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Covid-19 is a threat, but it also creates opportunities for serious thought about the future. Given deep structural problems which have enabled populism to become embedded in England, there is a need to think of a longer-term transformation: not whether but how and where the state comes back in, and how relations between state, markets and planning, city-regions, innovation and universities are reconfigured. Historically, the two major populist movements in the advanced world (American in the late C19th and Germany et al in the 1930s) occurred as a consequence of massive technological changes; the movements were not primarily located in the big cities, and they involved those in previously established but now declining occupations. Populism only disappeared as those populations reduced in size and as those areas changed function or declined much further. Responding to the ICT revolution, populism in England (the subject of this paper) locates today in Rodriguez-Pose's 'places that don't matter' (PDMs), and is reinforced by the deep educational/residential segregation of contemporary society with 50% higher education participation and graduate-intensive big cities. But England seems stuck here and major 'pathologies' in the neo-liberal framework are responsible. These include higher education as a competitive market, the separation of cycles and growth in macroeconomic policy, and the reliance on markets with arms-length regulation and de facto absence of government from a shareholder-value maximising private sector. Policy is still short-term and largely made in Westminster despite city-regions. A long-term policy transformation is necessary to restart the 'transmission belt' of the ICT revolution. We need developing long-term plans based on city-regional agglomerations, into which core city networks linking knowledge-based companies, research universities and city-regional administrations are integrated; with expanding travel-to-work areas incorporating the 'places that don't matter'; and supported by a research-oriented economic policy.

Covid-19 is a threat, but it also creates opportunities for serious thought about the future. Given deep structural problems which have enabled populism to become embedded in England, there is a need to think of a longer-term transformation: not whether but how and where the state comes back in, and how relations between state, markets and planning, city-regions, innovation and universities are reconfigured.Historically, the two major populist movements in the advanced world (American in the late C19th and Germany et al in the 1930s) occurred as a consequence of massive technological changes; the movements were not primarily located in the big cities, and they involved those in previously established but now declining occupations. Populism only disappeared as those populations reduced in size and as those areas changed function or declined much further. Responding to the ICT revolution, populism in England (the subject of this paper) locates today in Rodriguez-Pose's 'places that don't matter' (PDMs), and is reinforced by the deep educational/residential segregation of contemporary society with 50% higher education participation and graduate-intensive big cities. But England seems stuck here and major 'pathologies' in the neo-liberal framework are responsible. These include higher education as a competitive market, the separation of cycles and growth in macroeconomic policy, and the reliance on markets with arms-length regulation and de facto absence of government from a shareholder-value maximising private sector. Policy is still short-term and largely made in Westminster despite city-regions. A long-term policy transformation is necessary to restart the 'transmission belt' of the ICT revolution. We need developing long-term plans based on city-regional agglomerations, into which core city networks linking knowledge-based companies, research universities and city-regional administrations are integrated; with expanding travel-to-work areas incorporating the 'places that don't matter'; and supported by a ...

How will EMU influence the European political economy? This paper argues that most of the likely alternatives are unsustainable for at least some of the EMU member-states. As a result, the Stability Pact imposed by the Kohl government and the Bundesbank is likely to be rejected by other member-states. Additionally, EMU will most likely also have an effect on the relations within the German political economy, by unsettling the basic compromise between employers and labour unions that was at the basis of German export successes in recent decades. ; Wie wird die europäische Währungsunion die europäische politische Ökonomie beeinflussen? Aus Sicht der vorliegenden Arbeit sind die meisten der sich abzeichnenden Alternativen zumindest für einige der potentiellen Mitgliedsstaaten der EWU politisch nicht tragbar. Die Wahrscheinlichkeit ist groß, daß solche Vereinbarungen, darunter auch der vom ehemaligen Finanzminister Waigel eingebrachte Stabilitätspakt, von den Mitgliedern der EWU abgelehnt wird. Andererseits wird eine neu ausgehandelte Währungsunion wahrscheinlich ernsthafte Folgen für das Kräftegleichgewicht innerhalb der deutschen politischen Ökonomie haben und könnte die grundsätzlichen Verständigungen von Arbeit und Kapital, die die Exporterfolge der deutschen Wirtschaft in den letzten Jahren ermöglichten, zu Fall bringen.

The pattern of innovation in Germany is substantially different from that in the US and the UK. It is argued that German patterns of innovation - incremental innovation in high quality products especially in engineering and chemicals - require long-term capital, highly cooperative unions and powerful employer associations, effective vocational training systems and close long-term cooperation between companies and with research institutes and university departments. (The more radical high-technology innovation typical of the US and the UK benefits by contrast from less regulated market conditions.) These conditions are met by the incentives and constraints of the institutional framework in which companies located in Germany are embedded. It is suggested that German technology policy is appropriate to and important for this pattern of high-quality incremental innovation. Moreover, the institutional framework - especially the role of powerful business associations - can solve the collective action problems to which German-type technology policy would normally be exposed. ; Die Entwicklungsvoraussetzungen für Innovationen in Deutschland unterscheiden sich substantiell von dem entsprechenden Muster in den USA oder in Großbritannien. In dem Papier wird die Meinung vertreten, daß die in Deutschland vorherrschenden Formen von Innovationen - Entwicklungen in kleinen Schritten bei technischen und chemischen Spitzenprodukten - langfristiges Kapital, sehr kooperative Gewerkschaften und mächtige Arbeitgeberverbände, ein effizientes Berufsausbildungssystem und eine enge langfristige Zusammenarbeit zwischen Unternehmen einerseits und Forschungsinstituten bzw. Universitätseinrichtungen andererseits voraussetzt. (Den für die USA und Großbritannien typischen hochtechnologischen Basisinnovationen sind im Gegensatz dazu geringer regulierte Marktbedingungen förderlich.) Diese Bedingungen werden durch die Anreize und Beschränkungen des Institutionengefüges, in dessen Rahmen die Unternehmen in Deutschland arbeiten, erfüllt. Es wird in dem Papier die These vertreten, daß die Technologiepolitik in Deutschland angemessen und wichtig für den beschriebenen Innovationstyp ist. Darüber hinaus kann das Institutionengefüge - vor allem die mächtigen Unternehmensverbände - die "collective-action- Probleme lösen, denen die in Deutschland vorherrschende Technologiepolitik normalerweise ausgesetzt wäre.