Depoliticising Monetary Policy: The Minimum Lending Rate Experiment in Britain in the 1970s

Conflict reconsidered: The boomerang effect of depoliticization in the policy process

“…Both pose problems in terms of the amenability of policies by democratic institutions. If, for example, interest rates are not set through political decisions, but through an independent central bank (institutional depoliticization) or through a fixed algorithm built into decision‐making (rule‐based depoliticization), the possibilities for resisting decisions on interest rates become heavily constrained (Burnham ).…”

Financial Deregulation and the Role of Statecraft: Lessons from Britain’s 1971 Competition and Credit Control Measures

“…This focus on the Treasury derives from the fact that its role in passing CCC has faced limited academic scrutiny, unlike the role of the Bank. In addition, this analysis will follow recent contributions (Rogers 2009;Burnham 2011) in extending Bulpitt's statecraft thesis to important officials and advisors within the Treasury -who, it will be demonstrated, also faced pressures to reconcile legitimacy and governability. When dealing with the 'esoteric politics' of pre-Thatcherite monetary policy, Moran (1984: 27) is right to argue that much of the focus must necessarily be on the relatively small cabal of civil servants that operated monetary levers.…”

“…The Court, Bulpitt argued, strategises so as to achieve a degree of 'governing competence' over economic activity while also securing their (re)election (Bulpitt 1986: 22). Despite the fact that Bulpitt focused on political leaders, the concept of statecraft has consequently been used to analyse the strategic machinations of less senior politicians and even unelected officials operating within the Treasury and Bank (Rogers 2009;Burnham 2011). Yet central to all statecraft analyses -and conspicuously missing from the financialisation literature's treatment of the state -is a focus on state actors' attempts to strategically reconcile two objectives: legitimacy and governability.…”

Review of periodical literature published in 2011

“…The study of British economic policy in the 1970s has received a contribution from Burnham, who interprets the introduction of the minimum lending rate (October 1972) as an example of internal, rule‐based depoliticization that successfully shifted expectations about interest rate movements. In suggesting that well‐documented and overtly politicized strategies co‐existed with depoliticized strategies, Burnham offers a more complex assessment of British political economy in the 1970s. Such arguments raise the need to consider the depoliticization strategies of New Labour in a much longer‐run historical framework.…”