Britain S Political Economies

An innovative account of how thousands of acts of parliament sought to improve economic activity during the early industrial revolution.

This book begins by tracing the sea-change in British politics from the 1970s to the end of the twentieth century. The dominance of market ideology, the decline of social democracy and the 'marketization' of public policy are related to a widespread acceptance of globalization. Contemporary global capitalism is analyzed, not least as to its likely effect on countries such as Britain. New Labour's 'Third Way' is portrayed as reinforcing the apparent inevitability of globalization. In this environment, political and economic alternatives tend to be dismissed fatalistically. Politics is no longer about real choice. The second part of the book, as well as sketching an economic alternative, investigates how political theory and ethical concepts can help us today to re-establish the search for human freedom and a 'balanced' society. Such a vision can appeal to conservatives, liberals and socialists alike. It argues that a political coalition to further such ends is conceivable, if very difficult to organise or maintain. Finally, the 'postmodern' stance of eschewing ethical and political progress is criticized.

The Glorious Revolution of 1688-9 transformed the role of parliament in Britain and its empire. Large numbers of statutes resulted, with most concerning economic activity. Julian Hoppit here provides the first comprehensive account of these acts, revealing how government affected economic life in this critical period prior to the Industrial Revolution, and how economic interests across Britain used legislative authority for their own benefit. Through a series of case studies, he shows how ideas, interests, and information influenced statutory action in practice. Existing frameworks such as 'mercantilism' and the 'fiscal-military state' fail to capture the full richness and structural limitations of how political power influenced Britain's precocious economic development in the period. Instead, finely grained statutory action was the norm, guided more by present needs than any grand plan, with regulatory ambitions constrained by administrative limitations, and some parts of Britain benefiting much more than others.

Industrial strategy has been back on the agenda of UK policy elites since the 2008 financial crisis. How should we understand this shift? This collection of essays by leading academics and practitioners including Victoria Chick, Kate Bell, Simon Lee, Karel Williams, Susan Himmelweit, Laurie Macfarlane and Ron Martin - among many others- considers the effectiveness of recent industrial policies in addressing the UK's economic malaise. In offering a broad political economy perspective on economic statecraft and development in the UK, the book focuses on the political and institutional foundations of industrial policy, the value of "foundational" economic practices, the challenge of greening capitalism and addressing regional inequalities, and the new financial and corporate governance structures required to radicalize industrial strategy.

For a hundred years, Britain's decline as a great power has gone hand in hand with the relative decline of the British economy. Andrew Gamble's much acclaimed book provides a historical account of Britain's rise and fall and a succinct introduction to the main explanations of decline and political strategies for reversing it. The fourth edition has been updated throughout and a new concluding chapter assesses the state of debate and of the British economy after the Thatcher decade.

In this 1998 book, experts in British industrial history analyse the causes of nationalisation in the 1940s.

This book examines the relationship between imperial governance and political economy in eighteenth-century Britain, particularly in Canada and Ireland. It is concerned with the way economic ideology and party politics were mutually constitutive; and with the way extra-parliamentary interests both facilitated, and were co-opted into, strategies of governance and commercial regulation. Rather than treat political economy as a pre-existing intellectual orthodoxy that shaped imperial policymaking, it focuses on the ways in which economic thought was generated in moments of imperial crisis – especially those where politicians, commercial interest groups, and pamphleteer economists were forced to wrestle with the tensions between economic growth, political authority, and social stability. By rooting economic discourse and debate in specific problems of imperial commerce and administration, and by highlighting the many different actors and negotiations that produced economic policy, it argues that the transition from mercantilism to liberalism – the shift from protectionism to free trade – is a flawed description of eighteenth-century developments in economic thought.

Describing key political and economic decisions or events, this book discusses Britain's economic decline in the post war period. It offers an alternative approach to improving its performance, known as the strategic alignment of national and corporate competitiveness.