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In this collection, innovative and eminent social and policy analysts, including Colin Crouch, Anna Coote, Jeremy Gilbert, Grahame Thompson and Ted Benton, challenge the failing but still dominant ideology and policies of neo-liberalism. The book suggests extending and deepening democracy and participation into economic and cultural institutions for greater material and social equality to reinforce established social democratic principles of redistribution and public investment. Updated to assess the Brexit and Trump upsurges, the editors’ synthesis offers a framework for a revitalised social democracy. It links concepts such as Polanyi’s ‘commons’ and Habermas’s ’lifeworld’ to the attempts by social justice, feminist, environmentalist movements to advance equality through democratisation and market accountability to civil society. The lifeworld of voluntary associations, families and communities is proposed as the logical starting point for radical transformation, not in ‘blue-sky’ projects, but in existing alternatives like: community organisations, municipal enterprises, mutual and cooperative societies, social movement organisations, and trade-union branches. As well as the more informal networks in which popular involvement is already shaping solutions to the human needs which neoliberalism frustrates. The collection critically dissects, but goes beyond the ideologies and institutions of neoliberalism. It identifies the agents which could promote an alternative political economy for the UK; one based on local and international models of democratic governance to rival and displace prevailing market and corporate dominance. Its combination of critique, analysis and political engagement could be invaluable for those teaching, studying and campaigning for transformative political, economic and social policies.

In June 2016, after 43 years as part of the European community, the UK people decided to leave. In March 2017, the UK Prime Minister officially started the process of Brexit – the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. While Brexit was decided by a relatively small margin of people, one issue was key in the debates preceding the EU referendum. This was migration. People have been migrating since the beginning of time but today the issue of migration has been elevated to a key national concern. It is now one of the most contentious and divisive matters in the UK. This book investigates EU women migrants’ perspectives on the Brexit vote in the UK. It presents accounts from EU nationals and considers the wider implications in relation to precarity and the British paid labour market. This book offers important insights into the world of the UK paid labour but from the point of view of EU migrants and more specifically Polish women whose livelihoods have been disrupted by the Brexit vote and the decision that the UK should leave the EU whilst any solid guarantees with regards to migrants’ rights are yet to come from the UK government. Through analysis of new data generated in qualitative interviews, this book makes an original and grounded contribution to understanding the significance and impacts of the result of the Brexit referendum on migrant workers from the EU resident in the UK.

Drawing on unique research and rich data on cross-border practices, this book offers an empirically-based view on Europeans’ interconnections in everyday life. It looks at the ways in which EU residents have been getting closer across national frontiers: in their everyday experiences of foreign countries – work, travel, personal networks – but also their knowledge, consumption of foreign products, and attitudes towards foreign culture. These evolving European dimensions have been enabled by the EU-backed legal opening to transnational economic and cultural transactions, while also differing according to national contexts. The book considers how people reconcile their increasing cross-border interconnections and a politically separating Europe of nation states and national interests.

This edited book collection explores the role of the public sector, civil society and the civic university during austerity and neoliberalism and the challenges facing communities today. Using the North East of England as a lens and drawing on practical examples of case studies of action, it considers responsibilisation, a diminished public sector, the rise of civil society and the civic university. At the heart of the book is the key question of whether the decline of the state and the rise of civil society is to be celebrated or despaired. Chapters on case studies of action cover key aspects of social policy such as housing, education, young people’s cultural participation and food insecurity. Each case study chapter is jointly written by a university researcher and a case study practitioner and describes new and established examples of collaboration, co-production, resistance and hope that are relevant to advanced economies today. Critical engagement with the civic university mission and critical reflection on the unequal impacts of austerity and Covid-19 on women, young people and frontline workers is provided. The book concludes with the implications for social renewal, social justice and the social contract.

Scale is an overlooked issue in the research on interactive governance. This book takes up the important task of investigating the scalar dimensions of collaborative governance in networks, partnerships, and other interactive arenas and explores the challenges of operating at a single scale, across or at multiple scales and of moving between scales. The introductory chapter presents a general framework for thinking about the scale of collaborative governance and for conceptualizing dynamic processes of scaling. These general ideas provide the basis for examining the role of scale and scaling in a wide range of policy areas, including employment policy, water management, transportation planning, public health, university governance, artistic markets, child welfare and humanitarian relief. Cases are drawn from Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South America and span all levels from local to global. Together, the theoretical framework and the empirical case studies sensitize us to the tensions that arise between scales of governance and to the challenges of shifting from one scale of governance to another.

Indigeneity is a politics of potential. It allows indigenous peoples to think and pursue political aspirations beyond colonial victimhood. The politics of indigeneity is a theory of human agency. It is closely intertwined with discourses of reconciliation, self-determination and sovereignty. This book explores these discourses’ significance for contemporary indigenous politics. It uses them to examine just terms of indigenous citizenship in three contemporary post-settler states. The book argues for differentiated liberal citizenship as a way of allowing indigenous peoples to share in the public sovereignty of the nation-state while, at the same time, sharing a meaningful political authority vested in indigenous institutions. It tests neo-colonial understandings of power, politics and justice. The book’s comparative focus is unique. It compares the Australasian states with Fiji to show that historical constraints on political authority are not diminished with the withdrawal of the colonial power alone. Nor does the restoration of collective indigenous majority status, on its own, serve meaningful self-determination. Conversely, negative power relationships in Australia and New Zealand are not simply a function of minority status in majoritarian democracies. The comparison shows that the claims of indigeneity must hold equally well whatever the post-colonial indigenous population status.

There is a widespread recognition that Africa has to embark on strategies for sustainable and inclusive development. African economies have to evolve in their levels of development including the associated structure of factor endowments. However, each such structure requires corresponding infrastructure (both “hard” and “soft”) to circumscribe its operations and transactions. The type of infrastructure which is needed and what type of infrastructure would work for sustainable development more than others needs to be delineated. This book gives a sense of what exist and what Africa really needs in terms of its infrastructure. The contributors explore the challenges and opportunities for infrastructure development in Africa to take cognisance of and ensure balance between ‘what should be the case’ and ‘what is’. The book considers a wide range of pertinent issues such as corruption, tight budgets (RBM) and poor incentives that bred the tendency for poor maintenance and infrastructure service delivery and the subsequent deterioration of business confidence and related private sector engagement. Indeed, the arrival of other players such as China presents not just opportunities but also challenges for the development of infrastructure (in particular) and Africa (in general).

Policy analysis in Canada offers original contributions by leading scholars of public policy analysis in Canada. It examines the policy analysis capacity of the Government of Canada, the provincial governments and cities, as well as of the contributions that various civil society actors (e.g., business associations, trade unions, think tanks and the media) make to policy debates. It also sheds light on the role that academics play in not only generating new ideas but also teaching policy analysis. In addition to serving as an important complement to the existing volumes in the International Library of Policy Analysis, this volume contributes pertinent insights on new developments in the art of policy analysis, such as the implication of Big Data, or experimentation with “innovation hubs” in the federal public service and some provincial governments.

Policy analysis in France lays the foundation for a more systematic understanding of policy analysis in the country. In doing so, the volume discusses the role of the State and its restructuring, processes of government and governance, and State-Society relationships and policies as both a process and an outcome. Through 18 chapters contributions focus on policymakers, their practices, ideas and discourses, how they engage in sustained relationships with a large variety of market and society actors, and the concrete devices they use in order to make policy objectives operational. This is a comprehensive study of policy analysis in France that will be valuable to academics and postgraduate students researching and studying a range of policy and public management areas.

This book provides the first comprehensive overview of the state of policy analysis in Turkey. Policy analysis in Turkey, both as an academic inquiry and as a systematic practice in public and other policy-oriented organizations had been quite limited up until the 1990s. The book first examines the evolution of policy analysis in Turkish academia and public organizations followed by an in-depth review of the dominant modes of policy analysis performed by governmental and non-governmental actors. Throughout the chapters a special emphasis is given to structural constraints inhibiting the adoption of policy analytic approaches as well as the facilitating actors and forces such as international organizations. Overall, we challenge the caricatured image of policy making in Turkey as a uniform, strictly top-down hierarchical process that is solely shaped by politics and reveal the more complex decision-making mechanisms that vary significantly among policy-making actors.

Welfare states globally have been subjected to reform agendas that have stressed economic competitiveness but how has global competition reshaped welfare states in practice? Providing a new cross-national and international narrative, this book captures the complexity of social policy reform process that has taken place over the past 25 years. Drawing on data relating to multiple countries, the book examines global, cross-national and local cases in order to shed light on the impact of international forces on social policy. The book addresses major theoretical debates about the direction of welfare state reform processes across the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and beyond, offering empirically rooted analyses of change and new perspectives on the impact of global competition on social policy.

Austerity is not always one-size-fits-all; it can be a flexible, class-based strategy taking several forms depending on the political-economic forces and institutional characteristics present. This book identifies continuity and variety in crisis-driven austerity restructuring across Canada, Denmark, Ireland and Spain. In the book's analysis, it focuses on several components of austerity, including fiscal and monetary policy, budget narratives, public sector reform, labour market flexibilization, and resistance. In so doing, it uncovers how austerity can be categorized into different dynamic types, and expose the economic, social, and political implications of the varieties of austerity.

The Western Ideologyand Other Essays brings together a selection of Andrew Gamble’s essays on political ideas and ideologies written over the last forty years, combining influential and hard-to-find pieces and chosen to illustrate some of the main themes of his writing in this field. The title essay argues that economic liberalism in varied forms has been central to the dominant interpretation of the western ideology and of liberal modernity in the last two hundred and fifty years, explores the political conditions which made this possible and whether they can be sustained. Essays in the first section explore the character of economic liberalism and why it has been such a resilient form of political economy through an examination of the writings of Hayek, the relationship of neo-liberalism to older forms of economic liberalism, and the interplay of ideas and interests. Other essays explore Marxist, social democratic, and Conservative critiques and alternatives to the western ideology. A final essay explores critiques of the western ideology which reject ideas of progress in human affairs. Contents include a biographical introduction, notes on the essays and an epilogue which revisits the idea of the western ideology and its future, reflecting on recent political developments.

This book explores unique survey and interview data on the personality characteristics of British politicians, specifically the Basic Human Values of Members of Parliament (MPs). In doing so, it offers original insights into three compelling questions: Who enters politics and how are they different to the general public? Do politicians’ personality characteristics matter for their behaviour once they are elected to parliament? Do voters really get the ‘wrong’ politicians? Data collected from MPs are evaluated alongside comparable surveys and experiments conducted with over 400 elected councillors, over 500 unsuccessful candidates, and thousands of UK citizens. Synthesising the conceptual and empirical wisdom of political science and psychology, Weinberg uses these data and the governing questions above as a springboard from which to take an innovative and analytical dive into related areas of academic research and public interest. These include, for example, the role of basic values vis-à-vis candidate emergence and political ambition, parliamentary representation and legislative behaviour, and public voting habits. Through careful empirical analysis and theoretical dissection, this book shows that (a) politics is a profession few 'ordinary' people care to enter, (b) politicians’ basic values impact a range of actual legislative behaviours, and (c) voters have clear psychological preferences when it comes to choosing their representatives. Readers will find this book to be distinctive in its approach to familiar issues predominant in academic, popular and journalistic press. The substantive findings presented in this book do, therefore, tell a human story that has appeal beyond the ivory towers of academia.

When and how do ordinary citizens gain substantial control over important collective decisions affecting their lives? This book provides new answers to that question by systematically accumulating evidence in novel ways. This comparative review of participatory budgeting reveals the factors behind its success and failures in achieving democratic engagement. The book describes the application of Qualitative Comparative Analysis to systematically accumulate evidence of citizens gain control over important collective decisions in Participatory Budgeting. Analysis shows that popular claims that there are several single necessary conditions for citizens to gain such control over collective decisions have been imprudent. Nevertheless, a political leadership committed to participation is almost always required for sustained citizen control of political decisions over the longer term. There is evidence that these good outcomes only occur where those willing leaders can rely on strong support and competence from administrative staff, or alternatively where participatory leaders have strong fiscal independence. Perhaps controversially, the evidence for the importance of civil society conditions, which have played a strong role in theories of successful citizen participation, is mixed. The relevance afforded civil society in explanation depends on the level of uncertainty that researchers are willing to accept in their theories and reveals issues of conceptualisation of civil society roles in participatory programmes. Where politicians and bureaucratic staff are committed to supporting programmes, mobilised civil society organisations may serve to overcome fiscal constraints. Comparing global examples of both positive change and notable failure, it provides persuasive evidence and guidance for future public involvement in policymaking.

Social democracy is on the back-foot, and increasingly centre-left political parties are struggling to win office. Since the global financial crisis, if not before, there has been a general decline in the fortunes of social democratic and labour parties. Against these recent developments, there is a long-standing literature that appraises the electoral performance and impact of the left more broadly. Much of the literature on social democracy tends to be pessimistic, and there is a plethora of research that denotes recent developments as a ‘crisis’. Bringing together a range of leading academics and experts on social democratic politics and policy, this book offers an international, comparative view of the changing political landscape, examining the degree to which the centre-left project is exhausted and is able to renew its message in a neo-liberal age.