The Political Economy of Britain's North-South Divide
The Political Economy of Britain's North-South Divide
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英国南北分歧的政治经济学
DOI：
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发表时间：
1988
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影响因子：
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通讯作者：
R. Martin
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文献类型：
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作者：
R. Martin
在20世纪80年代，英国见证了社会和空间不平等的显著增加，并成为一个更加分裂的社会。这种日益扩大的分歧的一个特殊方面——该国南北之间日益扩大的经济、社会和政治差距——已成为激烈辩论的焦点。繁荣的“南部”和相对萧条的“北部边缘”之间的地区划分不仅可以追溯到两次世界大战之间的高潮，就像通常所说的那样，而且在某些方面更早，在19世纪的发展。然而，自20世纪60年代中期以来，“两个英国”之间的差距稳步扩大，而“北方”逐渐向南延伸，包括除了南部和东部四个地区之外的所有地区。这种“鸿沟”的增长不仅反映了过去二十年来发生的经济停滞和重组，而且也反映了历届战后政府的失败，无论是工党还是保守党，都未能充分解决地区社会经济不平等的问题，尽管每个政党都应该承诺“一国政治”。事实上，自1979年以来，保守党政府旨在实现国家经济复兴的政策似乎反而增加了英国的地区差距，并创造了一种新的“不平等政治”。
During the course of the 1980s Britain has witnessed a marked increase in social and spatial inequality, and has become a much more divided society. One particular aspect of this growing division-the widening economic, social and political disparity between the north and south of the country-has become the focus of intense debate. A regional division between a prosperous 'south' and a relatively depressed 'northem periphery' can be traced back not just to the inter-war climacteric, as is conventionally argued, but in some respects much earlier, to developments during the nineteenth century. Since the mid-1960s, however, the gap between these 'two Britains' has steadily widened while the 'north' has progressively extended southwards to encompass all but the four southern and eastern regions of the country. This growth of the 'divide' reflects not only the stagnation and restructuring of the economy that has taken place over the past two decades, but also the failure of successive post-war governments, both Labour and Conservative, to adequately tackle the problem of regional socio-economic inequality, despite each Party's supposed commitment to 'one nation politics'. Indeed since 1979, the Conservative governments' policies designed to achieve national economic revival, appear instead to have increased the regional divide in Britain and to have created a new 'politics of inequality'.