The programme of market‐oriented reforms to the UK’s welfare state commenced during the 1980s with the implementation of the competitive tendering of certain defined activities in health and local authorities. This paper argues that mainstream economic analysis offers only a very partial...

“Quasi‐markets” is the term predominantly employed as a means of conceptualising and describing the market‐oriented reforms primarily, but not exclusively, to the welfare state in the UK. This paper argues that the term, as popularly defined, cannot sustain a suitable analytical frame in...