The discourse of globalisation and the logic of no alternative : rendering the contingent necessary in the political economy of New Labour

Although convincingly discredited academically, a crude 'business school' globalisation thesis of a single world market, with its attendant political 'logic of no alternative', continues to dominate the discourse of globalisation adopted by the British Labour Party. Here, we identify three separate, albeit reinforcing, articulations of the policy 'necessities' associated with global economic change. Labour's leaders are shown to have utilised a flexible synthesis of potentially contradictory ideas in constructing their chosen discourse of globalisation to guide the conduct of British economic policy following the Party's election victory in 1997. We conclude that Labour appealed to the image of globalisation as a non-negotiable external economic constraint in order to render contingent policy choices 'necessary' in the interests of electoral rejuvenation

Globalisation : 'sceptical' notes on the 1999 Reith lectures

The contemporary debate concerning the limits of feasible public policy is invariably conducted in the somewhat sinister shadow cast by the image of globalisation. To have no opinion on globalisation is effectively to disqualify oneself from having anything to say about the way our world looks as we reach the millennium. The BBC’s recent Reith Lectures are therefore wholeheartedly to be welcomed for opening a public arena in which to conduct a debate whose significance could scarcely be overstated.1 In so doing, it offers the opportunity, if not to democratise globalisation, then at least to democratise the discussion of globalisation. Whether intentional or not, the BBC has made it possible to extend and refocus the debate beyond the narrow terms of political and academic reference in which it is so frequently cast, thereby rendering it accessible to those on whose futures it will impinge most directly. Moreover, in Anthony Giddens, the programmes’ producers could have made no better choice to lead the widening of the debate within the public domain

Growth – do we need it and can we learn to live without it?

So, do we need growth and might we learn to live without it? Nearly all of us who write regularly for SPERI Comment have at least nodded in the direction of the need to think beyond growth in some way. But we have typically left it at that, with the question of what ‘beyond growth’ actually means left unresolved. In fact, most of us (and I include myself here) have done rather worse than that – in that having identified the need to think beyond growth we have then reverted to the more familiar (and simpler) task of considering how growth (albeit a more sustainable growth) might be restored to our ailing economies. We all know this won’t do (...)

Beyond prospective accountancy : reassessing the case for British membership of the single European currency comparatively

The fact that Britain will, at most, be a late signatory to the single European currency means that the strategic deliberations it faces in deciding whether to enter EMU are rather different to those of earlier entrants. However, this crucial point is lost in almost all discussion of the subject. To date, the academic debate has been dominated by what we term 'prospective accountancy', in which a series of abstract counterfactuals ostensibly inform a stylised cost–benefit analysis. This article moves beyond such an approach by combining conjectures about the specificities of the British case with a concrete analysis of the experiences of the Eurozone member whose economy appears most closely to resemble Britain's: namely, Ireland. The comparative dimension of our work facilitates more empirically-based analysis of the merits and demerits of British entry into EMU. Yet, it is important not to lose sight of the limits of an exclusively comparative approach, for the British growth model is qualitatively different to that of other European Union economies. British growth since the early 1990s has been consumption led, and this in turn has been fuelled to a considerable degree by the release of equity from the housing market. The likely impact of EMU on the British economy will be determined to a significant extent, then, by its effect upon this key catalyst of British growth. Sadly, no retrospective comparison can inform such an assessment

Depoliticisation as process, governance as practice: what did the 'first wave' get wrong and do we need a 'second wave' to put it right?

To what extent do we need a 'second-wave' of writing on depoliticisation to correct the biases of the first and thereby to improve our capacity to gain analytical traction on the dynamic interplay between politicising and depoliticising tendencies in contemporary liberal democracies? In this article I welcome the debate this special issue has opened, but defend the first wave against its critics. More specifically, I argue that the first wave literature provides ample analytical and theoretical resources to capture the dynamic interplay between depoliticising tendencies and politicising or repoliticising counter-tendencies which its critics rightly place at centre stage. Indeed, I go further, suggesting that the more empirical contributions of the special issue, while bringing a series of new and important insights to the analysis of politicisation–depoliticisation dynamics, in fact do so by drawing extensively on first wave depoliticisation theory. Such work is very necessary and advances significantly our understanding of depoliticising, but it extends rather than challenges first wave perspectives and is ultimately better characterised as 'second generation' rather than 'second wave'

Les rituels de vote en France et au Royaume-Uni

Le vote est une pratique symbolique. Pourtant, les politistes tendent à se focaliser sur les résultats des élections ou sur les motivations du vote, en oubliant la signification symbolique de la pratique elle-même et celle qu’elle a pour les participants. Dans cet article, nous attirons l’attention sur cette dimension à travers une analyse des rituels de vote et France et au Royaume-Uni. Nous considérons ce que les électeurs font lorsqu’ils votent. En particulier, nous nous interrogeons sur la manière dont le choix de l’électeur est conçu comme une performance publique ou comme un acte accompli en privé et en secret. Nous considérons comment des pratiques, typiquement tenues pour évidentes et pourtant distinctes, nous aident à mieux comprendre dans quelle mesure ces actes reflètent des frontières différentes du public et du privé dans les deux pays, et contribuent à construire des conceptions singulières nationales du système politique et du citoyen dans le processus démocratique.Voting is a symbolic practice. Yet, political scientists tend to focus either on the outcomes of elections or on citizens’ motivations to vote in the first place – typically by building models of the former on assumptions made about the latter. By doing so, they forget the symbolic significance of the practice itself and the meaning it has for the participants. In this paper, we seek to restore a focus on this symbolic dimension, through an analysis of voting rituals in France and Britain. We explore what citizens do when they vote. In particular we pay attention to how the voter’s choice is constructed as either something that can be performed and hence displayed publicly or as irredeemably secret and private. We consider how such typically taken-for-granted practices help us understand the extent to which these actions reflect divergent assumptions about the boundaries of the public and the private and contribute to construct particular visions of the polity and the place of citizens in the democratic process

The Great Uncertainty: Thinking through questions of time

The global financial crisis, the shift in the global balance of economic power and the environmental threat have unfolded over very different time horizons, but they still come to a head at the same moment

An Sp1 Modulated Regulatory Region Unique to Higher Primates Regulates Human Androgen Receptor Promoter Activity in Prostate Cancer Cells

Funding: This work was supported by the Chief Scientist’s Office (CSO) of the Scottish Government (http://www.cso.scot.nhs.uk/): CWH (CZB-4-477) and IH (ETM/382).Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Britain's role in the world: a conversation

Stephen Whitefieldtalks to Colin Hay about Britain’sprojection of its place in the world today, set in the contextof the diminished sense of Britishness and the story of thelong decline of the country itseel

Negative regulation of the androgen receptor gene through a primate specific androgen response element present in the 5' UTR

Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited. Acknowledgements This work was supported by funding from the Chief Scientist Office, Government of Scotland (Grant Nos CZB/4/477 and ETM/258). DNL was supported by the Association for International Cancer Research (Grant No. 03–127)Peer reviewedPublisher PD