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Private pensions provision in the UK is in crisis. Through a political economy perspective, this book explores how financial security in retirement has been endangered through the response of policy-makers to wider social and economic change, making a unique contribution to our understanding of financialization, neoliberalism, and the welfare state

Craig Berry assesses UK economic policy in the wake of the financial crisis through the lens of the austerity agenda, focusing on monetary policy, economic rebalancing, industrial and regional policy, the labour market, welfare reform and budgetary management. He argues that austerity is geared towards a resurrection of financialisation and the UK's pre-crisis economic model, through the transformation of individual behaviour and demonisation of the state. Cutting public spending and debt in the short term is, at most, a secondary concern for the UK policy elite. However, the underlying purpose of austerity is frequently misunderstood due to its conflation with a narrow deficit reduction agenda, not least by its Keynesian critics. Berry also demonstrates how austerity has effectively dismantled the prospect of a centre-left alternative to neoliberalism.

This book critically interrogates the assumption that the idea of globalisation is derivative solely of neoliberal ideology by profiling the discourse on globalisation of five political groups involved in making and contesting British foreign economic policy between 1997 and 2009: New Labour, International Financial Services London, the Liberal Democrats, Oxfam and the Socialist Workers' Party

AbstractPensions provision in the UK has been undergoing upheaval for several decades, as an already liberal regime has gradually been further liberalised, resulting in the rollout of defined contribution provision via the pseudo‐compulsory automatic enrolment system. Yet, the system is dysfunctional, insofar as it replaces the institutional guarantors essential to pensions provision with hazy notions of individual responsibility. The ability of capitalism to reproduce itself is jeopardised as a result. Increasingly, the state, despite scaling back the state pension system, is intervening to subsidise and substitute for a marketised system. Despite the significant risk of poor outcomes for millions of savers in the automatic enrolment system, and the integral role of the state in private provision, pensions policy receives little attention in political debates, or by political scientists. This is driven in part by a lack of salience among the public, which is itself a result of the peculiar temporality of pensions. Yet it is a product also of the disciplinary norms of political science, and the positionality of political scientists.

Does Labour have a 'Mansfield problem'? What, if anything, can the party do to reverse the deepening problem of working‐class political disengagement?

Industrial policy rarely features in analysis of post-crisis economic policy change in Britain, despite manufacturing featuring centrally in the 'rebalancing' narrative espoused by elites since 2008. The article seeks to interrogate the character of recent governments' approaches to industrial policy and manufacturing industries. It does so through the prism of Peter Hall's 'three orders of policy change' framework, with particular reference to its application to macroprudential regulation by Andrew Baker. The article argues that the framework must be furnished with additional variables, namely, the type of institutional arrangements related to the policy area, and the status of the associated economic activities within the wider growth model, in order to better understand how ideas, institutions and interests interact in processes of policy change. The article finds little evidence of a 'paradigm shift' and suggests that innovations in industrial policy have served to reinforce the foundational assumptions of the British growth model.

The Conservative party's ability to embrace popular concerns around value, place and equality has enabled it to resurrect the old pre‐crisis growth model, says Craig Berry, in a move which none of the post‐crisis narratives offered by the Labour party has yet been able to disrupt or overturn.

Financialisation, understood as the increased role of finance in individuals' daily lives as well as the economy in general, has profound implications for the relationship between individuals and the state. This article therefore interrogates recent developments in welfare provision in the UK, in particular the 'financial inclusion' agenda, in order to assess how financialisation is affecting the nature and practice of citizenship. By associating institutional change with the UK's prevailing model of economic growth, it offers an original account of both the persistence of the financial inclusion agenda despite challenges posed by the financial crisis, and the 'responsibilisation' of citizenship.