Citizenship in United Kingdom under Neo-liberalism Essay

Citizenship in United Kingdom under Neo-liberalism - Essay Example Opening of markets refers to free trade and an international division of labor (Bateman 48). Neoliberalism usually favours multilateral political force through international organizations or treaty devices such as the WTO and World Bank. It promotes plummeting the role of national governments to a minimum. Neoliberalism favors laissez-faire over direct government intervention (such as Keynesianism), and measures achievement in overall economic gain. To improve corporate efficiency, it strives to reject or mitigate labor policies such as lowest wage, and collective bargaining rights. (Faulks, pp 34-37) Neoliberalism is an economic philosophy rather than a broader political ideology. The swing away from government action in the 1970s led to the prologue of this term, which refers to a program of dipping trade barriers and internal market restrictions, while using government power to enforce opening of foreign markets. This is strongly different by economic liberals, who favor a free market and free trade. Neoliberalism accepts a positive degree of government involvement in the domestic economy, mainly a central bank with the power to print fiat money. It also favors an interventionist military (Cate 73). While neoliberalism is sometimes described as overlapping with Thatcherism, economists as varied as Joseph Stiglitz and Milton Friedman have been described - by others - as "neoliberal". This economic agenda is not essentially combined with a liberal agenda in politics: neoliberals often do not pledge to individual liberty on moral issues or in sexual mores. An extreme example was the Pinochet regime in Chile, but some also categorise Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and even Tony Blair and Gerhard Schrder as being neo-liberal. It should be distinguished that, in the 1990s in the UK, a lot of social democratic parties adopted 'neoliberal' economic policies such as privatization of industry and open markets, much to the disappointment of many of their own voters. This has led these parties to become de facto neoliberal, and has often resulted in a radical loss of popular support. For instance, critics to the left of the German Social Democratic Party and the British Labour Party blame them of pursuing neoliberal policies by refusing to renationalise industry. As a result of this, much support for these parties has been gone astray to the Christian Democratic Union and the Liberal Democrats, correspondingly. (Cate 77) Sometimes 'Neoliberalism' is use as a catch-all term for the anti-socialist response which sweep through some countries during the period between the 70s and 90s. 'Neoliberalism' in the form of Thatcher, Reagan, and Pinochet claimed to move from a bureacratic welfare-based society in the direction of a meritocracy acting in the interests of business. In actuality, these governments cut financial support for education and taxed income more deeply than wealth, which augmented the influence of big business and the upper class. Some conservatives perceive themselves as the true inheritors of classical liberalism. Jonah Goldberg of National Review argues that "most conservatives are nearer to classical liberals than a lot of Reason-libertarians" because conservatives want to protect some institutions that they see as wanted for liberty