Globalisation and the Resilience of Social Democracy: Reassessing New Labour's Political Economy

Abstract

This article:• Places New Labour's political economy in historical context using macro-economic data; • Demonstrates that the arguments on policy convergence have led to a simplification of the nuances of Labour's political economy and underestimated its partisan nature; • Highlights how globalisation rather than restraining Labour allowed an unprecedented increase in borrowing and spending making Labour very different to Conservative administrations and more 'old' Labour than previous Labour administrations.There has been considerable debate about the way in which globalisation and neo-liberalism have produced convergence in macro-economic policy. In the British case this convergence is seen in the adoption by the Labour Government (1997)(1998)(1999)(2000)(2001)(2002)(2003)(2004)(2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010) of the core elements of Thatcherite economic policy. However, this article argues that that an examination of macro-economic data demonstrates that is difficult to characterise New Labour as neo-liberal and indeed there is some evidence that it shared a number of commonalities with 'Old' Labour. Indeed, in many ways the changing structure of the financial markets removed, to some degree, the shackles from Labour and allowed greater borrowing and spending than previous left of centre administrations. Consequently, as Geoffrey Garrett suggests, partisanship remains an important determinant of economic policy in the UK case.

From Knowledge Economy to Automation Anxiety: A Growth Regime in Crisis?

“…To quote Anthony Giddens, the sociologist often referred to as Blair's 'guru' in commentaries of this period, 'the guideline is investment in human capital … rather than the direct provision of economic maintenance' (Giddens 1998). Admittedly, in the UK case, such commitments may have been more rhetorical than substantive (Smith 2014), as social protection expenditure remained relatively stable as a proportion of GDP between 1997 and 2007. Nevertheless, the GDP share of public spending on education did rise by around 20 per cent over the same period (see Figure 2).…”

Rethinking Development Space in Emerging Countries: Turkey's Conservative Countermovement

“…This subordination of markets to social needs requires a fine political balance difficult to sustain under neoliberal globalization. Still, social democratic principles did guide some economies in the South in recent decades and have remained an integral component of the policy repertoire especially in Europe (Berman, ; Sandbrook, ; Sandbrook et al., ; Smith, ). In fact, social democracy has been flourishing in parts of Latin America over the past decade (Huber and Stephens, ; Sandbrook, ).…”

Researching resilience: An agenda for change

“…The theory and research on governmentality, bio-politics and the spatial, temporal and scalar implications of resilience (Chandler, 2012;Coaffee & Wood, 2006) can be linked to a grounded research agenda with practical outcomes (Bulley, 2013;Smith, 2013). What follows is the latest instalment of a wider research project which, in its full scope, attempts to trace the trends and themes emerging from our varied understandings of resilience to disasters.…”