Premium
Railtrack is Dead – Long Live Network Rail? Nationalization Under the Third Way
Author(s) -
Whitehouse Lisa
Publication year - 2003
Publication title -
journal of law and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.263
H-Index - 48
eISSN - 1467-6478
pISSN - 0263-323X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-6478.00254
Subject(s) - operationalization , contradiction , de facto , democracy , government (linguistics) , political economy , third party , law and economics , political science , economics , economic system , sociology , economy , law , epistemology , philosophy , linguistics , internet privacy , politics , computer science
This essay offers, by way of an examination of the proposals to reform the railway industry, a case study of the government's attempt to operationalize the third way. That these proposals are consistent with the third way is identified within this essay and yet they would appear to give rise to the de facto renationalization of the railway infrastructure. In accounting for this apparent contradiction in the (third way) means used and the (old‐style democracy) ends achieved, it will be argued that this new form of nationalization is consistent with the third way rather than any socialist understanding of the term. To this extent, therefore, New Labour have attempted to reconceptualize the process of nationalization in pursuit of the ‘new mixed economy’.