State economic planning in a capitalist society: the political sociology of economic policy in Britain, 1940-79

Longstreth, Frank Hoover (1983) State economic planning in a capitalist society: the political sociology of economic policy in Britain, 1940-79. PhD thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Abstract

This thesis investigates the relationship between business and the state in modern Britain by focussing in particular on the development and attempted institution of forms of economic planning and more generally on the formulation and implementation of economic policies. In this effort it looks at changes in forms of representation, modes of procedure and patterns of state intervention in the economy. It then attempts to characterise various shifts along all three axes in terms of an oscillation between pluralism/liberalism and corporatism/interventionism. A central theme is that the latter programme has been relatively weak and poorly instituted in post-war Britain, and most of the empirical detail is constructed around an explanation of this phenomenon. The core of the argument here is that, while relations between dominant and subordinate interests can be seen as primary in the explanation of the politics of economic policy, relations between business sectors are also an important and necessary part of that explanation. More specifically, the thesis attempts to document the argument that relations between the industrial and financial sectors have been marked by various lines of conflict, both actual and potential, and that the latter have been structured by a particular pattern of national economic development which has placed financial interests in a position of economic and political dominance. As such the introductory chapters trace out the historic roots of that dominance and instances of intra-business conflict in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The main bulk of the thesis attempts to substantiate a case for'their continued relevance in the period since World War Two, focussing in greatest detail on the attempts at economic planning and other forms of state intervention under Labour and Conservative governments in the 1960s and 1970s. The weakness of the corporatist/interventionist programme is then attributed to various institutional, structural and political-economic features of the relations between the state, finance, industry and organized labour.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Additional Information:	© 1983 Frank Hoover Longstreth
Library of Congress subject classification:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions J Political Science > JZ International relations
Supervisor:	Crouch, Colin
URI:	http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/3956

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