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Repurposing Globalization: Discourse and Political Strategy in New Labour Britain. ACES Working Papers, 2012

Dye, Daniel T. (2012) Repurposing Globalization: Discourse and Political Strategy in New Labour Britain. ACES Working Papers, 2012. [Working Paper]

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    Abstract

    As elsewhere in Europe and around the world, the discourse of globalization in the United Kingdom—the particular representation of the world as undergoing an epochal shift away from the traditional autonomy of the nation-state—has powerfully reshaped political debate. And this has had important distributional effects on the balance of power in the political party system, most notably in the return to power of the Labour Party as “New Labour” under the leadership of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. But while it is known that articulations of globalization are embedded in the political system, a systematic analysis linking such discourse with party competition is lacking. In this paper, I propose that many features of the globalist language invoked by New Labour can be explained in terms of concrete strategic aims. Working with concepts of “heresthetics” and “bricolage” drawn from a synthesis of literatures, I illustrate this approach through several representative texts. These findings are then used to make predictions about the kind of globalization discourse to expect in the communications of two nationalist parties in the UK—“least likely” cases for globalism—which can be explored further as part of a larger research program.

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    Item Type: Working Paper
    Subjects for non-EU documents: Countries > U.K.
    EU policies and themes > External relations > globalisation/globalization
    EU policies and themes > Policies & related activities > political affairs > governance: EU & national level
    EU policies and themes > Policies & related activities > political affairs > political parties
    Subjects for EU documents: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Series and Periodicals: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Annual Reports: UNSPECIFIED
    Series: Series > American Consortium on European Union Studies > ACES Working Papers
    Depositing User: Phil Wilkin
    Official EU Document: No
    Language: English
    Date Deposited: 13 Jan 2015 11:19
    Number of Pages: 29
    Last Modified: 13 Jan 2015 11:19
    URI: http://aei.pitt.edu/id/eprint/59204

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