Loading...
Please wait, while we are loading the content...
Similar Documents
Beyond living with capitalism: the Labour Party, macroeconomics, and political economy since 1994
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Weldon, Duncan |
| Copyright Year | 2013 |
| Abstract | In 1994 Dan Corry wrote an article in Renewal on the shape of Labour’s macroeconomic policy (Corry, 1994). After almost twenty years it is striking how relevant much of the article still feels. The original piece was entitled ‘Living with capitalism’ but today’s Labour economic policy appears to have moved beyond simply living with capitalism and is setting out an active agenda of how to change and shape it. Labour’s macroeconomic policy has moved through several distinct stages over the past two decades and the very defi nition of what exactly constitutes a ‘macroeconomic policy’ has been contested. In the early 1990s traditional macroeconomic policy (defi ned as the use of fi scal and monetary policy to impact upon macroeconomic variables such as growth, infl ation and unemployment) was downplayed in favour of an agenda of supply-side reforms. In the mid-1990s a brief fl irtation occurred with a more rounded approach to ‘political economy’, as opposed to simple macroeconomics, focused on the concept of a stakeholder economy. But this eventually gave way to a macroeconomic framework of ‘constrained discretion’ for policy-makers (Bank of England independence and fi scal rules) and a renewed focus on straightforward supply-side reforms. The notion of fundamentally changing the UK’s national business model was quietly dropped. From the late 1990s until the crisis of 2008 macroeconomics seemed oddly absent from British politics, in as much as when it entered political discourse it was usually reduced to seemingly endless lists of achievements (the longest period of consecutive growth since the 1800s, etc.). The crisis of 2008 saw both the return of macroeconomic policy to political debate and the return of active demand-side policies to prevent a slide into depression. In the years since the last general election a new economic agenda has been fl eshed out. Labour retains a strong macroeconomic focus but is now going well beyond what are thought of as the traditional levers of macroeconomic policy and into the realm of political economy. This new agenda does not take the shape of the British economy as a given but as something which active government can infl uence. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | http://renewal.org.uk/files/Weldon_final.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
