Policy transfer in a competition state: Britain’s ʼnew deal’

The main submission of this chapter is twofold. First, the British Labour government has adopted a policy agenda, which in its most crucial aspects reflects the continuing transformation of the British State into a competition state. Secondly, within a competition state policy actors and institutions increasingly promote new forms of complex globalization through processes of policy transfer. The main challenge facing governments all over the world is their capacity to adapt to the exogenous constraints and opportunities brought about by different processes of globalization while maintaining a relatively effective domestic policy programme. State actors and institutions promote new forms of complex globalization in the attempt to adapt state action to cope more effectively with what they see as global realities. As Anne Gray argues, ‘New Labour has explicitly chosen to continue the Tories’ workfarist approach to labour market policy. Welfare policy has thus been incorporated into the new economic orthodoxy of the competition state.