Selling scandal or ideology? The politics of business crime coverage

Abstract

Financial scandals and controversies have recently attracted much attention in the British press. The excesses of the bankers’ bonuses, MPs’ expenses scandals and those deemed ‘benefit cheats’ and welfare scroungers have been given prominence by the print news media, and the present Coalition government. The politicization of the current financial crisis has resulted in ‘the privatization of loss and the socialization of costs’. Yet how do we make sense of this? Or how are those responsible for financial wrongdoings able to ‘get away with it’? This article suggests that the interests of business as a class remain largely uncontested in contemporary political discourse. Just one way in which this is evident is through the coverage of financial crime, and this article offers as illustration a case study of the political construction of business crime (price fixing) in the pages of the British press. It is suggested that the way in which this crime is framed is reflective of a broader ideological discursive commitment which privileges business interests over the public interest.

Keywords

Business as class depoliticization decriminalization financial crime journalism news/information policy and law (media systems)political communication public sphere

In contemporary public discourses in the UK, bankers have been vilified as greedy and fat cats (which reflect the politer terms used) for their bonuses. The bankers themselves seem to have little concern about the public condemnation of their actions; they have sought to justify these payments as just desert for hard work, ‘fair remuneration’, and argue that they are not doing anything legally reprehensible. At the other end of the spectrum, benefit claimants, like bankers, are regularly pilloried in the press. While criticism is also connected to the size of payments, the difference between bankers and benefit claimants (according to the right-wing press) is that the latter have obtained their income through nefarious and implicitly illegal means. Indeed, this (unsupported) assumption is also one which the present Coalition government’s welfare reform agenda has been premised upon. This vilification of benefit claimants, in particular, takes place in a context in which businesses engaged in criminal activities are rarely held accountable in public discourses (let alone subject to the demonization of those on welfare). (It is perhaps worth noting here that the £7bn in bonuses that the City were rumoured to be paying themselves in 2010, is roughly equivalent to the £7bn Osborne is axing from the welfare budget [Treanor, 2010]). So why such a difference in response?

In the UK, a neoliberal political agenda is currently relentlessly pursued, markets are liberalized and deregulated to prevent the ‘flight of capital’, politicians capitulate to the demands of business, but what does this mean for the public? The rise of corporate power and corporations as political actors is increasingly documented (see, for example, Miller and Mooney, 2010) but what happens when they behave illegally? Or immorally? How do the public institutions which are supposed to protect the public interest respond? Much has been made of the failure of financial journalists in the recent financial crisis (see, for example, Tambini, 2010) but in a media environment generally supportive of business interests, is this really surprising? The media are crucial to the functioning of any democracy, and with the increasing political prominence of business interests it becomes perhaps even more pertinent to ask questions about the relationship between the media and business as a class. This article explores one aspect of that relationship, the coverage of business crime, in which we use the example of price fixing. Price fixing may sound like an innocuous or inoffensive crime, although as Stephan has observed (2008) chances are we have all been a victim of this crime. For example, the dairy product price fixing case by some of the big supermarkets was said to have costs consumers in the region of £270m (Attwood, 2007). On occasion companies are prosecuted, yet these prosecutions fail to be met with the same levels of outrage in the press that accompanies accusations of benefit ‘scrounging’. So why is this? While some of this may be attributable to journalists themselves (see Tambini, 2010) it is also the case that we need to consider the political context and structural features within which such coverage takes place.

The political media

It is accepted that the media play a role in circulating public discourse. But it is also assumed that the media are not simply passive conduits of information, rather that they perform an active role in constructing said discourse/s. This assumption draws attention to the tensions between the overt political motivations which have been ascribed to the media (see, for example, Street, 2001). While the media have the capacity to exhibit agency, that is not to deny the structural function of the media. The dominant ideology thesis (Abercrombie et al., 1980) or propaganda model (Herman and Chomsky, 1988) draw attention to the role of the media in circulating dominant discourses (akin to Gramsci’s notion of hegemony). As Abercrombie et al. observe, ideology is important in explaining the ‘coherence of the dominant class’, crucially for them though it does not explain the ‘coherence of society as a whole’ (1980: 3). We reject, however, the structural determinism implied by the dominant ideology thesis, and suggest there is an interaction within the media, who operate as both structures and agents, not passively disseminating dominant ideologies (as suggested by structural accounts) but playing an active role in their creation, construction, articulation and communication. Our argument is located in the context of the tension between business as a dominant class structure, but one which incorporates the media (whose business desires clash with the democratic ideals of liberal theory).

As such, the media, given their own pursuit of profit, also play a role in promoting the interests of business as a dominant class, while, at the same time, appearing to provide a site where ideologies are negotiated and contested. However, this clash of objectives means that it is the politically and economically dominant groups in society who have the capacity to define the parameters of debate; defining discourse and the way in which dominant ideas are framed, produced and reproduced. While this may not necessarily be an overt intention, arguably this is a consequence of interaction between media owners seeking to act strategically in the pursuit of profit and power (e.g. Street, 2001). The existence of the media in their own competitive marketplace means that they have a vested interest in the maintenance of the system status quo, which translates into not questioning the methods of business too closely.

Media and crime coverage

Much of the literature on crime coverage has been polarized around content and audiences. Focus has been upon the production and consumption of crime coverage (Schlesinger et al., 1991); the content of coverage of criminal action and prosecutions (Lofquist, 1997; for an extensive review see Reiner, 2007); the potential effects upon audiences (Schlesinger et al., 1991; Shelley and Adkins, 1981); as a sensationalist means to attract audiences (Schlesinger et al., 1991); and the difference in coverage and reality (Shelley and Adkins, 1981). While direct effects seem to be debatable, the media coverage of crime has been argued to have raised levels of fear (Schlesinger et al., 1991); both for individuals and within communities (Liska and Baccaglini, 1990); and in this sense has been argued to have played a role in the creation of societal ‘moral panics’ (Cohen, 2002 [1972]; Hall et al., 1978).

In 1949 Sutherland coined the phrase ‘white collar crime’, defined as a ‘crime committed by a person of respectability and high social status in the course of his [sic] occupation’ (1983 [1949]: 7). This definition openly asserted a class base to crime. Attempts to narrow the concept have focused on the workplace, either as a site where crime is committed or a place on whose behalf a crime is committed (Braithwaite, 1985; Clinard and Quinney, 1973; Pearce, 2001; and for review of its interdisciplinary roots and development see Lofquist, 1997). In media coverage, white collar crime tends to be marginalized and given much less prominence than that of ‘street crime’ (Welch et al., 1998: 222). For Welch et al. (1998), this is an ideological act which favours the construction of crime as something which is carried out by low income individuals, which lacks reference to the broader social context within which this crime occurred. Many of the studies above suggest that crime is something to be afraid of, defined by elite level actors and perpetrated by those at street level – whose voices we don’t hear.

In order to think about what is meant by ‘crime’, we need to understand the way in which public discourses present and define crime. One way to do this is through analysis of who gets to speak. Most literature highlights the role of elites, be they state managers or intellectuals (Welch et al., 1998) or state officials, union leaders and pressure groups (Schlesinger and Tumber, 1994). Those who speak about crime are thus structurally privileged and able to define what crime is. Carrabine (2008) argues that we need to understand the social character of the construction of ‘crime’, that is the way in which crime stories are produced, circulated and consumed. This means that the way in which crime is constructed in the media becomes reflective of the agenda and interests of those speaking, rather than representative of the interests of society more generally. In this way the social construction of crime can have an ideological function (Hall et al., 1978), legitimating and reinforcing dominant ideologies and ideas (Herman and Chomsky, 1988) and assumptions about what constitutes crime (i.e. theft from other people or property) and what doesn’t (such as theft from the taxpayer in the form of tax evasion). The media studies literature more widely draws our attention to perhaps the most significant effect of media coverage: its capacity to produce effects which are ‘broadly ideological rather than narrowly attitudinal’ (Sacco, 1995: 141). For us, the political dimension of this coverage therefore lies in the question: in whose interests is the coverage presented? We argue that the political dimension of business crime coverage is about more than the state’s ability to control its citizens through the enforcement of legislation. Thus the political dimension relates to not only what is said by political and economic elites, but what is not said. The bigger issue of course, is whose interests this discourse benefits.

Business and economic news coverage

Economic news and business news tend to be discussed differently from other forms of news. First, as Doyle (2006) observes, economic news tends to be relegated to specialist outlets whose audiences are already financially literate. Alongside sport, business is the only other specialist interest to get its own sections in the broadsheets. Again, the audiences for this news are assumed to be business and financially literate, the pages are used as a site for political, business and financial elites to speak to each other nationally (Davis, 2007) and globally (Kantola, 2007). This then is not news that is constructed in the public interest, rather it is news constructed in the interest of business. Where the audiences or the public have been discussed in relation to business or economic news, this has tended to be either in terms of its potential influence on voting publics at election times (Blood and Phillips, 1995; De Boef and Kellstedt, 2004) or if the news is ‘sensational’ (Tiffen, 1989; Tumber, 1993), and thus is not seen as particularly controversial (Baram, 1977). Davies (2008) eloquently maps the changing nature of news production. As press releases flood newspaper offices, and time and economic pressures mean journalists become less likely to check business PR sources than official sources (Davies, 2008; Tumber, 1993), integration and lack of remoteness has meant that business news has become more supportive and complimentary (Tumber, 1993). At the same time, as the production of financial news becomes the largest source of revenue for the broadsheet press (Davis, 2005: 305) it is perhaps unsurprising that news of business crime should be much less critical.

Case study: Price fixing as business crime

The practice of price fixing has a historical lineage, identified in the writings of Adam Smith in the eighteenth century. Smith argued that this particular business crime was inevitable, given that as social beings traders would meet and agree on mechanisms which would be beneficial to both parties (and against the interests of their customer/the public):

People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the publick, or in some contrivance to raise prices. It is impossible to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice. (Smith, 2008 [1776]: Book I x: 129)

He argues that it is not possible to prevent companies and individuals in the pursuit of profit, from meeting to collude to fix prices. Indeed, he implies that price fixing is an inevitable consequence of free, unregulated trade (and on a deeper level, human nature). This recognition of weaknesses with ‘free markets’ draws attention to the existence of inequality within the market: given the self-interest of those producers within markets, there was an almost inevitable likelihood of exploitation of the consumer.

Smith also argued that it was not possible to legislate against this type of behaviour (2008 [1776]: 129), and successive UK governments had accepted that view until 2002 when legislation was introduced. This brought the UK into line with EU policy in this area. The British Enterprise Act 2002, which made price fixing illegal, followed on from the prohibition of cartels in the Competition Act. This allowed for the prosecution of individuals within companies (where previously when price fixing was first criminalized in 2000 under the Competition Act, it allowed only for the prosecution of business rather than individuals). The Competition Act was introduced in 1988; it was a key piece of legalisation designed to promote and protect competition (in markets), which enshrined the normative political values of neoliberalism: a commitment to free markets, competition and light touch regulation. The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is charged with ensuring the implementation of Competition Policy. According to its website it functions to ‘make markets work well for consumers’ and as such, it states that ‘We achieve this by promoting and protecting consumer interests throughout the UK, while ensuring that businesses are fair and competitive’ (OFT, 2009). Here the OFT both claims it is regulator, in its mission statement, and enshrines a neoliberal commitment to markets ultimately as provider of consumer interests.

Competition policy illustrates the way in which economic theory itself has been important in informing policy (as economic modelling has played a key role in informing the formulation and implementation of said policy). This is not something which has happened in isolation, rather it is representative of a broader shift in the way in which Anglo-American politics of the last 30 years has evolved. The Thatcher/Reagan era ushered in a period which arguably marked the beginning of an era of neoliberal consensus (e.g. Hay, 1997) as subsequent British and US governments have both accepted economic monetarist policies. It is too simplistic to attribute change to one individual, but this shift was also heavily influenced by the Montpelier group and, in the UK, a decline in manufacturing base, the rise of financial institutions and the destruction of the unions. In short, the broader picture in which this policy was situated was one of a reassertion of the role of capital against the increasing power of labour.

This has not simply been about changes at the material level. The ideological assault of neoliberalism has been as significant. For Thatcher and the policies which emanated from her administration, ‘Economics [were] the method . . . but the object [has been] to change the soul’ (cited in Harvey, 2005: 23). Harvey’s phrase the ‘construction of consent’ highlights the way in which the dominant classes have organized against labour, and the way in which business has refined its capacity to act as a class, protecting its own interest. It is not only through lack of regulation that businesses benefit, where legislation is enacted, what becomes clear is that business benefits through its obscurity (Harvey, 2005). As Stephan (2010) observes, the workings of the anti-competitive practices legislation in the UK is so obscure as to make the pursuit of prosecutions extremely difficult: the broader context in which the extreme generation of wealth is legitimated.

Price fixing in the British press

It is in the aforementioned historical, legislative and ideological context, that our discussion takes place. Earlier academic analyses of price fixing press coverage have focused on the US. Evans and Lundman (1983) argued that press coverage lacked the energy, condemnation or the ‘brimstone smell’ of regular street crimes. This they attributed legislatively, to the ‘lack of recognition that corporations are juristic persons capable of criminal deviance’, the indirect harm of price fixing – that like other financial crimes no one victim can be personified and indentified – and a general reluctance for large organizations to link other organizations to criminality (Evans and Lundman, 1983). Despite cultural differences between the US and the UK, the introduction of recent legislation in the UK and the passage of nearly 50 years since their original study, we argue that, nearly 30 years later, very little is different. Our analysis focused upon UK broadsheet newspaper coverage of price fixing prosecutions since the introduction of its criminalization in 2002 until 2010 when the study took place. The relatively small number of prosecutions is in part responsible, we would suggest, for the relatively small number of articles which cover this issue. From our search of UK broadsheet newspapers, using the search terms price fixing, cartel and collusion, we uncovered 128 articles which referred to such cases. Given the small number of articles in the coverage our sample contained all the items. As we were seeking to explore the way in which the crime coverage was framed, we accepted the premise (as noted earlier) that the agenda is set by those who speak. As such our empirical research revolved around who spoke, what did they say and how did they say it? As noted in each section below, we coded each article, we began by identifying who spoke, and so our first set of categories sought to quantify the number of times the following voices were represented:

Business in the form of press releases;

Business in the form of direct quotes from the CEO, or a spokesperson;

Representatives of business as class (such as business analysts, or the CBI);

Shareholders

Consumers as individuals (or victims of crime);

Consumer representative bodies (such as Which?);

Consumers represented by the OFT;

Government and/or ministers;

Opposition/shadow ministers;

Regulatory bodies (such as the OFT, Serious Fraud Office [SFO] and Competition Commission).

The second part of our analysis explored the qualitative nature of news coverage, and the language used in the description of the case, the crime and the responses of consumers and companies, and this is discussed in the section ‘what was said’, below. To ensure consistency two coders used the same coding frame, and cross-checked each other’s coding.

Who speaks: Depoliticization

We began by looking at all the voices that were represented in our sample. Figure 1 shows each time a voice was either directly quoted or featured as reported speech. While we had quite detailed categories (as shown above) we found that voices could be clustered around four key groups – business, consumer, governments and OFT (as regulator).

The first thing to note is the dominance of business voices at 45%. If we follow the logic of media scholars, then as business voices are more prominent they become significant in constructing how we understand price fixing as a crime (or something less serious). Second, we see that consumers have an incredibly small voice – only 18%. If consumer voices are marginalized, this suggests not quite the equal relationship suggested in a neoliberal ‘free market’; leaving the question, just how far are consumer interests being represented and protected and by whom? The voice of business is thus privileged over the victims of the crime (consumers) and also over the political actors (who set the ‘rules of the game’). Finally, where political voice is given, the main political actor is the regulator. As such, responsibility for policy representation is devolved away from government, which could be viewed as part of a broader governance strategy of depoliticization.

Depoliticization is not about the direct removal of politics from political issues, rather it is viewed as a governing strategy (Burnham, 2001; see also Kettell, 2008). It has been defined as ‘the range of tools, mechanisms and institutions through which politicians can attempt to move to an indirect governing relationship and/or seek to persuade the demos that they can no longer reasonably be held responsible for a certain issue, policy field or specific decision’ (Flinders and Buller, 2006: 295–296; emphasis in original). Depoliticization narratives highlight the way in which policy issues are devolved away from ministers and politicians to civil servants, agencies or regulatory bodies (in this analysis this is the OFT). Politicians are thus able to distance themselves from policy outcomes. In our case study, the ‘political’ voice sees only 7% of reported coverage reflecting comments or views by politicians, and 30% of reported coverage reflecting the OFT. Not only is this issue depoliticized in that accountability and responsibility is being devolved from politicians to unelected bodies, but at the same time the dominant voice in the coverage is that of business. While business voices, and therefore interests, dominate coverage, devolved political accountability takes second place. In political science, there is a tendency to focus upon the discourse of individual politicians and policy per se (e.g. Kettell, 2008; Rogers, 2009), rather than the manner in which this is uncritically reproduced within the media. What our case study highlights is the way in which the media also play a role in the reproduction of a depoliticized discourse.

How was it said: The privileged role of public relations, or the PR-ization of news

Having explored whose voice dominated the news coverage, we then sought to analyse how that voice was presented. As public relations increasingly dominate the news agenda, we were interested to see the extent to which businesses now used PR – in a bid to mitigate the effects of potentially adverse news coverage.

The rise of PR as a means for influencing news coverage is not only something which politicians engage in. Aeron Davis (2005) demonstrates the way in which corporate elites have manipulated the business news agenda through the extensive and aggressive use of PR and in so doing have gained competitive advantage over their rivals. While he recognizes that there may be tensions between journalistic objectives and those of business, nonetheless he argues that corporate elites are ultimately successful in pursuing their own agenda through the pages of the press. This process serves to exclude the public, and business news becomes a site whereby business elites compete and communicate with each other. One of the key conclusions that Davis (2005) draws is that as a consequence of this, a significant proportion of financial activity, corporate regulation and economic policy-making takes place largely to benefit corporate elites, and out of view of the public. In this way, the public sphere becomes a quasi-marketplace, where competitive advantage is being sought out by rival elites. Moreover, exclusion of the public from this space also serves to generate an elite space where business and economic interests are privileged over those of society, negating any notion of a ‘public good’.

The focus upon the PR-ization of news (Jackson and Moloney, 2010) is one developed by Nick Davies (2008) whose political economy of the media industry draws attention to the way in which PR dominates as a consequence of economic constraints which hamper journalists. He argues that this reliance on PR has two key effects. First it enables business to represent its view unchallenged and often uncritically repeated. Second, through providing copy to journalists, Davies observes, the view of business is more likely to be represented, in the way that business would like it to be. In short, the use of PR reinforces the notion that both quantity and quality of coverage matter. As we see in Figure 2, where the voice of business is presented, this is predominantly in terms of PR (56%) rather than direct quotes of business people themselves. If we accept Davies’ argument about the way in which newsrooms operate, then we can safely assume that through the use of PR companies are having their words reprinted word for word by an overworked, but ultimately compliant press. While the stories about companies prosecuted for price fixing activities may be potentially damaging for firms, successful use of PR may well mitigate adverse perceptions on the part of other political and economic elites.

What was said: Decriminalization

The concern about the qualitative nature of the news coverage meant that our final focus was on the way in which news coverage of business crime was constructed. Here we were interested in the nature of the coverage, with a particular focus on the language that was being used. How far did press coverage express outrage at fraudulent behaviour of business elites? How far did it encourage its audience to accept or even express sympathy with those engaged in criminal activity?

What we found was not only that the voice of business dominated coverage, but where business did speak, linguistic and lexical choices served to play an important role in decriminalizing the activity. Much literature has been devoted to the extent to which white collar crime has been ‘decriminalized’ through, for example, reluctance of the media to use the term ‘crime’ to describe corporate illegality (Bohm, 1993; Wright et al., 1995). Our coverage reinforced this, with much greater emphasis upon soft terminology such as wrongdoing; misdemeanour was used to describe the behaviour of those firms involved in illegal activity, rather than crime. Firms were asked to respond to the charges against them – which were accompanied by strong defensive adjectives such as ‘vehemently deny’. Stephan contends that newspaper readership seems to have little effect upon public attitudes, he argues this is because the media are poor at disseminating information about the ‘effects [of price fixing], current cartel laws, and prosecutions in the UK’ (2008: 130). However, what our findings below suggest is that it is not only the lack of information but the nature of that information which is important in providing the backdrop through which public opinion is formed.

In our case study, we found the discussion of those who committed the crimes took place in sympathetic terms. The following is perhaps illustrative of a wider sympathy for business criminals as not having committed a ‘real’ crime: under the headline ‘A white collar Guantanamo’ The Times goes on to describe how,

Ian Norris is a frightened man. He fears he may be removed against his will from Britain and thrown into jail in the United States to languish for a year or more awaiting trial, without having had chance to profess his innocence in a British court. . . . If he were someone that the American authorities suspected was plotting to blow up the White house or contaminate water supplies, then such draconian measures might be understandable. . . . Mr Norris, however, stands accused of being involved in the dastardly crime of fixing the prices of carbon brushes. (Wheatcroft, 2005)

Norris’s personalization and the description of his ‘fear’, and the analogous depiction of the US torture camp, are aimed to evoke sympathy with the criminal, rather than anger at. Here then not only is the ‘crime’ decriminalized, but we are encouraged to feel sympathy for the criminal, who has not committed a real crime.

For crime to be ‘successfully’ discussed it needs personification, to be presented as the consequence of the actions of an individual (Kappeler et al., 1996). Yet the representation of Norris is unusual, not only for the extremity of analogy, but for its personalization. In price fixing cases the company is often presented as the ‘criminal’ rather than any individual. By denying agency to firms, this denies their capacity to commit crime. The decriminalization of these white collar crimes represents a way in which moral discussions about the way in which markets operate and the assumptions which underlie this are removed from the public agenda. While the morality of actors within markets may be discussed, these are individuals, personalized, implying that it is a personality flaw which leads these characters to behave in this way, rather than a problem with the market per se. The media discuss greedy bankers, implying an almost as innate, natural or at least human attribute, rather than any kind of systemic problem. This denies the possibility that it is the market itself that structures those choices that individuals (i.e. bankers) may make. This is not to negate the autonomy or choices that bankers have made, rather we suggest it is an interaction of bankers in the market context that they operate in which leads to these outcomes. Depersonalizing the behaviour of firms suggests that there is no criminal, and therefore no immoral activity. If we restore agency to firms we may begin to reopen the discussion about the nature of morality within markets per se, in which the personalization of white collar crime has been excluded from the public debate.

Conclusion

Business does not operate in a vacuum. If we are to make sense of the wider lack of accountability with which our business elites are subjected to publicly, we might begin with a glance around our political classes. Mandelson famously remarked that Labour was ‘intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich’, and ‘a Labour government which hands out ASBOs to the poor and peerages to the financiers’ (Irvin, 2008: 206). An observation made prior to the banking crisis, perhaps presciently noted the actions of the bankers collecting their bonuses irrespective of public opinion: ‘Today’s super rich feel that they deserve their rewards irrespective of the jobs that are lost through downsizing, the deteriorating working conditions entailed by locking out trade unions or the environmental damage resulting from relaxing emissions standards and the deteriorating public provision from lobbying for corporate and personal tax breaks’ (Irvin, 2008: 206; emphasis added). This culture of ‘deserving’ rich is a phrase more recently articulated by the Coalition government, but in part has been reinvigorated, or revived from its Victorian roots in contemporary neoliberalism.

While much has been made of the individuals caught up in the recent financial crises, less attention has been paid to the way in which businesses behave within markets. In the UK, with the decline of manufacturing, the lessening of the power of the trade unions, Britain’s economy has emphasized finance and big business as a necessary and good thing. Business power is reinforced as elite policy-makers seem reluctant to introduce progressive taxation measures – maybe for fear of the flight of capital (see, for example, Peston, 2008), but this is also reinforced through public discourse.

We have looked at the way in which public discourse is constructed around business crime through a case study of press coverage of ‘price fixing’. We are not suggesting a monolithic dominant media discourse, but what we have sought to do is reflect upon the way in which consensus is negotiated through public discourses. That individual bankers were still able to claim their bonuses, despite their role in the financial crisis, perhaps reveals something about the way in which we view business wrongdoing. The credit crunch may have shaken our economic system, and required responses from political elites of ‘outmoded’ fiscal Keynesian policies (Crouch, 2009; Watson, 2009), but it could be argued that the foundations of consensus around the methods, behaviour and morality of business were solid. The failure of the press to condone immoral, illegal behaviour of businesses prior to the financial crisis reveals much about the dominant ideology thesis. Where the very real tensions of a neoliberal hegemonic agenda were exposed within the financial crisis, dominant discourses had already excluded the vocabulary through which alternative viewpoints of the relationship between the economy and society and the role of markets in society might be legitimately debated.

Footnotes

Funding and Acknowledgement

The authors wish to thank the ESRC funded Centre for Competition Policy, University of East Anglia, Norwich, for supporting and funding this work.

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