Andrew Hindmoor - Böcker

Our sense of history shapes how we think about ourselves. One of the distinguishing features of the left in Britain is that it holds to a remorselessly bleak and miserabilist view of our recent political history -- one in which Margaret Thatcher's election in 1979 marked the start of a still-continuing fall from political grace made evident by the triumph of a free market get-what-you-can neoliberal ideology, dizzying levels of inequality, social decay, rampant individualism, state authoritarianism, and political corruption. The left does not like what has happened to us and it does not like what we have become.Andrew Hindmoor argues that this history is wrong and self-harming. It is wrong because Britain has in many respects become a more politically attractive and progressive country over the last few decades. It is self-harming because this bleak history undermines faith in politics. Post-Brexit, post-Grenfell, and post the 2010, 2015, and 2017 general elections, things may not, right now, look that great. But looked at over the longer haul, Britain is a long way from being a posterchild for neoliberalism. Left-wing ideas and arguments have shaped and continue to shape our politics.

This is the story of modern Britain, focusing on twelve formative days in the history of the United Kingdom over the last five decades. By describing what happened on those days and the subsequent consequences, Andrew Hindmoor paints a suggestive - and to some perhaps provocative - portrait of what we have become and how we got here. Everyone will have their own list of the truly formative moments in British history over the last five decades. The twelve days selected for this book are:- The 28th of September 1976. The day Labour Prime Minister James Callaghan renounced Keynesian economics.- The 4th of May 1979. The day Margaret Thatcher became Britain's first female prime minister.- The 3rd of March 1985. The day the miners' strike ended.- The 20th of September 1988. The day of Margaret Thatcher's 'Bruges speech'.- The 18th of May 1992. The day the television rights for the Premier League were sold to BskyB.- The 22nd of April 1993. The day that young black teenager Stephen Lawrence was murdered by racist thugs.- The 10th April 1998. The day of the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland.- The 11th of September 2001. The day of the Al Qaeda attacks on the United States.- The 5th of December 2004. The day Chris Cramp and Matthew Roche became the first gay couple in the UK to become civil partners under the Civil Partnership Act.- The 13th of September 2007. The day the BBC reported that the Northern Rock bank was in trouble.- The 8th of May 2009. The day The Daily Telegraph began to publish details of MPs' expense claims.- The 1st of February 2017. The day the House of Commons voted to invoke Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union.

Taking as its starting-point Anthony Downs' seminal work, An Economic Theory of Democracy, this book draws upon insights generated within economics, political psychology, and the study of rhetoric to examine the way in which New Labour achieved and maintained its electoral hegemony from 1994.Journalists and politicians routinely attribute New Labour's electoral success to its occupation of the 'centre-ground'. This book is interested in the question of how New Labour moved to the right and towards the centre. The obvious answer to this question is that New Labour moved by changing its policies. Against this, the book contends that changes in policy cannot in themselves constitute a complete explanation of changes in spatial position. They cannot do so because there is no pre-given and fixed relationship between policies and position such that the rejection of one policy and the adoption of another moves a party from one position to another. Policies are not immutably left-wing, right-wing, or centrist and so, given that the position a party is thought to occupy is a function of the policies to which it is committed, parties are not immutably left-wing, right-wing, or centrist either. The relationship between policy and position and thereby between parties and position is constructed and is in part constructed by parties themselves. New Labour did not simply move to the centre. It had to persuade the media, voters, and other parties that it had moved to the centre. New Labour achieved and maintained its electoral hegemony not simply by changing one set of policies for another. It achieved and maintained its hegemony by successfully constructing its policies as centrist.

‘In this fascinating book, Andrew Hindmoor makes sense of the tangled past we have just lived through ... sprinkling wit, insight and analytical verve over his energetic narrative. In contemporary British political history, his will be the distinctive voice of his generation' Peter Hennessy Vladimir Lenin, an occasional resident of North London who went on to other things, has been credited with once saying that there are decades where nothing happens but weeks when decades happen. The first two and a half decades of this century in Britain have had plenty of those weeks. Indeed, our recent history has at times resembled an episode of Casualty, the long-running BBC hospital drama in which every hedge trimmer slips, every gas pipe leaks, every piece of scaffolding collapses and everyone ends up in intensive care.In Haywire Andrew Hindmoor makes sense of the deluge of events which have rained down on Britain since 2000, from the Iraq War to financial collapse, austerity to Brexit, as well as more easily forgotten moments such as the MP’s expenses scandal. He shows not simply how one crisis has quickly followed another, but how each crisis has compounded the next, so that disaster feels like the new normal. Has Britain simply been the victim of a particularly prolonged run of bad luck which will, sooner or later, come to an end? No. Hindmoor argues that the way the British state is organised has, time and again, made a crisis out of a drama – and that it is time to find an alternative before we all go haywire.

Several problems plague contemporary thinking about governance. From the multiple definitions that are often vague and confusing, to the assumption that governance strategies, networks and markets represent attempts by weakening states to maintain control. Rethinking Governance questions this view and seeks to clarify how we understand governance. Arguing that it is best understood as 'the strategies used by governments to help govern', the authors counter the view that governments have been decentred. They show that far from receding, states are in fact enhancing their capacity to govern by developing closer ties with non-government sectors. Identifying five 'modes' of government (governance through hierarchy, persuasion, markets and contracts, community engagement, and network associations), Stephen Bell and Andrew Hindmoor use practical examples to explore the strengths and limitations of each. In so doing, they demonstrate how modern states are using a mixture of governance modes to address specific policy problems. This book demonstrates why the argument that states are being 'hollowed out' is overblown.

This account of the financial crisis of 2008–2009 compares banking systems in the United States and the United Kingdom to those of Canada and Australia and explains why the system imploded in the former but not the latter. Central to this analysis are differences in bankers’ beliefs and incentives in different banking markets.A boom mentality and fear of being left behind by competitors drove many U.S. and British bank executives to take extraordinary risks in creating new financial products. Intense market competition, poorly understood trading instruments, and escalating system complexity both drove and misled bankers. Formerly illiquid assets such as mortgages and other forms of debt were repackaged into complex securities, including collateralized debt obligations (CDOs). These were then traded on an industrial scale, and in 2007 and 2008, when their value collapsed, economic activity fell into a deep freeze. The financial crisis threatened not just investment banks and their insurers but also individual homeowners and workers at every level. In contrast, because banks in Canada and Australia could make good profits through traditional lending practices, they did not confront the same pressures to reinvent themselves as did banks in the United States and the United Kingdom, thus allowing them to avoid the fate of their overseas counterparts.Stephen Bell and Andrew Hindmoor argue that trading and systemic risk in the banking system need to be reined in. However, prospects for this are not promising given the commitment of governments in the crisis-hit economies to protect the “international competitiveness” of the London and New York financial markets.

Assuming no prior knowledge, this widely-used and critically-acclaimed text provides a clear introduction to, and uniquely fair-minded assessment of, Rational Choice approaches. The substantially revised, updated and extended new edition includes more substantial coverage of game theory, collective action, 'revisionist' public choice, and the use of rational choice in International Relations.

Assuming no prior knowledge, this widely-used and critically-acclaimed text provides a clear introduction to, and uniquely fair-minded assessment of, Rational Choice approaches. The substantially revised, updated and extended new edition includes more substantial coverage of game theory, collective action, 'revisionist' public choice, and the use of rational choice in International Relations.