This edited collection explores the future options for the UK regarding its relationship with the European Union (EU). Since Britain applied for membership in 1961, the nature of the relationship between the UK and the EU has been central to economic and political debate, being widely perceived as 'inevitable', because withdrawal from the process would leave Britain isolated and largely powerless. However, this book challenges this presumption by illustrating that it could be in Britain's ...

To date, critical analysis of the EMU project has largely been advanced from the centre-right spectrum of British politics. Comparable questions from the centre-left have failed to find a coherent voice. Although, the European fault-line cannot be characterized as a neat Left-Right issue there are noticeable divisions in opinion across British business, the trade union movement and within the Labour Party.Offering a unique insight into this key debate from the ‘centre-left’, eurosc...

Only a dramatic, imaginatively crafted intervention - a massive redistribution programme managed by the private sector, far-reaching policy changes in schooling, housing and health, and better, disciplined governance - will deliver the genuine liberation South Africa's still-poor millions expected from the 1994 settlement. Without it, without the real promise of a free, meritocratic society, South Africa will flounder and fail as corruption, crime, social decay, hopelessness and anger engu...

In 2008 Ireland experienced one of the most dramatic economic crises of any economy in the world. It remains at the heart of the international crisis, sitting uneasily between the US and European economies. Not long ago, however, Ireland was celebrated as an example of successful market-led globalisation and economic growth. How can we explain the Irish crisis? What does it tell us about the causes of the international crisis? How should we rethink our understanding of contemporary economi...

A Manifesto for Social Change is the third of a three-volume series that started seven years ago investigating the causes of our country’s – and the continent’s – development obstacles.Architects of Poverty (2009) set out to explain what role African elites played in creating and promoting their fellow Africans’ misery.Advocates for Change (2011) showed that there were short-term to medium-term solutions to many of Africa’s and South Africa’s prob...

Despite the rhetoric, the people of Sub-Saharan Africa are become poorer. From Tony Blair's Africa Commission and the Make Poverty History campaign to the Hong Kong WTO meeting, Africa's gains have been mainly limited to public relations. The central problems remain exploitative debt and financial relationships with the North, phantom aid, unfair trade, distorted investment and the continent's brain/skills drain. Moreover, capitalism in most African countries has witnessed the emergence of...

After five years of debates, consultations and negotiations, the European institutions reached an agreement in 2013 on the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) for the 2014-2020 period. The outcome has major implications for the EU’s budget and farmers’ incomes, but also for Europe’s environment, its contribution to global climate change and to food security in the EU and in the world.It was decided to spend more than €400 billion during the rest of the decade on the CAP. The official ...

Jane Kelsey’s was a questioning and challenging voice when she wrote this passionate critique of New Zealand’s economic policies in the 1980s and 90s. The social and economic consequences of a decade of market-based reforms are laid bare in this statistically rich and rhetorically powerful work.Drawing on a wide array of sources, Kelsey’s analysis delves into every aspect of the structural reforms that were to have such vast consequences for New Zealand society. Her analysis of those polic...

Northeast Asian steel industries have developed global production networks, but by spanning multiple national spaces, these networks unite many national economies while belonging exclusively to none. Who, therefore, is in control? Jeffrey D. Wilson examines how states and firms coordinate their activities to govern global production.

Is there an alternative to EU membership? What if Britain left the EU? Would it be a disastrous or liberating experience? What trade relationships could the UK forge outside the EU? How would economic and social policy be different? What are the implications for sovereignty and democracy?This text seeks to answer these questions through exploring the future options for Britain regarding its relationship with the European Union (EU). To the British establishment it seemed obvious that joini...

First Published in 2004. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

This book examines the role that the IMF has played in the management of financial crises in developed nations. The topic is of particular significance in light of the global financial crisis that emerged following the collapse of American sub-prime mortgage markets in 2007, and the subsequent sovereign debt problems of many Western states.