Why were capital controls abandoned? The case of Britain’s abolition of exchange controls, 1977-9

This article examines the politics of capital control liberalisation through an archival analysis of Britain’s exchange controls abolition. While the political economy consensus states that capital controls were abandoned because of a desire to boost the competitiveness of national financial centres and the ascendance of laissez-faire ideas, this article will challenge this interpretation. The James Callaghan and Margaret Thatcher governments were concerned by the worsening performance of British industrial exporters, and exchange control abolition constituted a strategy to depreciate sterling and thus boost export competitiveness. Yet this beggar-thy-neighbour strategy risked spooking global markets and provoking a run on sterling. Thus, the Thatcher administration publically masked its intentions by emphasising that this deregulation was motivated by laissez-faire ideology. This article thus reconceptualises the role of competition and ideas in spurring capital control liberalisation by demonstrating the importance of industrial competitiveness and the role of ideas as rhetoric

Inside Britain’s financial revolution

Since the 1970s, the world economy has been characterised by a process of financialisation. Britain has played a key role in this trend by helping to create a financialised global order and establishing the City of London as a central hub. But why did the UK choose to propel this process? Drawing on a new book, Jack Copley explains why the emergence of financialisation in the UK is best understood as an accidental outcome rather than as the product of a coherent neoliberal ideology

Financial deregulation and the role of statecraft : lessons from Britain’s 1971 competition and credit control measures

Within the financialisation literature, a number of approaches identify the coexistence of financial expansion and productive stagnation. Yet there is no consensus on which direction causality operates between these two phenomena. This impasse has been widened by the lack of attention paid to the role of statecraft strategies in mediating possible causal mechanisms. This article contributes to rectifying this shortcoming by focusing on the governance advantages granted to states through financial deregulation. By presenting archival evidence on Britain’s 1971 Competition and Credit Control deregulation, this article lends support to financialisation accounts that argue that weaknesses in the productive economy spurred financial expansion, yet it also indicates that the state’s desire for depoliticised forms of governance played a crucial role in mediating this relationship. This further suggests that International Political Economy should focus on the strategic manner in which states relate to markets

Financialisation and the State: Global Crisis and British Financial Regulatory Change

This thesis explores the role of states in propelling financialisation. The neoliberal period has been characterised by two interrelated phenomena: financial markets have expanded at a seemingly inexorable rate, while productive output has stagnated across much of the advanced capitalist world. States have acted to further these processes through discrete financial de- and reregulations. The existing literature has theorised states’ roles in this process by pointing either to the power of financial lobbyists and laissez-faire ideology or arguing that the state pursued these policies as an automatic reaction to the stagflation crisis. This thesis evaluates these claims by examining the governing motivations underpinning four key British financial regulatory transformations – the 1971 Competition and Credit Control measures, the 1977-79 abolition of exchange controls, the 1986 Big Bang, and the 1986 Financial Services Act – through the analysis of declassified government, Bank of England, and other documents. The findings presented in this thesis disconfirm both explanations advanced in the financialisation literature: state policy-makers were not dominated by financial lobbyists, entirely beholden to laissez-faire ideology, nor were their actions a reflexive, functional reaction to crisis. Instead, policy-makers employed financial de- and reregulatory measures as pragmatic instruments to strategically navigate the contradictory pressures of the global profitability crisis and the demands of domestic groups. This thesis theorises these findings by drawing from the value-form reading of Marx’s writings and Open Marxist state theory. During periods of crisis, states are forced to reconcile the impersonal domination of global value relations with the tangible demands of the electorate that their immediate needs be met. To do so, policy-makers create statecraft strategies that attempt to either discipline national social relations in line with global imperatives, often in a depoliticised manner, or delay the effects of the crisis through palliative measures in order to maintain political legitimacy. The financial regulatory changes studied in this thesis should be conceptualised as elements of these broader strategies of crisis governance. The British state’s propulsion of financialisation constituted a strategic attempt to govern the crisis- and struggle-ridden nature of capitalist social relations

Beyond the Mutual Constitution of States and Markets:On the Governance of Alienation

International Political Economy (IPE) textbooks tend to present the concept of a clear state-market dichotomy as the disciplinary mainstream. Yet we argue that a critical consensus has emerged around the mutual constitution of states and markets. Underpinning this is the Polanyian thesis that economic activities are always politically embedded. However, we claim that this notion of state-market mutual constitution is inadequate to grasp the peculiarities of the capitalist political economy. While capitalist market relations are underpinned by states, they take on an autonomous, dominating logic that limits states’ agency. Concretely, by reproducing international monetary relations, states accidentally contribute to the establishment of world labour productivity averages that force them to boost national competitiveness in order to keep pace with world market standards. In place of the notion of mutual constitution, then, we offer Marx’s concept of alienation as a theory of a form of social relations that have escaped the control of the institutions that produce them. The challenge of state governance – reflected in the canon of liberal thought – is to reconcile the impersonal imperatives of world market relations with the creation of a legitimate national political project, which we term the politics of governing alienation

Data of physical and electrochemical characteristics of calendered NMC622 electrodes and lithium-ion cells at pilot-plant battery manufacturing

The data reported here was prepared to study the effects of calendering process on NMC622 cathodes using a 3-3-2 full factorial design of experiments. The data set consists of 18 unique combinations of calender roll temperature (85 °C, 120 °C, or 145 °C), electrode porosity (30%, 35%, or 40%), and electrode mass loading (120 g/m² or 180 g/m²). The reported physical characteristics of the electrodes include thickness, coating weight, maximum tensile strength, and density. The electrochemical performances of the electrodes were obtained by testing coin cells. In this context, 54 half-cells were produced, 3 per each calendering experiment to ensure repeatability and reliability of the results. The responses of interest included, charge energy capacity at C/2, C/5, discharge energy capacity at C/20, C/5, C/2, C, 2C, 5C, 10C, gravimetric capacity (charge at C/2, C/5, discharge at C/20, C/5, C/2, C, 2C, 5C, 10C), volumetric capacity (charge at C/2, C/5, discharge at C/20, C/5, C/2, C, 2C, 5C, 10C), rate performance (5C:0.2C), area specific impedance (at 10% to 90% state of charge (SoC) in 10 breakpoints), long-term cycling capacity (charge at C/5 for 50 cycles, discharge at C/2 for 50 cycles), long-term cycling degradation (at C/2 during 50 cycles of charge and discharge), and cycling columbic efficiency (50 cycles of C/2 charge and discharge). The details of the experimental design that has led to this data as well as comprehensive statistical analysis, and machine learning-based models can be found in the recently published manuscripts by Hidalgo et al. and Faraji-Niri et al. [1,2]

How can power discourses be changed? - Contrasting the ‘daughter deficit’ policy of the Delhi government with Gandhi and King’s transformational reframing

Social policy impact is partly determined by how policy is articulated and advocated, including which values are highlighted and how. In this paper, we examine the influence of policy framing and reframing on outcomes, with particular reference to the policies of the Delhi state government in India that target the practices of female feticide, infanticide and neglect that underlie the ‘daughter deficit’. Using Snow and Benford’s categories for understanding reframing processes, the paper outlines and applies a ‘model’ of reframing disputed issues derived from looking at two famous campaigns – Gandhi’s 1930 Salt March in the struggle for Indian freedom from British rule and the African-American civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s. It argues that ‘carrot and stick’ policy measures, such as financial incentives and legal prohibitions, to counteract the ‘daughter deficit’ must be complemented by well crafted discursive interventions

NOX1 loss-of-function genetic variants in patients with inflammatory bowel disease.

Genetic defects that affect intestinal epithelial barrier function can present with very early-onset inflammatory bowel disease (VEOIBD). Using whole-genome sequencing, a novel hemizygous defect in NOX1 encoding NAPDH oxidase 1 was identified in a patient with ulcerative colitis-like VEOIBD. Exome screening of 1,878 pediatric patients identified further seven male inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) patients with rare NOX1 mutations. Loss-of-function was validated in p.N122H and p.T497A, and to a lesser degree in p.Y470H, p.R287Q, p.I67M, p.Q293R as well as the previously described p.P330S, and the common NOX1 SNP p.D360N (rs34688635) variant. The missense mutation p.N122H abrogated reactive oxygen species (ROS) production in cell lines, ex vivo colonic explants, and patient-derived colonic organoid cultures. Within colonic crypts, NOX1 constitutively generates a high level of ROS in the crypt lumen. Analysis of 9,513 controls and 11,140 IBD patients of non-Jewish European ancestry did not reveal an association between p.D360N and IBD. Our data suggest that loss-of-function variants in NOX1 do not cause a Mendelian disorder of high penetrance but are a context-specific modifier. Our results implicate that variants in NOX1 change brush border ROS within colonic crypts at the interface between the epithelium and luminal microbes

Global patient outcomes after elective surgery: prospective cohort study in 27 low-, middle- and high-income countries.

BACKGROUND: As global initiatives increase patient access to surgical treatments, there remains a need to understand the adverse effects of surgery and define appropriate levels of perioperative care. METHODS: We designed a prospective international 7-day cohort study of outcomes following elective adult inpatient surgery in 27 countries. The primary outcome was in-hospital complications. Secondary outcomes were death following a complication (failure to rescue) and death in hospital. Process measures were admission to critical care immediately after surgery or to treat a complication and duration of hospital stay. A single definition of critical care was used for all countries. RESULTS: A total of 474 hospitals in 19 high-, 7 middle- and 1 low-income country were included in the primary analysis. Data included 44 814 patients with a median hospital stay of 4 (range 2-7) days. A total of 7508 patients (16.8%) developed one or more postoperative complication and 207 died (0.5%). The overall mortality among patients who developed complications was 2.8%. Mortality following complications ranged from 2.4% for pulmonary embolism to 43.9% for cardiac arrest. A total of 4360 (9.7%) patients were admitted to a critical care unit as routine immediately after surgery, of whom 2198 (50.4%) developed a complication, with 105 (2.4%) deaths. A total of 1233 patients (16.4%) were admitted to a critical care unit to treat complications, with 119 (9.7%) deaths. Despite lower baseline risk, outcomes were similar in low- and middle-income compared with high-income countries. CONCLUSIONS: Poor patient outcomes are common after inpatient surgery. Global initiatives to increase access to surgical treatments should also address the need for safe perioperative care. STUDY REGISTRATION: ISRCTN5181700