The British Regulatory State: High Modernism and Hyper-innovation

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Oxford University Press, 2003 - 240 pages
For the first two thirds of the twentieth century, British government was among the most stable in the advanced industrial world. In the last three decades, the governing arrangements have been in turmoil and the country has been a pioneer in economic reform, and in public sector change. Inhis major new book, Michael Moran examines and explains the contrast between these two epochs. What turned Britain into a laboratory of political innovation? Britain became a formal democracy at the start of the twentieth century but the practice of government remained oligarchic. From the 1970sthis oligarchy collapsed under the pressure of economic crisis. The British regulatory state is being constructed in its place. Moran challenges the prevailing view that this new state is liberal or decentralizing. Instead he argues that it is a new, threatening kind of interventionist statewhich is colonizing, dominating, and centralizing hitherto independent domains of civil society. The book is essential reading for all those interested in British political development and in the nature and impact of regulation
 

Contents

From Stagnation to HyperInnovation
1
2 Images of the Regulatory State
12
3 Creating Club Regulation
38
4 Transforming SelfRegulation
67
5 Regulating Privatization
95
6 Regulating and Colonizing Public Worlds
124
the Age of the Regulatory State
155
Afterword
184
Notes
194
References
215
Index
241
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About the author (2003)

Michael Moran is a Professor of Government, University of Manchester.

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