Moran, M.

(2003) The British Regulatory State (Oxford: OUP), chapter 1 J

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Week 1 Further Reading: “Chapter 1. Introduction: From Stagnation to Hyper-Innovation”

By Carmel Jorgensen

Ch1 set out the key arguments and summaries chapter arguments.
Thesis: “This book is about the contrast between the two epochs” of British government. “For
about the first two-thirds of the twentieth century [to 1970], British Victorian culture ‘club
government’ ruled and “slumbered in the historical equivalent of a long Sunday afternoon. .. Since
then, [early 1970s to 1990s] history of turmoil, upheaval and innovation. (page 3)

“The two phases – of stagnation and of hyper-innovation -are connected. The connection is forged
by crisis, and in particular the crisis of a governing order.” One of the purposes of the book is to
contrast the two epochs of British Government” and “to both to describe and to try to account for
the collapse of the club system.”

Because there were two interrelated crisis’ at the same time, the well-known economic policy
crisis and the less well-known institutional governing crisis, the results were revolutionary.

The economic policy crisis of the early to mid 1970s, included the humiliating and disastorous
economic policy crisis (ex. 1976 because of the currency crisis, the IMF dictated economic policy),
provoked the second crisis: a deep institutional crisis of the ‘club government’. “The crisis of
the system of rule itself”( page 3).

Result - How Britain is a world leader/pioneer of institutional and policy reform (page 2)
1. Financial liberalisation – evidence, London as one of three great financial centres
2. Privatization – huge scale and rapid timing – matched only by New Zealand
3. Regulation, after privatization. “Remarkable”, “elaborate” “institutional upheaval”,
“especially in scale and complexity” went from ‘self-regulation’ to tighter state controls

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 4. Re-organisation of government – “radical character”; Politt measures Britain highest on
public sector reform on six dimensions: privatization, marketization, decentralization, output
orientation, quality systems, intensity of implementation.
More on Result:
Together the results were described by Rhodes as standing out for their “comprehensive range”.
They were intense, comprehensive institutional (public sector) and policy reforms.
“Britain thus led the way in redefining the boundaries between the public and private.” p.3 “simply,
a large number of industries that had been in the public domain were shifted to the domain of
private ownership” (pg 9) with the new regulation of privatization and new regulatory institutions
destabalizing business regulation and Victorian institutions. There were huge implications for both
the public world of regulation itself and for the business community. Now have increased
politicalization on range of regulatory issues and changes in constitutional understandings between
public and private (see CH 5). All factors together make it a “British revolution”.

Pre to post crisis of “club government” (Marquand) and “club regulation” (Moran):
Undemocratic Club New regulatory state features New state shares features
government and club with “Enlightenment
regulation features Modernism”
Informality –- intermeshed - Standardization, central control Has modernist democratising
pervasive - with 19th century and formality. The decline or roots in Quantification and
‘self-regulation’ systems and disappearance of private self- Objectivity; still in “a
institutions beyond law, gov’t regulation institutions. sustained crisis of club
and democratic control but regulation.” (pg 4)
central to markets – for labour,
services and goods
Reliance on tacit (secret) Provision of systematic “Public knowledge available
knowledge acquired by small information accessible both to to all” public reporting; thus
circle of elites by virtue of their insiders and outsiders (more less protection for elites from
insider status; thus “deliberately open) democracy politics
anachronistic”
Autonomy from public scrutiny Reporting and control “Quantification and
and accountability – culture of mechanisms (audits) that offer democratization are linked”
subjection/deference allowed it the chance of public control. and “provided a partial
to continue alternative to a business
culture of clubs and informal
contacts.” (Porter, 1995:84-
85) page 7

Problem: “Understanding what sense to make of the destruction of the club system, and what
sense to make of the policy responses produced by the epoch of hyper-innovation…” (pg 5)

Since the 1970’s “sustained waves of institutional and policy reform swept across the advanced
capitalist world” (pg 4)
“The most straightforward meaning of regulation is to govern in the sense of
balancing a system” (Moran pg 5).

3 Dominant, but distorted, images of British
governing arrangements 1970-1990s
1.- Withdrawal of the state from many of the
interventionist, utopian “rowing” projects to state
“steering” and “balancing” projects.
Actual key features/character of new reg.
state since 1970s
1. Persistent interventionism,
Reality is ‘Expanded surveillance and control
within the public sector, with more hierarchy,
more formality, more state control.

2 – Institutional innovation/construction of 2. Drive to ever more systematic

new regulatory agencies with task of steering surveillance

3 - Renunciation of “command” mode; view 3. Colonization of new regulatory spheres

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of the state as a regulatory state; (Majone) -
abandoning the Keynesian welfare state regulation greatly widening the range of social
interventionist model (page 5) and economic life that is subject to public power

Thus, new state is not a retreat from the utopian ambitions of high modernism. “ (page 7)

Ch 3 summary – British regulatory state of 1980-90s connected with Victorian regulatory state, but
“Victorian legacy provided no stability” on which to build modern structures because the Victorian
regulatory state was created in an undemocratic society and in a pre-democratic political
system…”. Page 7/8). At the same time of the ‘new build’ there was an attempted rescue, and
reconstruction, of the Victorian regulatory legacy.” Page 9

Ch 4 “Nothing encapsulated the Victorian regulatory legacy quite so perfectly as the British system
of self-regulation. … Self-regulation in Britain was unusual, in the degree to which self-regulation
really did stress the autonomy of the self, whether that self was a market, a firm, or a profession. It
was here that the dominant British ideology of regulation was hammered out, and then diffused
throughout much of the twentieth century to other parts of the British state and economy. Thus, the
crisis of self-regulation, and a whole way of intellectualizing regulatory activity, was called into
question. So, counter-intuitively there was the reconstruction of self-regulatory institutions and
practices along lines that made them both more hierarchical and more closely integrated with the
state.

Ch 5 – new regulatory institutions and conflict; and the change from public to private ownership
Ch 6 – club government; its collapse; the chaos, rage and bitterness of displaced elites (pg11)
Ch 7 – old and new contexts – globalization and Europeanization- decline of culture of deference –
decline of British Empire (page 11)
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