1 option
Market-driven politics : neoliberal democracy and the public interest / Colin Leys.
Lippincott Library HC256.7 .L49 2001
By Request
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Leys, Colin.
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Public television.
- Great Britain--Economic policy--1997-.
- Great Britain.
- Economic policy.
- Great Britain--Politics and government--1997-2007.
- Politics and government.
- Public television--Great Britain.
- National health services--Great Britain.
- National health services.
- Physical Description:
- viii, 280 pages ; 21 cm
- Place of Publication:
- London ; New York : Verso, 2001.
- Summary:
- Politics everywhere are now market-driven. It is not just that governments can no longer "manage" their national economies; to survive in office they must increasingly "manage" national politics in such a way as to adapt them to the pressures of transnational market forces.' Market-driven Politics is an empirical examination of the extent to which politics and policy are conditioned, or even determined, by global economic forces. It is a multi-level study which moves between an analysis of those global forces, through national politics, to the changes occurring week by week in two fields of public life that are both fundamentally important and familiar to everyone - television broadcasting and health care. The focus is Britain, but the arguments apply in many other contexts. Public services like health care and broadcasting play an important role, because they affect the legitimacy of the government of the day; in market-driven politics such domains become political flashpoints because they are also targets for global capital.
- Colin Leys argues lucidly that we are witnessing a fundamental shift in the relationship between politics and economics. His original analysis of the key processes of commodification of public services, the conversion of public-service workforces into employees motivated to generate profit, and the role of the state in absorbing risk is critically important, not just for an analysis of market-driven politics but also for the longer-term defence of democracy and the collective values on which it depends.
- Contents:
- 2. The global economy and national politics 8
- The formation of a global economy 8
- The new global economy 13
- Global market forces and national policy-making 21
- The options for national governments 26
- Explaining national responses 29
- The case of Britain 32
- The long-run impact of the global economy on national politics 35
- 3. British politics in a global economy 38
- British governments and economic globalisation, 1975-2000 40
- Market forces, social structure and ideology 45
- Interlude: the 'Big Bang' and its fallout 58
- Party politics 63
- Institutional and constitutional change 69
- The social costs of market-driven politics 74
- Problems of 'third way' politics 76
- 4. Markets, commodities and commodification 81
- Real markets and politics 81
- The private lives of commodities 87
- Services as commodities 90
- The specificity of commodities: television 95
- The specificity of commodities: health care 100
- 5. Public service television 108
- Public service broadcasting in Britain 110
- The transition to market-driven broadcasting 112
- The television market, 1999-2000 122
- Restructuring 132
- How television became a field of capital accumulation 136
- Commodification and public service television 149
- 6. The National Health Service 165
- The National Health Service, 1948-79 166
- The transition to commodified health services 167
- The NHS quasi-market and other health-care markets, 1999-2000 177
- The commodification of health care 189
- Effects 201
- The NHS Plan and the Concordat with the private sector 203
- Global market forces and the NHS 207
- 7. Market-driven politics versus the public interest 211
- The argument recapitulated 211
- Is the UK an 'outlier'? 216
- Does it matter that politics are market-driven? 217
- Why has there been so little resistance? 219
- Do public services matter? 220
- On what basis can public services flourish? 222
- Is this relevant? 224.
- Notes:
- Includes bibliographical references (pages [225]-266) and index.
- ISBN:
- 1859846270
- OCLC:
- 47643992
The Penn Libraries is committed to describing library materials using current, accurate, and responsible language. If you discover outdated or inaccurate language, please fill out this feedback form to report it and suggest alternative language.