New Book Series – Agenda Publishing

Agenda Publishing are delighted to announce the launch of a new Book Series:

Building Progressive Alternatives, edited by David Coates and Matthew Watson

The purpose of this series is to provide a space for, and to encourage the production of, high quality academic work by economists, political economists and other social scientists united in a common mission: to use their scholarship to create a coherent, credible and progressive economic growth strategy which, when accompanied by an associated set of wider public policies, can inspire and underpin the revival of a successful centre-left politics in advanced capitalist societies.

The fact that such a series can and needs to be proposed speaks to two important absences in and around the policy-making processes of democratic states. Together they weaken left-wing political forces in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis and the subsequent Great Recession. The first is the current absence of a fully thought through, clearly articulated and plausible set of drivers for sustainable economic growth that might operate in a non-predatory manner. The second is the dominance, within mainstream academia, of more conservative, predominantly neo-liberal paradigms of economic and social thought and the under-representation of alternative theoretical perspectives. The purpose of the series is to help address these current imbalances.

The editors welcome proposals that are addressed to one or more of the six great questions that currently face centre-left political movements in advanced capitalist societies:

(1) What are the central features of modern economies that make a progressive politics necessary?

(2) What are the economic end-states towards which a progressive politics should be oriented?

(3) What are the major trends in modern economic life that create the problems to which a progressive politics is a necessary response?

(4) What are the barriers to the successful resolution of those problems?

(5) What are the strategies available for the overcoming of those barriers?

(6) What policy options and policy instruments are available for the successful implantation of those strategies?

The aim is to create a series of works that will increasingly cross-reference and build upon each other, pulling together a mosaic of studies addressing all/part of one/more of these basic questions at the level of the national economy, or regional economies, or the global system as a whole. Authors will be encouraged to ground their analysis in the most extensive and reliable relevant empirical data; to anchor their arguments in clearly-specified theoretical systems; to engage systematically in critiques of alternative theoretical systems and policy proposals; and to focus their conclusions on the applicability of their findings to the design of progressive policies. Ideally, the series will become the flagship for a whole renaissance of progressive economic thought, analysis and practice that can lift industrial and post-industrial economies onto a more stable and prosperous growth path. Set within the context of sympathetic supporting policies, the ultimate objective is to bring prosperity, security and fulfilment to everyone as they navigate their way through everyday economic life.

If you are interested in working with us on this important new endeavour, then please contact the publisher, Alison Howson, in the first instance with your ideas and suggestions: Alison.howson@agendapub.com.

A proposal guide can be found here: http://www.agendapub.com/images/pdfs/agenda_submission_guide.pdf.