The End of Politics: New Labour and the Folly of ManagerialismNew Labour's distinctive idea is that equality and efficiency are partners, not enemies. This, the book argues, is an example of managerialist ideology - the belief that trade-offs between conflicting values can be managed away by clever policies, that management can replace politics. This is not true. New Labour's main economic policies - tax credits, the minimum wage, expanding higher education and promoting macroeconomic stability - have not removed the trade-off between equality and efficiency. However, the failure of managerialism is not merely a failure of particular policies. There are deeper flaws in it. It fails to recognize the multiple and conflicting meanings of the ideals of equality and efficiency. And it assumes that governments have knowledge and rationality that are in fact unattainable. The book is a plea to remove managerialism, and replace it with genuine politics. We should ditch the idea that a central elite can manage away social problems, and instead debate about conflicting ideals. |
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New Labour’s out-of-control freakery
Yes, the UK government under Blair, and now Brown, has tried to micro-manage our daily lives. But it is Labour's outsourcing of political responsibility, rather than its control-freakery, that has killed politics...
Review continued here: http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/reviewofbooks_article/4208/
Contents
| 7 | |
| 35 | |
| 55 | |
| 77 | |
| 89 | |
The Best Economic Policy There Is | 111 |
The Best Thing That Any Government Can Do | 133 |
A Free Lunch | 145 |
No Matter of Congratulation | 173 |
Some Defunct Philosopher | 187 |
A Wild Goose Chase | 207 |
The Rituals of Reason | 225 |
The Idle Slave of the Passions | 251 |
Conclusion | 277 |
Index | 287 |
Whats Wrong with New Labour? | 157 |
Common terms and phrases
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Bibliographic information
| Title | The End of Politics: New Labour and the Folly of Managerialism Harriman House Series |
| Author | Chris Dillow |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Harriman House Limited, 2007 |
| ISBN | 1905641176, 9781905641178 |
| Length | 293 pages |
| Subjects | › › Political Science / Political Process / Political Parties Political Science / Public Policy / General Political Science / World / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |