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This volume is a follow up to its highly influential predecessor,
"Options for Britain," which in 1995 brought together a leading
group of academics and policy experts to assess the key economic,
social and constitutional policy options for Britain.
A decade on and the British political world is very different. Much
of the analysis in "Options for Britain" has become accepted
wisdom, and many of the policy proposals have become reality.
However, there is also a sense of deja vu. The Labour government
has been in power for a decade and governments find it difficult to
refresh themselves in power, as the legacy of their own decisions
build up. It is in these historical moments that outside thinking
such as that embodied within "Options for a New Britain" can have a
decisive influence, helping to inform the public and key
commentators, and to provide a source of ideas and inspiration.
Leading policy experts examine what has happened over the last
decade across a broad range of key policy areas, what are the
current challenges and what options might an incoming government-
regardless of political persuasion- have to address them.
Iain McLean reexamines the radical legacy of AdamSmith, arguing
that Smith was a radical egalitarian and that his work supported
all three of the slogans of the French Revolution: liberty,
equality, and fraternity. McLean suggests that Smith's The Theory
of Moral Sentiments , published in 1759, crystallized the radically
egalitarian philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment. This book
brings Smith into full view, showing how much of modern economics
and political science is in Smith. The author locates Smith's
heritage firmly within the context of the Enlightenment, while
addressing the international links between American, French, and
Scottish histories of political thought.
The system for allocating public expenditure to the nations and
regions of the UK has broken down. Money goes to Scotland, Wales
and Northern Ireland by the notorious Barnett formula, but this is
collapsing and cannot last long. Money goes to the English regions
by poorly-understood formulae that work badly. People in every
region think that the system is unfair to them. The Fiscal Crisis
of the United Kingdom suggests how the system could be fixed,
drawing lessons from Australia and Canada. It recommends a
Territorial Grants Commission.
In this exciting collection, Iain McLean and Colin Jennings bring
together some of the most eminent social scientists to have advised
British governments since 1964. Successive chapters show what went
wrong in UK economic policy making in the 1960s and 1970s, what
goes better now, and what still goes wrong. The editors explain how
recent developments in economic theory have improved economic
policy making. Contributors include two former Chief Economic
Advisers at HM Treasury, and the co-designer of the successful '3G
spectrum auction'.
In this exciting collection, Iain McLean and Colin Jennings bring
together some of the most eminent social scientists to have advised
British governments since 1964. Successive chapters show what went
wrong in UK economic policy making in the 1960s and 1970s, what
goes better now, and what still goes wrong. The editors explain how
recent developments in economic theory have improved economic
policy making. Contributors include two former Chief Economic
Advisers at HM Treasury, and the co-designer of the successful '3G
spectrum auction'.
The 1968 Nobel Prize for Economics was awarded to one of the
founders of public choice theory, James Buchanan, yet many people
have only the vaguest idea what public choice is. The book offers
and unusually clear and accessible introduction to an important
subject. McLean examines the workings of public choice from two
related perspectives - collective action and the aggregation of
individual preferences into social consensus.
The book highlights the paradox at the heart of collective
action- that self-interest in the public domain is frequently
counterproductive. National defense and clean air are things we all
benefit from - they are public goods - but we tend to resist
contributing to them. The first part of this book examines how
government choice in such areas is shaped, and by whom- political
entrepreneurs, bureaucrats, interest groups and ordinary citizens.
McLean uses the idea of a public market in which politicians sell
what they hope voters will buy, and further considers how and when
people (and animals) co-operate to produce public goods even
without government coercion. In the second part of the book the
author examines the consequences of combining individual
preferences, arguing that there is no straightforward way of adding
them up to form a 'social ordering' and assesing the implications
of this both for electoral reform and for the status of 'the will
of the people'.
The system for allocating public expenditure to the nations and
regions of the UK has broken down. Money goes to Scotland, Wales
and Northern Ireland by the notorious Barnett formula, but this is
collapsing and cannot last long. Money goes to the English regions
by poorly-understood formulae that work badly. People in every
region think that the system is unfair to them. The Fiscal Crisis
of the United Kingdom suggests how the system could be fixed,
drawing lessons from Australia and Canada. It recommends a
Territorial Grants Commission.
In this accessible new book, Iain McLean explores the impact of
information technology on democracy. Combining democratic theory,
social choice theory and description of new technology at work in
Europe and the USA, McLean explores democracy as it is and as it
could be. The author begins in ancient Athens and moves through
Pliny, Rousseau, Madison and J S Mill to modern representatives and
direct democracy. Introducing the theory of social choice, he
argues that democracy is about procedures, not results, and sets
out some criteria for fair aggregation of individuals' preferences
to society's. Exploring the impact of new technology on these
procedures, McLean shows how it can save time, and increase
accuracy and accessibility, but also how it can lead to
manipulation and come up against Arrow's, Gibbards' and McKelvey's
impossibility theorems.
In conclusion, McLean asks whether new technology widens or
narrows our democratic horizons, and points to the technical and
logical boundaries of democracy. "Democracy and New Technology"
will be of great interest to students and researchers in politics,
sociology, and media and communications studies. It is one of very
few books to explain social choice theory in totally non-technical
language and to explore what it means for democracy.
One of the most successful groups in music history, the Backstreet
Boys have sold 65 million albums to date, and AJ McLean, the
tattooed bad boy of the group, has fans throughout the world. An
integral part of the Backstreet Boys from the very beginning, AJ's
mother, Denise, travelled with the group and served as their
publicist and fan club co-ordinator. In close proximity to the
successes and heartbreaks of her son's career, Denise watched her
son's painful descent into alcoholism and depression. This
revealing account tells the tale of AJ's rise to superstardom, his
descent into addiction, and his struggles through rehabilitation,
and offers a look at the harsh world of the music industry. A
candid and heartfelt story, this book will appeal to fans of the
Backstreet Boys, readers interested in behind-the-scenes music
industry stories, and mothers with children who have substance
abuse problems.
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