Mark Carney and the gendered political economy of British central banking

In this article we explore Mark Carney’s place in the gendered political economy of British central banking. We document the gendered narratives surrounding Carney around the time of his appointment as Governor of the Bank of England, suggesting that they worked to naturalise certain gender constructions in finance. We show how Carney seemingly had the ability to successfully embody a combination of two ideal-types of masculinity: both ‘transnational business masculinity’ and ‘traditional bourgeois masculinity’. We argue this contributed to three depoliticising moves, each of which gain their strength in part from the naturalisation of masculinities in finance, while obfuscating important questions of gendered finance. To elucidate the latter, we highlight some of the gendered outcomes that are obscured by the furore surrounding Carney’s character, suggesting that the monetary and financial stability concerns of the Bank under his stewardship are likely to reproduce the uneven and exploitative relations of gendered finance

Rolling back the prison estate: The pervasive impact of macroeconomic austerity on prisoner health in England

Prisons offer policymakers an opportunity to address the pre-existing high prevalence of physical and mental health issues among prisoners. This notion has been widely integrated into international and national prison health policies, including the Healthy Prisons Agenda, which calls for governments to address the health needs of prisoners and safeguard their health entitlement during imprisonment, and the Sustainable Development Goals 2030 concerning reducing inequality among disadvantaged populations.However, the implementation of the austerity policy in the United Kingdom since the re-emergence of the global financial crisis in 2008 has impeded this aspiration. This interdisciplinary paper critically evaluates the impact of austerity on prison health. The aforementioned policy has obstructed prisoners’ access to healthcare, exacerbated the degradation of their living conditions, impeded their purposeful activities and subjected them to an increasing level of violence.This paper calls for alternatives to imprisonment, initiating a more informed economic recovery policy, and relying on transnational and national organizations to scrutinize prisoners’ entitlement to health. These systemic solutions could act as a springboard for political and policy discussions at national and international forums with regard to improving prisoners’ health and simultaneously meeting the aspirations of the Healthy Prisons Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals

Assessing relative spending needs of devolved government: the case of healthcare spending in the UK

The system used to allocate resources to the UK's devolved territories, known as the Barnett formula, takes no account of the relative expenditure needs of the territories. In this paper we investigate the prospects of developing a needs based model for allocating healthcare resources to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. We compare the method used by the National Health Service in England to allocate resources geographically within England with the method used by the NHS in Scotland to allocate resources to territorial Health Boards. By applying both approaches to the UK's devolved territories, we are able to examine similarities and differences in the two methods, and explore implications for an assessment of the relative healthcare expenditure need of each territory. The implications for the way in which revenue is distributed to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland are discussed

Is the grass always greener? Making sense of convergence and divergence in regeneration policies in England and Scotland

This paper is concerned with the trajectories of regeneration policy discourse and practice in a devolved UK context. Over recent years the asymmetrical nature of devolved governance has intensified, exemplified by a policy of political containment in Scotland and a reconfiguration of sub-national institutional architecture in England. Against a backdrop of the transfusion of Holyrood’s devolution agenda and Westminster’s localism programme, an empirical analysis of contemporary English and Scottish regeneration policy is provided. We investigate the extent to which perceived divergences in government policy resonate with those at the sharp end of regeneration practice, informed by concepts derived from the policy convergence/divergence literature. The key finding is the coexistence of ideological divergence, replete in political discourse and policy documentation, but growing convergence in actual existing practice, evidenced in the nature, extent and scale of initiatives. The enveloping fiscal context and austere politics, producing what is anticipated to be a protracted period of financial retrenchment, appears to be a defining factor in contemporary urban regeneration policy convergence

Regulation and supervision of financial intermediaries in the EU: the aftermath of the financial crisis

The financial crisis has reopened debate on the architecture of financial regulation and prudential supervision in the EU, calling into question the home country control principle that has prevailed since the mid-1980s. This article discusses how the growth of cross-border financial intermediation can best be regulated to limit the ensuing risks of financial contagion. It argues that a supranational supervisory system is now needed for some intermediaries, but that proximity to market actors at national level remains important. This points to a quasi-federal system as the way forward, but in constructing such a system account has to be taken of the diversity of Member State structures and preferences. The article concludes that even if a much more extensive EU-level competence is theoretically the optimal way forward, political considerations make it unlikely, suggesting that the crisis has broader implications for European integration

Redistribution and financing schools in England under Labour: are resources going where needs are greatest?

This article explores the policy changes made by the Labour government to the recurrent funding of school-based education in England, focusing in particular on the allocation of resources to meet the needs of disadvantaged pupils. Expenditure on education and, in particular, on schools has increased since 1997. However, while there have been two major changes to the way in which government allocates resources to local authorities (LAs) and a new requirement for LAs to include a deprivation factor in their funding formulae for schools, the evidence indicates that resources are being allocated to schools in a less redistributive manner than they are being allocated by central government to LAs. To address this issue, the government could require a minimum proportion of funding to be allocated to schools on the basis of disadvantage; however, politically this would be problematic in the absence of additional resources as it would mean cuts being made by LAs elsewhere in the education budget. And whilst there is now some information about the level of funding allocated to meet the needs of disadvantaged pupils, there is a paucity of information about how these resources are actually used within schools

Performance indicators: good, bad, and ugly

A striking feature of UK public services in the 1990s was the rise of performance monitoring (PM), which records, analyses and publishes data in order to give the public a better idea of how Government policies change the public services and to improve their effectiveness. Copyright 2005 Royal Statistical Society.