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
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.
Chapter 11, The Self-destructing Propensities of Global Capitalism, considers contradictions in the development of global capitalism which have precipitated the formation of a new ascendant class predicated on information technology, economic abundance and collaborative production. A metamorphosis is occurring leading to a new superior social formation, post-capitalism, which can take various forms. The claim, that contemporary capitalism is driven by ascendant forces, the creatariat, leading to a new form of production, based on a network society and the creative industries, is evaluated and found to be inadequate. A future ‘automated luxury communism’ consequent on increased productivity is questioned and found to be over optimistic. Other critics consider that the state is undermining capitalism. Disillusion with previous forms of social democratic electoral politics and with the ‘vanguard party’ leads to the rejection of organisational forms of leadership as means to attain political power. The author examines the call, by various writers, for autonomous spontaneous action to create cooperative social forms of economy and social life to replace global capitalism. It is contended that such views are over optimistic as a means to overcome the dominant transnational corporations (TNCs) and hegemonic capitalist states.
Chapter 14, Social Democratic and Socialist Perspectives, outlines the views of those who regard capitalist globalisation as a positive economic development, but consider it necessary to democratise or regulate it. Others propose a form of socialist globalisation. Such proposals curb current globalisation policies, give states more powers and effectively move to internationalisation. The reformist social democratic approach proposes to make global organisations more democratic and responsive to societal interests, to strengthening the state and weakening the processes of globalisation. Social democratic parties in power, however, are found to pursue policies within the context of global capitalism. Some, including the Chinese, advocate socialist policies that reshape globalisation by giving states greater rights – a return to internationalisation. Corporate social responsibility (CSR) relying on obligations to stakeholders, is outlined as another mechanism for modifying global capitalist interests. A more radical socialist approach proposes a different form of globalisation – here the institutions of capitalism are dismantled, globalisation remains. Capitalist globalisation becomes socialist globalisation, which pursues objectives based on human needs.
Global neoliberal capitalism presents the major form of economic coordination and political control in the world economy. The book distinguishes between globalisation and neoliberalism, and explains what global neoliberalism is, why it has appeal, what alternatives have been tried and why they have failed. The rise of neoliberalism is presented as a failure of 20th-century state-led economies to satisfy the aspirations of their citizens under conditions of advanced capitalism. The author provides a sociological understanding of post-industrial society on which different forms of economic and political coordination have to be predicated. He considers in detail both the strengths and weaknesses of social democracy and state socialism, and explains why and how these alternatives either disintegrated or were dismantled. He discusses developments in Great Britain, the post-socialist states of Eastern Europe and the USSR, and China. He distinguishes between globalisation and internationalism and analyses developments within states as well as the shift from a concentric geo-politics to a bi-polar world system. The author identifies key areas where embedded neoliberalism may be faulted. Replacements are considered in terms of alternative forms of capitalism and alternatives economies to capitalism. The book defines the limits and opportunities of four major challenges to global neoliberal capitalism: the reform and democratisation of global capitalist institutions; the strengthening of states against transnational interests; the reversal of globalising tendencies and the introduction of autonomous self-sustaining democratic economies; and proposals for instituting a global form of socialism. The author finally proposes something new: a system of economic and political coordination based on a combination of market socialism and state planning.
Chapter 4, Socialist Visions, outlines ideas that have driven the socialist movement – both social democratic and socialist. Whereas liberalism in is various forms was grounded on the rights of individuals, socialism promotes collective rights, which in turn liberate individuals. Socialism is a social and political system that is predicated on the universal fulfilment of human needs, which can only be met by the attainment of three other objectives: public property, social equality and a classless society. Two distinct approaches to socialism are delineated, social democracy and socialism. which have remained the two foremost adversaries of capitalism. The views of Durkheim, Mill, Marx and Engels are contrasted. The practice of state socialism and the planned socialist economy is considered an alternative to liberal competitive capitalism and social democratic welfarist forms of capitalism. Social democracy and socialism have a collectivist, rather than an individualistic, frame of reference.
Relying on the experience of the USSR, the chapter shows how convergence to neoliberalism arose out of the failure of the statist economy to adapt to the technological advances that were under way in the transition from industrial to post-industrial society. Reform of state socialism led by Gorbachev, was influenced by Thatcher’s reforms, and supported by the rising strata of professional educated people who formed the ‘service class’. The geo-political dimension in favour of neoliberal reforms is shown to be crucial for the dismantling of state socialism. The two area comparisons bring out how, in both the Western social democratic and the East European socialist parties, domestic social support for neoliberal political reform was generated by the ascendant professional white collar social strata and the failure of state led politics. The chapter analyses how Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms effectively dismantled the planned socialist economy, ending an alternative to capitalism and instigated the arrival of a neoliberal capitalist economy.
State socialism, as it appeared in the East European socialist bloc and China after the Second World War, was a hierarchical state-administered publicly-owned planned economy. The communist party state was hegemonic. State socialism is considered the first comprehensive form of state-led industrialisation, ensuring not only economic growth but a transformation of the social structure that prioritised economic growth, relatively low income differentials and a comprehensive welfare state. By the 1960s, state socialism was an effective form of welfare state industrialisation. However, as economic growth declined and real income fell, public aspirations for higher living standards were not fulfilled. State socialism was challenged ideologically by reformers who advocated market socialism and participatory electoral democracy. Criticisms of the planning system mirrored those of the neoliberal economists. The state socialist system is appraised as an effective but imperfect alternative to liberal market capitalism. Two alternatives to the difficulties of Soviet planning are outlined and discussed: market socialism as proposed by Oskar Lange and participatory socialist planning as advocated by Ernest Mandel.
This chapter describes how policy makers and decision-makers developed and implemented strategies and policies based on the ‘talent’ imaginary and bring knowledge alchemy to life. By reviewing how the presuppositions revolving around the global competition for talent became integrated in higher education and university policies, migration policies, university recruitment practices and more, we show how the processes of globalization, internationalization and competition unfold across multiple policy sectors, institutions and governance levels. Here, policy makers and decision-makers use the notion of interdependence to describe the state of existence, but also to identify policy problems and solutions. To unpack how interdependence is interpreted and used, we organized this chapter to revolve around several case studies that span multiple governance levels: the macro-regional, the national and transregional, and at the city level. Our case selections are meant to be illustrative and not comprehensive, involving cities, countries and regions in the ‘West’ as well as the ‘East’. What our cases have in common is the centrality of the ‘talent’ competition imaginary, articulated through the competition narrative, driving knowledge governance.
A breakfast meeting in March 2000 sets the scene for a discussion of the role London’s markets have played in financing colonialist endeavours. The book’s narrative continues with an account of the closure of the London Stock Exchange’s junior market and the subsequent outcry from the financial community. This, and strategic pressures from the new market OFEX, led to the formation of the Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market, or AIM, which was by 2000 becoming a hub for mineral exploration finance. Chapter 11 concludes with an account of the Shanghai rubber bubble of the early 20th century and the British plantations in Malaya, where indentured labour generated high returns for investors that funded them. The chapter notes the similarities in deal structure between these financings and those of the dotcom era discussed in Chapter 10.
This final chapter stages a dialogue between the author and the stock exchange. It equivocates after Chapter 14’s abrupt dismissal of the possibilities of finance: perhaps there might be a role for new financial markets in very focused cases. It suggests a market in recyclable materials and a Scottish stock exchange as two such possibilities. The stock exchange defends itself against the book’s accusations: it is a social technology, a reflection of the society that created it.
