Redefining the Market-State Relationship: Responses to the Financial Crisis and the Future of Regulation

This book offers an interdisciplinary study of the market-state relationship drawing on law, economics, and politics. It addresses the changing nature of this relationship exploring the place law and regulation occupy in setting boundaries to market activity. The book sets out a theoretical evaluation of the state-market relationship offering an exposition of philosophical and political economy standpoints from Plato to Marx to the Chicago School. It also situates in a historical context discussions about the roles of law and regulation in relation to the market in liberal democracies, before focusing on the recent financial crisis which begun in 2008 and the ongoing crises in the financial markets, the wider economy and in the institutional structures of states and the EU. The book explores in depth the contradictions between the purported de-politicisation of economic policy and the highly ideological connotations of liberal economic policies. The book goes on to show that the state-market relationship should be reassessed with a corresponding re-conception of the role of law in regulating the market, arguing that issues of economic governance need to return to the forefront of political debate.