Colin Hay

Narrating Crisis: The Discursive Construction of the `Winter of Discontent'

The winter of discontent continues to exert a powerful hold over the British political imaginary. It acts as a discursive key to a collective mythology seemingly appealed to, and conjured, in each wave of industrial unrest, in each hint of political turmoil and, until recently, whenever the election of a Labour Government looked credible. In this paper I consider the rhetorical strategies and linguistic devices deployed by the tabloid media in the narration of the events of the winter of 1978-79. I argue for an interpretation of the winter of discontent as a moment of state crisis. By crisis however I do not refer to the mere accumulation of contradictions but rather to a moment of transition, a moment of decisive intervention. Within such a framework, the winter of discontent emerges as a strategic moment in the transformation of the British state, and perhaps the key moment in the pre-history of Thatcherism. For, as I hope to demonstrate, the initial appeal of the New Right was premised upon its ability to offer a convincing construction of the winter of discontent as symptomatic of a more fundamental crisis of the state. In such a moment of crisis, a particular type of decisive intervention was called for. In this discursive construction of crisis the New Right proved itself capable of changing, if not the hearts and minds of the electorate, then certainly the predominant perceptions of the political context. It recruited subjects to its vision of the necessary response to the crisis of a monolithic state besieged by the trade unions. This was perhaps the only truly hegemonic moment of Thatcherism. It occurred well before Mrs Thatcher entered Number 10. It is thus not surprising that one of the most enduring and distinctive legacies of Thatcherism has been the new political lexicon of crisis, siege and subterfuge born of the winter of discontent.

Common trajectories, variable paces, divergent outcomes? Models of European capitalism under conditions of complex economic interdependence

Globalization is widely held to circumscribe the parameters of political and economic choice in contemporary Europe, just as it has come to circumscribe the parameters of debate on the future of European models of capitalism. Yet opinions on the question of convergence nonetheless vary markedly, with proponents of the hyperglobalization thesis pointing to a simple and inexorable process of neoliberal convergence while an increasingly influential school of neo-institutionalists point to a rather more complex process of ‘dual’ or ‘co-convergence’, reinforcing the distinctiveness of liberal and coordinated market economies. In both accounts, the exhibited pattern of convergence (dual or otherwise) is seen to be driven by globalization. In this paper I provide a theoretical and empirical critique of this important literature, challenging the contextualization of the question of convergence with respect to globalization which both perspectives share. I advance a distinctive variant of the new institutionalism which emphasizes: (i) the contingency of any process of convergence observed; (ii) the frequently political as opposed to economic nature of convergent tendencies; (iii) the counter-tendencies which might be mobilized to such tendencies; and (iv) the invariably far greater significance, in the establishment of common trajectories, of regional rather than genuinely global processes of integration. Though common trajectories are discernible within contemporary Europe, associated in particular with the institutional architecture of EMU and an accelerating process of European economic integration, they have been embraced more or less enthusiastically and at variable paces, leading not to convergent but to divergent outcomes.

The normalizing role of rationalist assumptions in the institutional embedding of neoliberalism

The political economy of Britain over the past three decades provides an interesting example of the consolidation, normalization and institutionalization of a new economic paradigm – neoliberalism. As such, it serves as a potentially instructive focus for debate both about the conditions under which economic paradigms are replaced and consolidated and the evolution of such paradigms through the process of institutionalization. In this paper I suggest that the institutionalization of this new economic paradigm has been associated with the shift from a normative to a normalized and necessitarian neoliberalism. I examine the role played by rationalist assumptions in this extended process of normalization-institutionalization. After presenting a stylized account of the evolution of British neoliberalism, I show how New Labours monetary policy regime is the heir to the legacy of monetarism and its agenda of labour-market reform is the heir to Thatcherisms supply-side economics. I suggest that the time-inconsistency thesis and the business school globalization thesis have played an equivalent role, for New Labour, to that played for the new right by monetarism and supply-side economics in legitimating neoliberalism. In this way neoliberalism has been normalized. In the final sections of the paper I reflect on the implications of the normalized and necessitarian character of neoliberalism in Britain for its contestability and for democratic economic governance more broadly.

Mobilization Through Interpellation : James Bulger, Juvenile Crime and the Construction of a Moral Panic

T IS now over twenty years since Stanley Cohen concluded his pioneering account of the discursive construction of folk devils and the mobilization of the moral panic surrounding the Mods and Rockers ’phenomenon’ with these hauntingly prophetic comments. Since then his words have become something of a sociological truism. Indeed, in a somewhat ironic confirmation of Cohen’s thesis, we are currently witnessing the first reflexive moral panic in which the British media itself has co-opted Cohen’s terminology to describe its

The Tangled Webs of Westminster and Whitehall: The Discourse, Strategy and Practice of Networking Within the British Core Executive

In this paper we identify and seek to resolve a certain paradox in the existing litera-ture on networks and networking. Whilst earlier policy network perspectives have tended to emphasize the structural character of networks as durable, dense and relatively static organization forms, the more recent strategic network literature emphasizes the flexible, adaptive and dynamic quality of networking as a social and political practice. However, neither perspective has yet developed a theory of network formation, evolution, transformation and termination. In this paper, we seek to rectify this omission, advancing a ‘strategic relational’ theory of network dynamics based on a rethinking of the concept of network itself. We illustrate this perspective with respect to the policy process centred in and around Westminster and Whitehall, drawing on a series of semi-structured interviews with ministers and officials from four departments.

Contemporary capitalism, globalization, regionalization and the persistence of national variation

The literatures on globalisation and regionalisation on the one hand and on the institutional distinctiveness of national capitalisms on the other, seem to pull in very different directions. Nonetheless, an increasing number of international and comparative political economists sensitive to the institutional and cultural variability of contemporary capitalism identify tendencies towards convergence — often towards an Anglo-US model of deregulated neoliberal capitalism. In this paper I critically review the literature on convergence, difference and divergence in the global political economy, differentiating between neoclassical and institutionalist perspectives. Resisting arguments which posit a natural selection process initiated by untrammelled free market competition and free capital mobility, I identify the contingent, political and frequently coercive nature of the convergence process. This is illustrated through a discussion of regional selection mechanisms in the context of European Monetary Union and the East Asian financial crisis. In so far as evolutionary selection mechanisms can be identified in the European context, selecting for a more residual social model, these are more a product of the contingent process of European economic integration than they are a necessary consequence of globalisation . Moreover, in so far as similarly convergent processes can be identified in contemporary East Asia, they are less a product of globalisation than of the ‘predatory neoliberalism’ of a beleagured Washington Consensus.

REVITALISING POLITICS: HAVE WE LOST THE PLOT?

In this framing paper for the special issue as a whole, the authors review existing attempts to diagnose and respond to the condition of political disaffection and disengagement afflicting our democratic polities. They caution against an overemphasis on measures to address declining turnout – which they see as a symptom of a more general condition. That condition, they suggest, is the development and inadvertent nurturing of a profoundly anti‐political culture. Such a diagnosis suggests: (i) the need for political elites to acknowledge how implicated they are in the crisis of democratic politics; (ii) that constitutional reform does not hold the key to a solution; (iii) that a revitalised politics must deal more adequately with the multi‐level character of modern politics; and (iv) that any strategy for revitalising our politics must build from a genuine understanding of how citizens understand and orient themselves to politics.

Divided by a Common Language: Political Theory and the Concept of Power

Power is probably the most universal and fundamental concept of political analysis. It has been, and continues to be, the subject of extended and heated debate. In this article I critically review the contributions of Bachrach and Baratz, and Lukes to our understanding of the multiple faces of power. I suggest that although the formers two-dimensional approach to power is ultimately compromised by the residues of behaviouralism that it inherits from classic pluralism, the latters three-dimensional view suggests a potential route out of this pluralist impasse. To seize the opportunity he provides, however, requires that we rethink the concept of power. In the second half of the paper I advance a definition of power as context-shaping and demonstrate how this helps us to disentangle the notions of power, responsibility and culpability that Lukes conflates. In so doing I suggest the we differentiate clearly between analytical questions concerning the identification of power within social and political contexts, and normative questions concerning the critique of the distribution and exercise of power thus identified.

The Political Economy of European Welfare Capitalism

A state-of-the-art assessment of welfare provision, policy and reform at national and at EU level which spans the whole of Europe - East, West and Central. Uniquely broad-ranging in scope, and covering the latest research findings and theoretical debates, it provides a genuinely comparative overview text for students of twenty-first-century Europe.

Treating the Symptom Not the Condition: Crisis Definition, Deficit Reduction and the Search for a New British Growth Model

It has taken quite a while for a consolidated crisis discourse to emerge in Britain in response to the seismic events of 2007–09. But one is now clearly evident, widely accepted and deeply implicated in government economic policy. It is a ‘crisis of debt’ discourse to which the response is austerity and deficit reduction; it is paradigm-reinforcing rather than paradigm-threatening. In this article I consider the appropriateness of such a crisis discourse, arguing that an alternative ‘crisis of growth’ discourse is rather more compelling and would point in very different policy directions while generating very different expectations about the effects of deficit reduction. Such a discourse can just about be detected in the growing criticism of the governments austerity programme, but it is yet to lead to the positing of a new growth model. I explore the implications of both crisis discourses for responses to the crisis, concluding with an assessment of the prospects for the return to growth under a new growth model in the years ahead.