Author: Leys, Colin
Title: Market-driven Politics: Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest
Description: London, Verso, 2001. dustwrapper.. 22x15cm, viii,280 pp. Minor rubbing. VG. ¶ Market-driven Politics is an empirical examination of the extent to which politics and policy are conditioned, or even determined, by global economic forces. It is a multi-level study which moves between an analysis of those global forces, through national politics, to the changes occurring week by week in two fields of public life that are both fundamentally important and familiar to everyone - television broadcasting and health care. The focus is Britain, but the arguments apply in many other contexts. Public services like health care and broadcasting play an important role, because they effect the legitimacy of the government of the day; in market-driven politics such domains become political flashpoints because they are also targets for global capital. Colin Leys argues lucidly that we are witnessing a fundamental shift in the relationship between politics and economics. His original analysis of the key processes of commodification of public services, the conversion of public-service workforces into employees motivated to generate profit, and the role of the state in absorbing risk is critically important, not just for an analysis of market-driven politics but also for the longer-term defence of democracy and the collective values on which it depends" - Publisher's description.

Keywords: British Political History, Great Britain, Economic Policy, National, Health Service, Public Television, Politics, ,