Focusing on pressing global challenges, the book explores the European Union's capabilities in addressing environmental issues, the aftermath of the coronavirus crisis, and the need for reform in globalization and financial capitalism. It highlights the EU's role as a global standard-setter and discusses the potential of a social-investment welfare state to tackle material inequalities and align the future of work with the needs of workers in a dynamic economy.
Crouch's provocative argument in Post-Democracy has in many ways been
vindicated by recent events, but these have also highlighted some weaknesses
of the original thesis and shown that the situation today is even worse--
Increasingly, employees are being falsely treated as ‘self-employed’. This phenomenon – the ‘gig economy’ – is seen as the inevitable shape of things to come. In this book, Colin Crouch takes a step back and questions this logic. He shows how the idea of an employee – a stable status that involves a bundle of rights – has maintained a curious persistence. Examining the ways companies are attacking these rights, from proffering temporary work to involuntary part-time work to ‘gigging’, he reveals the paradoxes of the situation and argues that it should not and cannot continue. He goes on to propose reforms to reverse the perverse incentives that reward irresponsible employers and punish good ones, setting out an agenda for a realistic future of secure work. Crouch’s penetrating analysis will be of interest to everyone interested in the future of work, the welfare state and the gig economy.
Globalization, heralded for decades as a harbinger of prosperity, faces a huge
backlash. In this incisive book, leading thinker Colin Crouch defends
globalization against its critics to the right and left, thus providing a
much-needed riposte to the delusions that risk plunging the world back into a
zero-sum game of regressive economic nationalism--
An authoritative but accessible introduction to all key aspects of life across
contemporary Europe focusing in particular on the dynamics of social change
and similarities and differences between groups of European states and in
contrast to other advanced industrial societies.
In principle the advanced, market-driven world in which we now live is fuelled by knowledge, information and transparency, but in practice the processes that produce this world systematically corrupt and denigrate knowledge: this is the powerful and provocative argument advanced by Colin Crouch in his latest exploration of societies on the road to post-democracy. Crouch shows that executives in profit-maximizing corporations have incentives to ignore or distort knowledge, especially firms in the information business of the mass media themselves, as financial knowledge increasingly trumps the other kinds of knowledge that business needs. Firms also seek to take control of public knowledge and use it for their own ends, often at the cost of other stakeholders in society. Meanwhile the transfer of similar practices to professional public services undermines professional skills and ethics - especially when these services are out-sourced to the private sector. Attempts to extricate ourselves from these problems involve reshaping the complex and often conflicting relationships among citizens, professionals, managers and financiers. This new book by one of the most incisive critics of contemporary Western societies will be of interest to a wide range of readers, from students to policy-makers and those who work in the public and private sectors.
International Master Colin Crouch demonstrates how Magnus Carlsen was able to
elevate his play to a stratospheric level and become the highest-rated chess
player in the history of the game, breaking Garry Kasparov's record.
Capitalism is the only complex system known to us that can provide an efficient and innovative economy, but the financial crisis has brought out the pernicious side of capitalism and shown that it remains dependent on the state to rescue it from its own deficiencies.
