lavery_150Dr Scott Lavery

Position: Research Fellow
Telephone: +44 (0)114 222 8395
Email: scott.lavery@sheffield.ac.uk

Areas of interest and expertise: British and European Political Economy, Labour Markets, Inequality, Economic Geography, State Theory, Scottish Politics, Devolution.

Scott Lavery’s research focuses on the evolving relation between British and European capitalism. In light of the UK’s vote to leave the EU, his research examines the emerging political economy of ‘Brexit’ and its impact on both the UK and the EU. Three research strands underpin this project. First, Scott’s research traces the strategic orientation of powerful British business groups in relation to EU social and employment policy and financial regulation policy. In the past, British business has attempted to realise its interests through utilising the formal and informal power of the British state within the EU. In the aftermath of the Brexit vote, this strategy has been fundamentally undermined. Scott’s research therefore traces the ways in which British business is attempting to shape social and economic policy in Britain after Brexit. Second, his research examines the possible impact of Brexit on the UK’s national growth model, which consists of an open, lightly regulated financial sector, a flexible labour market regime and imbalanced patterns of service sector-led growth. The research examines the extent to which Brexit might lead to a deepening – or indeed a transcendence – of this deregulatory national growth model. Third, Scott’s research places these processes in a broader comparative perspective, tracing the ways in which interrelated disintegrative dynamics within European capitalism combine to threaten the EU as a distinctive social, economic and political order. Scott co-leads the ‘European Capitalism and the Crises of the EU‘ research programme at SPERI.

Publications

  • 2017    ‘Defend and Extend’: British business strategy, EU employment policy and the emerging politics of Brexit, British Journal of Politics and International Relations. Available here: https://doi.org/10.1177/1369148117722713
  • 2017    Enduring Imbalances in the Eurozone, in C. Hay & T. Hunt (eds), The Coming Crisis, Palgrave.
  • 2017    Towards a political economy of depoliticisation strategies: Help to Buy, the Office for Budget Responsibility and the UK growth model’, in M. Flinders, C. Hay, P. Fawcett & M. Wood (eds) Anti-politics, Depoliticisation and Governance, Oxford University Press [with C. Berry].

Other publications