Ian Hodge - ‘Neoliberalism, Institutional Blending and the Governance of Rural Land’

Date: Wednesday 11 October 2017
Time: 18:00 -19:30
Speaker: Ian Hodge
Talk Title: 'Neoliberalism, Institutional Blending and the Governance of Rural Land’
Location: Ramsden Room, St Catharine's College

The seminar series is supported by the Cambridge Journal of Economics and the Economics and Policy Group at the Cambridge Judge Business School.

An audio recording of the presentation

Speaker

Ian Hodge is Professor of Rural Economy in the Department of Land Economy and Fellow of Hughes Hall at the University of Cambridge, where he has worked since 1983. He was Head of Department of Land Economy between 2002-2011. His primary research interests are in rural environmental governance, policy and economics, property institutions and rural development. He has previously worked at the Universities of Queensland in Australia and Newcastle upon Tyne in the UK. He has a PhD in Countryside Planning from Wye College, University of London and a BSc from the University of Reading.

Talk Overview
There is a large literature on neoliberalism. Over time the literature has expanded to cover a variety of different issues. It is almost universally critical and has become increasingly incoherent and contradictory. One thread within neoliberalism, focusing on property rights, casts the debate in terms of public ownership and intervention versus private enterprise and ‘free’ markets. However, this obscures a more significant trend towards new approaches in governance that fall between these extremes that we term institutional blending. This recognises the major role of civil society, reallocation of property rights, provision of assurance and of public, private and third sector partnerships. It includes a role for an interventionist state that embraces many of the mechanisms that have been developed through neoliberal approaches. These will be illustrated taking examples from rural land management. The discussion questions whether this may represent a post-neoliberal approach to public governance.