Overview
- Shows how ‘crisis prone neoliberalism’ has weakened the resilience of the UK and led to poor pandemic outcomes
- Contributes political insights to COVID-19 public inquiry processes now gathering momentum globally
- Mobilises neorepublican thought to fashion an anti-neoliberal build back better manifesto
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About this book
This book seeks to better understand the meaning and implications of the UKs calamitous encounter with the COVID-19 global pandemic for the future of British neoliberalism.
Construing COVID-19 as a political pandemic and mobilising a novel applied political philosophy approach, the authors cultivate fresh intellectual resources, both analytical and normative, to better understand why the UK failed the COVID-19 test and how it might ‘fail forward’ so as to strengthen its resilience.
COVID-19 they argue, has intercepted the UK government’s decades-long experimentation with neoliberalism at what appears to be a threshold moment in this model’s life course. Neoliberalism has served as a key progenitor of the country’s vulnerability: the pandemic has cruelly unveiled the failings of neoliberal logics and legacies which have placed the country at elevated risk and hampered its response. The pandemic in turn has attenuated underlying systemic maladies inherent in British neoliberalism and served as a great disruptor and potential accelerant of history; a consequential episode in the tumultuous life of this politico-economic model.
To meaningfully ‘build back better’, a true renaissance of social democracy is needed. Drawing upon the neorepublican tradition of political philosophy, the authors confront neoliberalism’s hegemonic but parochial concept of human freedom as non-interference and place the neorepublican idea of freedom as non-domination in the service of building a new UK social contract.
This book will be of interest to political philosophers, political geographers, medical sociologists, public-health scholars, and epidemiologists, to stakeholders engaged in the public inquiry processes now gathering momentum globally and to architects of build back better programmes, especially in western advanced capitalist economies.
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Keywords
Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
Reviews
“This is a timely provocation on the UK’s experience of the Covid-19 pandemic. It illuminates deeper issues within the British political system, especially its increasing engagement with neoliberal philosophy and policy through an implicit commitment to value individual freedom over community security. Covid-19 has brought these tensions to a wider public audience, and challenges us to think more seriously about what kind of society we wish to forge post-pandemic.” (Professor Sally Sheard BA PhD MFPH FHEA Executive Dean Institute of Population Health Faculty of Health & Life Sciences University of Liverpool)
“This important and insightful book examines the Covid pandemic in its political context and shows how the UK's response to the pandemic embodied some of the worst aspects of neoliberal thinking. Boyle, Hickson and Ujhelyi Gomez demonstrate some of the most important lessons to be learned from how the UK’s Covid response fell short, in the hope that responses to future emergencies can avoid the pitfalls of the past.” (Professor Martin O’Neill Professor of Political Philosophy, University of York)
“Each and every project and program of neoliberalization has a habit of failing in its own way, while failing the poor, the sick, and the vulnerable in ways that are quite systematic and sometimes deadly. In COVID-19 and the Case Against Neoliberalism, Mark Boyle, James Hickson and Katalin Ujhelyi Gomez combine a shrewd diagnosis of this distinctively political pandemic with a plea to actually build back better.” (Professor Jamie Peck, Professor of Geography and Distinguished University Scholar University of British Columbia)
“This book brings together detailed arguments about the impact of the pandemic on the UK within a political analysis about neoliberalism as influencing UK policy and its relationship to the impact of socio-economic factors on the biological. It uses Liverpool City Region as the UK case study in comparison to analyses of other international experiences. It brings together detailed, heavily referenced arguments and data to inform the debate and analysis of the UK COVID-19 pandemic from a political science/public health interface, focusing on underlying structures and systems and decisions on strategy, response and how this influenced impact. It looks forward to potential learning from what happened, and analyses of influences as outlined. It adds depth and breadth to debates about socio economic inequalities, the role of the state, communities, individuals, and ways to improve equity and its impact on health, using the pandemic as the overarching case.” (Professor Mark Gabbay MD FRCGP Professor of General Practice, University of Liverpool)
“This important and insightful book examines the Covid pandemic in its political context and shows how the UK's response to the pandemic embodied some of the worst aspects of neoliberal thinking. Boyle, Hickson and Ujhelyi Gomez demonstrate some of the most important lessons to be learned from how the UK’s Covid response fell short, in the hope that responses to future emergencies can avoid the pitfalls of the past.” (Professor Martin O’Neill Professor of Political Philosophy, University of York)
“Each and every project and program of neoliberalization has a habit of failing in its own way, while failing the poor, the sick, and the vulnerable in ways that are quite systematic and sometimes deadly. In COVID-19 and the Case Against Neoliberalism, Mark Boyle, James Hickson and Katalin Ujhelyi Gomez combine a shrewd diagnosis of this distinctively political pandemic with a plea to actually build back better.” (Professor Jamie Peck, Professor of Geography and Distinguished University Scholar University of British Columbia)
“This book brings together detailed arguments about the impact of the pandemic on the UK within a political analysis about neoliberalism as influencing UK policy and its relationship to the impact of socio-economic factors on the biological. It uses Liverpool City Region as the UK case study in comparison to analyses of other international experiences. It brings together detailed, heavily referenced arguments and data to inform the debate and analysis of the UK COVID-19 pandemic from a political science/public health interface, focusing on underlying structures and systems and decisions on strategy, response and how this influenced impact. It looks forward to potential learning from what happened, and analyses of influences as outlined. It adds depth and breadth to debates about socio economic inequalities, the role of the state, communities, individuals, and ways to improve equity and its impact on health, using the pandemic as the overarching case.” (Professor Mark Gabbay MD FRCGP Professor of General Practice, University of Liverpool)
Authors and Affiliations
About the authors
Mark Boyle is Professor of Geography in the Department of Geography at Maynooth University in Ireland.
James Hickson is Research Associate at the University of Liverpool’s Heseltine Institute for Public Policy, Practice and Place.
Katalin Ujhelyi Gomez is Research Associate at the Applied Research Collaboration North West Coast (ARC NWC) in the Department of Primary Care and Mental Health at the University of Liverpool.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: COVID-19 and the Case Against Neoliberalism
Book Subtitle: The United Kingdom’s Political Pandemic
Authors: Mark Boyle, James Hickson, Katalin Ujhelyi Gomez
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18935-7
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-18934-0Published: 10 January 2023
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-18935-7Published: 09 January 2023
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIX, 236
Number of Illustrations: 2 b/w illustrations, 52 illustrations in colour
Topics: Human Geography, Political Theory, Sociology, general, Epidemiology, Political Philosophy