Hugh Pemberton

Policy Networks and Policy Learning UK Economic Policy in the 1960s and 1970s

Policy networks are advanced as an alternative to the Westminster model of the UK polity but the theory lacks an internal dynamic and has typological problems. This article applies Peter Hall’s (1993) concept of ‘social learning’ to policy networks and maps the networks found in two case studies of British economic policy making: Hall’s own study of the shift from Keynesianism to monetarism in the 1970s and the author’s research on the advent of ‘Keynesian-plus’ in the early 1960s. The article advances three main propositions. Firstly, that integrating the concept of social learning can dynamize the policy network model. Secondly, the case studies suggest that different network configurations are associated with different orders of policy change but that Hall’s definition of ‘third order change’ may be too restrictive. Thirdly, policy networks can be much more complex and fluid then is generally claimed, sometimes becoming so extensive that they might be termed a ‘meta-network’.

Learning, Governance and Economic Policy

This article examines the relationship between economic policy networks and policy learning during the 1960s, using recently released files to flesh out the operation of both networks and learning. It finds that policy failure in the 1950s brought into being a new policy network which was able to secure a radical shift in the economic policy of the core executive in the early 1960s. However, it then proved impossible to craft, implement and sustain a coherent and enduring set of new policies within the new policy framework due to the ability of competing networks to resist central control. This leads to three conclusions. First, peripheral actors may obtain influence over policy-making in the core executive by means of a policy network. Second, policy learning does not necessarily generate policy change of a similar order because, whilst networks may facilitate learning, competing networks may block the translation of this learning into effective policies. Third, ‘governance’ is not solely a phenomenon of the years since 1979: in the 1960s the British core executive was already operating within a polity characterised by fragmentation, inter-dependency and self-organising policy networks.

RELATIVE DECLINE AND BRITISH ECONOMIC POLICY IN THE 1960s

In explaining Britains post-war relative economic decline, contemporary historians have concentrated upon ‘government failure’: not enough, too much, or too much of the wrong sort of government intervention. Implicitly, such explanations conceive the British state as both centralized and powerful. Recent developments in political science have questioned this traditional view. Using this insight to structure its historical analysis, this article examines the wide array of policy changes that flowed from the British governments adoption in the early 1960s of an explicit target for higher growth. It finds that the principal reasons for the failure of these policies can be found in the fragmentation and interdependence of Britains economic institutions – the source of which lay in the particular historical development of Britains polity. These issues of governance required new conceptions of both policy making and policy implementation able either to strengthen the power of the centre to impose change, or to promote consensus building. However, lacking a sufficient shock to the system, and imprisoned in a mindset in which the British state was conceived as both centralized and powerful, elites saw little need for fundamental institutional change.

The Failure of ‘Nationalization by Attraction’: Britain's Cross‐Class Alliance Against Earnings‐Related Pensions in the 1950s

In 1957, the Labour Party published radical proposals for a state earnings�?related pension scheme (‘national superannuation’) whose funds were to be invested in stock markets to generate high returns, and to help modernize and dynamize the British economy. This article explores a sophisticated campaign against the proposal by the insurance industry, and the resistance of the unions. In doing so, it considers the implications of this cross�?class alliance, not least in terms of a possible missed opportunity to build a ‘developmental state’ in the UK, but also in terms of the countrys increasingly inadequate and inequitable system of pension provision.

Strange Days Indeed: British Politics in the 1970s

It is now 30 years since the end of the 1970s. How distant that decade already seems. To anyone under 30, it appears as remote as the 1930s. If, as L. P. Hartley had it, the past is a foreign count...

Taxation and Labour's Modernisation Programme

Extensive reforms to the countrys taxation system were an integral part of Labours plans for the modernisation of Britain and, despite its very narrow parliamentary majority, the new government immediately embarked on the most complex tax reform since the 1909 budget. This article considers the nature of that reform, concentrating on the new capital gains tax and the corporation tax, its two main elements, and its place in the modernisation project. It concludes that the implementation of the two new taxes represented a major achievement. In both cases, however, the government was forced to retreat from core objectives. It is argued that in large part this retreat was the product of inadequate prior consideration of how exactly tax fitted in with the partys wider modernisation project coupled with an excessive dependence on a single special adviser and a failure to secure a mandate for wide-ranging tax reform.

“If You've Got Friends and Neighbours”: Constituency Voting Patterns for the UK Labour Party Leader in 2010

Abstract Most attention in British electoral studies has been paid to the pattern of voting for parties, with relatively little to that for individual candidates. In intra-party elections, however, candidates may perform better in some areas than others, illustrating V. O. Keys well-known “friends and neighbours” effect. This paper explores whether that was so at the election for the leader of the UK Labour party in 2010, expecting each of the five candidates to perform better in their own constituency and its environs and also with those constituency parties whose MPs supported their candidature. The results are in line with the expectations, especially for one of the candidates who ran an explicitly geographical campaign.

WASPI's Is (Mostly) a Campaign for Inequality

Women Against State Pension Inequality (WASPI) has mounted a vociferous campaign for full compensation to be given to ‘1950s women’ who, it argues, have suffered severe financial hardship as a result of the rise in their state pension age from age 60. That campaign has gained significant political traction, with much sympathy expressed for the plight of those affected and acceptance (most notably by the Scottish National Party and the Labour Party) that some form of compensation is urgently needed. But WASPI fails to acknowledge the rise in the state pension ages roots in the fight for womens equality, disregards the fact that the problems experienced by this cohort as they near retirement are faced by both women and men and glosses over the fact that the increase in pension age above 65 applies to both genders equally. Its campaign obscures deeper and more important issues in old-age income replacement.

‘Everyman a Capitalist?’ or ‘Free to Choose’? Exploring the tensions within Thatcherite individualism’

It is widely recognized that ‘the individual’ was prioritized by the Thatcher governments. However, there has been little analysis by historians of exactly how the Thatcher government conceptualized ‘the individual’. In this article, we attempt to remedy this deficiency by undertaking a case-study of a key Thatcherite social policy reform: the introduction of ‘personal pensions’. This approach allows us to understand the position of ‘the individual’ on the functional level of Thatcherite policy-making. In doing so, we argue that there was no coherent or fixed Thatcherite concept of the individual. Instead, we identify three fundamental tensions: (i) should individuals be capitalists or consumers; (ii) were they rational or irrational; and (iii) should they be risk-taking entrepreneurs or prudent savers? This reflected, in part, conflicts within the diverse tapestry of post-war neoliberal thought. We demonstrate in this article that these tensions undermined the Thatcher governments’ original attempt to create a society of entrepreneurial investor-capitalists, which in turn cemented their preference for simply maximizing individual freedom of choice within a competitive – yet tightly regulated – market environment.

Crisis? What Crisis? The Callaghan Government and the British ‘Winter of Discontent’

and who lamented the rise of ‘political correctness’ because of its impact on the show in which he was a star. At the same time, Schaffer’s training and expertise comes through in the carefully constructed chronological narratives in the individual chapters which he writes. The publication of this book indicates an increasingly important trend in the historiography of contemporary Britain which accepts the role of immigration. The book tells us much about the power of television, the attitudes of the elites who controlled TV and the inherent nature of racism in post-war Britain. It would be impossible to teach a course on contemporary Britain without using The Vision of a Nation. The people who should really read this, of course, consist of those working on TV who, however, would probably dismiss the findings as evidence of a racist past from which we have now ‘moved on’. While 2014 might differ from 1960, I still find myself watching mainstream British TV which excludes millions of people from numerous ethnic groups.