An ambitious volume that sets out to analyse the nature, contradictions and limits of neoliberal governance in the EU. The analysis covers the changing geopolitical and geo-economic context, the Lisbon agenda and the contestation and mobilization against the European project, such as manifested in the national resistance against the constitution.

In the context of the financial and economic crisis, corporate governance and regulatory supervision failures, Laura Horn investigates one of the defining questions in social power relations in contemporary capitalism: who controls the modern corporation, and why.

This book argues that the concepts of ‘neoliberalism’ and ‘neoliberalisation,’ while in common use across the whole range of social sciences, have thus far been generally overlooked in planning theory and the analysis of planning practice. Offering insights from papers presented during a conference session at a meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Boston in 2008 and a number of commissioned chapters, this book fills this significant hiatus in the study of planning. What the case studies from Africa, Asia, North-America and Europe included in this volume have in common is that they all reveal the uneasy cohabitation of ‘planning’ – some kind of state intervention for the betterment of our built and natural environment – and ‘neoliberalism’ – a belief in the superiority of market mechanisms to organize land use and the inferiority of its opposite, state intervention. Planning, if anything, may be seen as being in direct contrast to neoliberalism, as something that should be rolled back or even annihilated through neoliberal practice. To combine ‘neoliberal’ and ‘planning’ in one phrase then seems awkward at best, and an outright oxymoron at worst. To admit to the very existence or epistemological possibility of ‘neoliberal planning’ may appear to be a total surrender of state planning to market superiority, or in other words, the simple acceptance that the management of buildings, transport infrastructure, parks, conservation areas etc. beyond the profit principle has reached its limits in the 21st century. Planning in this case would be reduced to a mere facilitator of ‘market forces’ in the city, be it gentle or authoritarian. Yet in spite of these contradictions and outright impossibilities, planners operate within, contribute to, resist or temper an increasingly neoliberal mode of producing spaces and places, or the revival of profit-driven changes in land use. It is this contradiction between the serving of private profit-seeking interests while actually seeking the public betterment of cities that this volume has sought to describe, explore, analyze and make sense of through a set of case studies covering a wide range of planning issues in various countries. This book lays bare just how spatial planning functions in an age of market triumphalism, how planners respond to the overruling profit principle in land allocation and what is left of non-profit driven developments.

This book explores the relationship between neo-liberalism, state power and global governance, exploring national differences in the exercise of state power in a variety of industrialized and developing economies. Among the strengths of this volume are its detailed global scope, its range of case studies in diverse policy areas, its analysis and critique of neo-liberalism, in theory and practice, and its impact upon state power and global governance.

Much of the critical discussion of the European political economy and the Eurozone crisis has focused upon a sense that solidaristic achievements built up during the post-war period are being continuously unravelled. Whilst there are many reasons to lament the trajectory of change within Europe’s political economy, there are also important developments, trends and processes which have acted to obstruct, hinder and present alternatives to this perceived trajectory of declining social solidarity. These alternatives have tended to be obscured from view, in part as a result of the conceptual approaches adopted within the literature. Drawing from examples across the EU, this book presents an alternative narrative and explanation for the development of Europe’s political economy and crisis, emphasising the agency of what are typically considered subordinate (and passive) actors. By highlighting patterns of resistance, disobedience and disruption it makes a significant contribution to a literature that has otherwise been more concerned to understand patterns of heightened domination, exploitation, inequality and neoliberal consolidation. It will be of interest to students and scholars alike.

Despite the severity of the global economic crisis and the widespread aversion towards austerity policies, neoliberalism remains the dominant mode of economic governance in the world. What makes neoliberalism such a resilient mode of economic and political governance? How does neoliberalism effectively reproduce itself in the face of popular opposition? States of Discipline offers an answer to these questions by highlighting the ways in which today’s neoliberalism reinforces and relies upon coercive practices that marginalize, discipline and control social groups. Such practices range from the development of market-oriented policies through legal and administrative reforms at the local and national-level, to the coercive apparatuses of the state that repress the social forces that oppose various aspects of neoliberalization. The book argues that these practices are built on the pre-existing infrastructure of neoliberal governance, which strive towards limiting the spaces of popular resistance through a set of administrative, legal and coercive mechanisms. Exploring a range of case studies from across the world, the book uses ‘authoritarian neoliberalism’ as a conceptual prism to shed light on the institutionalization and employment of state practices that invalidate public input and silence popular resistance.

This book centres on the effects of the political and later economic crisis which seriously affected the European Union and its impact on the seemingly endless UK debate over Britain's position within the EU.