Stephen Driver

New Labour's communitarianisms:

This article argues that communitarianism can be analysed on different levels—sociological, ethical and meta—ethical—and along different di mensions—conformist—pluralist, more conditional-less conditional, progressive-conservative, prescriptive-voluntary, moral-socioeconomic and individual-corporate. We argue that New Labours communitarian ism is a response to both neo-liberalism and old social democracy. It is sociological, ethical and universalist rather than particularist on the meta-ethical level. Labour increasingly favours conditional, morally pre scriptive, conservative and individual communitarianisms. This is at the expense of less conditional and redistributional socioeconomic, progress ive and corporate communitarianisms. It is torn between conformist and pluralist versions of communitarianism. This bias is part of a wider shift in Labour thinking from social democracy to a liberal conservatism which celebrates the dynamic market economy and is socially conserva tive.

Resisting the ‘protest business’: bureaucracy, post-bureaucracy and active membership in social movement organizations

Over the past few decades, the legitimacy of membership-based social movement organizations (SMOs) has been called into question (Bosso, 2005; Jordan and Maloney, 1997, 2007; Putnam, 2000). As professionally-run institutions, SMOs have been accused of a preoccupation with maintaining income through membership marketing at the expense of fostering active participation among their members. In a nutshell, SMOs are seen to be self-serving ‘protest businesses’ which contribute little to social movement activism, and civic engagement in general. Our research into student members of a leading SMO takes issue with this assertion. Whilst organizationally SMOs can appear bureaucratic and impersonal in their marketing strategies, it cannot be assumed that this approach is only capable of attracting passive ‘chequebook activists’. Our findings suggest that younger members feel a sense of loyalty and trust towards the SMO as an effective ‘brand leader’ in its field, though this is by no means unrelenting. As reflexive consumers of activism, members have also grown more accustomed to the flexibilities of emerging post-bureaucratic ‘DIY’ activist groups. In sum, SMOs would benefit from a stronger and more consistent ‘feedback loop’ between the organization and its younger and more active members, as this will help provide scope for greater innovation whilst resisting tendencies towards self-serving ‘bureaucratized activism’.

Work to be done? Welfare reform from Blair to Brown

Welfare reform has been central to ‘New Labour’ politics since the mid-1990s. In government, Labour can, with some justification, take credit for getting Britain working and cutting poverty. But while employment continued to rise after 1997, rates of economic inactivity remained much the same. And since 2005, the battle against poverty has stalled. This article assesses the Brown governments plans to reform the welfare state. These plans are leading to fresh political tensions within the Labour Party as the government seeks to extend its ‘employment first’ welfare policies by getting tougher on entitlements and extending the role of the private sector in delivering welfare-to-work. With the economic outlook deteriorating, and public spending under tighter reign, the outlook for Labours reforms looks uncertain. The buoyant labour market that sustained the governments welfare-to-work programme – but which did little for the underlying rate of economic inactivity – has gone. After 10 years of government, welfare reform is unfinished business for Labour under Prime Minister Gordon Brown.

From Old Labour to New Labour: a comment on Rubinstein

In a critique of our book New Labour, David Rubinstein has argued that we exaggerate the degree of difference between Old and New Labour and underplay the similarities. In this article we agree with many of the continuities that Rubinstein outlines. However, we argue that he himself gives plenty of evidence in favour of our thesis that change has been marked in many policy areas. We argue that we give a good account of the wider social factors that he says accounts for such change. In this article we offer a restatement of the view that New Labour offers a ‘post-Thatcherite’ politics. New Labour breaks both with post-war social democracy and with Thatcherism.

The shock of the new? Democratic narratives and political agency

Political parties were at the heart of the traditional narrative of British democracy. But parties as agents of political mobilisation are in decline. By contrast, membership of political pressure groups and social movement organisations has grown considerably. This shift in political activism is considered by some, but by no means all, to offer a radical alternative narrative of democratic participation. This article examines the organisational changes taking place behind this shift; and explores the extent to which more traditional models of political agency can be reformed in ways that supports and sustains the political activism at the core of a healthy democratic society.

Narratives of British democracy

British democracy has entered uncharted waters. Coalition government, a multiparty system (and multi-level governance), a lack of trust in politics and a collapse in traditional measures of political participation have left political compasses spinning. In these conditions, are the established narratives of British democracy any use? The Westminster model was at the core of the post-war narrative of British Government. The model prided itself on ‘strong government’. Policy-making was better done with just one party in government. Absolute majorities in the House of Commons ruled the waves. This narrative viewed continental European politics as generally ‘weak’ because of the reliance on coalition government. To be sure, there were times when the British model of one-party government was shaken notably in the 1970s and 1980s. Ideologically fuelled political swings did little, some thought, for stable and effective public policy-making (e.g. Finer 1980). British democracy could learn a lesson or two from across the English Channel or so suggested the habitués of centre ground politics in the Liberal and Social Democratic parties. The 2010 general election produced anything but a clear-cut result. The only government with any kind of democratic mandate was one bringing together the Conservative Party and the Liberal Democrats. This coalition is the first serious attempt in peacetime at multi-party government at Westminster since the 1930s. Time will tell whether the coalition lasts the course. Despite obvious tensions on a range of issues such as NHS reform and European integration, and a haemorrhaging of the Lib Dem vote in the 2011 local elections, the coalition has proved more resilient than many expected. Given the realities of the UK electoral system, one-party government could well return after the next general election set for 2015. But coalition politics, whatever happens at Westminster, has become an established feature of public administration across the UK. The devolution of government to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland in 1998, elected by systems of proportional representation (PR), has made coalitions and minority governments just about the norm; in Northern Ireland, this is by constitutional design. Such multi-level governance has combined with the fragmentation of the party system to create the conditions for a re-working of British democracy. As voter dealignment eroded the underlying class-based partisan attachments of British politics, a more fluid multi-party (and multi-level) system has emerged (Webb 2000, Dunleavy 2005). This has seen core support for the Conservative and Labour parties fall, made hung parliaments more likely at Westminster and given opportunities for smaller parties to flourish (not least the Scottish National Party in devolved elections). As British society, then, has become more pluralist, so democratic politics has fragmented and, to a degree, ideologically stretched. Policy Studies Vol. 33, No. 2, March 2012, 115 120

Book Review: Changing Politics of Canadian Social Policy

earlier analysis of social welfare, except to make the point that in some unidentified way, international contacts have helped to spread social welfare ideas around the world. Midgley then returns to his earlier themes and begins to explore social conditions and social welfare world-wide. But just as the argument begins to develop, the book shifts its focus, once again and a whole chapter is devoted to different theories of social welfare before Midgley attempts to undertake a comparative evaluation of the impact of state welfare in the ‘Industrial Countries’, the ‘Former Communist Nations’ and the ‘Third World’. The third part of the book is devoted to ‘applied international social welfare’. This turns out, however, to be little more than an analysis of international activities in the field of social welfare and an analysis of the significance of international contacts in the development of the social work profession. As each chapter is careful and clearly written, the lack of overall organization is somewhat puzzling and one is left with the suspicion that different chapters were written at very different times. At any rate, the strengths of the book lie in the individual chapters rather than in the book as a whole and taken by themselves they often constitute useful if oversimplified introductions to some complex issues, but the book is not a coherent student text on globalization or even the comparative study of social welfare. For this, we are still waiting.