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2 The New Economic Policy T he New Economic Policy, or NEP, was introduced by Lenin in 1921. It was initially intended as a short-term measure to deal with the acute crisis in food production. Under War Communism, grain which was considered surplus to the peasants’ own needs – and this was open to interpretation – had been requisitioned by the authorities and used to feed the urban workers and the army. The furious peasants had rebelled; if the food they produced would be taken from them, they would simply produce less. A severe drought in 1920 and 1921 turned
4 Economic policy under the PSOE, 1982–96 Entering office in 1982 at a time when social democracy was generally acknowledged to be in retreat before the dominant neoliberal paradigm, the PSOE acknowledged that the pursuit of an interventionist, Keynesian-Âstyle economic policy would be unlikely to secure economic success. The very gravity of the economic situation bequeathed by the Socialists’ UCD predecessors militated against the adoption of any kind of risk likely to provoke an adverse reaction from the financial markets. Indeed, 1982, when the PSOE entered
economic policy. His fundamental approach to economic relations does not differ in orientation from that of Trump: a US-centric and labour-based posture. Of course, the styles are markedly different with Trump implementing a bellicose policy of extortion, while Democrats have been far less confrontational. Biden has been hesitant to revisit the Transpacific Partnership, which will include
Introduction Our argument in this chapter is that mainstream economic policy in the UK is in a quagmire. As in the case of military quagmires, it is the poor bloody infantry, not the staff officers, who pay the price for ongoing failure to achieve national objectives. The staff of policy
4 Social and economic policy and the executive in office A wide range of socio-economic policy matters were discussed by the powersharing executive, despite its brief tenure. Issues such as job creation and educational policy were subjects of particularly high priority for the powersharing administration. The downturn in both the regional and world economies at the time, created a particularly challenging environment for an executive that desperately needed a popular social and economic programme in order to build support for power-sharing in the wider
4 The political economy of French social democratic economic policy autonomy 1997–2002: credibility, dirigisme and globalisation Ben Clift Introduction: the crisis of social democracy The U-turn of French Socialism in 1983 saw a retreat from egalitarian redistribution, full employment and social justice as the priorities of economic policy. A prolonged period of ideological and programmatic flux ensued. The manifest failure of a decade of Socialist Government to make any impression on the soaring unemployment figures was devastating. This, acting in tandem with
1 The making and remaking of ‘common sense’ about British economic policy Peter Clarke Duncan Tanner made many contributions to the teaching, the writing and, above all, to the understanding of British political history from the late nineteenth Âcentury to the end of the twentieth. One recurrent theme of his research, of course, Âconcerned the vicissitudes in the political fortunes of the Liberal and Labour Âparties over that period. Indeed his first book, Political Change and the Labour Party, constitutes a massive scholarly achievement in teasing out some of
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, historians of England pioneered a series of new approaches to the history of economic policy. Commerce, finance and statecraft charts the development of these forms of writing and explores the role they played in the period's economic, political and historiographical thought. Through doing so, the book makes a significant intervention in the study of historiography, and provides an original account of early-modern and Enlightenment history. A broad selection of historical writing is discussed, ranging from the work of Francis Bacon and William Camden in the Jacobean era, through a series of accounts shaped by the English Civil War and the party-political conflicts that followed it, to the eighteenth-century's major account of British history: David Hume's History of England. Particular attention is paid to the historiographical context in which historians worked and the various ways they copied, adapted and contested one another's narratives. Such an approach enables the study to demonstrate that historical writing was the site of a wide-ranging, politically charged debate concerning the relationship that existed – and should have existed – between government and commerce at various moments in England’s past.
The Conservative Party's survival as a significant political force was now open to serious question for the first time since the crisis over the Corn Laws. The Labour Party has commanded a fairly consistent level of attention, whether in office or in opposition. But it seems that the Conservatives are fated to be regarded either as unavoidable or irrelevant. This book presents an analysis that suggests that the party leader plays a less important role in Conservative recoveries than a distinctive policy programme and an effective party organization. It examines the Conservative position on a series of key issues, highlighting the difficult dilemmas which confronted the party after 1997, notably on economic policy. New Labour's acceptance of much of the main thrust of Thatcherite economic policy threw the Conservatives off balance. The pragmatism of this new position and the 'In Europe, not run by Europe' platform masked a significant move towards Euro-skepticism. The book also traces how the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Parties adapted to the creation of the Scottish Parliament, exploring the re-organisation of the Scottish party, its electoral fortunes and political prospects in the new Scottish politics. It examines issues of identity and nationhood in Conservative politics in the 1997-2001 period, focusing on the 'English Question' and the politics of 'race'. The predictable results of the Conservatives' failure to develop an attractive, consistent narrative are then analysed. Right-wing populist parties with charismatic leaders enjoyed some electoral success under the proportional representation systems in 2002.
The ‘globalisation’ concept has become ubiquitous in British politics, as it has in many countries of the world. This book examines discourse on foreign economic policy to determine the impact of globalisation across the ideological landscape of British politics. It critically interrogates the assumption that the idea of globalisation is derivative solely of neo-liberal ideology by profiling the discourse on globalisation of five political groups involved in making and contesting British foreign economic policy between 1997 and 2009: New Labour, International Financial Services London, the Liberal Democrats, Oxfam and the Socialist Workers Party. In addition to the relationship between neo-liberalism and globalisation, the book also explores the core meaning of the idea of globalisation, the implications for the principle of free trade, the impact on notions of the state, nation-state and global governance, and whether globalisation means different things across the ideological spectrum. Topically, it examines how the responses to the global financial crisis have been shaped by globalisation discourse and the value of ideology as an analytical concept able to mitigate debates on the primacy of material and ideational explanations in political economy.