Neo-liberalism, democracy and the state: Temporal and spatial constraints to globalisation

Most discussions of the role of the state in an emerging neo-liberal, globalised world pay little or no attention to the constraints on state action linked to the operation of liberal representative democratic regimes. A discussion of the nature of representative democracy identifies those temporal and spatial constraints, and illustrates them with examples from four policy areas: freedom of labour movement; exporting jobs; subsidising and protecting producers; and promoting places. Those constraints are much more effective in some types of country than others, however, and in some it has proved possible to circumvent them by moving policy decisions outside direct government purview.