The Internal and External Face of New Labour's Political Economy

Abstract

To Grasp Fully The Nature And Significance Of The Economic policies at the heart of dominant political projects, those policies have to be studied in the round. They have to be grasped as complex totalities which touch all aspects of the political agenda; and they have to be seen as constructed and contested wholes, whose contradictions, internal inconsistencies and conceptual limits are as vital to their trajectory as are their axioms, theories and content. Academically and professionally, the study of policy in this rounded way is often a more difficult task to complete than might be expected, in part because of the powerful divisions within and between the intellectual disciplines which comprise the social sciences.