The British Regulatory State: High Modernism and Hyper-Innovation

Michael Moran's The British Regulatory State is a must read for all interested in questions about how our polities are being governed. Focusing on the UK, he identifies two types of regulation: 1) a club government of autonomous networks of policy makers, inspectors, professional, and bureaucrats, clearly elitist but disaggregated and 2) a post-1970 regulatory state replacing the old informal system with a pervasive and intrusive application of surveillance and performance evaluation. His analysis of the cancerous spread of this "high modernism" holds significant implications for the USA and all state's adopting the mantra of markets and the new public management. The work tends to be heavy going but is filled with pregnant insights. A survey of chapter six first and then the first chapter might help readers with key ideas and make the book easier to digest. But this is book is very much worth the effort and its content very important.