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	Verso Jan 2002, hc $25.00

Market Driven Politics: Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest
by Colin Leys

Market-driven Politics is an empirical examination of the extent to which politics and policy are conditioned, or even determined, by global economic forces. It is a multi-level study which moves between an analysis of those global forces, through national politics, to the changes occurring week by week in two fields of public life that are fundamentally important and familiar to everyone -- television broadcasting and health care. The focus is Britain, but the arguments applly in many other contexts. Public services like health care and broadcasting play an important role, because they affect legitmacy of the government of the day; in market-driven politics such domains become political flashpoints because they are also targets for global capital.

Colin Leys argues lucidly that we are witnessing a fundamental shift in the relationship between politics and economics. His original analysis of the key processes of commodification of public services, the conversion of public-service workforces into employees motivated to generate profit, and the role of the state in absorbing risk is critically important, not just for an analysis of market-driven politics but also for the longer-term defense of democracy and the collective values on which it depends.

"Neoliberal democracy is arguably the most important political notion of our age, yet it is one that is very poorly understood. Colin Leys has come to our rescue with a brilliant and accessible presentation of the concept, chock full of hard empirical data and case studies. I strongly urge all who are concerned with the future of democracy to read this book." -- Robert W. McChesney, author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy

Colin Leys is Emeritus Professor of Political Studies at Queen's University, Canada. He has taught at universities in Uganda, Kenya and the UK, and has since 1997 been co-editor with Leo Panitch of Socialist Register. His previous books include Politics in Britain, The Rise and Fall of Development Theory and, with Leo Panitch, The End of Parliamentary Socialism.

from the publisher