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The purpose of this paper is to overview and critique the over‐reach of highly ideological assumptions of neo‐classical economics into policy and governance terrains. The ontology and epistemology of neo‐classical economics know no bounds in their imperial extension to non‐market applications. The colonization of Public Administration in Australia, and elsewhere, is a vexing epistemological issue, demanding some reckoning.

This deconstructive, critical essay seeks to provide a set of “check‐lists” of issues for those teaching, or proselytizing, governance within highly reduced public domains.

This paper moves an epistemological “audit” of “public choice theory” some steps forward, especially in the face of significant ideological and policy convergence, among putative social‐democratic governance regimes, regarding out‐sourcing, no‐bid contracting, agency “capture”, risk and a renewed urgency for necessary re‐regulation. The paper identifies policy imperatives for a new age of regulation after 35 years of prevailing “market fundamentalism”.

There has been much hubris associated with so‐called policy convergence in a globalized context. Deconstructing such hubris within a divergent world is long overdue for the next generation of scholars/policy apologists/rating agencies/and economists prone to some reflexivity in plying their “dismal” trade.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how important the choice of theoretical perspective is on the analyses of empirical data from a Danish case study.

The empirical bases for the analyses are qualitative, longitudinal case studies of school leadership in the International Successful School Principalship Project (ISSPP). This article discusses and compares analyses from two analytical perspectives. The first is a welfare state perspective, which includes education for democracy and social justice. The second perspective is a competitive state perspective. Here the educational focus is on educating for employability on a labour market.

School leaders are seen to comply with most of the demands of the competitive state: e.g. demands for negotiations and effectiveness. Leaders also intended to lead schools and education for democracy and social justice.

The limitations and possibilities are described more clearly than usual. They therefore provide deeper insights into the complexities of school leadership.

This chapter discusses salient factors pertaining to the Global Financial Crisis (GFC), also called the Great Recession, which gave rise to contagion effects that continue to reverberate across the global financial landscape. The GFC is linked to three primary negative themes: build-up of credit in a global credit super cycle, New Financial Architecture (NFA) and financialization under neoliberalism, and a distorted relationship between laissez-faire economics/finance and normative political imperatives. The conclusion is that we need to rethink understandings of key principles in economics and finance and reform governance mechanisms of the financial system.

The essay examines an empirical phenomenon – the GFC – and discusses themes based upon the author’s insights gained from the vantage point of working in asset management during the Crisis. In addition, the author draws upon material from the academic literature and financial press. He problematizes finance through the lens of the GFC and suggests that the three causal factors being highlighted are enduring sources of instability in the financial system.

The conclusion is that financial crises such as the GFC are not caused by unpredictable exogenous variables but instead pertain to identifiable recurring factors and human failures. Structural, epistemological, and behavioral issues are aggravated by neoliberalism. Finance is integral to economic activity. But under neoliberalism, the global financial economy rapidly assumed a particular form of financialization founded on market fundamentalism and political and regulatory capture. Neo-liberal coöptation of finance, economics, and politics needs to be reversed to place financial and economic activity within more robust frameworks that take into account credit cycles, flaws, and instabilities inherent in the system while applying appropriate regulatory mechanisms to prevent crises.

Scholars and practitioners can draw upon claims made in this essay to propose more substantive reforms to the global financial system. These range from redesigning how finance and economics are understood and taught, to imposing circuit breakers to prevent credit cycles from becoming untenable bubbles.

Neoliberalism is a political project that has distorted understanding of empirical truths while also effecting a paralysis with regard to fixing problems. The market fundamentalism that neoliberalism prescribes and promulgates results, time and time again, in financial crises that have disastrous consequences including massive wealth destruction. It is crucial to reform the system and create more sustainable, less volatile paradigms of financial and economic life.

Arguments in this chapter are simple and straightforward but have significant implications for achieving more nuanced understandings of the financial system. Claims are presented as distillations of how the system actually works, especially the way in which it tends toward conditions of crisis and stress. Mainstream finance and economics are characterized as predicated upon certain erroneous propositions, particularly concerning efficient markets and rational agency, core tenets of the neo-liberal project.

This chapter will now focus on humanity’s response to the seismic contextual changes brought about by globalization at the cusp of the twenty-first century. The signature feature of this response is an enrollment explosion. Other features are four driving policyscapes (that aligned to capabilities theory, neo-liberal economics, the Creed of Human Rights, and social justice), education for sustainable development, managerialism, decentralization, Global, Citizenship Education, Multicultural and Intercultural education, Multilingualism and the rising importance of English as international lingua franca, Human Rights Education, from STEM to STEAM education and a reappreciation of the social sciences and the humanities, the divergent calls for relevance, new ways of production and packaging of knowledge, a shift from teaching to learning, new learning theories, and the rise of international testing regimes. In many ways, these responses are incomplete and still searching for the perfect fit in each context. It is in this regard where the value of Comparative and International Education comes to the fore.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the serious limitations of neo‐liberal capitalism and urge for a shift to socialized capital before further economic deterioration leads to a succession of global conflicts.

This conceptual paper adopts a macro perspective in presenting argument on how global, financial markets integration and capital flow liberalization have led to inadequate market and corporate governance measures. The argument is couched in a selected literature and is preceded by a proposed solution – the requirement for socialized capital. An analysis of the nature of socialized capital is outlined and the questions that require attention identified if a paradigm shift from neo‐liberal capitalism is to take place.

The need to urgently shift to a new philosophy of capitalism is overwhelming. Emphasized is that capital needs to adopt a socialised identity and is supported by investment horizons of 30 years or more. It is argued that non‐market (e.g. state, NGOs, civil society) intervention is critical in setting appropriate frameworks within which socialized capital can operate.

This is a theoretical paper, in which questions are raised which require transparent, public debate.

The paper presents the case for a fundamental reconsideration of present day markets, the role of capital and the influence of elites in determining the public good.

At the heart of any public‐sector reform discourse are the conflicting contentions about what constitutes good public leadership. The battles fought ‐ and to be fought ‐ over public‐sector reform are over the appropriate role of the state. These contending perspectives are the traditional hierarchical model and the neo‐liberal managerialist model of public administration. The aspiration to build a responsive and cost‐effective public sector that appropriately balances public and private interests inevitably confronts the challenge of how best to impose neo‐liberal managerialist values and practices onto a hierarchical politico‐administrative system, grounded on the premise that the state is best placed to determine, protect and promote the public interest, without inevitably creating a counter‐productive paradoxical public‐management environment. In this public‐sector reform scenario, it is necessary to foster a form of leadership ‐ both political and organisational ‐ that demands of itself that it be capable of perpetual adaption in the face of ambiguity and which change. That is a great deal to ask of both shrewd politicians and consummate bureaucrats.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of financial institutions in the escalation of the global economic melt‐down (GEM) in America and how policy‐makers in Nigeria can learn from South Africa to safe‐guard the nation's financial institutions from economic shocks that could be propelled by banks' financial recklessness and poor corporate governance ethics.

The paper combines qualitative and quantitative data to establish that Nigeria has a lot to learn from America and South Africa. America is the heartland of the global financial system, and whatever happens to its economy and currency, often cause ripple effects on the rest of the world, except for a nation like South Africa that had an in‐built mechanism to forestall shock. The paper has six sections. First section presents a brief introduction on GEM and its ripple effects. Second section outlines the retrospective causes of GEM. Third section provides justification for regulation of the economy in the economic literature. Fourth section focuses on the thrust of bank regulation and control with reference to South Africa. Fifth section explores the financial institutions, regulation and supervision in Nigeria. Sixth section concludes with policy recommendations.

The findings in this paper are the potency of financial regulation and supervision to forestall economic melt‐down; the potency of financial regulation and supervision to safe‐guard a nation's financial institutions from financial recklessness and promote good corporate governance.

The major practical implication of this paper is that the problems of major banks in Nigeria are traceable to liquidity constraints, poor corporate governance compliance, poor credit risk management policy and ineffective allocation of capital to businesses.

This paper supports the Keynesian argument for effective regulation, supervision and control of the economy in general and financial institutions specifically (as opposed to the blind adoption of mainstream neo‐liberal economics).

The Mexican government has been criticized for its implementation of neo-liberal economic policies that threaten to further impoverish indigenous populations. Given this, it is surprising that in 1997 some members of the Mixe people – one of the poorest indigenous groups in Mexico – condemned the implementation of a new government funding project that was specifically intended to alleviate hardship caused by free trade. The paper argues that objections to both free trade and the new funding program stem from the overarching problem the Mixe face, namely their systematic exclusion from decision-making processes and citizenship at the national level.