English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Global: Zendy Plus annual

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Global: Zendy Tools annual

Global: Zendy Free Plan

Global: Zendy Tools monthly

Global: Zendy Plus monthly

to strip them of any overly flagrant idiosyncrasy that would tie them back to their originating national context.” (ibid. p.47-8) Powerful and convincing as it is, Wacquant’s analysis blends rather different UK governments into the same explanatory account. Whilst undoubtedly neoliberal in both rhyme and reason, and sporting prominent politicians (e.g. Frank Field, Jack Straw) enamoured with the prophets of punitive governance, the New Labour (1997-2010) government operated in a quite different way with respect to think-tanks as the preceding Conservative governments. This period was characterised by a pragmatist ‘What Works?’ approach to public policy, where centrist think tanks came to dominate all government research activities, and, subsequently, the policy process. The Institute for Public Policy Research and DEMOS, to take the two most Blairite examples, left market rule unquestioned whilst they commissioned grant-hungry academics to trawl through the ‘evidence base’ for examples of policies that might soften the sharp edges of supply-side, inflation-busting economic management, and as they conducted focus groups with randomly selected pundits from all walks of life to evaluate policy packages on the table. But at precisely the time the Blairite think tanks were at their influential apex in “explicating the terms of the politically deliverable” (Peck and Tickell, 2007, p.48), two new think tanks were born with dramatic implications for the British welfare state in particular. What distinguishes the free market Centre for Social Justice and Policy Exchange from the think tanks before them is the central involvement of (then opposition) frontline politicians in their initial formation. The former was the brainchild of Iain Duncan-Smith (now Work and Pensions Secretary), the latter that of Michael Gove (currently the Justice Secretary) in collaboration with other Tory politicians. Duncan-Smith and Gove are two staunch Thatcherites and close allies of Prime Minister David Cameron, and the think tanks they created have not only become the go-to sources of comment and ‘evidence’ arming those of a neoliberal persuasion, but continue to provide the intellectual impetus behind the ongoing Conservative assaults on the public sector and on the welfare state in Britain under the banner of “cutting the deficit” (austerity). Supported by the press releases and noisy interjections of other free market think tanks such as Reform and The Taxpayers’ Alliance, what Owen Jones (2014) calls the “outriders” have been instrumental in connecting together the worlds of politics, business and the media to defend the neoliberal society they and their predecessors have helped to create, and to keep the national political conversation on terms/categories favourable to ruling elites. But it would be erroneous to view them simply as mere servants of the powerful:

The Housing Crisis in Neoliberal Britain: Free Market Think Tanks and the Production of Ignorance