The 2008 global economic crisis was unprecedented in living memory and its impact on economic and social life immense. Large-scale social policy interventions played a crucial role in helping to mediate the crisis, and yet the welfare state continues to come under attack. A new age of austerity, based more on politics than economics, is threatening to undermine the very foundations of the welfare state.
However, as this important book illustrates, there is still room for optimism - resistance to the logic of austerity exists within organisations and governments, and among peoples, demonstrating how essential social policies remain to human progress.
The second of a three-book series covering the post-2008 global economic crisis and the period of austerity, this volume draws together edited chapters from leading scholars engaged in the debate and will be equally suitable for academics and other researchers studying international and comparative social policy, as well as upper level undergraduate and postgraduate students.
‘Being more like America again and less like Europe is the heart of the UK model of capitalism … [but] there are many respects in which Britain remains unlike America despite its strong appeal to the British political class ...’
In 'After Brexit' Andrew Gamble sets out the economic models and external relationships that Britain has pursued since the Second World War and examines the choices it now faces as it adjusts to life outside of the European Union.
This volume brings together this essay with some of Andrew Gamble’s most important and influential writings on British politics and political economy from the last forty years. They reflect on many of the issues that animate British politics, from the relative decline of the economy and the reshaping of the welfare state to the transformation of the Conservative and Labour parties and the changing constitutional order with the devolution of power to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The volume is introduced by the author and includes his notes on each of the essays as well as an epilogue, which considers their original context and what has changed since. Taken together, the essays in this volume are testament to the acuity of one of Britain’s foremost political thinkers and provide rich insight into debates and ideas that continue to influence British politics and Britain’s place in the world.
A companion volume of Andrew Gamble’s essays, The Western Ideology and Other Essays, focusing on political ideas and ideologies, is also available from Bristol University Press.
‘Capitalism may be teetering once again on the edge of a terminal crisis, but there are no gravediggers in sight. This time around not only are there no gravediggers there are no longer any rival economic systems either …’
In ‘The Western Ideology’ Andrew Gamble demonstrates the contradictions and the resilience of the doctrines that define liberal modernity, and examines the contemporary possibilities for dissent and change.
This volume brings together for the first time this seminal essay with a collection of Andrew Gamble’s writings on political ideas and ideologies, which have been chosen by the author to illustrate the main themes of his writing in intellectual history and the history of ideas. Themes include the character of economic liberalism and neoliberalism, especially as expressed in the work of Friedrich Hayek, as well as critiques from both social democratic and conservative perspectives and from critics as varied as Karl Marx, Michael Oakeshott and Bob Dylan.
The collection includes a new autobiographical introduction, notes on the essays and an epilogue putting the essays into the context of today’s society. Andrew Gamble provides a unique exploration of the debates and the ideas that have shaped our politics and Western ideology.
A companion volume of Andrew Gamble’s essays, After Brexit and Other Essays, focusing on political economy and British politics, is also available from Bristol University Press.
Throughout the developed world governments have invested substantial sums in local and regional economic development. Many have spent heavily on local development agencies and strategies to bolster competitiveness within world markets.
What has been the impact of these actions? How effective are the strategies and processes employed by development agencies? How well funded are development efforts in one nation compared to another, and how are their objectives defined?
This book addresses these questions. It:
· explores the impact and functioning of economic development agencies;
· makes a unique contribution to the emerging literature on economic development agencies by reporting on the results of a cross-national survey of economic development practitioners;
· compares the ‘institutional architectures’ of economic development in Australia, England, the United States and Northern Ireland;
· analyses how these institutional arrangements affect individual agencies and their regions.
This book is intended for a wide audience including economic development practitioners, local government officers, officials within national or state governments and academics. It provides the reader with a greater appreciation of how local and regional economic development systems operate in different economies and aids understanding of what makes the economic development system in each nation unique. It challenges ideas about the uniformity of economic development efforts and encourages practitioners and policy makers to experiment with and explore strategies used elsewhere.
New Zealand has experienced both sweeping economic and social reform and growing poverty and income inequality in the last twenty years. This book explores the changes to social security provision and coverage in the context of these developments and of widening national and international poverty and inequality.
The book argues that the policy initiatives have altered the nature of social security and in doing so have significantly transformed the nature of social citizenship. The author brings the New Zealand data together in a way that has not been done previously and provides the reader with both a detailed discussion of the work on poverty and living standards in New Zealand and the political and economic context within which social security changes have occurred.
Linking the discussion to international changes in social security and to the international literature on poverty and inequality, the author demonstrates the important implications the New Zealand directions have for the development of social security internationally.
The book will be of considerable interest for all those interested in international reshaping of state support for the poorest and most vulnerable and its development in a neoliberal and Third Way.
Since 2000, countries across Africa have maintained over a decade of unprecedented economic expansion in a phenomena known as ‘Africa rising’. However, despite pockets of strong economic growth, Africa still faces major development challenges.
In this important book the contributors argue that Africa as a continent must work on securing social and political stability and build effective economic governance to ensure the development of a society that is socially, economically and politically inclusive.
Looking beyond the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) the contributors highlight what they consider to be the 12 major public policy conversations of the continent post-2015, from the legacy of African leadership, to the ‘youth bulge’ (and resulting unemployment) and climate change. The volume presents policy makers, academics and students with a chance to take a fresh look at urgent emerging challenges in post-MDG African development.
There is no precedent to the current economic crisis which looks set to redefine social policy debate throughout the globe. But its effects are not uniform across nations. Bringing together a range of expert contributions, the key lesson to emerge from this book is that ‘the crisis’ is better understood as a variety of crises, each mediated by national context. Consequently, there is an array of potential trajectories for welfare systems, from those where social policy is regarded as incompatible with the post-crisis economy to those where it is considered essential to future economic growth and security.
As part of the devolution process, a range of powers was granted to the newly formed Scottish Parliament in 1999. These powers principally governed social welfare where there was already a degree of Scottish autonomy. Welfare has thus been central to the devolution project. The book looks at why social welfare issues were central to the devolution process in Scotland; explores the particular social and financial circumstances in which Scottish policy makers operate; reviews and assesses Scottish policies for children, education and lifelong learning; examines health policy, including care for the elderly, an especially controversial example of ‘policy divergence’ from England and provides an invaluable overview of the Scottish welfare state is as it is, and discusses how it might develop in the future. This book is essential reading for all those concerned with the contemporary and historical dimensions of social policy in Scotland and how they relate to developments in other parts of the United Kingdom.
Lily Hamourtziadou’s investigation into civilian victims during the conflicts that followed the US-led coalition’s 2003 invasion of Iraq provides important new perspectives on the human cost of the War on Terror.
From early fighting to the withdrawal and return of coalition troops, the Arab Spring and the rise of ISIS, the book explores the scale and causes of deaths and places them in the contexts of power struggles, US foreign policy and radicalisation. Casting fresh light on not just the conflict but international geopolitics and the history of Iraq, it constructs a unique and insightful human security approach to war.
In the Beveridge Lecture, delivered on 18 March 1999, Prime Minister Tony Blair committed his government to abolishing child poverty within 20 years. He concluded that the present-day welfare state is not fitted to the modern world, and laid out his vision for a welfare state for the 21st century. Blair’s vision, grounded in a particular conception of social justice, is perhaps as challenging as the blueprint laid down by Beveridge.
Ending child poverty presents Blair’s Beveridge Lecture alongside the views of some of Britain’s foremost policy analysts and commentators. This unique collection makes it possible to not only read the ideas of leading current thinkers in this critical area of policy, but also to compare them with the Prime Minister’s lecture, and to see which ideas he himself took up and in what form.
Ending child poverty is a record of not only the Lecture itself, but also of the ideas available to government and their influence on its leader at an important moment in the formation of policy. It provides a rich tapestry on analysis, insight and reflection that will, it is to be hoped, stimulate critical debate about the future shape of British welfare.
This collection is essential reading for anyone interested in the future of modern society and politics and provides an accessible handbook for undergraduate students of politics, social policy and sociology.
