Katja Philipps

Paradigm Shift or Groundhog Day?: The Public Debate on Post-Crisis Banking Regulation in the United Kingdom Katja Philipps

Master's Thesis from the year 2013 in the subject Politics - International Politics - Region: Western Europe, grade: 2,0, University of Twente (School of Management and Governance), language: English, comment: At the heart of the thesis is a media analysis about the public debate on post-crisis banking regulation in the United Kingdom after the general election in May 2010. The codebook (outlining the methodology behind the media analysis) can be found in the annex. , abstract: The United Kingdom has been at the epicentre of the global financial crisis erupting in 2007. The City of London's global interconnectedness as well as the long-established culture of regulatory self-independence triggered a near meltdown in the British banking system. Next to the immediate consequences for the British economy as a whole, the financial crisis led to a fundamental change of direction in national economic policies and destabilized a system of politics that had governed financial regulation in the UK for over two decades. The Thatcher administration had replaced the decaying manufacturing industry with a finance-led service sector and hence made the City of London the centrepiece of a self-ruling world based on the principles of privatisation and deregulation. The banking crash in September 2007, however, destroyed the illusion that an economic system which relied on light-touch financial regulation to promote the international competitiveness of the City was competent at the job of securing financial stability. The scale and prolonged effects of the financial crisis provided the central backdrop to the general election in May 2010. The financial crisis spurred ad-hoc policy responses around the globe and energized efforts to strengthen financial regulation. Instead of focusing solely on the change of policy in financial supervision, the thesis analyses the developments in the public debate on post-crisis banking regulation that has accompanied the general election in 2010. T