Market-Driven Politics: Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest

by Colin Leys

Overview

With the globalisation of the capitalist economy the economic role of national governments is now largely confined to controlling inflation and facilitating home-grown market performance. This represents a fundamental shift in the relationship between politics and economics; it has been particularly marked in Britain, but is relevant to many other contexts.

Market-Driven Politics is a multi-level study, moving between an analysis of global economic forces through national politics to the changes occurring week by week in two fields of public life that are both fundamentally important and familiar to everyone…television broadcasting and health care. Public services like these play an important role, because they both affect the legitimacy of the government and are targets for global capital. This book provides an original analysis of the key processes of commodification of public services, the conversion of public-service workforces into employees motivated to generate profit, and the role of the state in absorbing risk. Understanding the dynamics of each of these trends becomes critical not just for the analysis of market-driven politics but also for the longer-term defence of democracy and the collective values on which it depends.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781859844977
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	07/17/2003
Pages:	290
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Colin Leys is Emeritus Professor of Political Studies at Queen’s University, Canada. His previous books include Politics in Britain, The Rise and Fall of Development Theory and, with Leo Panitch, The End of Parliamentary Socialism.

Table of Contents

	Preface	vii
1.	Introduction	1
2.	The global economy and national politics	8
	The formation of a global economy	8
	The new global economy	13
	Global market forces and national policy-making	21
	The options for national governments	26
	Explaining national responses	29
	The case of Britain	32
	The long-run impact of the global economy on national politics	35
3.	British politics in a global economy	38
	British governments and economic globalisation, 1975-2000	40
	Market forces, social structure and ideology	45
	Interlude: the 'Big Bang' and its fallout	58
	Party politics	63
	Institutional and constitutional change	69
	The social costs of market-driven politics	74
	Problems of 'third way' politics	76
	Conclusion	79
4.	Markets, commodities and commodification	81
	Real markets and politics	81
	The private lives of commodities	87
	Services as commodities	90
	The specificity of commodities: television	95
	The specificity of commodities: health care	100
5.	Public service television	108
	Public service broadcasting in Britain	110
	The transition to market-driven broadcasting	112
	The television market, 1999-2000	122
	Restructuring	132
	How television became a field of capital accumulation	136
	Commodification and public service television	149
	Conclusion	162
6.	The National Health Service	165
	The National Health Service, 1948-79	166
	The transition to commodified health services	167
	The NHS quasi-market and other health-care markets, 1999-2000	177
	The commodification of health care	189
	Effects	201
	The NHS Plan and the Concordat with the private sector	203
	Global market forces and the NHS	207
7.	Market-driven politics versus the public interest	211
	The argument recapitulated	211
	Is the UK an 'outlier'?	216
	Does it matter that politics are market-driven?	217
	Why has there been so little resistance?	219
	Do public services matter?	220
	On what basis can public services flourish?	222
	Is this relevant?	224
	Notes	225
	Index	267

Editorial Reviews

... a book of enormous importance. Elegantly written, clearly structured, and powerfully argued, Market-Driven Politics documents the dangers inherent in the increasing commodification of public services and the growing subordination of national policy to global market forces. Colin Leys has written, at one and the same time, a powerful introduction to the forces shaping modern UK politics and a much needed wake-up call to the British Left.”—David Coates

“... a powerful indictment of the invasion of the public sphere by the market. Closely argued and backed by detailed case studies of health and the media this book is the most searching examination yet published of trends that are becoming ever more dominant in our politics, forcing us to reflect anew on the meaning of the public interest and how markets can be reconciled with it.”—Andrew Gamble

“In this fine and powerful book, Colin Leys gives an incisive and compelling account of the ways in which the pressures of the global market-place are undermining the public domain, and narrowing the scope of democratic politics in the process. His analysis of the disastrous effects of market-driven politics on public-service broadcasting and health care is penetrating, scholarly and unanswerable. This is a book which no one interested in the political economy of twenty-first-century Britain can afford to miss.”—David Marquand

“Neoliberal democracy is arguably the most important political notion of our age, yet it is one that is very poorly understood. Colin Leys has come to our rescue with a brilliant and accessible presentation of the concept, chock full of hard empirical data and case studies. I strongly urge all who are concerned with the future of democracy to read this book.”—Robert McChesney

From the Publisher