes international relations and global economics in a social science framework with reference to social, historical and cultural factors. At issue are questions raised in IPE scholarship and practice by the international financial crisis that began in 2007 and reached its peak during 2008-09. The central focus of the article is an examination of the response to the crisis by the two schools of IPE thought: the British, which defines itself in terms of quantitative research, and the American, that is concerned with hypotheses and empirical methods.

The article discusses the British school of thought in the discipline of international political economy (IPE) in an international framework. The philosophy of the British school of IPE is contrasted with that of the American school's vision of the subject. The article notes that the divisions between the two schools of thought arise from the book "International Political Economy: An Intellectual History," by Benjamin J. Cohen. Among other issues the author links divisions between two contrasting philosophies of the 17th and 18th centuries.

In this article the author discusses aspects of international political economy (IPE), a discipline that analyzes international relations and global economics in a social science framework with reference to social, historical and cultural factors. He notes that IPE is divided into two schools of thought: the British, which defines itself in terms of quantitative research, and the American, that is concerned with hypotheses and empirical methods. Among other issues the author explores divisions between the two branches of study.

In this article the author examines issues arising from the international political economy (IPE), a discipline that analyzes international relations and global economics in a social science framework with reference to social, historical and cultural factors. The central focus of the article is the author's investigation of the future of the British school of thought on IPE that defines itself in terms of quantitative research. Central to the author's thesis in an examination of a number of issues raised by Benjamin J. Cohen in his book "International Political Economy: An Intellectual History."

In the spring of 2009, long months after the September 2008 financial tsunami had begun its destructive journey around the financial machineries of the global system, the governing party of the United Kingdom, one of two countries whose financial centres had precipitated all the trouble, is still in place, notwithstanding the almost audible sound of a population tapping its collective foot as it awaits an electoral opportunity to wreak a measure of revenge. But the electorate is condemned to wait upon the convenience of the government and administrative machineries that are responsible for the debacle. This seems unreasonable. One might ask how is this possible and what—speculatively—could happen to improve matters; that is, one can ask how the elite's insulating machineries might be reduced in order to bring them more routinely within the reach of the judgements of the electorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Two books at the end of the Blair era—by Michael Barber and Julian Le Grand—offer to redeem the ‘third way’. Both authors explore the political case for public sector reform and the means by which it can be accomplished. They explore a similar range of reform models: command and control; quasi-markets; and devolution and transparency. But the circle between efficiency, client service and continuous improvement must be squared. Neither author considers the ‘learning by doing’ alternative. No less fundamentally, neither author addresses the political and technical challenges in developing strategy. How are issues to be aired in advance so as to expose evidence and perspectives? How are interests to be engaged and supporting coalitions formed? How are these processes to occur without executive commitment? How are unconventional ideas to be aired without being over-ruled by populist or media sensationalism? These are the practical dilemmas that confounded Blair's efforts. These books invite a strategic conversation that is badly needed. But where in the political system can it be pursued? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay argues that the Barnett formula—which determines the block grant paid annually by the UK government to each of the Devolved Administrations of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland—be reformulated, guided by the following principles: fiscal equity, accountability, transparency, and flexibility. The rationale for change is that the current fiscal arrangements make little policy sense and may not be sustainable in a changing political and economic context. The formation of a grants commission to help develop data, calculate disparities, and provide public advice to the Chancellor of the Exchequer is also advocated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses the changing political significance of UK balance of payments assessment in the post-war era, seeking to explain its disappearance as a policy issue today. We demonstrate the historically contingent nature of balance of payments performance assessment by comparing its shifting, conjunctural, constructions, rooted in underlying political economic assumptions, across four periods in the 20th and 21st centuries. We argue that the political salience of UK balance of payments assessment is contingent upon structural changes (both ideational and material) within the global political economy and domestic politics. Changes in the prevailing policy paradigm through which balance of payments was interpreted (for example from ‘embedded liberalism’ to neo-liberalism), and redefinitions of balance of payments assessment techniques, both of which happened on numerous occasions in the post-war world, had the effect of reshaping the nature of the external international political economic constraints to which UK governments were subjected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The "big trade-off," described by Arthur Okun some thirty years ago, is back again: equality or efficiency, or to put it differently, modern highly developed economies and societies have to choose between the Scylla of income inequality and the Charybdis of unemployment. Furthermore, it looks like the continental European economies—foremost Germany and France—sided with more egalitarian ends accepting higher unemployment while the liberal economies such as the United States and the United Kingdom chose higher inequality for lower unemployment. In this paper it is argued that the trade-off is not a supply-side necessity to maintain work effort in a situation of incomplete contracts, but is a politico-economic issue of particular interest groups seeking rents. However, unlike in Mancur Olson's seminal approach, it is not the trade unions that are forming distributional coalitions on the labor market, but rather the meritocracy which is happy to use Keynesian-type demand management to advance their material interests by pursuing a "meritocratically optimal rate of unemployment" (MORU). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article situates the analysis of fair-trade consumption in the context of debates about civic activism and political participation. It argues that fair-trade consumption should be understood as a political phenomenon, which, through the mediating action of organizations and campaigns, makes claims on states, corporations, and institutions. This argument is made by way of a case study of Traidcraft, a key player in the fair-trade movement in the United Kingdom. The study focuses on how Traidcraft approaches and enrolls its supporters. The Political Rationalities of Fair-Trade Consumption in the United Kingdom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the differences between the American and British International Political Economy (IPE). The author stated that IPE is about the complex linkages between economic and political activity at the level of international affairs. The dominant version of IPE is developed in the U.S., where most scholarship tends to hew close to the norms of conventional social science. In Great Britain, IPE is less wedded to scientific method and more ambitious in its agenda.

Globalization has not led, and is unlikely to lead, to a global homogenization of penal policy and practices. Drawing on a study of penal systems in 12 contemporary capitalist countries (the United States of America, England and Wales, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Germany, the Netherlands, France, Italy, Sweden, Finland and Japan), this article demonstrates that the political economies of such countries can be broadly categorized as neo-liberal, conservative corporatist, social democratic or oriental corporatist. This categorization is strongly related to the punitiveness of the penal culture and the rates of imprisonment to be found in each country. The reasons for this association are discussed. One crucial factor may be the degree to which societies with different types of political economy are 'inclusive' rather than 'exclusive' towards deviant individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aggregate-level models of party support patterns increasingly seek to evaluate both “economic” and “political” explanations of election outcomes. This paper explores the evolution of support for Labour, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats between 1997 and 2004. A number of politico-economic models are developed and tested against monthly timeseries data for the 1997–2004 period. A variety of different assumptions are then made about likely movements in the key independent variables in these models in the run-up to the next general election. Finally, these assumptions are used to inform a series of forecasting models in order to produce forecasts of likely party support levels in the early summer of 2005, the presumed time of the next general election. The analysis suggests, on balance, that the best performing statistical model is one that takes account of Blair’s leadership ratings, voters’ personal economic expectations, the “costs of ruling” and the continuing effects of the Iraq war. The central forecast from this model, for an assumed election in June 2005, produces vote shares of 39% for Labour, 31% for the Conservatives and 22% for the Liberal Democrats. Although a wide range of forecast election outcomes can legitimately be derived from the existing data, most of the forecasts reported suggest that a Labour victory is the most likely outcome of the next UK general election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses issues raised in this edition of the journal. The central focus of the article is the examination of questions arising from differences between the British school of international political economy and the the American school of thought on the discipline. Among other issues the author notes that this debate has been fueled by the 2008 publication of the book "International Political Economy: An Intellectual History," by Benjamin J. Cohen, a book that sought to delineate the two schools of geopolitics.

The author reflects on the association between science and politics in Great Britain. The author relates that the scientific method is often bested by economic or political conditions. The author stresses the responsibility of a science and technology committee to look at the supporting evidence for homeopathy to help re-evaluate the government policy. Further, the author suggests the need for the government to teach their members about the importance of science in making policy decisions.