Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Conclusion: Reflections on Governance from an International Perspective

  • Chapter
Book cover Governance, Consumers and Citizens

Part of the book series: Consumption and Public Life ((CUCO))

  • 131 Accesses

Abstract

The warp and weft of this book so far has concerned processes of state restructuring and welfare state retrenchment taking place within the borders of the United Kingdom. Yet globalization is never far away: as Janet Newman suggests in her chapter, current UK reforms are often justified as common-sense decisions by contextualizing them as the natural response to a particular version of history with ‘consequences for the inevitable emergence of new (often globalizing) realities’.1The UK occupies an almost paradoxical position in this respect. On the one hand, the Thatcher administration is frequently cast as the progenitor of early neoliberal reforms that have since travelled well beyond UK borders, as have the more hybrid forms of new governance that New Labour has crafted in the wake of the Thatcher administration. Yet at the same time, government officials during the same period have all too often justified their policy choices as driven by external pressures that necessitate state restructuring and welfare state retrenchment. Globalization, in the diffuse sphere of political legitimation, is everywhere and nowhere at the same time: catalysed by UK politicians, yet encompassing and shaping UK politicians’ choices.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
Chapter
USD 29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD 84.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Notes

  1. D. Harvey, A Brief History ofNeoliberalism(Oxford, 2006).

    Google Scholar 

  2. J. G. Valdés, Pinochet’s Economists: The Chicago School of Economics in Chile(Cambridge, 1995).

    Google Scholar 

  3. J. Kelsey, Economic Fundamentalism: A World Model for Structural Adjustment(London, 1996).

    Google Scholar 

  4. O. Williamson, ‘Transaction-cost Economics: The Governance of Contractural Relations’, Journal of Law and Economics22 (1979), pp. 233–61;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  5. D. Osborne and T. Baebler, Reinventing Government: How the Entrepreneurial Spirit is Transforming the Public Sector(Reading, MA, 1992).

    Google Scholar 

  6. D. Richards and M. Smith, Governance and Public Policy in the UK(Oxford, 2002);

    Google Scholar 

  7. R. Rhodes, Understanding Governance(Buckingham, 1997);

    Google Scholar 

  8. R. Rhodes (ed.) Transforming British Government, 2 vols. (London, 2000);

    Google Scholar 

  9. G. Stoker, Transforming Local Governance(Basingstoke, 2004).

    Google Scholar 

  10. J. Braithwaite, ‘Responsive Regulation and Developing Economies’ in N. Woods (ed.) Making Corporate Self-Regulation Effective in Developing Countries(Oxford, 2007).

    Google Scholar 

  11. P. Cammack, ‘The Governance of Global Capitalism: A New Materialist Perspective’, Historical Materialism, 11 (2) (2003), pp. 37–59;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. K. Jayasuriya, Statecraft, Welfare and the Politics of Inclusion(Basingstoke, 2006).

    Book  Google Scholar 

  13. L. W. Kimathi, ‘Non-State Institutions as a Basis of State Reconstruction: The Case of Justice Systems in Africa’, paper presented at the 2006 Law and Society Summer Institute, Johannesburg, July 2006, available at: http://www.lawandsocietysummerinstitutes.org/workshop06/participants/leah.htm/workshop06/participants/leah.htm.

    Google Scholar 

  14. See also P. Englebert, State Legitimacy and Development in Africa(London, 2000);

    Google Scholar 

  15. G. Hyden, D. Olowu, W. O. Hastings and O. Ogendo (eds) African Perspectives on Governance(Trenton, NJ, 1998); and on Asia:

    Google Scholar 

  16. T. Ginsburg, Judicial Review in New Democracies: Constitutional Courts in Asian Cases(Cambridge, 2004);

    Google Scholar 

  17. B. Harriss-White, Agricultural Markets from Theory to Practice (Basingstoke, 1999);

    Google Scholar 

  18. R. D’Souza, ‘The “Third World” and Socio-legal Studies: Neo-liberalism and Lessons from India’s Legal Innovations’ Social and Legal Studies14 (2005), pp. 487–513.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  19. D. Olowu and J. Erero (eds) Indigenous Governance Systems in Nigeria(Ile-Ife, Nigeria, 1996).

    Google Scholar 

  20. J. Newman, Chapter 3 in this volume, citing C. Knowles, ‘Cultural Perspectives in Welfare Regimes’, in P. Chamberlayne, A. Cooper, R. Freeman and M. Rustin (eds) Welfare and Culture in Europe: Towards a New Paradigm in Social Policy(London, 1999), pp. 240–54.

    Google Scholar 

  21. Barnett argues that a ‘bottom up’ approach to he study of neoliberal governance ‘might help explain how the rhythms of the everyday are able to produce effects on macro-scale processes and vice versa’: C. Barnett, ‘The Consolations of Neo-liberalism’, Geoforum36 (2005), pp. 7–12 at p. 11.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  22. C. Harrington and B. Yngvesson, ‘Interpretive Sociolegal Research’, Law and Social Inquiry15(1) (1990), pp. 135–48;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  23. A. Sarat, ‘Off to Meet the Wizard: Beyond Validity and Reliability in the Search for a Post-empiricist Sociology of Law’, Law and Social Inquiry15(1) (1990), pp. 155–70;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  24. P. Fitzpatrick, ‘Distant Relations: The New Constructionism in Critical and Socio-Legal Studies’, in P. Thomas (ed.) Sociolegal Studies(Aldershot, 1997);

    Google Scholar 

  25. A. Hunt, Alan, Explorations in Law and Society: Toward a Constitutive Theory of Law(New York, 1993);

    Google Scholar 

  26. D. Cooper. Governing out of Order: Space, Law and the Politics of Belonging(Rivers Oram, NY, 1998).

    Google Scholar 

  27. S. Merry, ‘Constructing a Global Law — Violence against Women and the Human Rights System’, Law and Social Inquiry28(4) (2003), pp. 941–77 (gender and human rights in international law);

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. B. Yngvesson, ‘Placing the Gift Child in Transnational Adoption’, Law and Society Review, 36(2), 2002, pp. 227–56 (international adoptions);

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. S. Coutin, B. Maurer and B. Yyngvesson, ‘In the Mirror: The Legitimation Work of Globalization’, Law and Social Inquiry, 27(2) (2002), pp. 801–43 (comparing adoption, immigration and global financial services research with particular attention to methodological issues);

    Article  Google Scholar 

  30. R. D’Souza, ‘The “Third World” and Socio-legal Studies: Neo-liberalism and Lessons from India’s Legal Innovations’ Social and Legal Studies14 (2005), pp. 487–513 (public interest litigation in India analysed through the lens of the transnational effects of colonial relations);

    Article  Google Scholar 

  31. B. Morgan, ‘Emerging Global Water Welfarism: Access to Water, Unruly Consumers and Transnational Governance’, in F. Trentmann and J. Brewer (eds) Consumer Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges(Oxford and New York, 2006), pp. 279–310; and

    Google Scholar 

  32. B. Morgan, ‘Consuming without Paying: Stealing or Campaigning? The Civic Implications of Civil Disobedience around Access to Water’, in K. Soper and F. Trentmann (eds) Citizenship and Consumption(Basingstoke, 2007) (advocacy coalitions and networks of professionals engaged in struggles around access to water also engage in practices of insurgent political consumerism and technocratic citizenship that confound nationally-embedded spatial assumptions).

    Google Scholar 

  33. A. Riles, The Network Inside Out(Michigan, 2001);

    Google Scholar 

  34. A. Griffiths, F. and K. von Benda-Beckmann (eds) Mobile People, Mobile Law: Expanding Legal Relations in a Contracting World(Aldershot, UK, 2005);

    Google Scholar 

  35. A. Apparudai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation(Minneapolis and London, 1996); R. State and G. Dahl (eds) Globalization, Creolization and Cultural Complexity: Essays in Honour of Ulf Hannerz, Special Issue of Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs, 3(3) (2003).

    Google Scholar 

  36. W. Lamer and W. Walters (eds) Global Governmentality(London, 2004);

    Google Scholar 

  37. W. Larner, ‘Neo-liberalism: Policy, Ideology, Governmentality’, Studies in Political Economy, 63 (2000), pp. 5–25; C. Barnett, P. Cloke, N. Clarke and A. Malpass, ‘Consuming Ethics: Articulating the Subjects and Spaces of Ethical Consumption’, Antipode, 37(1) (2005);

    Google Scholar 

  38. E. ‘Swyngedouw, with P. Getimis, H. Heinelt, G. Kafkalas, and R. Smith (eds) Participatory Governance in Multi-Level Context: Concepts and Experience(Opladen, 2002).

    Google Scholar 

  39. M. Goldman, Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalisation(New Haven, 2006).

    Google Scholar 

  40. For example, J. Williams, ‘Private Legal Orders: Professional Markets and the Commodification of Financial Governance’, Social and Legal Studies15 (2006), pp. 209–36 (exploring how forensic corporate investigators influence corporate governance but citing a much wider literature on networks).

    Article  Google Scholar 

  41. J. Braithwaite and P. Drahos, Global Business Regulation(Cambridge, 2000) (how actors create global webs of influence in business regulation in fourteen different policy areas);

    Google Scholar 

  42. M. Keck and K. Sikkink, Activists Beyond Borders: Advocacy Networks in International Politics(Ithaca, 1998) (how transnational advocacy networks influence human rights policies);

    Google Scholar 

  43. B. Garth and Y. Dezalay, The Internationalisation of Palace Wars: Lawyers, Economists, and the Contest to Transform Latin American States(Chicago, 2002) (how lawyers and economists shape political economy and governance strategies).

    Google Scholar 

  44. J. Freeman, ‘Collaborative Governance in the Administrative State’, University of California at Los Angeles Law Review 45 (1997), pp. 1–98;

    Google Scholar 

  45. C. Scott, ‘Accountability in the Regulatory State’, Journal of Law and Society, 27(1) (2000), pp. 38–60;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. G. Teubner (ed.) Dilemmas of Law in the Welfare State(Berlin, 1986);

    Google Scholar 

  47. J. Black, ‘Proceduralizing Regulation Part I’, Oxford Journal of Legal Studies, 20 (2000), pp. 597–614.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  48. D. Cowan and A. Marsh, ‘From Need to Choice: Welfarism to Advanced Liberalism? Problematics of Social Housing Allocation’, Legal Studies25(1) (2005), pp. 22–48;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. M. Dean, Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society(Sage, 1999);

    Google Scholar 

  50. M. McDermont, ‘Territorializing Regulation: a Case Study of ‘Social Housing’ in England’, Law & Social Inquiry, 32(2) (2007), pp. 373–98;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. J. Williams, ‘Private Legal Orders’; P. Vincent-Jones, The New Public Contracting: Regulation, Responsiveness, Relationality(Oxford, 2006).

    Google Scholar 

  52. A. Sarat, ‘“…The Law Is All Over”: Power, Resistance and the Legal Consciousness of the Welfare Poor’, Yale Journal of Law and the Humanities2(2) (1990), pp. 343–80.

    Google Scholar 

  53. P. Houtzager, ‘From Polycentrism to the Polity’, in P. Houtzager and M. Moore (eds) Changing Paths: International Development and the New Politics of Inclusion(Michigan, 2003).

    Google Scholar 

  54. M. Bevir et al.(eds) Traditions of Governance: History and Diversity;

    Google Scholar 

  55. D. Vogel, National Styles of Regulation: Environmental Policy in Great Britain and the US(Ithaca, NY, 1986);

    Google Scholar 

  56. J. Richardson (ed.) Policy Styles in Western Europe(London, 1982);

    Google Scholar 

  57. F. van Waarden, ‘Persistence of National Policy Styles’, in B. Unger and F. van Waarden (eds) Convergence or Diversity? Internationalization and Economic Policy Response(Aldershot, 1995);

    Google Scholar 

  58. M. Thatcher, ‘Winners and Losers in Europeanisation: Reforming the National Regulation of Telecommunications’, West European Politics27(2) (2004), pp. 284–309.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  59. D. Levi-Faur, ‘Herd Behaviour and Regulators’, in J. Jordana and D. Levi-Faur (eds) The Politics of Regulation: Institutions and Regulatory Reforms for the Age of Governance(Cheltenham, 2004).

    Google Scholar 

  60. P. Houtzager, A. Lavalle and A. Acharya, ‘Beyond Comparative Anecdotalism: How Civil and Political Organizations Shape Participation in Säo Paulo, Brazil’, World Development, 33(6) (2005), pp. 951–64 is an early publication in this ongoing project. See also P. Houtzager, ‘From Polycentrism to the Polity’, footnote 40.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  61. Barnett argues that a ‘bottom up’ approach to he study of neoliberal governance ‘might help explain how the rhythms of the everyday are able to produce effects on macro-scale processes and vice versa’: Newman, C. Barnett, ‘The Consolations of Neo-liberalism’, Geoforum, 36 (2005), pp. 7–12, quotation p. 11.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  62. M. Redclift, Chewing Gum: The Fortunes of Taste(New York, 2004);

    Book  Google Scholar 

  63. D. Anderson and N. Carrier, ‘“Flowers of Paradise” or “Polluting the Nation”: Contested Narratives of Khat Consumption’, in J. Brewer and F. Trentmann (ed), Consuming Cultures, Global Perspectives: Historical Trajectories, Transnational Exchanges(Oxford and New York, 2006), pp. 145–66;

    Google Scholar 

  64. P. Jackson, P. Russell and N. Ward, ‘Mobilising the “Commodity Chain” Concept in the Politics of Food and Farming’, Journal of Rural Studies22 (2006), pp. 129–41;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  65. M. Prendergast, Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How it Transformed our World(New York, 1999).

    Google Scholar 

  66. K. Litfin, Ozone Discourses: Science and Politics in Global Environmental Cooperation(New York, 1994).

    Google Scholar 

  67. J. Meyer and B. Rowan, ‘Institutionalised Organisations: Formal Structure as Myth and Ceremony’, American Journal of Sociology, 38 (1977), pp. 340–63;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  68. M. Finnemore, ‘Norms, Culture and World Politics: Insights from Sociology’s Institutionalism’, International Organisation, 50(2) (1996), pp. 325–47;

    Article  Google Scholar 

  69. M. Barnett and M. Finnemore, Rules for the World: International Organisations in Global Politics(Ithaca, 2004);

    Google Scholar 

  70. E. Boyle and J. Meyer, ‘Modern Law as a Secularized and Global Model: Implications for the Sociology of Law’, in Y. Dezalay and B. Garth (eds) Global Prescriptions: The Production, Exportation, and Importation of a New Legal Orthodoxy(Michigan, 2002).

    Google Scholar 

  71. K. Conca, Governing Water: Contentious Transnational Politics and Global Institution Building(Cambridge, MA, 2006).

    Google Scholar 

  72. G. Shaffer and K. Nicolaidis, ‘Transnational Mutual Recognition Regimes: Governance Without Global Government’, Law and Contemporary Problems, 68(3) (2005), pp. 267–322; H. Klug, ‘Hybrid(ity) Rules: Creating Local Law in a Globalized World’, in Dezalay and Garth, Global Prescriptions;A. Sinha, When David Meets Goliath: How Global Trade Rules Shape Domestic Politics in India, book manuscript in progress presented at the Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Baltimore, July 2006; A. Christian, ‘Taxing the Global Worker: Three Spheres of International Social Security Coordination’, Virginia Tax Review, 26 (2006).

    Google Scholar 

  73. Though see Merry, ‘Constructing a Global Law’ for a recent study of practices around international human rights law, exploring formal centralized institutional practices at the international level around human rights. Some commentators hope such practices will form a bulwark against the political direction of the institutions supporting trade liberalization, development assistance, and capital mobility: see for example P. Alston and M. Robinson (eds) Human Rights and Development: Towards Mutual Reinforcement(Oxford, 2005).

    Google Scholar 

  74. B. Morgan, ‘Turning Off the Tap, Urban Water Service Delivery and the Social Construction of Global Administrative Law’, European Journal of International Law, 17(1) (2006), pp. 215–47; Morgan, ‘Consuming without Paying’, footnote 31.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  75. K. Sikkink, ‘The Transnational Dimension of the Judicialisation of Politics in Latin America’, in R. Sieder, L. Schjolden and A. Angell (eds) The Judicialization of Politics in Latin America(New York and Basingstoke, 2005).

    Google Scholar 

  76. J. Foweraker, ‘Grassroots Movements, Political Activism and Social Development in Latin America: A Critical Comparison of Chile and Brazil’, Journal of Latin American Studies, 33(4) (2001), pp. 839–65.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Authors
  1. Bronwen Morgan
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of California, Berkeley, USA

    Mark Bevir

  2. Birkbeck College, University of London, UK

    Frank Trentmann

Copyright information

© 2007 Bronwen Morgan

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Morgan, B. (2007). Conclusion: Reflections on Governance from an International Perspective. In: Bevir, M., Trentmann, F. (eds) Governance, Consumers and Citizens. Consumption and Public Life. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230591363_11

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation