The political economy of Brexit and the future of British capitalism first symposium

The political economy of Brexit generates new challenges for the UK’s national business model and for European capitalism more broadly. Two symposia examine the implications of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU in key economic policy areas. These symposia contribute to two main bodies of academic literature: the political economy literature on varieties of capitalism, with a specific focus on the UK, and the political economy literature on key economic policy areas of the EU. This short introduction to the first symposium first outlines the key features of the British variety of capitalism and highlight the main questions raised by Brexit in that respect. It then summarises the main findings of the papers of the first symposium and tease out some common themes

From funding gaps to thin markets.UK Government support for early-stage venture capital

This report analyses the impact of investment from UK government-backed venture capital schemes on funded firms over the period 1995-200

Riverkin: Seizing the moment to remake vital relations in the United Kingdom and beyond

1. We show how the dire state of the Earth's rivers entangles intimately with ‘thingifying’ processes at the heart of colonial modernity. Known in many precolonial and Indigenous contexts as person-like kin, we describe how rivers the world over have been re-done primarily as thing—amoral, controllable, a potential commodity like anything else. 2. We develop and work with a provisory concept of kin as those constituents of environments that reciprocally nurture, and contribute to the substance of, one another's life and wellbeing. 3. We show how kinship with rivers figures centrally in primarily Indigenous-led struggles in various regions of the globe for the recognition and enforcement of river personhood and rights. This is partly because people are motivated to fight passionately for their kin. 4. With some careful caveats, we argue that associating river kinship exclusively with Indigenous worlds undermines its potential for global impact. Thus, as an apposite case study, the latter part of the paper focuses on some of the social–ecological trends which we suggest are opening up the possibility for the re-establishment of ‘riverkinship’ in the United Kingdom. 5. We reflect on the potential for riverkinship to help cultivate political constellations fitting to the challenges of the Anthropocene

Small and medium-sized enterprise policy: Designed to fail?

Significant doubts persist over the effectiveness of government policy to increase the numbers or performance of small and medium-sized enterprises in the UK economy. We analyse UK political manifestoes from 1964-2015 to examine the development of SME policy in political discourse. We do this by analysing how the broadly-defined category of ‘SME’ has been characterised in the manifestoes and assess these characterisations in relation to the empirical evidence base. We highlight three consistent themes in UK political manifestoes during 1964-2015 where SMEs have been characterised as having the potential for growth, struggling to access finance and being over-burdened by regulation. We argue that homogenising the broad range of businesses represented by the SME category and characterising them in these terms misrepresents them, undermining policies developed in relation to this mischaracterisation

The European Social Model after the crisis: the end of a functionalist fantasy?

What is the European Social Model (ESM) for? This paper argues that it is best seen as an ideal type that facilitates the selection of values that sustains the political economy of the European Union. The ESM has facilitated integration in response to changing systemic requirements in the EU: to compensate for Economic and Monetary Union, to coordinate responses to globalisation under the Lisbon Agenda and to offer solace within the EU 2020 agenda after the sovereign debt crisis. As the systemic demands of the EU have changed, the ESM has not. It now has damaging effects on society which have harmed the political integration of the EU. In conclusion, it is argued that the ESM was a missed opportunity, and that while it remains an ideal type rather than a reality, it needs to present a more ambitious political agenda that would reconfirm the EU's commitment to its society over its markets

Turkey in the world system and the new orientalism

This chapter argues that the semi-periphery is no longer simply a place of unfulfilled promises or one in which the desire for progress is exploited to balance the structures of the capitalist world system. Today the semi-periphery challenges the system itself. Turkey demon- strates its anti-systemic aims in the political challenge that it presents to the world system. The new transformative semi-periphery is not interested in simply ‘developing’ according to the pre-ordained sets of institutional structures to then achieve ‘core’ status amongst battling hegemons. Rather, its potential today is its ability to challenge and per- haps alter the entire system. South America’s socialist strategies and the democratisation of the Western European countries have demonstrated the political drivers for systemic change. What makes Turkey interest- ing is that it is not challenging the political and economic expression of global capitalism through the socialist or democratic routes so often associated with the semi-periphery. The Turkish government is now using a very interesting critical technique called Ottoman Orientalism to challenge the arguably hegemonic civilising processes of EU integration. This chapter discusses the way in which Turkey is doing this, and argues that the transformative semi-periphery cannot cohere to one set of ideological, political, or identity-oriented principles, but now enjoys an anti-systemic status not seen in the theorisations of the semi-periphery in the traditional WSA

Engagement as an educational objective

Few politics modules encourage research based learning to generate research and evidence for policy debate.This example draws from a final year undergraduate module that explores Britain's relationship with the EU to asesses the pedagogic role of policy engagement on student learning, motivation and reflection. It argues that engagement with pratitioners creates a cognitive disequilibrium within students that enables them to learn.In practical terms this means that applying concepts to empirical problems in seminars, lectures, offline resources and assessments allows students to demonstrate originality and rigour in their work that is more easily rewarded with higher grades.Furthermore practitioner engagement offers motivational factors such as achievement, recognition and employability.The costs to this approach include the preparation of additional teaching resources and additional teaching to provide high levels of support to the students