Neoliberalism and Policy Transfer in the British Competition State: the Case of Welfare Reform

Abstract

My main submission in this chapter is twofold. First, the British Labour government has adopted a policy agenda, which in its most crucial aspects reflects the continuing transformation of the British State into a competition state. Secondly, within a competition state policy actors and institutions increasingly promote new forms of complex globalization through processes of policy transfer in an attempt to adapt state action to cope more effectively with what they see as global ‘realities’. Complex globalization in this context refers to the way in which public policy-making in a globalizing world is increasingly internally and externally complex due to the sheer range of state and non-state actors involved in the delivery of public goods through multi-level governance.