- Title
- Legitimating private interests: Hegemonic control over 'the public interest' in national competition policy
- Creator
- McDonald, John
- Date
- 2007
- Type
- Text; Journal article
- Identifier
- http://researchonline.federation.edu.au/vital/access/HandleResolver/1959.17/40480
- Identifier
- vital:568
- Identifier
-
https://doi.org/10.1177/1440783307083230
- Identifier
- ISSN:1440-7833
- Abstract
- National Competition Policy (NCP), legislated in Australia in 1995, has arguably been the single most consequential economic policy over the past decade. Yet it has largely escaped sociological analysis. This article investigates how the concept of the public interest in NCP has actually had the effect of legitimizing neo-liberal ideologies concerning private, individual, economic interests. Using critical policy analysis, this article examines how this legitimization has occurred through: (1) the policy language of the public interest, and how this discourse has shifted over time; (2) the implementation of NCP, particularly the application of the public interest test; and (3) evidence proffered by dominant institutions about the social and economic distributional outcomes of NCP. This analysis demonstrates that the policy language and public discourse of the public interest has been used to secure hegemonic control to legitimate the interests of dominant groups. © 2007 the Australian Sociological Association.; C1
- Publisher
- The Australian Sociological Association
- Relation
- Journal of Sociology Vol. 43, no. 4 (2007), p. 349-366
- Rights
- Centre for Health Research and Practice
- Rights
- Copyright the Australian Sociological Association
- Rights
- Open Access
- Rights
- This metadata is freely available under a CCO license
- Subject
- 1608 Sociology; Critical policy analysis; Hegemony; National Competition Policy; Neo-liberalism; Public interest
- Full Text
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