Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
Since the world economic crisis of 2007, commentators have pointed to the dangers of a capitalistic system that seems incapable of delivering sustainable growth and well-being.
This bold new book offers an exhaustive diagnosis of global capitalism across the world’s nations. David Lane examines the nature and appeal of neoliberal capitalism according to different schools of thought, and he analyses proposals for its reform and replacement from state socialism and social democratic corporatism to self-sustaining networks.
Looking ahead to a novel system of economic and political coordination based on a combination of market socialism and state planning, this book offers crucial insights for scholars thinking about alternatives to capitalism.
Chapter 2, Global Neoliberalism and What It Means, defines modern capitalism, contrasting Weberian and Marxist approaches. The ambiguities in the understanding of ‘neoliberal capitalism’ and its diversity in the practice of modern economies are outlined. On the basis of the writings of Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman, neoliberalism is defined. Contemporary neoliberalism enlarges the 20th-century version of liberalism to include a social economy, financialisation of social relations and a propensity to expansion on a global level. Neoliberalism is considered to be a comprehensive theory of how economy and society should be ordered, and its psychological, political, economic and social dimensions are discussed. A contrast is made between the collectivist views of Emile Durkheim and Francis Fukuyama’s neoliberal approach. Contradictory features of neoliberalism are discussed with particular reference to the contradiction between bureaucratic regulation and free market exchange.
This chapter provides an overview of the development of global rankings in good governance and higher education. Initially, the metrics dealt with good governance and competitiveness of countries, but since the 2000s the global rankings on higher education and innovation have emerged. Recently, city rankings have highlighted the importance of assessment of academic research and education. The effects of these rankings have been numerous, and innovation, higher education and academic life more generally have been increasingly governed by high-pace data-driven reforms, as for example our discussion on the case of Paris-Saclay University demonstrates.
In this chapter, we discuss innovation rankings and city-level measurements of competitiveness that draw heavily from other indicators, hence echoing the hegemonic views and ideological undercurrents already present in the ranking field. The sharing of data is part of the evolving conventional power of data production on a global level. Empirically, we focus on four key indicators of knowledge governance and competitiveness that also reveal how the global ranking field has evolved: Global Competitiveness Index (GCI), Global Innovation Index (GII), Global Talent Competitiveness Index (GTCI) and Global Power City Index (GPCI). We analyse the convergence of the metrics of competitiveness, innovation and education and its implications on the policy script of ‘talent competition’. We conclude the chapter with closer analysis of the actors behind the GTCI.
This book introduces the concept of ‘knowledge alchemy’ to capture the generic process of transforming mundane practices and policies of governance into competitive ones following imagined global gold standards. Using examples from North America, Europe and Asia, it explores how knowledge alchemy increasingly informs national and institutional policies and practices on economic performance, higher education, research and innovation. The book examines how governments around the world have embraced global models of the world-class university, human capital and talent competition as essential in ensuring national competitiveness. Through its analysis, the book shows how this strongly future-oriented and anticipatory knowledge governance is steered by a surge of global classifications, rankings and indicators, resulting in numerous comparisons of various domains that today form more constraining global policy scripts.
In this chapter, we present our theoretical framework for studying knowledge alchemy – a generic process of transforming mundane practices and policies of knowledge governance into competitive ones following imagined global gold standards and universal symbolic formulas. We argue that knowledge alchemy is prevalent around the world, informing national and institutional policies and practices on global competitiveness, higher education and innovation. Given how interdependent the world remains, knowledge alchemy is also embedded in transnational administration and steers global policy making. To understand contemporary national and transnational governance, it is thus essential to know how knowledge alchemy unfolds across multiple policy domains and sectors.
The introduction outlines the significance of global neoliberal capitalism – its achievements, failures and contradictions. Despite recurrent crises of capitalism, current critical thinking in the social sciences reveals unpredictable and uncertain futures. The introduction summarises the thinking of leading writers, which include: spontaneous collapse leading to the rise of a new but undefined social formation, a reformed liberal capitalism, state capitalism or the rise of parallel autonomous economies. Among the social scientists discussed are Randall Collins, Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, Michael Mann, Branco Milanovic, Craig Calhoun and Georgi Derluguian, Immanuel Wallerstein, Alexander Buzgalin, Daniel Chirot, Wolfgang Streeck, J.K. Gibson-Graham and Samir Amin. The introduction explains why it is important to distinguish, theoretically, between different forms of capitalism and globalisation, and outlines six major alternatives. The book is organised into three parts: the three introductory chapters outline and criticise globalisation and neoliberalism; the next part outlines 20th-century alternatives to capitalism, it discusses their merits and failings; the final part considers current alternatives – their strengths and weaknesses – and finally my own proposal of regulated market socialism.
This book introduces the concept of ‘knowledge alchemy’ to capture the generic process of transforming mundane practices and policies of governance into competitive ones following imagined global gold standards. Using examples from North America, Europe and Asia, it explores how knowledge alchemy increasingly informs national and institutional policies and practices on economic performance, higher education, research and innovation.
The book examines how governments around the world have embraced global models of world-class university, human capital and talent competition as essential in ensuring national competitiveness. Through its analysis, the book shows how this strongly future-oriented and anticipatory knowledge governance is steered by a surge of global classifications, rankings and indicators, resulting in numerous comparisons of various domains that today form more constraining global policy scripts.
Chapter 3, Neoliberalism: A Critique
Despite many crises and widespread public and academic criticism, neoliberalism survives as a hegemonic ideology. Following a summary of neoliberalism’s development, seven dimensions of theory and practice are outlined where it may be faulted. Neoliberal theory by putting individual behaviour as the drivers of economic development and wealth creation gives insufficient attention to the unequal division of economic and political power. The absence of countervailing power may lead to economies operating for long periods of time at sub-optimal conditions. States, rather than countervailing economic forces, have resolved economic crisis caused by systemic economic imbalances. While promoting diversity and mobility, neoliberalism ignores the constitution of inequality which is based on the unequal ownership of property. The theory is unable to articulate holistic knowledge. It is contended that societies and collaborative human behaviour create civilisations, rather than the neoliberal assumptions of individual self-interest working through market mechanisms.
Chapter 16, Regulated Market Socialism, summarises the major alternatives discussed in the book. The chapter then outlines the preferences of the author: regulated market socialism - a hybrid economy predicated on public and private ownership, markets and an economic plan. A ‘social state’ is envisaged as a post-capitalist socialist political and moral order – without losing the satisfactions of a pluralist consumer society. Economic surplus, made available from public ownership, is allocated through a state plan. Socialist planning is revisited in the context of computerised planning. In the private sector, economic coordination functions through markets. The justification for public ownership is that it will perform more efficiently and effectively than private ownership and is proposed for major economic corporations, and for those that fail, or lack public responsibility. Socialism develops in a democratic pluralist society with a competitive electoral political system. Self-motivating individualism is retained and political democracy is extended to include economic democracy. Regulated market socialism is presented as a realistic alternative capable of transcending neoliberal capitalist globalisation.
