A discursive enquiry into the political economy of new labour: is it a rupture from or a perpetuation of neoliberal hegemony?

Download

index.pdf

Date

2009

Author

Savaş, Efe

Metadata

Show full item record

Item Usage Stats

102
views

28
downloads

From the 1980’s onwards a new conceptual framework which will be subsequently called neoliberalism has become hegemonic by transforming and redefining the common sense. In the midst of the world economic crisis in the 1970s which would bring the collapse of Keynesian paradigm, a new political culture promoting the superiority of market-based order has started to emerge. Subsequently during the 1980s, by establishing ‘market-oriented society’ as the new dominant paradigm, neoliberal hegemony has realized furher seperation of ‘economics’ from the ‘politics.’ In this respect, regarding the implementation of neoliberal policies, Great Britain can be considered as a prime example. During the last three decades, political atmosphere of Great Britain has to a large extent been shaped under the influence of neoliberal hegemony that has engendered a significant paradigm shift in the country’s political economy. Meanwhile in the rapidly changing political atmosphere of 1980’s and 1990’s, British Labour Party has also gone through a gradual ideological transformation that culminated in the emergence of New Labour. Despite its initial claim to novelty, since New Labour is itself an actor that is formed during the hegemony of neoliberalism, its possible affiliation with the neoliberal paradigm deserves attention. In this sense, in order to analyse its affiliation with the neoliberal hegemony, this thesis attempts to develop a discursive enquiry into the political economy of New Labour. Consequently, by relying on remarkable findings which indicate the commonalities between New Labour and neoliberalism, this thesis advocates that although being different from the initial neoliberal stance of ‘Thatcherism’, New Labour perpetuates neoliberal hegemony insofar it takes neoliberal political economy’s basic premises as for granted.

Subject Keywords

Political science., European Integration.

URI

http://etd.lib.metu.edu.tr/upload/3/12611164/index.pdf
https://hdl.handle.net/11511/18947

Collections

Graduate School of Social Sciences, Thesis

Suggestions

OpenMETU
Core

Debates on civil society: from centre-periphery to radical civil societarianism Duruşan, Fırat; Ayata, Ayşe; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2008) The radical democratic conception of civil society strives for theoretically constructing and politically defending civil society as a social sphere autonomous from both the economy and state. As a position taken against Marxist and liberal theories, radical civil societarianism views the cultural and normative structures of modern societies as independent from and prior to systemically conceived economic and political relations. These structures is purported to give way to spontaneous social solidarity cha...
The intellectual framework of the ‘European New Right’ and European Integration Kurtoğlu, Mete; Okyayuz, Mehmet; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2009) This thesis aims to analyze the ideology of the “European New Right” (Nouveille Droite) and its attempt to establish its cultural hegemony on European integration. The revival of the radical right-wing parties after 1980s and the rise of xenophobia have emerged as a fundamental threat to European democracy. The study of such developments and the measures taken to combat right-wing extremism, however, should not be limited to political parties and activists. The intellectual framework of the contemporary rad...
The issue of undecidability within the debate between Ernesto Laclau and Slavoj Žižek Uzuner, Mehmet Gökhan; Okyayuz, Mehmet; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2009) The philosophical problem of the tension between liberty and order has dominated the agenda of western philosophy and science since the beginning of the history of thought, and it is a leading issue nowadays, too. The problem of the act of decision is particularly one of the significant themes of contemporary political thought. Instead of the classical poles of both voluntarism and determinism prioritising either the subject or the structure, what should be employed is a much deeper analysis of the relation...
Understanding populist politics in Turkey: a hegemonic depth approach Yalvaç, Faruk (Cambridge University Press (CUP), 2019-12-01) The aim of this article is to understand populism as a hegemonic project involving a struggle for power between different social forces. We take a critical realist approach in defining populism. This implies several things. We develop a new approach to understanding populist politics by taking neither a purely discursive (Laclau), nor a solely structural (Poulantzas), but a critical realist approach and analysing the three-way relationship between structural conditions, agency, and institutional framework. ...
A critical approach to central bank independence : the case of the central bank of the Republic of Turkey Ayhan, Berkay; Üstüner, Mustafa Yılmaz; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2008) From the 1970s onwards, it is argued that central banks should be independent from politicians since the latter have an interest in seeking populist interventions to the conduct of the monetary policy. Additionally, it is often maintained that the sole aim of a central bank should be to seek price stability. Despite the seemingly neutral and objective tone of these arguments, central bank independence can find its meaning as a part of Neoliberalism, which restructured the economic administration of the stat...

Citation Formats

E. Savaş, “ A discursive enquiry into the political economy of new labour: is it a rupture from or a perpetuation of neoliberal hegemony?,” M.S. - Master of Science, Middle East Technical University, 2009.