Ben Clift
Biographic Data
| ID | 380387 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ben Clift |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ben |
| FAMILY NAME | Clift |
| SIGNATURE | BEN CLIFT |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Warwick |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6983-5768 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 463 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 50 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Wicked politics and trashy economics: Gender and scandalous expertise
Who gets to speak with authority about the economy? Countering problematic identity-blindness, we develop a framework for exploring how identity designates whose economic expertise is perceived as authentic and authoritative according to the intersectional exclusions of gender, race and class. These exclusionary power dynamics are key to a fuller understanding of the politics of economic expertise, shaping not only who gets to speak with authorit…
How “baked in” ideas hinder ideational robustness: The International Monetary Fund and “fiscal space”
This paper brings insights into ideational robustness to bear on the International Monetary Fund (IMF) fiscal policy thinking. It advances understanding of both the IMF and the concept of ideational robustness by focusing on economic ideas as they are put into practice by expert economic institutions. The IMF has traditionally enjoyed a reputation as a hawkish enforcer of neoliberal doctrine and conservative fiscal discipline, foregrounding defic…
The social construction of sustainable futures: How models and scenarios limit climate mitigation possibilities
This article shines a light on the act of social construction of climate change mitigation as a policy issue at the hands of expert bodies enjoying epistemic power, notably the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), using Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) as key tools. This is crucial to the politics of tackling climate change as IPCC models and scenarios profoundly shape what are seen as viable futures and mitigation policy options.…
Technocratic reason in hard times: The mobilisation of economic knowledge and the discursive politics of Brexit
In the context of the debate surrounding and following the Brexit referendum in June 2016, credentialed economic expertise did not enjoy a privileged position within the political and policy debate. Using the contrasting cases of the Office for Budget Responsibility and Economists for Brexit/Free Trade, this paper explores the mobilisation of economic expertise within the discursive politics of Brexit under conditions of pervasive radical uncerta…
The OBR and the fragilities, complexities and promise of technocratic economic governance
This contribution explores how technocratic economic governance rests on underlying principles of political economy—normatively informed judgements about how the economy and policy operate. It shines light on how fiscal councils such as the OBR can open up (or close down) policy possibilities through the way they narrate economic crises, the trajectory of the economy and the fiscal stance. Noting the epistemic limits of technocracy, it shows how …
The OBR and the March 2023 Budget: The Travails of UK Economic Growth and the Politics of Technocratic Fiscal Governance
This article places the Office for Budget Responsibility's commentary on the March 2023 UK Budget in political context. It explores how increased independent expert input has transformed the UK economic policy regime, focussing on the complex relationship between rules‐based economic governance, independent oversight and fiscal discipline. The technocratic veneer that enshrines the UK fiscal watchdog obscures the inevitable politics of rules‐base…
Economic patriotism: The transformation of economic governance in 21st century capitalism
This chapter explores the concept of economic patriotism (EP), and demonstrates its worth as a complement to economic nationalist analyses. EP's account of state/market relations, the transformation of economic governance in the 21st Century, and the politics of market-making is distinct from economic nationalism, neo-mercantilism, and Realist International Political Economy. EP reflects profound if not self-evident contradictions between interna…
Technocratic economic governance and the politics of UK fiscal rules
Robert Elgie: An excellent human, and a fabulous French politics scholar
The politics of the British model of capitalism’s flatlining productivity and anaemic growth: Lessons for the growth models perspective
This article assesses the usefulness of the growth models perspective for understanding contemporary British capitalism in the context of its ongoing ‘productivity puzzle’ and stagnating economic growth. The analysis of British capitalism supports our argument that growth models perspective analyses currently have limited capacity to understand the developmental trajectory of growth models, the instabilities and dysfunctionalities of these models…
The IMF, tackling inequality, and post-neoliberal ‘reglobalization’: The paradoxes of political legitimation within economistic parameters
In a quest for political legitimacy and traction since the global financial crisis and the Arab Spring, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has become much more engaged in tackling inequality through its surveillance and other operations. This article analyses the depth and strength of this egalitarian commitment to reorient Fund actions. Notwithstanding shifts in high-level IMF rhetoric, we find that rigidity in the IMF’s mind-set and prioriti…
Remembering and forgetting IPE: Disciplinary history as boundary work
A full understanding of the development and re-production of IPE is only possible with an appreciation of its disciplinary politics. This institutionalises four aspects of academic inquiry: (a) what is considered admissible work in the field, (b) how work should be conducted and where it should be published (c) where the field’s legitimate boundaries are, and (d) ‘external relations’ with cognate disciplines. Academic gatekeepers in positions of …
The hollowing out of monetarism: The rise of rules-based monetary policy-making in the UK and USA and problems with the paradigm change framework
Capitalist Convergence? European (dis?)Integration and the Post-crash Restructuring of French and European Capitalisms
This article critiques and builds upon first-wave (Höpner and Schäfer 2010. A new phase of European integration: organised capitalisms in post-Ricardian Europe. West European Politics, 33 (2), 344–368) and second-wave (Johnston and Regan 2018. Introduction: is the European Union capable of integrating diverse models of capitalism? New Political Economy, 23 (2), 145–159) European Integration and comparative capitalisms literatures which posit conv…
Contingent Keynesianism: The IMF’s model answer to the post-crash fiscal policy efficacy question in advanced economies
Belying the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) reputation as a bastion of neo-liberal policy orthodoxy, this article analyses important yet contingent transformations in IMF fiscal policy thinking which constituted a key intervention in international austerity debates. Applying only to advanced economies, and in the specific post-crash conditions, the Fund came to champion fiscal policy as a more potent and effective counter-cyclical tool. Ana…
The IMF and the Politics of Austerity in the Wake of the Global Financial Crisis
The book provides a path-breaking comprehensive analysis of how the IMF approach to fiscal policy has evolved since 2008, the Fund’s role within the politics of austerity, and how it worked to shape advanced economy policy responses to the global financial crisis (GFC) and the Eurozone crisis. The book aligns with and advances cutting-edge ideational scholarship in international political economy (IPE) and comparative political economy (CPE) to b…
The IMF and the Politics of Austerity in the Wake of the Global Financial Crisis
The IMF uses crisis-defining economic ideas, and crisis legacy-defining ideas, to construct interpretations of economic crises in ways which prioritize particular policy or institutional responses, and rule out or marginalize others. The post-crash IMF enjoyed scope to shift the boundaries of ‘legitimate’ policy, involving heightened appreciation of ‘non-linear’ threats from losses of confidence, prolonged weak demand, and financial system fragil…
The IMF, the eurozone and global financial crises, and the politics of economic ideas
Is this crisis of French socialism different? Hollande, the rise of Macron, and the reconfiguration of the left in the 2017 presidential and parliamentary elections
With the extraordinary rise of Emmanuel Macron and the near complete collapse of the Parti Socialiste (PS), the past year has seen arguably the most dramatic upheaval in the French party system since 1958. This article develops a political economy analysis of the Hollande quinquennat to better understand how we arrived here. It argues that Hollande’s programmatic failures must be situated within an institutional account of the constraints of the …
Comparative Political Economy
Comparative Political Economy: States, Markets and Global Capitalism
Comparative Political Economy: Lineages from Classical Political Economy, Linkages to International Political Economy
Joined at the hip, but pulling apart? Franco-German relations, the Eurozone crisis and the politics of austerity
The Hollande Presidency, 2012–14
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Modern & Contemporary France on 31/10/2014, available online: http://wwww.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09639489.2014.957959
Bank Rescue Schemes in Continental Europe: The Power of Collective Inaction
Comparing bank rescue schemes in France and Germany during the banking crisis of 2008–9, this article argues that collective inaction is a little-studied aspect in the exercise of power in business–government relations. Contrary to studies that focus on lobbying, structural power or the influence of beliefs, the comparison highlights that governments depend on contributions from the financial industry during crisis management. In the negotiations…
Economic patriotism: Reinventing Control Over Open Markets
We analyse how tensions between international market integration and spatially limited political mandates have led to the phenomenon of economic patriotism. As discrimination in favour of insiders, economic patriotism goes beyond economic nationalism and can include territorial allegiances at the supranational or the local level. We show how this prism helps to understand the evolution of political intervention in open economies and present the a…
Leading the Dance? Power and Political Resources of Business Lobbyists
Studies of lobbying try to determine the influence and power of non-governmental actors on public policy. Although influence is very difficult to measure empirically, many continue to push for better research design to solve the problem. Through case studies of business-government relations in the United States and the European Union, this article argues that the difficulties with power and influence concern not only their operationalisation, but…
Credible Keynesianism? New Labour Macroeconomic Policy and the Political Economy of Coarse Tuning
This article questions prevailing interpretations of New Labour's political economy and challenges the assumption within the comparative and international political economy literatures of the exhaustion of the Keynesian political economic paradigm. New Labour's doctrinal statements are analysed to establish to what extent these doctrinal positions involve a repudiation of Keynesianism. Although New Labour has explicitly renounced the ‘fine tuning…
Comparative Party Finance Reform: The Cases of France and Britain
In Britain, the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act has revolutionized the regulation of party finance after several half-hearted failures at attempted reform. In France, a series of high-profile corruption scandals in the 1980s and 1990s provoked a bout of ‘legislative incontinence’ – resulting in over eight laws in seven years, which profoundly transformed the regime regulating party finance. The comparative analysis of reforms in …
When rules started to rule: The IMF, neo-liberal economic ideas and economic policy change in Britain
This article reassesses the neo-liberal shift within British economic policy-making and the international political economy, focusing especially the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the 1960s. The IMF has always used the conditions attached to its lending to try and shape borrower's policy; here we explore the evolving content of that conditionality and the economic ideas underpinning it. Using recently released IMF records, as we…
Comparative Capitalisms, Ideational Political Economy and French Post- Dirigiste Responses to the Global Financial Crisis
This article advances the case for the more systematic incorporation of ideational factors into comparative capitalisms analysis as a corrective to the rational choice proclivities of the Varieties of Capitalism approach. It demonstrates the pay-off of such an ideationally attuned approach through analysis of French capitalist restructuring over the last 25 years, placing it in comparative context. A modus operandi for such ideational explanation…
Contingent Keynesianism: The IMF’s model answer to the post-crash fiscal policy efficacy question in advanced economies
Belying the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) reputation as a bastion of neo-liberal policy orthodoxy, this article analyses important yet contingent transformations in IMF fiscal policy thinking which constituted a key intervention in international austerity debates. Applying only to advanced economies, and in the specific post-crash conditions, the Fund came to champion fiscal policy as a more potent and effective counter-cyclical tool. Ana…
The road to external representation: The European Commission's activism in international air transport
This article argues that the role the Commission plays in European foreign policies goes beyond the execution of the competences delegated by the member states. The Commission is not just the external negotiator of the EU, it can also use its powers as the guardian of the Treaties to expand its foreign policy competences. The case study of international air transport illustrates how the Commission\nwas able to obtain an external negotiation manda…
French Corporate Governance in the New Global Economy: Mechanisms of Change and Hybridisation within Models of Capitalism
This article analyses the implications of the internationalisation of capital markets, and the influx of Anglo-Saxon institutional investors, for the French model of capitalism. Its central contention is that the global convergence thesis misrepresents contemporary evolutions because it pays insufficient attention to mechanisms of change within models of capitalism. Secondly, framing analysis in terms of hybridisation and fragmentation of nationa…
Joined at the hip, but pulling apart? Franco-German relations, the Eurozone crisis and the politics of austerity
Remembering and forgetting IPE: Disciplinary history as boundary work
A full understanding of the development and re-production of IPE is only possible with an appreciation of its disciplinary politics. This institutionalises four aspects of academic inquiry: (a) what is considered admissible work in the field, (b) how work should be conducted and where it should be published (c) where the field’s legitimate boundaries are, and (d) ‘external relations’ with cognate disciplines. Academic gatekeepers in positions of …
Le Changement? French Socialism, the 2012 Presidential Election and the Politics of Economic Credibility amidst the Eurozone Crisis
This article analyses Hollande's presidential election campaign and victory of 2012, placing them in the historical, organisational and ideological context of French Socialism and the French party system. It argues that an effective campaign, an unpopular adversary and a French party system context unusually conducive to pooling the Left's electoral resources akin to 1981 all aided Hollande's cause. Despite limited ideological renewal, Hollande's…
The Second Time as Farce? The EU Takeover Directive, the Clash of Capitalisms and the Hamstrung Harmonization of European (and French) Corporate Governance
This article focuses on the EU Takeover Directive and its transposition into French law. French outcomes diverge from European Commission aspirations for greater clarity and uniformity. The clash of European capitalisms as well as heightened uncertainty and differentiation in takeover regulation exacerbate problems of asymmetric vulnerability of EU states (and firms) to the European Commission's liberal reform agenda. This explains the failings o…
Capitalist Convergence? European (dis?)Integration and the Post-crash Restructuring of French and European Capitalisms
This article critiques and builds upon first-wave (Höpner and Schäfer 2010. A new phase of European integration: organised capitalisms in post-Ricardian Europe. West European Politics, 33 (2), 344–368) and second-wave (Johnston and Regan 2018. Introduction: is the European Union capable of integrating diverse models of capitalism? New Political Economy, 23 (2), 145–159) European Integration and comparative capitalisms literatures which posit conv…
Is this crisis of French socialism different? Hollande, the rise of Macron, and the reconfiguration of the left in the 2017 presidential and parliamentary elections
With the extraordinary rise of Emmanuel Macron and the near complete collapse of the Parti Socialiste (PS), the past year has seen arguably the most dramatic upheaval in the French party system since 1958. This article develops a political economy analysis of the Hollande quinquennat to better understand how we arrived here. It argues that Hollande’s programmatic failures must be situated within an institutional account of the constraints of the …
Fiscal policy and capital mobility: The construction of economic policy rectitude in Britain and France
Social Democracy and Globalization: The Cases of France and the UK
This Article Explores The Nature Of Contemporary Social democracy, questioning, with like-minded scholars, John Gray's interpretation of the relationship between social democracy and globalization, which asserts that social democracy is a historically exhausted project. Garrett, for example, in rejecting such assertions, argues that social democracy remains a distinctive and viable ‘project’ within the global economy, specifically in cases where …
Negotiating Credibility: Britain and the International Monetary Fund, 1956–1976
For twenty years before the famous crisis of 1976 Britain was a regular borrower from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Through this lending role, the Fund in these years played a key part in determining the credibility of British policies. Borrowing from the Fund meant that British policy had to be seen as conforming to certain norms, but these norms were always negotiable, albeit within shifting limits. This article uses archival material …
Party Finance Reform as Constitutional Engineering? The effectiveness and unintended consequences of Party Finance Reform in France and Britain
The IMF, tackling inequality, and post-neoliberal ‘reglobalization’: The paradoxes of political legitimation within economistic parameters
In a quest for political legitimacy and traction since the global financial crisis and the Arab Spring, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has become much more engaged in tackling inequality through its surveillance and other operations. This article analyses the depth and strength of this egalitarian commitment to reorient Fund actions. Notwithstanding shifts in high-level IMF rhetoric, we find that rigidity in the IMF’s mind-set and prioriti…
The political economy of the Jospin government
This article explores the political economy of the French Socialist Party (PS), beginning with the neo-liberal U-turn of 1983. It then charts the re-evaluation of the PS's political economic foundations after the 1993 defeat, the rejection of the neo-liberal 'pensée unique', and the rehabilitation of a broadly Keynesian frame of reference. The article goes on to explore how this shift has fed through into the Jospin government's policy and positi…
The New Political Economy of Dirigisme: French Macroeconomic Policy, Unrepentant Sinning and the Stability and Growth Pact
This article traces the enduring influence of the dirigiste traditions on contemporary French macroeconomic policy-making, arguing that French policy both within and towards the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) is consistent with long-standing French dirigiste preferences and policy traditions. Specifically it explores how, within the SGP, French governments have created and defended significant fiscal policy space, and how the scope for discretio…
The Jospin Way
Since Malmö, Tony Blair has castigated all those who do not share his proselytising zeal for the ‘third way’. Underpinning his view is a thinly veiled assumption that ‘there is no alternative.’ Another reading, advanced by Sassoon, is that—under the influence of globalisation—the whole of the European left is converging on overwhelmingly similar positions, and all else is rhetorical embellishment and detail.1 Neither narrative is accepted here. S…
Bank Rescue Schemes in Continental Europe: The Power of Collective Inaction
Comparing bank rescue schemes in France and Germany during the banking crisis of 2008–9, this article argues that collective inaction is a little-studied aspect in the exercise of power in business–government relations. Contrary to studies that focus on lobbying, structural power or the influence of beliefs, the comparison highlights that governments depend on contributions from the financial industry during crisis management. In the negotiations…
Whatever Happened to the Balance of Payments ‘Problem’? The Contingent (Re)Construction of British Economic Performance Assessment
This article analyses the changing political significance of UK balance of payments assessment in the post-war era, seeking to explain its disappearance as a policy issue today. We demonstrate the historically contingent nature of balance of payments performance assessment by comparing its shifting, conjunctural, constructions, rooted in underlying political economic assumptions, across four periods in the 20th and 21st centuries. We argue that t…
The Jospin Way
Since Malmö, Tony Blair has castigated all those who do not share his proselytising zeal for the ‘third way’. Underpinning his view is a thinly veiled assumption that ‘there is no alternative.’ Another reading, advanced by Sassoon, is that—under the influence of globalisation—the whole of the European left is converging on overwhelmingly similar positions, and all else is rhetorical embellishment and detail.1 Neither narrative is accepted here. S…
The political economy of the Jospin government
This article explores the political economy of the French Socialist Party (PS), beginning with the neo-liberal U-turn of 1983. It then charts the re-evaluation of the PS's political economic foundations after the 1993 defeat, the rejection of the neo-liberal 'pensée unique', and the rehabilitation of a broadly Keynesian frame of reference. The article goes on to explore how this shift has fed through into the Jospin government's policy and positi…
Tawney and the third way
From the 1920s to the 1950s R. H. Tawney was the most influential socialist thinker in Britain. He articulated an ethical socialism at odds with powerful statist and mechanistic traditions in British socialist thinking. Tawney's work is thus an important antecedent to third way thinking. Tawney's religiously-based critique of the morality of capitalism was combined with a concern for detailed institutional reform, challenging simple dichotomies b…
Social Democracy and Globalization: The Cases of France and the UK
This Article Explores The Nature Of Contemporary Social democracy, questioning, with like-minded scholars, John Gray's interpretation of the relationship between social democracy and globalization, which asserts that social democracy is a historically exhausted project. Garrett, for example, in rejecting such assertions, argues that social democracy remains a distinctive and viable ‘project’ within the global economy, specifically in cases where …
Debating the Restructuring of French Capitalism and Anglo-Saxon Institutional Investors: Trojan Horses or Sleeping Partners
Fiscal policy and capital mobility: The construction of economic policy rectitude in Britain and France
Comparative Party Finance Reform: The Cases of France and Britain
In Britain, the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act has revolutionized the regulation of party finance after several half-hearted failures at attempted reform. In France, a series of high-profile corruption scandals in the 1980s and 1990s provoked a bout of ‘legislative incontinence’ – resulting in over eight laws in seven years, which profoundly transformed the regime regulating party finance. The comparative analysis of reforms in …
Dyarchic Presidentialization in a Presidentialized Polity: The French Fifth Republic
Begins by charting the emergence and evolution of the Fifth Republic, identifying the key structural and contingent causes of presidentialization within the French political system. The ambiguity inherent in the 1958 constitution as to where power lay within the French ‘dual executive’, successfully exploited by De Gaulle, established presidential precedents that overstepped the constitutional brief. Having shaped the nature of party competition …
Party Finance Reform as Constitutional Engineering? The effectiveness and unintended consequences of Party Finance Reform in France and Britain
The New Political Economy of Dirigisme: French Macroeconomic Policy, Unrepentant Sinning and the Stability and Growth Pact
This article traces the enduring influence of the dirigiste traditions on contemporary French macroeconomic policy-making, arguing that French policy both within and towards the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) is consistent with long-standing French dirigiste preferences and policy traditions. Specifically it explores how, within the SGP, French governments have created and defended significant fiscal policy space, and how the scope for discretio…
The road to external representation: The European Commission's activism in international air transport
This article argues that the role the Commission plays in European foreign policies goes beyond the execution of the competences delegated by the member states. The Commission is not just the external negotiator of the EU, it can also use its powers as the guardian of the Treaties to expand its foreign policy competences. The case study of international air transport illustrates how the Commission\nwas able to obtain an external negotiation manda…
Europeanizing Social Models
How should we understand the European social model, and what impact are Europeanizing pressures of the single market, the EU competition regime, and Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) having on its evolution at the national and subnational level?These four texts address these crucial comparative political economy questions with varying degrees of precision.All explore the interplay of endogenous and exogenous pressures at work in the reshaping of …
Complexity, Constraint and New Labour's Putative Neo-liberalism: A Reply to Colin Hay
Colin Hay's combative response is a welcome engagement with our ideas. Let us first set out where the battle lines are drawn. The most important points in Hay's shot across our bows relate to accommodating the notion of complexity; defining Keynesianism; invoking Labour's past; the relationship between fiscal and monetary policy; and the evidential basis for our argument. The first point involves admitting complexity when characterizing a politic…
The Ségolène Royal Phenomenon: Political Renewal in France
This article analyses Ségolène Royal's rise during 2006 to become the first ever female mainstream French presidential candidate in the context of ongoing presidentialising tendencies within the French Fifth Republic. It considers the extent to which Royal's candidacy represented a turning point for the French Left, not only because of her gender, but also because of her challenge to the Left's traditional organisational and ideological norms of …
French Corporate Governance in the New Global Economy: Mechanisms of Change and Hybridisation within Models of Capitalism
This article analyses the implications of the internationalisation of capital markets, and the influx of Anglo-Saxon institutional investors, for the French model of capitalism. Its central contention is that the global convergence thesis misrepresents contemporary evolutions because it pays insufficient attention to mechanisms of change within models of capitalism. Secondly, framing analysis in terms of hybridisation and fragmentation of nationa…
Leading the Dance? Power and Political Resources of Business Lobbyists
Studies of lobbying try to determine the influence and power of non-governmental actors on public policy. Although influence is very difficult to measure empirically, many continue to push for better research design to solve the problem. Through case studies of business-government relations in the United States and the European Union, this article argues that the difficulties with power and influence concern not only their operationalisation, but…
Credible Keynesianism? New Labour Macroeconomic Policy and the Political Economy of Coarse Tuning
This article questions prevailing interpretations of New Labour's political economy and challenges the assumption within the comparative and international political economy literatures of the exhaustion of the Keynesian political economic paradigm. New Labour's doctrinal statements are analysed to establish to what extent these doctrinal positions involve a repudiation of Keynesianism. Although New Labour has explicitly renounced the ‘fine tuning…
Whatever Happened to the Balance of Payments ‘Problem’? The Contingent (Re)Construction of British Economic Performance Assessment
This article analyses the changing political significance of UK balance of payments assessment in the post-war era, seeking to explain its disappearance as a policy issue today. We demonstrate the historically contingent nature of balance of payments performance assessment by comparing its shifting, conjunctural, constructions, rooted in underlying political economic assumptions, across four periods in the 20th and 21st centuries. We argue that t…
The Fifth Republic at Fifty: The Changing Face of French Politics and Political Economy
At its inception, a time of great political upheaval in France, it was uncertain whether the new regime would last five years, let alone fifty. The longevity of the regime is due in part to its flexibility and adaptability, which is a theme explored both below and in all of the contributions to this special issue. To set the scene, this will briefly elucidate some of the elements of the constitutional settlement of 1958 which have had an importan…
Negotiating Credibility: Britain and the International Monetary Fund, 1956–1976
For twenty years before the famous crisis of 1976 Britain was a regular borrower from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Through this lending role, the Fund in these years played a key part in determining the credibility of British policies. Borrowing from the Fund meant that British policy had to be seen as conforming to certain norms, but these norms were always negotiable, albeit within shifting limits. This article uses archival material …
The Second Time as Farce? The EU Takeover Directive, the Clash of Capitalisms and the Hamstrung Harmonization of European (and French) Corporate Governance
This article focuses on the EU Takeover Directive and its transposition into French law. French outcomes diverge from European Commission aspirations for greater clarity and uniformity. The clash of European capitalisms as well as heightened uncertainty and differentiation in takeover regulation exacerbate problems of asymmetric vulnerability of EU states (and firms) to the European Commission's liberal reform agenda. This explains the failings o…
When rules started to rule: The IMF, neo-liberal economic ideas and economic policy change in Britain
This article reassesses the neo-liberal shift within British economic policy-making and the international political economy, focusing especially the role of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in the 1960s. The IMF has always used the conditions attached to its lending to try and shape borrower's policy; here we explore the evolving content of that conditionality and the economic ideas underpinning it. Using recently released IMF records, as we…
Comparative Capitalisms, Ideational Political Economy and French Post- Dirigiste Responses to the Global Financial Crisis
This article advances the case for the more systematic incorporation of ideational factors into comparative capitalisms analysis as a corrective to the rational choice proclivities of the Varieties of Capitalism approach. It demonstrates the pay-off of such an ideationally attuned approach through analysis of French capitalist restructuring over the last 25 years, placing it in comparative context. A modus operandi for such ideational explanation…
Economic patriotism: Reinventing Control Over Open Markets
We analyse how tensions between international market integration and spatially limited political mandates have led to the phenomenon of economic patriotism. As discrimination in favour of insiders, economic patriotism goes beyond economic nationalism and can include territorial allegiances at the supranational or the local level. We show how this prism helps to understand the evolution of political intervention in open economies and present the a…
Le Changement? French Socialism, the 2012 Presidential Election and the Politics of Economic Credibility amidst the Eurozone Crisis
This article analyses Hollande's presidential election campaign and victory of 2012, placing them in the historical, organisational and ideological context of French Socialism and the French party system. It argues that an effective campaign, an unpopular adversary and a French party system context unusually conducive to pooling the Left's electoral resources akin to 1981 all aided Hollande's cause. Despite limited ideological renewal, Hollande's…
Political science (46 works) · Politics (42 works) · Economics (40 works) · Law (36 works) · Law (35 works) · Political economy (34 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (17 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Political and Economic history of UK and US (16 works) · Economic system (14 works)