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This chapter considers the area of personal work relations, i.e., relations between employers and workers which are not mediated through the formal institutions of workers' collective representation. It argues that the main trend during the period under review was one of ‘de-standardization’ of those relations, initially through a straightforward process of de-regulation and later, under ‘New Labour’, through more sophisticated legal and regulatory mechanisms. The main aim of this policy, it is argued, was to promote managerial adaptability, i.e., the ability of employers to respond to changes in demand or methods of production. However, de-standardization was compatible with, and perhaps even required, some cautious conferment of new rights on workers, for example, in the area of ‘family-friendly’ policies. On the other hand, this policy caused difficulties for the government in relation to more far-reaching European proposals for individual rights, whether stemming from the European Court of Human Rights or the institutions of the European Community.

This chapter presents a mainly EC level analysis of the important questions surrounding the regulatory competence of public services in Europe. The analysis points out that public services lie at the crossroads of national and supranational regulatory regimes, each interacting and shaping their functioning directly or indirectly. In this self styled type of ‘shared competence’, the European regulatory level is progressively carving out its space either through direct EC intervention, or indirect regulatory influences by other areas of EC law and policy that affect public services when in the presence of an ‘economic activity’. De-regulatory pressures (mainly in the form of negative integration introduced by the ECJ) and re-regulatory initiatives are also present and are partly limited by competence questions. But perhaps the most interesting findings are those that point out at the cyclical and simultaneous interactions between deregulation and re-regulation, national influences, and EC pressures.

This chapter looks in detail at the ways in which the night-time economy in Britain has developed since the late-1980s, from a context of repression and marginality to its current position of centrality to the political economy of British cities. In particular, it traces key shifts in the governance of urban spaces after dark and in nightlife cultures. The chapter documents the emergence of a new ‘night-time high street’ and its increasing dominance by the branded pub chains who exploited legal loopholes in the pre-2003 licensing system to acquire prime locations. This entrepreneurial agenda is contrasted with the repression of unlicensed ‘rave’ events and the repackaging of ‘dance music culture’ by the drinks and leisure industries, linked to the creation of new alcoholic drinks products and lifestyle branding, targeted at the young adult consumer.

This chapter explores the culpability of the economics profession in the current global economic crisis. Like the previous chapter, it demonstrates that leading economists pursued a maxi-max decision rule: enamored with the elegance of the efficient markets hypothesis, they advocated a utopian scheme of financial liberalization/de-regulation despite its attendant risks to the economy (which Keynes had identified over seventy years ago). Moreover, the profession failed to promote and sustain intellectual pluralism, and instead dismissed the warnings of those economists who correctly identified the looming crisis. Indeed, the profession was overtaken by closed-mindedness, overconfidence and group-think which obstructed the free and fair exchange of conflicting ideas that are the hallmark of a vibrant intellectual tradition. In all these ways, the intellectual bubble in economics and the financial bubble in asset markets were mutually reinforcing, and helped prepare the ground for the ultimate collapse.

Billions of litres of water flow through the centre of Guayaquil each day, as the Rivers Daule and Babahoyo converge to form the River Guayas. Given this fact, it is perplexing to find that 35% of the inhabitants of the city do not have access to adequate and reliable water supplies and the whole city suffers from chronic absolute water shortages. In this and the next chapter, we shall explore the contradictions of urban water provision, which result in a sizeable part of the urban population, invariably the poorer end of the social spectrum, not having access to piped potable water. This situation, in turn, makes them easy victims of water speculators, the private water sellers that distribute water in non-serviced areas by means of tankers. In Guayaquil, approximately 400 tankers service a population of half a million people, or approximately 35% of the total urban population. These water-merchants buy water at a highly subsidized price (70 sucres/m3),while they sell it for up to 6,500 sucres/m3 (November 1993), a price of up to 300 times higher than that paid by low-volume consumers who receive water from the water company. We will also explore the strategies and structure of the water company, infrastructure and investment planning, price mechanisms and control structures in the light of these exclusionary and disempowering mechanisms of the existing water system. In short, we shall explore the contradictory dynamics of the ‘Water Mandarins’. The complex networks of those that hold control over the water tap, water infrastructure, and water distribution will be excavated in order to unearth the relations of power that infuse and eventually organize the intermittent flow of water in Guayaquil. Of course, analysing the changing dynamics of water supply in Guayaquil is like trying to hit a moving target. The field research for this book was completed in 1998. Since then, the public water company has awarded a concession to International Water Services, a Dutch-based subsidiary of Bechtel and Edison Spa, to operate, administer, and expand Guayaquil’s water and sewage services and infrastructure (see below).

This chapter explores the reform of the working processes and organisational structures of the public management bureaucracies in the Amsterdam municipality. It reflects on the mechanisms through which technocratic thinking gets institutionalised within existing public government bodies, and reveals the development of public planning expertise in contemporary urban governance. This chapter particularly questions the changing role of public bureaucracies in the Netherlands, a country where public expertise still plays a central role in urban governance, but is progressively being reformed to accommodate private actors. It shows how the city's internal bureaucratic structure has been reformed and reorganised under processes of austerity and de-regulation to promote quick adjustments to plans and efficient delivery. Leadership and working processes are becoming increasingly focused on ‘flexible implementation’ and the production of entrepreneurial modes of governance.

This chapter explores the role of planning's publics within the emergent technocratic landscapes of planning. It does so by drawing on ongoing research into the localism agenda in England and in particular on neighbourhood planning. Neighbourhood planning was introduced in 2011 as a ‘community right’ to draw up a statutory land-use plan. The chapter explores the extent to which technical and ‘expert’ knowledge and the power of public and private planners is being challenged or displaced by the knowledge, emotions, and actions of citizen planners. As such, the chapter shows that technocratisation is a more varied and complex process than previously thought and that these seeming spaces of de-regulation are not immune to forms of re-regulation which seek to re-create local knowledge to align with technocratic language and purposes.

This chapter charts the rise of the neo-liberal Conservatism approach to the welfare state under the Thatcher and Major governments. While emphasis was given to economic reforms during the first and second term Thatcher governments, there were clear indications of a neo-liberal turn in social policy. These included enabling council house tenants to buy their homes under the 1980 Housing Act, reforms to the social security system and the adoption of a more `business-like’ approach to running the NHS. In the third term social policy took centre stage with changes in health and social care. The Education Reform Act of 1980 led to the introduction of a national curriculum and national testing of pupil performance. Thatcher’s downfall led to Major taking the reins in 1992. After securing victory in the General Election, Major embedded Thatcher’s neo-liberal social reforms years, maintaining public funding whilst seeking cost savings and more `efficient’ non-state forms of delivery.

With a specific concern for the period from the 1980s to the 2000s, this chapter examines how the connection of alcohol to crime and disorder is understood and addressed through regulation. It considers the construction of drinking as a crime problem with reference to violence, anti-social behaviour, football hooliganism and binge drinking. Importantly, it confronts the narrative of de-regulation, usually used to describe alcohol policies in this period, and demonstrates that, while some licensing controls were relaxed, other forms of alcohol regulation were actually intensified. Furthermore, this chapter explores the historical roots of recent public attitudes and forms of regulation in the nineteenth century.

The Royal Commission on Standards of Conduct in Public Life chaired by Lord Nolan became a standing committee and commissioned reports on many aspects of public life including local government. The Commission’s attempt to re-invigorate the ideals of public service by teaching codes of behaviour perhaps represented a last ditch attempt to reduce corruption by voluntary self-regulation rather than by legislation. The examination of the presence of corruption in British urban society in particular has revealed a peculiar complacency. Even as Nolan was issuing his first reports there were corruption cases in Glasgow, Birmingham, Paisley, Doncaster and Hull.

This introductory section acts as a platform for the director-centred film analyses of chapters 1, 2 and 3. As well as looking at Iñárritu, Cuarón and del Toro’s ongoing connections to Mexico’s national film culture and ‘industry,’ the section offers an account of their beginnings in feature filmmaking in Mexico and the industrial, political, legislative and production model changes propelled by neoliberalism (North American Free Trade Agreement, ticket price de-regulation, private production models) that have been instrumental in shaping both the failures (reduction in production numbers, exhibition crisis) and successes (1999-2002 critical renaissance) in Mexican cinema from 1990 to the present moment. These changes are key to understanding both Iñárritu, Cuarón and del Toro’s early features and the circumstances that propelled these directors’ periods of deterritorialized filmmaking in the United S+tates and Europe.