Industrial Policy and the Rise of Government Activism

This book explores the evolving nature of economic and social policy in the United Kingdom over the last decade. The book relies on a computational, text-as-data, analysis of thousands of official documents produced by the British government between 1983 and 2024. The primary focus is on understanding evolutions in the recent, post-2016, period, and in particular on how this period may differ from previous eras. Three key conclusions emerge: First, the rise of a more activist, interventionist, and state-led approach to economic policy; second, the parallel rise of a distinctive form of activism in social policy; and third, the rise of a host of institutions designed to constrain and outsource the authority of the executive, which was already underway before 2016. The take-away point is that the United Kingdom has moved, in the second part of the 2010s, to a post-neoliberal model that has its own internal logic and is supported by its own distinctive set of institutions. The book will be of great interest to readers in political economy, political science, public policy, and quantitative research methods.