Institutional Crisis in 21st Century Britain Understanding Governance

In the 21st Century, a perfect storm appears to have engulfed many of Britain's most important institutions. The list of those it has enveloped is extensive, but headline acts would include - the banking sector for malpractice, Parliament for its expenses scandal, the media for phone-hacking and the police for duplicity and corruption. It raises a fundamental question of whether there is an endemic and fundamental crisis in British political, economic and social institutions or instead simply a set of contingent events that have been discursively constructed and presented as a collective crisis. This volume offer the first major, wholesale consideration of the extent to which a crisis of legitimacy has taken root in Britain's key institutions. It does so by exploring the nature of crisis across a diverse range of institutions, assessing the accuracy of the 'crisis' label and crucially considers whether a set of shared underlying pathologies exist that has led to a point of collective crisis and the need for fundamental renewal.