The search for democratic renewal: The politics of consultation in Britain and Australia 9781847799470

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The politics of consultation in Britain and Australia

Why is the search for democratic renewal so elusive? This book examines both the political and policy implications of efforts by the centre-left to transform democracy. This is a story not only about democratic change, but also the identity crisis of centre-left political parties. The book offers a fresh critique of the Big Society agenda, and analyses why both left and right are searching for democratic renewal. Drawing on high-profile interviews and examining an in-depth series of comparative cases, the book argues that the centre-left’s search for democratic renewal contains a range of policy and political aims, contradictions and tensions. It will be of interest to students, academics, researchers, and policy analysts concerned with consultation, democratic renewal, labour politics, and Australian and British politics. Rob Manwaring is a Lecturer in Politics and Public Policy at Flinders University, South Australia

The search for democratic renewal

The search for democratic renewal

The search for democratic renewal The politics of consultation in Britain and Australia

Manwaring

Cover photo by Greg Schuster/ Photonica/Getty

www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk

ISBN 978-0-7190-8876-6

9 780719 088766

Rob Manwaring

The search for democratic renewal

The search for democratic renewal The politics of consultation in Britain and Australia R OB M A NW A RI N G

Manchester University Press Manchester and New York distributed in the United States exclusively by PA LG RA V E M A CM IL L A N

Copyright © Rob Manwaring 2014 The right of Rob Manwaring to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Published by Manchester University Press Altrincham Street, Manchester M1 7JA, UK and Room 400, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA www.manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk Distributed in the United States exclusively by Palgrave Macmillan, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010, USA Distributed in Canada exclusively by UBC Press, University of British Columbia, 2029 West Mall, Vancouver, BC, Canada V6T 1Z2 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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ISBN

978 0 7190 8876 6 hardback

First published 2014 The publisher has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for any external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any ­content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

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Contents

List of figures and tables page vi Acknowledgementsviii 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Labour in flux 1 Labour, democratic renewal and the New Social Democracy 9 Understanding political participation 30 Political participation: continuity and change 53 New Social Democratic governments in Britain and Australia 82 National conversations 106 Engagement at the regional level 128 Beyond the glittering facade 150

References180 Index199

Figures and tables

Figures   4.1 Interest in politics in Australia, 1967–2010 58   4.2 Interest in politics in Britain, 1986–2010 59   4.3 Trust in government in Australia, 1993–2010 60   4.4 Trust in British governments, 1986–2010 60   4.5 Strength of party identification in Britain, 1987–2010 62   4.6 Strength of party identification in Australia, 1967–2010 63   4.7 Combined first preference vote for main parties in Australian House of Representatives, 1987–2010 63   4.8 Voter turnout at British general elections, 1945–2010 66   4.9 Acts of political participation in Britain, 1983–2005 68 4.10 Acts of political participation in Australia, 1993–2010 69 4.11 Types of organisational membership in Britain (2001) and Australia (2001–3) 70 4.12 Active membership of organisations in Australia, 1967–200471 4.13 Internet users as a percentage of population in Australia and the United Kingdom, 1995–2010 72   5.1 Labour governments in Britain and Australia 83 Tables   2.1 Dimensions of the Third Way   3.1 Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation (1969)   3.2 IAP2’s spectrum for public engagement (2004)   3.3 Summary of the limitations of suggested models for ­democratic renewal   4.1 Changes in political participation in Britain, 1984 and 2000

15 45 45 50 68



Figures and tables vii

  4.2 Membership of voluntary organisations in Australia by ­demographic group, 2003 75   4.3 Characteristics of political participants and non-participants in Britain76   8.1 The five case studies in comparison 153

Acknowledgements

The book could not have been completed without the help and assistance of a number of people. The book has its genesis in my PhD thesis which I completed in 2010 at Flinders University. It has taken far longer than anticipated to complete the manuscript, as it substantially builds upon and extends my doctoral research. Despite my tardiness in completing the book, I hope that it makes a contribution to wider d ­ iscussions about the role and future of the centre-left. Thanks are extended to my PhD supervisors Andrew Parkin and Haydon Manning at Flinders University. In early 2012, I convened a conference on social democracy with my colleague Lionel Orchard, and am also grateful for his ongoing support. I also express my thanks to my colleague, now sadly deceased, Geoff Anderson. I have received ­support and enjoyed a crucial exchange of ideas with Carol Johnson at the University of Adelaide. I am also grateful to Tony Mason and colleagues at Manchester University Press for supporting this project, and their ongoing patience and understanding. My thanks also to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on both the proposal and the early version of the manuscript. My thanks also extend to all the interviewees who took part in this research project, and I have done my best to ensure that their comments and views are accurately presented. I have also endeavoured to ensure that any quotations and extracts from other sources comply with the relevant copyright legislation. Of course, any errors and ­inaccuracies are solely the fault of the author, and I’m sure many would not share my interpretation of a number of the political and policy activities described in the book. During the writing of the book, I received valuable research assistance from Josh Holloway who updated a number of the tables and figures, and thanks to Penelope Curtin for editing the early draft. Early reflections on some of the cases in the book have appeared in ­academic journals. An article on the South Australian case was p ­ ublished



Acknowledgements ix

in the Australian Journal of Public Administration (2010, volume 69, issue 2). With Paul Fawcett and David Marsh, an ­examination of the 2020 Summit was published in the Australian Journal of Political Science (2011, volume 46, issue 4). Early drafts have also been c­ onsidered at a number of both the Australian and British Political Science Association conferences. Finally, the book could not have started, let alone finished, without the unstinting support and love of my partner Sandy. During the w ­ riting of the PhD, our first child Tilly was born to help motivate and ­distract me in equal measure. During the writing of the book, our second ­daughter Tess was born, and has proved equally distracting. They are my world, and I dedicate this book to them.

1

Labour in flux

… a state of ‘post-democracy’, a situation where, although the formal institutions of democracy continue and might even be strengthened, the heart goes out of it, there is a wearying of democratic energy. Colin Crouch, 2007, p. 47 The crisis of democracy comes from it being not democratic enough. Anthony Giddens, 1998, p. 71

Introduction Equality is often offered as the defining characteristic of centre-left ­ olitics. From the late 1800s labour and socialist parties were ­established p to replace, then overhaul, and latterly, mitigate, the inherent inequalities of capitalism. Yet a survey of Donald Sassoon’s opus, One Hundred Years of Socialism, indicates that perhaps a better claim for the defining trait of the centre-left is revision and change. As Sassoon reminds us, labour and socialist political parties are constantly ­undergoing periods of renewal and reinvention. Indeed, revision could be a defining ­characteristic of many centre-left political parties. This book attempts to understand how two sister centre-left parties – the British Labour Party and the Australian Labor Party (ALP) – have sought to adapt to the modern era and effect changes. What underpin these changes are deep-rooted questions of identity: what do the p ­ arties stand for? Who and what do they represent? Do these adaptations even matter? These and other critical dilemmas and problems face both ­parties. Since the 1980s and the dominance of neoliberal settings in both countries, these long-standing questions of identity have become more critical and pressing. In the ‘heyday’ of the 1950s and 1960s, when both were mass parties with significant levels of party membership, it was perhaps clearer whom they represented and what they stood for – in

2

The search for democratic renewal

stark contrast to modern times, where the Labour1 parties in Britain and Australia confront the prospect of becoming hollowed-out and lifeless entities. Membership has fallen to record low levels, with an ageing and largely inactive membership, and in Australia swathes of local branches have closed down. The wider labour ‘movement’ is not in an overly healthy state either, with declining levels of trade union density. The modern Labour parties are professionally run, highly sensitive to opinion polls, and increasingly preselecting electoral candidates from eversmaller social bases. Against this backdrop, there are growing concerns that both parties have become disconnected from working people and they are struggling to respond to changing structural patterns of political participation and engagement. Following the defeat of New Labour in 2010 and the leadership changes in Australia since the election of the Rudd government in 2007, there has been renewed soul-searching about Labour’s core mission in the modern era. In response to these problems of identity, relevance and mission, the Labour parties in Britain and Australia (and elsewhere) have been seeking new ways to engage with stakeholders and the wider public, with a renewed interest in democratic revitalisation – Labour’s search for democratic renewal is inherently bound up with its need to secure wider legitimacy. This book seeks to examine aspects of this ­democratic renewal agenda and its prospects for the revitalisation of labour politics. Arguably, the best-publicised variant of British Labour’s attempt to find meaning in current neoliberal settings is the so-called Third Way. Anthony Giddens, often seen (inaccurately) as its architect, and other adherents prefer the term ‘New Social Democracy’ (NSD). The New Social Democracy is a useful descriptor for understanding one strand of revisionist social democratic politics in Britain and Australia. A central part of the New Social Democracy is a call for democratic renewal, or what Giddens terms ‘the democratising of democracy’. Inherent in this call is that the existing architecture of representative democracy is no longer sufficient for meeting the needs of a more fragmented and ­reflexive citizenry. Proponents of the New Social Democracy in both Australia and Britain argue that the processes of democracy need to be strengthened and indeed augmented by new spaces for public ­deliberation and debate. While New Labour has been called the New Social Democracy in ‘chemically pure form’, the influence of the NSD is less pronounced in Australia. There are various strands to Labour’s call for democratic renewal, including constitutional change, electoral reform, a greater focus on government transparency and the strengthening of human rights. In the



Labour in flux 3

United Kingdom, far greater attention has been paid to questions of constitutional reform, with the notable achievements of New Labour being the introduction of assemblies in Wales, Scotland and London, the establishment of a supreme court and reforms to the still-unelected House of Lords. In Australia, the Rudd–Gillard governments’ legacy of constitutional reform was minimal, with little movement on the issue of the republic and, despite a wide-ranging consultation, a refusal to introduce human rights legislation. While Labour’s efforts in relation to these aspects of democratic renewal have received wider attention, this book examines the parties’ attempts to implement new forms of consultation and citizen engagement. Labour governments in both Britain and Australia have sought to create new ‘dialogic’ spaces for citizens and experts, the aim being to inform governance processes and decision-making. While some of these experiments have been critiqued, this book offers a systematic and comparative assessment of attempts to introduce innovative forms of consultation and citizen engagement. What does this book offer that can’t be found elsewhere? A plethora of books examine consultation and democratic renewal – for example, Stewart’s (2009) fine The Dilemmas of Engagement – but while these books offer important critiques of the policy aspects of various dimensions of engagement and consultation, they often do not have a specific political focus or context. This book’s approach is distinctive, in that it argues that Labour governments are not interested in democratic renewal because it is essentially a worthwhile endeavour or because everyone else is doing it, but rather it is a central defining part of the political narrative about its reinvention. This book also builds upon a smaller literature which links and brings together British and Australian Labour, building upon the important works by Scott (2000) and O’Reilly (2007). As we shall see these sister parties have much in common, and in recent years there has been significant policy transfer between them. Moreover, Australian Labor tends to be overlooked in the wider story about social democracy; for example, most mainstream accounts focus on social democracy in Western Europe, such as Sassoon’s epic One Hundred Years of Socialism, or Merkel et al.’s (2008) Social Democracy in Power. Yet, as others such as Pierson (2001) rightly point out, there is something very distinctive about Australian Labor which is often overlooked. Moreover, while there is a veritable armada of books about New Labour, the focus of New Labour’s experiments examined in this book is not tackled elsewhere (for example, Bevir’s 2010 Democratic Governance does not cover this territory). The books and works on democratic renewal and

4

The search for democratic renewal

New Labour tend to focus on its constitutional changes – an important but limited story. This is a story that encompasses much more than New Labour. In addition to its comparative focus, this book offers an in-depth analysis of a range of cases; cases which have often been overlooked by more mainstream books on democratic renewal. This approach is in contrast to say, Marsh and Miller’s (2012) recent Democratic Decline and Democratic Renewal, which takes a broad-brush approach to mapping democratic change in three countries. Indeed, Marsh and Miller (2012, p. 116) dismiss two of the initiatives examined in this book, but in doing so they ignore a significant narrative about the tensions in Labour’s search for democratic renewal. This book is unique in recording a hitherto untold strand of a much wider story about how Labour in Britain and in Australia is seeking to reinvent itself. The book focuses on Britain and Australia for a number of reasons. New Labour is a key choice because it is the archetype of the NSD of all recent centre-left governments in advanced industrial settings. The book focuses on the two countries because to some extent, other comparators either did not aspire to implement an NSD agenda, or were either not in power or did not hold onto power for prolonged periods. For example, New Labour was the leading example of the NSD agenda, and was far more electorally successful than, say, Gerhard Schröder’s ‘die neue mitte’ social democratic government in Germany from 1998 to 2005. In both New Labour and the Australian Labor Party there is a much greater interest in and commitment to the democratic renewal agenda, unlike say, the Dutch ‘polder’ model under the leadership of Wim Kok from 1994 to 2002. The ‘polder’ variant of the NSD was focused much more on an economic reform agenda. As noted above, the focus on Australia is important as this variant of social democracy is often overlooked in more mainstream accounts of centre-left and labour politics. Crucially, at both the federal and state level, Australian Labor has shown a real willingness to experiment with democracy. Whilst democratic experimentation is not limited to either of these two centre-left parties, there are additional reasons why other possible comparators were excluded from the book. For example, 2007 French presidential candidate Ségolène Royal was something of an innovator in regard to democratic renewal (Clift 2007, p. 285). As part of her candidacy, Royal wanted to spearhead a ‘democratic revolution’, and sought constitutional reforms and a more participatory form of politics (particularly with forms of e-engagement) (pp. 285–6). Yet until the 2012 presidential election win by François Hollande, the French left had been out of power since Lionel Jospin’s single term as president from



Labour in flux 5

1997–2002. Royal’s presidency would have been an interesting case, if she had secured office. Likewise, the centre-left under Romano Prodi ruled Italy only for short spells from 1996–98 and 2006–8. Overall, in many of the large industrial countries, during the period surveyed in this book, the centreleft was out of favour. There is a case that democratic experimentation has also been taking place in the US, especially since the Obama presidency. Yet, to some extent, the Democrats are a distinctly different ideological and organisational beast to their British and Australian counterparts. Ultimately, the focus on Britain and Australia is for two key reasons. First, in the literature on comparative politics, both countries fall within the ‘most similar systems’ approach (see Przeworski and Teune 1970). Comparison between the two countries is fruitful because they share more in common. The parties are similar, and with the obvious exception of Australian federalism, the political systems are similar. The two-party system is a historical feature of both countries. Britain and Australia, of course, also share the same Head of State. This approach enables a more meaningful form of comparison than if, for example, the centre-left Scandinavian countries were included. The second main reason for the focus on Britain and Australia is that the book seeks to offer a deep and rich critique of the experiments in democratic renewal, and a more limited focus on these two countries enables this to take place. The book is organised in the following way. In the second chapter, the context is set for British Labour’s heightened interest in democratic renewal, with the emergence of the New Social Democracy (NSD) described, as well as a critique of the call for the ‘democratising of democracy’. The second chapter identifies and examines a range of drivers for Labour’s desire to experiment and find new forms of citizen engagement. Linked to the influence of the New Social Democracy is the lingering legacy of the new public management (NPM) reforms implemented in the public sectors in both countries. For Labour, democratic renewal is an attempt to secure wider legitimacy in ­ ­neoliberal settings; similarly, the NSD is also linked to the debates about the perceived shift from government to governance. The NSD has attempted to respond to these debates and in Britain a concerted effort has been made to r­ eformulate the role of the state and, by extension, civil society. Chapter 5 examines how far the NSD has influenced Labour g­ overnments in Britain and Australia. While New Labour is often seen as the archetype of the NSD, its influence in Australia is arguably more muted, or at least there is greater reluctance by ALP

6

The search for democratic renewal

elites to label and identify the current strands in Australian Labor traditions. The book examines how four NSD-inspired governments – New Labour, the Rann government in South Australia, the Bracks ­government in Victoria and the Rudd–Gillard federal governments – have sought to use NSD ideas to reinvent a social democratic agenda in the face of the dominance of ­neoliberalism. What is striking is that what can be broadly termed ‘democratic renewal’ is a key feature of their political narratives. The third chapter establishes Labour’s interest in democratic renewal, specifically, the role of political participation and civic engagement in the wider context of democratic theory. Given that the New Social Democracy calls for an ‘active citizenry’, this is important. A c­entral motif of democratic theory is an ambivalence about the role of political participation in a modern liberal democratic polity. While Schumpeter offers a ‘realist’ account, with a strident appeal for minimal political participation, more ‘participatory’ accounts, usually drawing from Rousseau, such as Carole Pateman’s, argue for a much deeper engagement of the citizenry. The more recent ‘deliberative’ turn in democratic theory at one level seeks to resolve these debates by institutionalising news mechanisms for enriching democratic decision-making processes and enhancing the quality of public debate. Yet deliberative democracy is difficult to enact in mass societies, and political elites remain wedded to the existing architecture of representative democracy. The cases that comprise this book explore how far New Social Democratic governments in Britain and Australia have been successful in seeking to link new forms of public dialogue to existing democratic decision-making processes in the modern western world. The further challenge facing supporters of forms of deliberative democracy is the dominance of neoliberalism. Accounts of deliberative democracy largely remain silent on the neoliberal settings in many advanced industrial societies and the existing power structures which shape political decision-making. Here, Chapter 3 revisits the starting point for many accounts of the public realm – Habermas’s theory of the public sphere. Habermas’s landmark study charts the rise of a distinct bourgeois public sphere and its evolution in the development of capitalism. In revisiting the work of Habermas we are reminded that in the modern setting the public sphere cannot be divorced from the advanced capitalist system, which sustains liberal democracy. Further, as explored in the case studies in the book, NSD-influenced governments seek to institute and shape the public realm through their mechanisms for public dialogue. The risk is that these public engagement mechanisms provide weak and anaemic vehicles for a more sustained



Labour in flux 7

critique of the structural inequalities and power in advanced capitalist societies. In this sense, the ‘active citizen’ sought by NSD governments is a highly normative one. The NSD seeks ‘active citizens’, but at the same time sets clear boundaries for the ways in which people can participate and engage; the NSD seeks to invigorate and manage public debate, but without enabling it to undermine the modern capitalist system. Following the theoretical discussions, the ‘democratic audit’ framework is outlined as the overall mechanism for understanding and critiquing the initiatives. At the heart of the book lie a number of case studies exploring a series of experiments in the New Social Democracy in Britain and Australia. What links these cases is that they are all ‘big picture’ consultations and large-scale initiatives designed to bring the citizens’ voice to ­policy-making. In many cases they claimed to be the largest consultation to have taken place in that polity (for example, the South Australian case) or a world-first – such as New Labour’s People’s Panel. The cases are innovative attempts at consultation that go beyond the more usual ‘single issue’ or ‘one off’ consultations carried out by government departments seeking to gain views on specific pieces of legislation. That said, the cases are ‘halfway houses’ in the search for democratic renewal. While they transcend previous, more limited, efforts at engagement, none is a fully fledged experiment in deliberative or participatory democracy. Yet critics who wish to dismiss such initiatives as ‘talkfests’, fail to recognise the genuine attempts by these Labour governments to find new ways of engaging the public and wider stakeholders. It is only as the cases are examined in detail that the underpinning strengths, weaknesses, tensions and contradictions are revealed, demonstrating that Labour governments on the one hand are keen to find new ways of engaging citizens, yet on the other hand they are ambivalent about the merits of seeking to do so. In the final chapter, the overarching themes are drawn together and the cases compared. As outlined in the previous chapters, these initiatives, while markers of Labour governments seeking to find new forms of democratic renewal, are a ‘glittering facade’ to a deeper problem: Labour’s weakening attachment to forms of inequality of voice and civic engagement. These cases are ‘thin’ responses to a much ‘thicker’ set of structural problems for Labour in Britain and Australia – the hollowing-out of its membership. Finally, these attempts by Labour governments are contrasted with David Cameron’s call for a ‘Big ­ Society’, an apparent reformulation of many of these themes. While there are differences between the attempts at new forms of civic engagement by the centre-left and the centre-right, it is suggested that

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The search for democratic renewal

Cameron’s ‘Big Society’ draws substantially upon the efforts of the NSD, because while it expands aspects of the public realm, it offers no threat to neoliberal settings. Note 1 The spelling ‘Labour’ will be used throughout when referring ­simultaneously to the British Labour Party and the Australian Labor Party and when making generic references to the labour movement.

2

Labour, democratic renewal and the New Social Democracy

In Britain and Australia, Labour governments have been ­experimenting with democratic renewal. Democratic renewal includes a range of diverse activities, processes and mechanisms and can include constitutional reform, increasing the transparency of government d ­ ecision-making, activating new forms of civic engagement and introducing new spaces for public debate. This book looks at one strand of this search for democratic renewal: a growing willingness by Labour ­ governments to introduce new mechanisms for grand-scale consultation and civic engagement. These more ambitious democratic attempts include ­citizens’ panels, citizens’ juries, deliberative polls and ‘visioning events’. While some of these are not ‘new’ or indeed unique to centre-left ­governments, there is a strong case to be made that the centre-left has been driving this agenda forward in modern times.1 For Labour, there is a pressing need to reconfigure and reinvigorate the relationship between the state and civil society. As New Labour put it, ‘the ballot box is a blunt tool’ (Cabinet Office 1999a) and there is a need to supplement the existing architecture of representative ­democracy. Government needs to be ‘modernised’ and made more ‘responsive’ to its citizens. Before some of these cases are examined in greater detail, we set the context to account for this focus on enhancing citizen engagement in decision-making processes. Arguably, there are at least four drivers for Labour’s desire to find new forms of citizen engagement. These include: • a revitalised interest in democratic renewal as part of Labour’s ongoing process of ‘modernisation’ and revision; • Labour’s attempt to recalibrate the role of the state in the face of the interrelated pressures of neoliberalism, the legacy of the new public management and the challenge of the ‘governance’ debate; • the deliberative ‘turn’ in democratic theory; • changes in structural patterns of political participation.

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The search for democratic renewal

The first two drivers of Labour’s push for democratic renewal are ­considered in detail in this chapter. The challenge of deliberative (sometimes discursive) democracy is outlined in Chapter 3, while Chapter 4 considers and outlines the structural changes in patterns of political participation and behaviour that underpin Labour’s attempt to find new ways of engaging citizens. Labour and the New Social Democracy At the heart of Labour’s quest for democratic renewal is a more f­undamental set of questions about Labour’s identity and purpose in the modern era. What exactly is the Labour party for? Who does it represent and what values does it seek to espouse? There is nothing new about Labour’s identity ‘crisis’. As Donald Sassoon’s One  Hundred  Years of Socialism reminds us, revision and change is a constant within social democratic and labour politics. In each era, social democratic parties are confronted by new social, t­echnological and economic ­ challenges that exert pressure for the reformulation of their values, m ­ ission and policy objectives. In the early t­wentieth century the central debate was between the socialists and social democrats, while in the late 1960s the emergence of green politics, the women’s m ­ ovement and other social movements forced a realignment of p ­ riorities. The key issue is that change and questions of identity are ongoing concerns in labour politics. In more recent times in the British context the debate centred on what, if anything, was distinctive about ‘New Labour’. After 13 years of a Labour government, Ed Miliband, the party leader, declared that ‘the era of New Labour has passed. A  new  ­generation  has taken over’ (Telegraph, 26 September 2010). One prism for the more recent debate about British Labour’s identity has been through  Maurice Glasman’s notion of rebuilding the party as ‘Blue Labour’ (Davis 2011). In Glasman’s view, British Labour has been far too wedded to a Fabian view of social democracy, with far too  great a ­reliance on state i­nstruments to achieve wider egalitarian goals. In Australia, the debate about Labor’s identity and purpose is also  ongoing. The legacy of the Hawke–Keating federal government (1983–96) remains hotly contested. Most recently, the changes in the party’s leadership since 2007, along with the 2010 minority g­ overnment – the first minority Australian federal government since 1943 – has prompted further debate about Labor’s identity and purpose. These debates will continue and are problematic, and it is well beyond the scope of this book to outline them all. My aim is a far more



Labour, democratic renewal and the NSD 11

modest one: to examine Australian and British Labour’s interest in one strand of democratic renewal – a desire to create new spaces for public ­engagement and consultation. A useful way of understanding the changes to both parties and their interest in democratic renewal is to view them as elements of the New Social Democracy, a political project which seeks to ‘modernise’ and update social democracy, particularly in response to the dominance of neoliberalism. Untangling the overlap and connections between the NSD, the Third Way and New Labour is a useful starting point for a ­discussion of the o ­ rigins of the NSD. Before New Labour came to power, and during its first term in office, the ‘Third Way’ was used as a term to describe its overall political programme and guiding philosophy (after a brief fl ­ irtation with the idea of ‘stakeholding’ – which involves moving towards a more German-style market economy; see Driver and Martell 2002, p.  68). However, by New Labour’s second term (from  2001 onwards) it had ceased to use the term as the defining motif  of its ­politics (Clift 2004, p. 36). Concurrently, key advocates such as Anthony Giddens adopted the term ‘New Social Democracy’ (NSD), as they argued that the debate about the Third Way label was obscuring the wider aims and ideas that underpin the ‘modernisation’ of social democracy (Giddens 2002; White 2001). The academic discourse has seen some movement toward using the term ‘New Social Democracy’ rather than ‘Third Way’ (Gamble and Wright 1999). For the purposes of this book, the Third Way and the NSD are essentially the same, but the Third Way is the British variant of the NSD more narrowly ­ ­ associated with New  Labour. ‘New Social Democracy’ is ­ however a more useful umbrella term for describing a common ­cluster  of ideas  which have informed the political discourse of New Labour, but also to a lesser degree, recent Labor governments in Australia. Richards and Smith (2004, p. 109) note that the Third Way is not a coherent ideological package, and they cite Newman (2001) to observe that: The third way should be understood as a metaphor for centre-left parties in both Europe and the US to help them to forge political settlements that combined a recognition of the increasing importance of the global economy with attention to the importance of social cohesion.

While not a full ideology (White 2001), the concept of the New Social Democracy is a powerful vehicle for understanding the political ­narratives adopted by the Labour governments discussed in this book, even though it is not a label they have adopted.

12

The search for democratic renewal Defining the NSD

Giddens (1998, 2000, 2002, 2003) and Gray (1996) are the t­hinkers most closely associated with mapping out the Third Way–NSD (see  Pierson 2001), with Giddens widely seen as its most high-profile ­proponent (Bevir 2005). This section examines the work of Giddens (1998, pp. 70–7; 2000, p. 61) in defining the NSD, with an ­emphasis on his call for the ‘democratising of democracy’, although Bevir argues convincingly that Giddens should not be seen as the inventor of the NSD: Perhaps the high profile of Giddens’ theories acts merely as a retrospective systematisation and legitimation of ideas and policies that New Labour already had developed from other sources. (Bevir 2005, p. 41)

Giddens outlines his belief in the influence that his early work had on the Third Way: Well, first of all there was a massive response across the world to this Third Way book – there was a response you would not believe that any academic book could get … Second, I think it contributed a general framework for discussion, rather than influencing particular policies. (Giddens, interview with author, 10 December 2007)

One of the central criticisms of the NSD is that it is a vague and opaque political project. Giddens (1998, p. 8) cites one critic, who comments that the term has become ‘so wide as that it is more like a political parking lot than a highway to anywhere in p ­ articular’. A useful interpretation of the NSD is provided by White (1998, p. 4), who argues that it is a ‘relatively general normative ­framework … which can be rendered determinate and concrete in a number of ways’. However, White is adamant that it ‘does not add up to anything like a complete political philosophy in itself’, a view shared by Beech (2006). Lukes (1999) cited by Kelly (2003, p. 243) argues that the Third Way was not really a concept or theory but rather a ­‘rhetorically defined space’. Pierson and Castles (2002, p. 685) see the Third Way concept ‘less as a programme and rather more as an omnibus term for a ­particular ­reorientation of parties of the centre-left in the face of a series of ­substantial changes in their external environment’. The NSD can be seen as an attempt to provide a new framework which (­proponents argue) avoids the ‘mistakes’ of the traditional left responses and the unresponsiveness of state socialism. One of the main factors that shaped the emergence of the NSD is the ‘growing disaffection



Labour, democratic renewal and the NSD 13

with  ­ mainstream  politics and p ­arties’ (Pierson and Castles 2002, p. 684). Fitzpatrick (2003) and Callinicos (2001) make an important link between the apparently ‘thin’ ideology of the NSD and the New Labour project. Fitzpatrick’s analysis (2003, p. 13) of the NSD p ­ olitical programme examines it ‘in what arguably remains its purest form, ­ that of Tony Blair’s post-1994 Labour Party and the ideas which have been deployed to both motivate and justify its approach’. Fitzpatrick ­proposes that it is the very thinness of the NSD ideology which allows the analysis to focus on the actions and discourse of New Labour. This is part of the driving force for this book: comparing the NSD rhetoric of democratic renewal with its practice. Cuperus, Duffek and Kandel (2001) identify ‘multiple third ways’. Giddens (2003) and Merkel (2001) also argue that the NSD has taken different forms across Europe. While all these political parties may face the common challenge of the dominance of neoliberalism, it is rather unhelpful to see them all as variants of the NSD. Clift (2004) argues persuasively that there have always been critical differences between British Labour and its European counterparts. It is hard to see where the ‘new’ social democratic politics begins in some of these models and where the ‘old’ ends, particularly in the case of the French Parti Socialiste. Barrientos and Powell (2004) make a useful contribution to disentangling elements of the NSD, by focusing on its various ­constituent parts, including a political party’s discourse, values and policy means. In this way, a centre-left party may not talk the language of the NSD, but its policies may broadly fit within the paradigm – and vice versa. The NSD is a lightning rod for a wider vociferous, critical (and at times rather entertaining), ongoing battle for the ‘soul’ of social democratic politics. Critics of the NSD are irritated that the NSD ­ ­misrepresents the character of the ‘old’ social democracy (Fitzpatrick 2003; Pierson 2001). In turn, Giddens (1998, 2002) lambasts those on the left who hang onto long-cherished myths about social democracy, resisting in particular the reform of the public sector and the changed role of the state. The NSD arrives at an interesting moment in the history of social democracy. With the dominance of neoliberalism, the aims of social democracy have never been more questioned. Indeed, most recently, following the financial crisis of 2008, left-of-centre political ­parties are increasingly out of favour and are viewed by the public as unable to offer viable alternatives to neoliberalism. These themes were reflected upon in a wide-reaching 2011 speech by David Miliband after losing his bid to

14

The search for democratic renewal

assume the Labour Party leadership. Critics such as Fitzpatrick (2003) and Hamilton (2006) claim that the NSD arrives (rather too conveniently) as the saviour of social democracy, ­particularly with its appeal to ­pragmatism. Hamilton (2006, p. 19) argues: The Third Way came from nowhere, sparkled briefly in the political ­firmament and then winked out. Its function is now clear. It provided an ideological vehicle – a cover story – for former social democrats who had decided to abandon the ideas of the past but did not want to be seen to have cast their lot with the conservatives.

The main themes of the NSD Basing his analysis on Giddens’s work, White (1998) identifies the main themes of the NSD, these being ‘real opportunity’, ‘civic ­responsibility’ and ‘community’. In terms of the role of government, White (1998, pp. 3–6) identifies five defining characteristics: the state should be g­uarantor (not necessarily direct provider) of opportunity goods; the state needs to be receptive to forms of ‘mutualism’; new ­thinking is required on public finances; social policy should be focused on  ­employment; and there should be a focus on asset-based ­egalitarianism. Barrientos and Powell (2004) provide a useful, if stylised, version of the distinctions between the Third Way, ‘old’ social democracy and the neoliberal approach to politics (Table 2.1). It is not the focus of this book to evaluate the NSD in full; however, it is clear that these themes are strongly identifiable in the writings of NSD enthusiasts such Tony Blair (1998), Mark Latham (1998, 2001) and Geoff Gallop (2001). A key strand in all these writings is an e­ mphasis on revitalising democratic processes. Blair calls for a modern government based on partnership and decentralisation, ‘where democracy is deepened to suit the modern age’ (Blair 1998, p. 7). In the Australian context Mark Latham links this to a call for a d ­ ispersal of political power and laments how ‘community consultation has been thinned out to the interaction between government and national peak bodies’ (Latham 2001, p. 25). Latham suggests giving ‘greater prominence [to] direct democracy’, developing internet democracy, and extending this to the ALP’s internal democracy. He advocates strongly that ‘interest group politics’ should be replaced with ‘communitarian methods of public dialogue’ (p. 26). For NSD enthusiasts the historical divide between the left and the right is no longer the central division in society. Former Australian

Rights Equity Market failure Equality of outcome Security Equality of outcome Full employment Rights State State finance and delivery Security Hierarchy High tax and spend High services and benefits High cash redistribution Universalism High wages

Discourse Rights and responsibilities Equity and efficiency Market and state failure Inclusion Positive welfare Minimum opportunities Employability Conditionality Civil society/market State/private finance and delivery Flexicurity Network Pragmatic tax to invest High services and low benefits High asset redistribution Pragmatic mix of universalism and selectivity National minimum wage/tax credits

Third Way

Source: Adapted from Barrientos and Powell 2004, p. 15.

Policy means

Policy goals

Values

Old social democracy

Dimension

Table 2.1: Dimensions of the Third Way

Responsibilities Efficiency State failure Equality of opportunity Insecurity Equality of opportunity Low inflation Responsibilities Market/civil society Private/state finance and delivery Insecurity Market Low tax and spend Low services and benefits Low redistribution Selectivity Low wages

Neoliberal

16

The search for democratic renewal

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd also argues that the old left–right divide is a ‘political straitjacket’ (Rudd 2008b), while Blair argued that: Most confusingly for modern politicians, many of the policy prescriptions cross traditional left–right lines. Basic values, attitudes to the positive role of government, social objectives – these still divide among familiar party lines, but on policy cross-dressing is rampant and a feature of modern politics that will stay. (Cited in ‘Cross-dressing on political policy here to stay, says PM’, The Guardian, 1 December 2003)

Gamble and Wright (1999, p. 3) consolidate this analysis of the NSD. They argue that the main sectional interest for social democratic p ­ olitical parties was the labour movement, but ‘this era, even in Britain, is now ending. Party leaders are no longer the representatives of a unified, disciplined labour movement, but brokers in an increasingly pluralistic and diverse politics.’ This leads the proponents of the NSD to argue that NSD parties need to represent and lead from the ‘radical centre’ (Fitzpatrick 2003). Rudd prefers the term ‘reforming centre’ (Manne 2008b, p. 25). Giddens (2002) argues that the focus on the radical centre reflects the growing divergence of citizens from the main political parties. Drawing upon the ideas of Blair, Giddens and Latham, for the ­purposes of this book the following are the main themes of the NSD narrative: • a ‘new politics’ that transcends the left–right divide; • an ensuring, enabling state that ‘steers’ not ‘rows’; • the value of community, with a central place in the new political ­settlement; • a moving-away from public ownership (means) as a vehicle for achieving greater social cohesion (ends); • an emphasis on equality of opportunity rather than outcomes; • a democratic renewal to enhance the relationship between state and citizen; • a seeking of new institutional forms such as networks; • citizen-centred policy-making. With the main themes of the NSD outlined, it is useful to highlight some of the main criticisms. Giddens (2000) and Fitzpatrick (2003) provide a useful catalogue of some of the common complaints about the NSD. Often, the criticisms are aimed at New Labour in particular, which was seen as the most visible brand of the NSD in action. An early focus was New Labour’s promotion of the concept of ­‘community’, which critics argued was too vague. New Labour’s i­nitial attraction to the communitarian ideals, such as those espoused by



Labour, democratic renewal and the NSD 17

Tam (1998) and Etzioni (1993), was based on the belief that community could help find the middle way between collectivism and egalitarianism (Fitzpatrick 2003). Feminist critiques of New Labour argue that community is a vague concept, one which tends to romanticise the role of women in the family (Franklin 2000). Giddens also acknowledges that ‘the term “community” does too much work in communitarian theory’ (Giddens 2000, p. 63). There is an argument that NSD thinking does not differentiate the components of civil society enough (Edwards 2004). Fitzpatrick (2003, p. 22) argues that because New Labour aims to be compatible with global capitalism, the brand of communitarianism in its policy-making tends to be authoritarian and moralistic rather than reflexive and heterogeneous. A second criticism is that New Labour elevated the principle of meritocracy but paid insufficient attention to its limitations. Fitzpatrick (2003, p. 21) invokes Michael Young’s (1958) famous work on ­meritocracy: ‘genuine equality requires the removal of the structures that distribute power, wealth and capital unevenly’. As we shall see, this is a criticism which was levelled at some of the more elite forms of consultation used by NSD-influenced governments in Britain and Australia. Third, the NSD’s advocacy for equality of opportunity was criticised for lacking bite, with Fitzpatrick (2003) arguing that a renewal of social democracy also requires some equalisation of outcomes. NSD thinkers, such as Giddens, are highly sensitive to this charge. Giddens argues strenuously that the NSD requires both components, and if inequality persists in Britain, it is partly due to New Labour not implementing the NSD in full (Giddens and Diamond 2005). Shaw considers that New Labour’s commitment to equality of opportunity itself has been thin, despite some redistribution (Shaw 2007, p. 202). A fourth criticism levelled at the NSD is that it accuses the ‘old’ social democracy of ignoring the importance of duties in its discourse of reciprocity. Fitzpatrick (2003, p. 22) counters with an important claim: ‘what traditional social democracy recognised, unlike New Labour, was the duty of the state to structure the job market. And at its worst what New Labour has done is to decentralise responsibility while c­ entralising power upon those who already hold it’ (emphasis in original). The issue here is that the NSD focus on ‘rights and responsibilities’ is rather one-sided (Fitzpatrick 2003, p. 22). Responsibilities tend to be directed towards those from lower socioeconomic groups. In Britain, this took the form of the so-called respect agenda and its exhortations for decent public behaviour and the use of anti-social behaviour orders (ASBOs) as a local policy tool to police behaviour.

18

The search for democratic renewal

There is wide debate about many different aspects of the NSD and these encompass only a small number of the criticisms levelled at New Labour and the NSD in general, but they are the most relevant to the case studies in this book. Crucially for this book, it is what the NSD has to say about political participation and civic engagement that is central to understanding the programme responses by Labour governments. Reinvigorating the state and civil society A central motif of the NSD is that social democrats need to rethink the role of the state (Gamble 2003b): the NSD seeks to reconfigure the ­relationship between state and civil society in order to shore up political participation and support.2 Giddens offers the most clearly articulated view of the role of the state in the politics of the NSD, demarcating the state, the economy and civil society (1998, p. 51), also arguing that ‘all [three spheres] need to be constrained in the interests of social solidarity and social justice’. Giddens (1998, p. 37) recognises a tension between each of these spheres and cautions that ‘there are interest groups, and groups of the powerful, that any self-respecting left of centre g­ overnment must confront, face down, or regulate’. The challenge of ‘interest politics’ is also a central feature of both Latham’s and Blair’s account of NSD politics. As noted above, Latham (2001, p. 26) argues that interest group politics should be replaced with other methods of public debate and consultation. Similarly, Blair ­identifies the elements that government should ‘face down’: In these conditions political leaders have to back their instinct and lead. The media climate will often be harsh. NGOs [non-governmental ­organisations] and pressure groups with single causes can be benevolent, but also can exercise a kind of malign tyranny over public debate. (The Guardian, 1 December 2006)

A key concern is that since the rise of social movements in the 1960s the fabric of civil society has been changing (Marsh 1995, 2005; Sawer and Zappalà 2001; Skocpol 2003; Stoker 2006). Skocpol (2003) claims that in the United States there has been a decrease in the range and number of membership-based, civil society organisations, and increasingly governments are engaging with more professional lobby groups to set and agree on public policy. She argues that US democracy has become diminished as everyday citizens are not included in this political interaction between government and the lobby groups. Marsh (1995, 2005) argues that to some extent similar patterns are occurring in Australia. Stoker (2006, p. 104) identifies a similar process in



Labour, democratic renewal and the NSD 19

Britain and notes that increasingly civil society is characterised by ‘the ­professionalism of activism’ (a view also shared by Tony Blair’s former head of strategy, Geoff Mulgan (2006)). In NSD thinking, there is an apparent ­democratic deficit in the ‘interest group’ sector. Fitzpatrick (2003, p. 193) believes that, where the political class is not rooted in the ‘life-world’ of wider civil society (as apparently is the case for Britain), then ‘conservatives have found it easier to detach social democratic institutions from those they were originally designed to assist’. In this, the NSD is clearly influenced by public choice or rational choice theory. For rational choice theorists, interest groups are seen as ‘special interest’ groups, which exercise a malign influence over policy. As we shall see in the cases in the book, the NSD efforts at ­democratic renewal were determined attempts to find new mechanisms for ­consultation and deliberately avoided or minimised direct engagement with interest groups. As outlined in the case of Rudd’s 2020 Summit in Australia, the participants were specifically asked to disassociate themselves from their organisational and institutional ‘homes’. The NSD seeks democratic renewal and new forms of engagement, but in line with rational choice concerns, it seeks to create new dialogic spaces which do not directly involve established interest groups in civil society. In this, the NSD seeks to reconfigure the relationship between the state and civil society, and by creating an ‘active citizenry’ there is hope that this will nullify the tyranny of malign interest groups. In this context, the role of government is forced to change. The ensuring state Giddens, along with Blair and Latham, holds distinct conceptions of the role of government in the relationship with civil society.3 He argues that the lesson from state socialism is that state power can be suffocating, and there is a difference between a big state and an active state. Government, for Giddens (1998, p. 60), is a vehicle for confronting apathy: The self-reform of government and the state needs not only to meet ­efficiency goals, but to respond to the voter apathy from which even the most established democratic states are suffering. In many countries, levels of trust in political leaders and other authority figures have declined while the proportions voting in elections and expressing an interest in parliamentary politics have also dropped.

Initially, Blair invoked Giddens’s earlier notion of the active state (as a counterpoint to the traditional social democratic vision of the big state). Latham, along with later NSD thinkers, uses the concept of the enabling

20

The search for democratic renewal

state. More recently, Giddens and others such as Schuppert (2003) have seen limitations in the concept of the enabling state and argue for an ensuring state. Giddens (2003, p. 13) argues: The central idea of the enabling state is that the state should empower its citizens – the state should provide resources that allow individuals to develop their own lives, rather than being told what to do or how to act … the state is conceived of mainly as a facilitating agency. … The concept of the ensuring state, however, recognises that the state also has obligations of care and protection for citizens, and some of these obligations should be provided as guarantees … It recognises that many services once delivered directly by the state are now provided by non-state agencies.

Despite this recent change in emphasis in the role of the state, ­proponents of the NSD argue that the state has a key role in fostering active c­ itizenship (Blair 1998; Latham 2001, p. 27). Blair, Giddens and, to a lesser extent, Latham 4 have then argued for democratic renewal. For Latham (1998, p. 34): The electorate is now riddled with cynicism and apathy about the political process. Political change needs to be built on a strengthening of political choice. Ironically, this mass disillusionment with politics has taken place at time when most political messages represent a recycling of opinion poll messages. This is, in fact, a form of direct democracy, albeit flawed in its motivation and practice.

Similarly Blair (1998, p. 15) argued that British democracy should be strengthened and modernised to enable greater citizen input. For New Labour, this concept was institutionalised in the c­ reation of the Active Community Unit (Bevir 2005, p. 72). The notion of active citizenship draws directly from the earlier NSD theme of civic ­responsibility. This appeal to active citizenship is one way that the issue of the professionalisation of lobby groups can be addressed – as wider associational life and civil society are reinvigorated. However, as is quite often the case with some aspects of NSD thinking, this concept is not as self-evident and straightforward as it first appears. White (1999, p. 166) argues that ‘New Labour’s rhetoric of civic responsibility is compatible with a variety of different philosophical positions’. The democratising of democracy Latham, Blair and other NSD proponents have called for some form of democratic renewal. Giddens (2000, p. 61) calls for a ‘second wave of democracy’ or what he calls ‘the democratising of democracy’.



Labour, democratic renewal and the NSD 21

Giddens  gives some indications of what this might look like and the ­different forms it might take: constitutional reforms and experiments with democracy, including citizens’ juries, electronic referenda and forms for direct democracy. Giddens (1998, p. 65) emphasises the role of civil society in constraining the state and the economy: ‘Civil society, rather than the state, supplies the grounding of citizenship, and is hence crucial to sustaining an open public sphere.’ Despite the various NSD calls for democratic renewal (Bentley and Halpern 2003; Blair 1998; Giddens 1998, 2003; Latham 1998), the actual content and character of what the democratising of democracy should look like is rather vague. Giddens (1998, pp. 70–7) talks about the need for ‘experiments’ at the local level, but this is one of the least developed areas in his writings on the NSD. Likewise, Bentley and Halpern (2003) strongly argue for concentrating more power in communities, but their prescriptions are still rather suggestive. They call for devolving responsibility for service management and priority setting to local governance, and creating new subsidies and support for specific communities to develop their own health, education or crime reduction strategies. (Bentley and Halpern 2003, p. 85)

Ultimately, the central difficulty for NSD-influenced governments is how they achieve this. Fitzpatrick (2003) argues that where New Labour has tried this, the result has been devolved responsibility but centralised power. Interestingly, even Blair’s former Head of Strategy argues that decentralisation does not always guarantee the fair e­ xercise of political power: ‘it can be a tool for governments that want to ­dispose of their responsibilities rather than powers’ (Mulgan 2006, p. 175). Marquand (1999) argues that throughout the social democratic ­tradition there has been a tendency for the state to be used as a ‘­ surgeon’ operating on the ‘patient’ (citizen body). According to its critics, New Labour has not been able to escape this strand of paternalism. In theory, the NSD may advocate devolution and democratisation, but in p ­ ractice this has not been fully realised, with much of the criticism of New Labour’s radical constitutional programme concurring with this view (Driver and Martell 2002, 2006; Flinders 2004; Gamble 2003b; Norton 2007; Richards and Smith 2004). The push for wider democratic renewal is inherently complex, with Smyth, Reddel and Jones in 2005 arguing that ‘the local modernisation reforms of the current British ­government highlight the tensions inherent in trying to balance vertical and horizontal accountabilities’ (2005, p. 200).

22

The search for democratic renewal

There are a number of reasons why the democratising of democracy may not have been fully realised by New Labour. Firstly, democratic reform is a second-tier issue in the NSD. For example, it is far less developed in Giddens’s work than other issues such as welfare reform and reconciling public services with economic growth. This is due, in part, to the historical backdrop of the past few decades, whereby social democratic parties have lost ground to conservative parties on these issues. Secondly, thoroughgoing democratic reform often takes place at a slower pace than other aspects of public policy development, and the results can be less tangible for NSD-influenced governments. This is obvious in New Labour’s approach to constitutional reform. As Gamble (2003a, p. 19) notes: There are several reasons for this caution. The constitution is seen as an issue with limited political appeal, popular amongst a vocal section of  the political class, but largely regarded with bemusement by the rest of the electorate. Secondly, constitutional reform became a major part of Labour’s programme under the leadership of John Smith. It never had the same priority for Tony Blair, but many of the commitments, particularly those on devolution, were impossible to abandon, and the Party fought the 1997 election on a far reaching programme of constitutional reform. In government, however, the Blair government, like all Labour governments before it, proved cautious in the way it implemented the programme, often choosing the least radical option, and disappointing the high hopes of the reformers.5

Despite the centrality of the theme of democratic renewal in NSD thinking, it remains underdeveloped and rather narrow in focus. Driver and Martell (2001, pp. 44–5) argue that for New Labour at least the focus on democratic renewal is specifically constrained: The core of New Labour has little interest with active democratising processes for citizens in everyday life outside mainstream politics … The democratisation programmes are of government, not beyond government.

Flinders (2004, p. 138) makes an important link between New Labour’s constitutional reforms and the Third Way–NSD politics, citing: The lack of a coherent statement of goals or clear framework that would offer a holistic view of the constitution as a whole. Arguably, this is reflected in the fact that constitutional reform has never been located clearly within the ‘third way’ project.

Giddens, despite remaining a supporter of the New Labour project, is sceptical of its record on democratic renewal:



Labour, democratic renewal and the NSD 23 And I think it was pretty clear that Labour didn’t really think things through [regarding] the devolution agenda … There’s very imbalanced devolution as everyone can see, and Labour initially weren’t really ­committed to a strong outburst of regional autonomy and therefore it was voted down. And frankly, naming no names, they put John Prescott in charge of it – which was a sign about how they felt about it. It wasn’t at the forefront of their thinking I would say … from the ­beginning there should have been a clearer idea of what kind of Britain they wanted to create around the frontiers of democracy, and I don’t see that there was a clear [idea] of that really, and so I see that as kind of weak thread for New Labour. (Giddens, interview with author, 10 December 2007)

In addition, democratic reform in the modern age is made more complex in the face of the changing nature of government, which in some respects is tilting towards governance (see the following section). Finally, reforming representative democracy in itself is an inherently complex and difficult project. Arguably, it is for these reasons that the NSD prescriptions for renewal remain rather underdeveloped. In the case of New Labour, it is also interesting that after some early reforming zeal (for example, creating the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly), other constitutional reforms have been considered ‘half-baked’ (Toynbee and Walker 2005, p. 299). In Australia, the Rudd–Gillard governments also disappointed with their democratic renewal agenda. There was little movement on the issue of the republic, and despite a wide-ranging consultation, Australia remains one of the few advanced industrial nations without a bill of rights. That said, both of these constitutional reforms would require a referendum to change the written constitution, and historically only eight of 44 referendums have been carried. The Rudd government’s rather lacklustre agenda on community engagement is explored more fully in Chapter 6. Despite the ambivalent place of democratic renewal in NSD t­ hinking, New Labour and other NSD-influenced governments have shown a willingness to experiment in the democratising of democracy. Before turning to the case studies, it is important to locate the NSD’s push for democratic renewal alongside what has been called the ‘challenge of governance’ (Richards and Smith 2004, p. 106). This challenge offers new complexities in how the relationship between state and civil society is reconfigured. NSD experiments in the democratising of democracy are both a cause of, and a response to, this trend towards governance.

24

The search for democratic renewal The challenge of governance

Linked to the NSD debates about the changing role of the state is the challenge of the shift (perceived or real) from ‘government’ to ‘governance’. Governance as a term is contested and has been used in a variety of contexts (Bevir and Rhodes 2003; Hirst 2000; Kjaer 2004; Pierre 2000). At its most basic level it signifies a move away from a unified, centralised decision-making authority (underpinned by the attendant classical Weberian bureaucracy) to a devolution of the decision-making process, which is carried out through a multi-layered set of institutions and/or networks. Governance requires government to ‘steer more and row less’ (Coote 1999, p. 117). Bevir and Rhodes (2003, p. 13) define governance as referring to ‘the informal authority of networks as c­onstitutive of, supplementing or supplanting the formal authority of government’. Meyer (2001, p. 193) argues that the transformation from government to governance involves a greater focus on ‘co-production, forming alliances, and striking contracts between government and society, towards support of societal actors instead of government acting as the ­monopolist of welfare related political action’. The emergence of the governance debate arose in the 1980s and, as Jessop (2011, p. 106) notes, it was related to the growing perception of the problems generated in this period by a combination of market failure and/or by a decline in social cohesion in advanced capitalist societies. This was reflected in notions such as governmental overload, legitimacy crisis, steering crisis, and ­ungovernability.

Most prominently, it has been associated with the work of Rod Rhodes and his expression, the ‘hollowing out of the state’ (Rhodes 1994, 1996, 2000). In the British context, Rhodes (1996, pp. 53–4) refers to a range of changes to government including privatisation, loss of functions to alternative delivery systems, the influence of the European Union (EU), and the influence of the new public management. Some of these changes are clearly identifiable in the Australian context, especially the growth of statutory agencies (and the influence of the NPM). The NPM paradigm aligns closely with the neoliberalism that dominated the 1980s and, in keeping with a general scepticism about the role and value of government, sought to introduce market or quasi-market techniques into the governance structures. Particularly influential, or perhaps rather more widely cited as inspiration, was Osborne and Gaebler’s (1992) work, Reinventing Government. An important part of this governance narrative is that it has a greater potential to activate



Labour, democratic renewal and the NSD 25

wider sources of input into the policy-making process. Considine and Kamran (2011, p. 369) argue: More recently, this process has seen the emergence of new types of network governance in which state agencies are found operating key functions through somewhat self-organizing arrangements comprising bureaucrats, private enterprises, not-for-profit agencies, community organisations, and even citizens themselves.

This growth of governance arrangements dovetails with the NSD thinking about civic responsibility: New Governance, thus, is mainly about more self-responsibility and participation of citizens (i.e. civic empowerment); [what is] required is a revival of the spirit of republicanism. (Meyer 2001, p. 194)

In theory, the fragmentation of the state has the potential for wider democratic engagement. As Bevir and Rhodes (2003, p. 217, cited in Enroth 2011, p. 26) argue, governance ‘opens up new possibilities of participation and devolution in democracy’. The central argument proposed in this book is that NSD-influenced Labour governments in Britain and Australia have embraced the governance narrative. As Bevir and Rhodes (2003, p. 124) comment: New Labour’s adherence to the Third Way stands as a general response to the dilemmas highlighted by Thatcherism, while its belief in joined-up government stands as a more specific response to the consequences, often unintended, of the NPM.

Under New Labour, there were two waves of governance reforms (Fawcett and Rhodes 2007). Firstly, when New Labour took office, the emphasis was on joined-up government. The second wave saw a shift in focus to ‘delivery’. Joined-up government had been developed to respond to unintended problems resulting from the Thatcher–Major Conservative reforms of the public sector. New Labour inherited a much more fragmented state, with an attendant loss of steering ­capacity and a concern that accountability regimes had been weakened (Bevir and Rhodes 2003, p. 133). Under New Labour, the emphasis on governance came to fruition under the guidance of the No. 10 Strategy Unit. A range of initiatives was established, including a plethora of partnership bodies comprising statutory local agencies such as local councils, the police, and voluntary and private-sector bodies (Coote 1999; Ling 2002). As explored in the case studies in this book, Labor governments in Australia also sought to introduce new forms of citizen and expert

26

The search for democratic renewal

engagement in their policy-making. Indeed, at the state level in Australia, Labor governments heralded an era of what former Western Australian Premier Geoff Gallop (2007) called an era of ‘strategic government’. Gallop identified the growing use of strategic planning in each Australian state and also the wider use of consultation and engagement strategies to counter the ‘narrowness’ of the NPM agenda in Australia. In NSD theory at least, the shift to governance is an opportunity for more meaningful citizen input into the political process. Reddel and Woolcock (2004) identify a trend away from traditional forms of c­ommunity consultation towards more participatory governance. Fung and Olin Wright’s (2003) work on empowered participatory governance (EPG) strongly advocates for a deeper level of citizen ­ involvement. In this sense, ‘participatory governance’ entails a far richer engagement with civil society than ‘network governance’, which often institutionalises expert and stakeholder opinion. Fung and Olin Wright surveyed a range of different examples of EPG and are optimistic that within clear boundaries there is an enhanced role for citizens in local decision-­making. However, it remains open to question how far these models can be realised and translated into other political systems and contexts. For example, many have been optimistic about the use of ­‘participatory budgeting’ (PB) in Porto Allegro, Brazil (Wiseman 2004).6 Perhaps characteristically, Gordon Brown was more interested in this agenda than Blair, with 22 PB pilots set up in Britain in 2008 under the oversight of the Department of Communities and Local Government (Ministry of Justice 2008). Yet such initiatives were undermined by the impact of the MPs’ expenses scandal, where in more extreme cases the expense claims dwarfed many of the PB funds devolved to local communities. These were laughably meagre breadcrumbs compared with the MPs’ richer pickings. The use of PB was also discussed at Rudd’s 2020 Summit, but its adoption in Australia is unlikely. As explored in Chapter 6, most of the suggestions to the summit related to community engagement were not enacted. The more fundamental concern is that these are ‘top-down’ solutions for fostering citizen engagement and power-sharing. There is wider scepticism that some forms of empowered participatory governance are rather idealistic. For some, such as Stoker (2006), the difficulty is that often these models suggest a normative ideal of the ‘good citizen’ rather than reflect how people currently engage or want to engage with liberal democracy. The wider issues related to the way citizens engage with political processes is explored in further detail in Chapter 4.



Labour, democratic renewal and the NSD 27

In the case of New Labour’s governance reforms, there is widespread agreement that there has been distinct and unresolved tension between centralisation and decentralisation (Bevir and Rhodes 2003; Fawcett and Rhodes 2007; Newman 2001; Peele 2003), these tensions arising in part because Blair never had a consistent vision of the public service (Fawcett and Rhodes 2007, pp. 93, 103). The concern remains that, while New Labour advocated for new forms of network governance, it decentralised responsibility but centralised power (Fitzpatrick 2003). This links with Marquand’s view that state paternalism (Labour ­governments performing the role of surgeon to the public ‘patient’) is a key strand in the social democratic tradition. A useful way of understanding Labour’s centralising tendencies in the face of the challenge of governance is through the concept of metagovernance. Marsh, Lewis and Fawcett (2010, p. 144) argue: Many do not accept the blanket claim about the rise of network governance. In particular, it is argued that the distinction between government, based on hierarchy and markets, and governance, based on networks, creates a dualism, when it is better to see it as a duality.

More simply, metagovernance has been described as the ‘government of governance’ (Marsh, Lewis and Fawcett 2010, p. 106). In this way, government exerts centralised control through hierarchical structures to influence policy-making through the diverse range of actors, organisations and public servants interlinked in governance networks. The argument here is that, even where Labour governments sought to use new forms of network governance to deliver policy outcomes, Labour metagoverned these networks through public spending targets, or other NPM-related regimes. In this respect, despite the democratic potential of the governance narrative, in part embraced by NSD-influenced Labour, Labour still remains reluctant to abandon its role as surgeon to the body politic. To recap, a central part of NSD thinking is to reconfigure the role of the state, and by doing so, meet the challenge of governance. Giddens’s (and fellow NSD proponents’) call for the democratising of democracy entails a search for new ways and mechanisms for enhancing the relationship between the state and civil society. New Labour and, as we shall see, to some extent the Rudd government in Australia, sought to find new ways of citizen-centred policy-making. Yet, for critics, these governments used forms of hierarchy and centralised control to neutralise some of the initiatives. What underpins this recourse to centralised forms of control is ambivalence about what democratic reform can ‘deliver’ for Labour governments influenced by the New Social

28

The search for democratic renewal

Democracy. Through the case studies detailed in this book, we can get a clearer picture of the contradictions, tensions and underlying processes at play. The NSD and Labour governments in Britain and Australia In summary, the NSD is a term for the political narratives adopted (in part) by recent Labour governments in Britain and Australia. The NSD is an attempt to transcend the problems of neoliberalism and the ‘old’ social (statist) democracy. The NSD is a dynamic, not static, set of ideas. Crucially, it is characterised by underpinning tensions and contradictions, such as the push for both centralisation and devolution. The NSD does not constitute a fully fledged ideology and it encompasses both conservative and radical elements (fiscal conservatism on the one hand and constitutional reforms on the other). NSD governments – New Labour is the closest example of the archetype – have at times asserted the conservative strand, and at other times asserted the more radical elements, such as zeal for the modernisation of public services. The NSD is a prism for understanding the political dilemmas facing Labour governments, particularly their response to the dominance of neoliberalism. The NSD call for the democratising of democracy raises a whole suite of questions which forms the core of this book. Have the Labour governments been able to carry out these experiments in citizen-centred policy-making with any great deal of success? What does this ‘success’ look like? How effective have the various cases described in this book been in facilitating, at least in part, a reconfiguration of the relationship between state and civil society? Have these experiments opened up new paths of dialogue and opportunities for citizens to influence government policies? Have these experiments been able to transcend some of the contradictions and tensions within the NSD thinking? A reflection upon the role of the citizen in democratic theory and also within the social democratic tradition provides a context for addressing these questions. This is the subject of the next chapter. Notes 1 As examined in the final chapter of the book, the UK Conservatives ‘Big Society’ is a centre-right variant of this agenda, and to some extent builds and extends on New Labour’s legacy. Perhaps one distinction between the centre-right and centre-left variants of democratic renewal is that in the former version, there is a stronger focus on reconfiguring the citizen as



Labour, democratic renewal and the NSD 29

‘consumer’. For example, Mullen’s (2006, p. 34) critique of John Major’s 1991 ‘citizen charter’ initiative reminds us that, ‘the ideal is consumerism, not ­“participatory democracy”, the citizen as individual consumer, not politicized and mobilized’. 2 Civil society is a contested concept. A useful summary of the key elements is provided by Edwards (2004, pp. vi–viii). He identifies three main elements of civil society: (1) ‘associational life’; (2) civil society as ‘the good society’ (this is the institutionalisation of civility); and (3) civil society as the ‘public sphere’ – the realm where the common good is discussed and democratically deliberated (building on the work of Jürgen Habermas). There are strengths and limitations to all three aspects. Edwards argues that to function well, civil society needs to integrate all three areas. 3 It is notable that despite large areas of agreement between Giddens, Blair and Latham, there are differences in their conceptual understanding and emphasis of Third Way–NSD politics. Giddens is often seen as providing intellectual cover for Blair, but an interesting account of the differences in their thinking is provided by Driver and Martell (2001, pp. 36–49). 4 While Latham has outlined ideas for democratic or civic renewal (or at least offered a diagnosis for political cynicism with party politics), much of the focus of his thinking on the relationship between state and civil society is in the context of welfare reform and rewarding ‘active’ citizens (Latham 1998, Ch. 18). 5 There are interesting parallels here with the first Australian Rudd Labor government. Obviously, in Australia the constitutional reform questions are different because they reflect a different political system. Rudd’s and Gillard’s approach to creating an Australian Republic was a low priority and limited to offering a referendum in a second term of office. There has also been some push for a bill of rights, but again there was little enthusiasm in the Rudd–Gillard governments. The bill of rights was a key theme of the 2020 Summit but there has been no rush to adopt one. Rudd instigated a national consultation on human rights issues, which enabled him to be seen to be doing something without any firm commitment to strong constitutional reform. The emergence of the Labor minority government in 2010 saw even greater caution in advancing this agenda. 6  Fung and Olin Wright (2003, pp. 3–44) provide further details of this ­democratic experiment.

3

Understanding political participation

The democratic impulse needs to be strengthened by finding new ways to enable citizens to share in decision-making that affects them. For too long a false antithesis has been presented between ‘representative’ and ‘direct’ democracy. The truth is that in a mature society representatives will make better decisions if they take full account of popular opinion and encourage public debate on the big decisions affecting people’s lives. Tony Blair, 1998 The trouble with Socialism is that it takes too many evenings. Attributed to Oscar Wilde

The New Social Democracy in its variant forms in both Australia and Britain is experimenting with the ideas of participation, ­democracy and consultation. In both countries, there is willingness by c­ entre-left ­governments to search for new mechanisms to enable citizen ­engagement with the policy-making process. As outlined in the ­previous ­chapter, these are responses to both the dominance of ­ neoliberalism and the impact of the new public management. While there has been a proliferation of such initiatives in many countries (see Barnes et al. 2003; Carson 2001; Dryzek 2000; Head 2007; Munro-Clark 1992; Newman 2005; Newman and Clarke 2009; Pratchett 1999; Reddel and Woolcock 2004; Smith 2005; Williams 2001), proponents of the NSD attempt to build a narrative which links and legitimises these experiments to the renewal of centre-left thinking. As the focus shifts from a ‘big’ state to an ‘ensuring’ state, so the role of the citizen is ­reconfigured. In the process, New Social Democrats seek to encourage and create ‘active citizens’. Making sense of these mechanisms and experiments invites a wider discussion of what it is that a democracy and a citizen are supposed to do in a political system driven by NSD. To understand the attempts by New Labour and the ALP to create ‘active citizens’, we need to explore the wider debates about the role of democracy and the challenges facing



Understanding political participation 31

attempts to institute the ‘democratisation of democracy’. This chapter examines the oscillating place of participation in democratic theory and traces how social democratic thinking seeks to reconfigure citizenship. The chapter examines the limits of democracy, after which a critique of the attempts to find new consultative and public participation mechanisms is offered. Rather than beginning with a definition of democracy, Dryzek (1996) more enterprisingly offers the notion of a democratic ‘concourse’. The democratic concourse is a place where the multiple ideas, positions and models of democracy can be assembled, while recognising the competing and contradictory claims. For Dryzek, ‘the democratic concourse may be defined as pertaining to the collective construction, distribution, application and limitation of political authority … democracy is an open ended project, and the democratic life consists in large part of searching for democracy’ (1996, p. 4). Democracy is dynamic, open-ended and shaped by competing ideals, different political systems and historical settings. For John Keane, democracy ‘consistently disappoints’ because there is always a gap between what it can offer as an ideal, and how it operates in practice (Keane 2009, p. 867). Keane sees the democratic ideal as constantly fluid and changing: Democracy is always on the move. It is not a finished performance, only a set of actions that are in rehearsal. It is never something that is done and dusted, never a mechanism that comes to rest, as if it reached a steady state. It is a thing of action – not something accomplished and piled up and stored, like gold in a vault, or goods in a warehouse. (Keane 2009, p. 867)

Given this fluidity, the democratic ideal can enlarge and shrink. Dryzek helpfully offers three criteria by which we can observe the deepening of democracy. These are franchise, scope and authenticity. Franchise relates to the number of participants in a setting; the historic deepening of democracy in Britain includes landmark legislative changes such as the Great Reform Act of 1832. Dryzek’s criterion of scope relates to the domains of life under democratic control, although democratic scope can also have a more limited meaning, which might include discrete public participation initiatives to increase the range of citizens involved in government policy-making. For the centre-left, widening the democratic scope has often been applied to forms of worker control over the firm. Authenticity, Dryzek’s third criterion for extending democracy, relates to the degree to which democratic control is substantive rather than symbolic. All three criteria are linked and, as Dryzek notes, while movement on any might indicate a further deepening of democracy, this is not always the case. He argues that the ‘experience of referenda

32

The search for democratic renewal

in a number of US states is sobering’: they did not lead to a substantive revival of democratic practice (1996, p. 7). The underpinning issue is that democracy itself is contested, open-ended and elusive – what has been called the ‘strange elusiveness of the democratic ideal’ (Dryzek 1996, p. 865). In the democratic concourse, the role of the citizen is contested. Different models or typologies of democracy suggest differing degrees of citizen participation, and for varying purposes. For example, Weale (2007) proposes five types of democracy, with David Held’s work the more commonly cited typology (Held 2006). The notion of an active citizenry is the dominant feature of democratic theory and continues to pervade modern-day thought and practice. The classical model of democracy is based on the Athenian city-state, where participation is clearly linked to a common civic duty: ‘Pericles describes a community in which all citizens could and indeed should participate in the creation and nurturing of a common life’ (Held 1987, p. 17). Participation, of course, was limited to male citizens and confined to a city-state that was based on a slave economy. In Held’s (1987) account of the evolution of democratic thought, it is the developmental model of democracy that promotes a highly active citizenry and which is closely associated with Rousseau. Rousseau remains the wellspring of inspiration for later democratic enthusiasts such as Pateman and MacPherson. For Rousseau, where participation is limited to periodic voting of elected officials, ‘the people’ cannot be truly free. Rousseau’s account of the active citizen is based on his ideas about the character of sovereignty. In a well-known passage, Rousseau argues: Sovereignty can not be represented, for the same reason it can not be ­alienated … the people’s deputies are not, and could not be, its representatives; they are merely its agents; and they cannot decide anything finally. Any law which the people has not ratified in person is void; it is not law at all. The English people believes itself to be free; it is gravely mistaken; it is free only during the election of Members of Parliament; as soon as the Members are elected, the people is enslaved, it is nothing. (Rosseau cited in Held 1996, p. 58)

These ideas are developed further by J.S. Mill. Mill shares Rousseau’s belief that participation can be an engine for moral self-development, but Mill argues, ‘Participation in political life is sadly but inescapably limited in a large-scale, complex and densely populated society’ (Mill cited in Held 1987, p. 93). Mill desires and encourages active citizenry but argues that it can only remain a limited feature of the modern state.



Understanding political participation 33

Much of the debate about the role of participation in democratic theory then becomes a discussion about where to draw the line that determines how far citizens should be involved in the political system outside their role of electing their representatives. Schumpeter remains the champion for a ‘realist’ view of participation in democracy (Schumpeter 1952). For Schumpeter, democracy is conceived as no more than a political method for electing the political elites. Schumpeter argues that an overly participative society would be an inherently unstable polity, basing his views on limited civic participation on three sets of assumptions: the incompetence of the typical citizen to make sound decisions; the tendency to irrationality of the public; and the fact that greater participation gives greater space for special interest groups to pursue their own ends (see Weale 2007, p. 121). Held (1987, p. 192) finds these ideas echoed in those of Lipset, who suggests that political apathy may be a useful function for liberal democracy – an expression of general content and delegation to the government to resolve dispute and arbitrate interest. The risk, however, is that elite or ‘realist’ views of democracy breed complacency, with advocates in the 1960s arguing that, despite u ­ niversal suffrage, liberal democracy does little to tackle the entrenched exclusion of many social groups on the grounds of class, race and gender. The legacy of Rousseau and Mill find voice in the advocates for greater participation such as Pateman (1970) and MacPherson (1973). For Pateman and MacPherson, greater participation increases the ­quality and operation of democracy and can be extended in scope to sites such as the workplace. Pateman suggests that there are limits to this expanded role of participation, insofar as people are less likely to be interested in national events than issues closer to home. She c­ ontends that increasing participation ‘would enable the individual better to appreciate the ­connection between the private and public spheres’ (Pateman 1970, p. 110). For some, such as Stoker (2006) and Walzer (1970, 1991), those who espouse greater democracy often impose a normative ideal of increased participation, which does not correlate with how citizens actually engage with the political system, which is more spasmodic and fitful. Walzer (1970) rather entertainingly satirises the role of participation offered by others in the left in his essay, ‘A day in the life of a socialist citizen’. He suggests (1970, p. 231) that ‘ultimately it may require almost continuous activity, and life will become a succession of ­meetings’. Weale also raises the spectre of what he terms ‘defensive participation’ (Weale 2007, p. 128), whereby citizens have to turn up to engage, so that others do not get their way. For Weale, it might well be better if no one turned up at all.

34

The search for democratic renewal

Interestingly, Walzer and Weale (though to a much lesser extent than Pateman) still argue that democracy can be enriched and renewed. In the era of mass democracy, the difficulty is to reconcile representation with wider participation. These ideas are developed further in Young’s (2000) conception of an inclusive democracy. Young argues that political representation is a necessary part of a modern democracy, but this needs to be reconceptualised in more dynamic and inclusive terms. Young makes a strong case for special representation of excluded groups. Crucially, for Young, there are clear limits to the role of civil society. As much as civil society can be a voice for excluded groups, the state has specific, unique functions which cannot be replaced by civil society. The tension between the state and civil society cannot be transcended, but through inclusive political communication – developed from Habermas’s theory of communicative action – the state can mediate for and represent excluded groups. Common to the political thought of Held (1987), Pateman (1970), Young (2000), Stoker (2006), and Weale (2007) is that, while the tensions between the state and civil society will persist, they can (and ought to) be reinvigorated. This view is shared by Giddens (and the proponents of the NSD) in their call for the ‘democratising of democracy’. This then takes us back to the beginning of this discussion, with the underpinning characteristic that democracy is constantly evolving and remains open-ended. Limits to democratic renewal Hindess (1997) strikes a cautionary note regarding the calls for democratic renewal and argues that, while the democratic dream ­ still lingers as an ideal, disenchantment will continue to be a feature of p ­articipative democracy. Dunn shares this view and notes that an ­ongoing feature of democratic political life is that it remains ‘consistently ­disappointing’ (Dunn 2000, p. xii cited in Hay 2007, p. 6). Hindess argues that the democratic dream will persist while there remains confusion about the nature of political power, and the ­distinction needs to be made between power as a right and power as a capacity. Governments may have the right to make laws but not always the capacity to do so. Hindess takes issue with those, such as Pateman, who examine the ‘democratic deficit’, and argues that while increasing the number and range of democratic institutions may devolve authority (which may not be a bad thing), it also expands the range of ­locations where the ability to influence the agenda of government will be ­frustrated.



Understanding political participation 35

The implication of Hindess’s (and Dunn’s) insight for Labour is that democratic renewal is an inherently limited project because it simultaneously seeks to strengthen the democratic ideal; yet reasserting the ideal only exposes the utopian foundations on which it rests. Democratic renewal then becomes a dual process of idealisation and disappointment. Paradoxically, democratic renewal can lead to apathy and what Burchell (2002, p. 65) terms ‘perpetual disillusionment’. Burchell, invoking the political thought of Carl Schmitt, argues that essentially politics is in a different realm of human relations from other spheres such as family life. For Schmitt, the overriding characteristic of politics is the ‘capacity for political relations to be reduced to what he called “friend-enemy” ­relations’ (Burchell 2002, p. 67). Democracy gives effect to an unbridgeable conflict between politicians. Yet, while this conflict is real, ‘it does not need to assume a personal form’; and this ‘may help explain at once the bitterness and also the apparent theatricality of our political culture’ (p. 68). Disillusionment with politics and democracy, in part, stems from a confusion that the political sphere can be like other spheres of life. For Schmitt, liberals perpetuate a myth of democracy as they promote an overly consensual approach to politics that glosses over the ‘­ friend-enemy relations’. This leads Burchell (2002, p. 77) to claim: ‘At least part of our perpetual disillusionment with politics may be ­attributable to the fact that we have never really pulled it out of the clouds.’ This inherent tension between idealism and realism strongly resonates in NSD thinking. Pierson (2001, p. 145) argues that social democratic politics itself might well be ‘the politics of perpetually diminishing expectations’, with NSD thinking, at times, seemingly attempting to espouse an idealistic and transformative strand of ‘New Politics’ (Blair 1998). Yet it is also an exercise in downplaying the expectations of the electorate, particularly the ‘fiscal conservatism’ inherent in the politics of the NSD (Manne 2008b, p. 26). NSD thinking espouses both idealism and pragmatism, perhaps to the detriment of both. Understanding the NSD experiments in the democratising of democracy cannot be divorced from the wider normative debates about the role of political participation in democratic theory. The deliberative ‘turn’ Partly in response to what some commentators perceived to be a crisis of democracy in the late 1960s and early 1970s, there has been a growth in calls for the introduction of forms of deliberative or ­discursive ­democracy (Besson and Martí 2006), although there is wide ­disagreement between its proponents about its underpinning principles

36

The search for democratic renewal

and ­institutional design (Benhabib 1996, p. 6). Deliberative democracy, in theory, helps to break the impasse between representative d ­ emocracy and the calls for forms of direct democracy. With commentators c­ alling for new deliberative p ­olicy-making mechanisms to supplement the institutions of representative democracy, the critique of deliberative democracy rests on the a­ rgument that, in a mass society, representative democracy is a blunt tool for aggregating citizens’ needs (Benhabib 1996; Dryzek 2000; Elster 1998; Fishkin and Laslett 2003; Young 2003). The starting point for many deliberative democracy enthusiasts is Habermas’s defence of the public sphere (Benhabib 1996; Habermas 1974, 1989; Newman 2005). For Habermas, the public sphere is a distinct social category which nestles between the state and civil society. His ideas about the public sphere are most clearly developed in his 1962 work, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (translated 1989). It remains an important work for a range of reasons. Habermas (1989, p. 49) offers this definition of the public sphere: By ‘the public sphere’ we mean first of all a realm of social life in which something approaching public opinion can be formed. Access is g­ uaranteed to all citizens. A portion of the public sphere comes into being in every conversation in which private individuals assemble to form a public body. They then behave neither like business or professional people transacting private affairs, nor like members of a constitutional order subject to the legal constraints of a state bureaucracy. Citizens behave as a public body when they confer in an unrestricted fashion … Although state authority is so to speak the executor of the political public sphere, it is not a part of it.

The fundamental feature is that the public sphere is ‘people’s public use of their reason’ (1989, p. 28). It is worth re-emphasising a number of dimensions for Habermas’s concept of the public sphere. The ­crucial factor, often taken for granted, is that it developed as a feature of advanced capitalism. The Structural Transformation charts the genesis of what Habermas subtitled a category of ‘bourgeois society’. The public sphere evolved as a sphere of bourgeois life, where rational– critical forms of reason were employed through coffee houses, French salons, literary journals and so on. Ultimately, as the mass society emerged, the quality of discourse in the public sphere declined (Calhoun 1992, p. 3). A crucial feature is that the public sphere itself was commodified and transformed by capitalism, particularly by the emergence of the mass media. The public sphere becomes a sphere for advertising, rather than rational–critical debate (Habermas 1989, p. 216). There are further political developments which encourage Habermas to believe in the decline of the public sphere. The emergence of the liberal



Understanding political participation 37

capitalist welfare state has a detrimental effect on participation, where ­citizens engage with the state, not through political participation, but by ­‘adopting a general attitude of demand’ (1989, p. 211): ‘Their [citizens’] contact with the state occurs essentially in the rooms and anterooms of bureaucracies; it is unpolitical and indifferent, yet demanding.’ Here, Habermas’s grounding in the Frankfurt School’s critical social theory is apparent. The social welfare state administers and distributes ‘political interests’ (1989, p. 211) and whatever is left over is appropriated by modern political parties. A rather anaemic imitation of the public sphere then becomes a legitimising tool for the democratic arrangements. The emergence of professionalised political parties has a corrosive effect on the democratic polity. Habermas argues that for modern political parties, ‘the decisive issue is who has control over the coercive and educational means for ostentatiously or manipulatively influencing the voting behaviour of the population’ (1989, p. 202). Parliament itself evolves away from being a debating body, to take on a ‘rubber stamping’ function of resolutions decided behind closed doors (1989, p. 205). Ultimately, politics becomes spectacle. The public sphere suffers great stress as a result of these changes, in part driven by changes in the capitalist state (1989, p. 206): Before the expanded public sphere the transactions themselves are s­ tylized into a show. Publicity loses its critical function in a favour of staged display; even arguments are transmuted into symbols to which again one can not respond by arguing but only by identifying with them.

So, ultimately, Habermas finds the public sphere debased, although he breaks with the pessimism of Horkheimer and the Frankfurt School on the mass society, suggesting that the concept of the public sphere and subsequent transformations may offer some bulwark against advanced capitalism. Habermas’s work has of course been widely criticised for a range of reasons, with some key weaknesses usefully highlighted by Calhoun (1992, pp. 33–42). A central problem is that Habermas overestimates the degeneration of the public sphere. Apart from these criticisms – which can’t be resolved here – the key theme is that the public sphere provides a key concept for understanding and ­anchoring democratic renewal. For Habermas the public sphere as a realm of public reason is (or should be) autonomous from the state. Where the state re-creates the public sphere, this is the process of ‘colonisation’ (see McLaverty 2011, p. 410).1 This notion underpins the critique of the attempts by the New Social Democracy to experiment and find new spaces for public dialogue or ‘big conversations’, and the like. In one sense, despite a clear ­commitment

38

The search for democratic renewal

from many NSD enthusiasts for debate, the NSD ­ experiments in democracy seek to contain public opinion, and have the effect of ­ ­colonising the public sphere. The crucial difference is that the state ­creates these discursive spaces – and they are not autonomous from government. On a prosaic level, they encourage ‘problem-solving’ for local problems or wider policy issues, but they would not fulfil Habermas’s expectations for a full-blooded use of rational–critical discussion. The consultative experiments, despite having such seemingly open agendas, are shaped by government and are established on its terms. The experiments tolerate some forms of critical reason, but ultimately do not invite deeper critical engagement, especially of forms of advanced capitalism. Returning to the ebbs and flows of democratic theory, we can then understand how Habermas’s work remains the inspiration for many advocates of deliberative or discursive democracy. Deliberative ­democracy, at least in some forms, seeks to institutionalise the public use of reason. The main strength of this approach is that it can ­produce better and more legitimate decision-making processes. The q ­ uality of decisionmaking under deliberative processes trumps that of a cruder representative democracy, particularly in existing democracies where political representatives tend to be white, male and relatively a­ ffluent. Proponents of deliberative democracy are keen to increase the range of deliberative forums to foster wider and more inclusive debate. On one level, this seems to fit with the NSD calls for the democratising of democracy, but as Besson and Martí (2006, p. xv) note, there is an ambiguous relationship between deliberative democracy and ­participative democracy: Contrary to what is usually supposed by many commentators … ­deliberative democracy is not conceptually committed to a participatory or ­direct-democratic ideal.

For deliberative enthusiasts, it is not the overall amount of participation that is desirable (although many would welcome more), it is an improvement in the quality of decision-making that will strengthen democratic legitimacy. Deliberative democracy has been subject to a wide range of criticisms (Benhabib 1996; Fishkin and Laslett 2003; Held 2006; Young 2003), so it is worth highlighting some of the key problems. Feminist critiques of some accounts of deliberative democracy have detected an underlying patriarchal use of instrumental reason, which risks excluding women (Benhabib 1996). A second concern is the institutional form of ­deliberative democracy and how it might dovetail with and enhance the existing institutions of representative democracy. As Besson and Martí



Understanding political participation 39

(2006, p. xv) note, the second wave of deliberative politics has focused more on this issue. Fishkin’s (2002) development of deliberative polling is arguably the most robust and sophisticated response.2 Young (2003) claims that there may be good reasons why activists may not want to engage in forms of deliberative democracy, arguing that the emphasis in deliberative democracy is on producing ­consensual outcomes. She argues that many activists strive to question the p ­ olitical status quo, and their agendas risk being co-opted in the deliberative p ­ rocesses. Sunstein (2003, p. 81) raises a more technical, but n ­ evertheless compelling, objection by observing that in many small group d ­ iscussions, the ‘law of group polarisation’ can take place: In brief, group polarization means that members of a deliberating group predictably move toward a more extreme point in the direction indicated by the members’ predeliberation tendencies.

Sunstein cites the example of affirmative action, whereby if the m ­ embers of the group are generally predisposed towards affirmative action ­measures before the deliberative event, they tend to be much more ­supportive after the event. This poses a whole suite of difficult questions for policy-makers in relation to the representativeness of such views obtained through deliberative events. The deliberative ‘turn’ in democratic theory has then placed additional pressures on government policy-makers to supplement the existing architecture of representative democracy. Certainly, some governments are flirting with these ideas and looking at ways to enrich democratic debate. Indeed, in Australia, a deliberative inventory by Carson ­suggests a growing use of such mechanisms (Carson 2007, cited in Sawer, Abjorensen and Larkin 2009, p. 254). However, it is useful to strike a cautionary note about the commitment by the New Social Democracy to deliberative democracy. None of the cases considered can be described as forms of deliberative democracy; indeed, this is what makes the cases so interesting. The cases, as we shall see, are transitional mechanisms towards greater dialogic governance; they go beyond traditional one-off stakeholder government consultations, but fall short of being full cases of deliberative democracy. What this book aims to do is to explore this ambivalent commitment to a more substantive use of public rational– critical reason. Social democracy and participation Up to this point we have considered the changing role of deliberation and participation in wider democratic theory to give, at the very least, some

40

The search for democratic renewal

insights into some of the competing normative claims about democratic practice. It is, however, important to consider the role of participation in the social democratic and labour tradition. The emphasis, meaning and conception of democracy in ‘social democracy’ remain contested (Pierson 2001, p. 19). The beginnings of modern Western European social democracy saw at least two different strands to the emphasis and role of democracy and in the struggle to achieve socialism. As Berman notes, it achieved written expression in the ‘dualism’ of the Erfurt programme of the German social democratic party (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, SPD) (Berman 2006, p. 35), and centres on the debates between Eduard Bernstein and Karl Kautsky over the future direction of the German SPD. Bernstein and Kautsky each wrote one half of the programme, and Berman contends that the two visions were never fully reconciled. This story is told in full elsewhere (see also Sassoon 1997, pp. 16–18; Pierson 2001, pp. 22–3), but the contest of ideas between Kautsky and Bernstein (and also Rosa Luxemburg) is a fault line which continues to haunt more contemporary centre-left debates about ­ the role of d ­ emocracy and participation. Democracy plays a central part in Bernstein’s break from ‘traditional Marxism’ (Pierson 2001, p.  22). Crucially, Bernstein was active when the ‘universalization of the suffrage was still a very p ­ artial achievement’ (Pierson 2001, p. 23). However, Bernstein expressed hope that, as democracy expanded, it would challenge the privileges inherent in the capitalist system. Bernstein’s advocacy of democracy contrasted with Kautsky’s more instrumental approach – as a means to achieve socialist ends. As Pierson (2001, p. 23) argues: At the same time, Bernstein was not an enthusiast for democracy as ‘pure majoritarianism’ – the position that Kautsky ... was later to adopt as giving proper expression to the unqualified rule of the presumed-to-be majoritarian working class (and underpinning the distinction he was to draw between ‘dictatorship as a condition’ under democratic rules, and the ‘dictatorship as a form of government’ which he identified with Bolshevism). Indeed, Bernstein appeared to subscribe to a thoroughly modern and largely liberal-democratic account of democracy as ‘majority rule plus minority rights’.

In Bernstein’s opinion democracy and participation played a key role in seeking to ‘raise the worker from the social position of a proletarian to that of a citizen (Burger) and thus make citizenship universal’ (cited in Pierson 2001, p. 24). At a crucial juncture in the revision of the social democratic tradition, Bernstein pressed the case for a wider embrace of



Understanding political participation 41

democracy and democratic institutions, in which the working class (but not only the working class) is an agent in its own transformation. Kautsky’s view was that parliamentary democracy was a key ­instrument (along with other civil rights) in securing the path towards a socialist society. In his account, the role of parliament is crucial as it enables a democratic ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’ to seek to govern and implement the changes to achieve a more egalitarian system and begin the process of dismantling capitalist economic structures. Kautsky gives supremacy to parliament (and the central place of the SPD as the ­primary political agent) to achieve these ends precisely because the masses are not full citizens. Parliamentary control over government is crucial as parliament, rather than the ‘unorganised and formless mass of people’ (cited in Pierson 2001, p. 30), can hold government accountable. This is a crucial distinction between Kautsky and Bernstein, because to some extent it presages the debate between those social democrats ­advocating for wider ‘active citizenship’ (such as New Labour) and those preferring to give greater importance to parliament, or see democracy in more instrumental terms. For Bernstein, democracy is ‘both a means and an end. It is the weapon in the struggle for socialism and it is the form in which socialism will be realized’ (cited in Pierson 2001, p. 42). In Britain, Bernstein’s ethical socialist approach to democracy was taken up by R.H. Tawney. In Tawney’s account, democracy plays a ­crucial role in helping to foster a greater sense of ‘fellowship’ or ‘community’, which stark inequality under capitalism so brutally undermines. Indeed, Matt Beech (2006) offers an important account of the political– philosophical influences on New Labour, and the writings of Tawney are central to this account. Tawney’s commitment to ethical socialism (like Tony Blair’s and Kevin Rudd’s) is grounded in Christianity. Tawney’s aspiration, like Blair’s, was for a more communal and active civil society. Indeed, in what sometimes passes as nostalgia in the modern era, writers such as Rodney Cavalier champion Australian Labor’s history as a ‘movement’ because it was grounded far more widely than the parliamentary party. Labor ideals were diffused through a range of collective activities and institutions and invigorated by mass (and active) trade union membership, labour clubs, societies, reading groups, and so on – all rooted in local communities (Cavalier 2010, p. 32). Tawney has an important role as a philosophical influence on New Labour, although as Beech notes, a range of people on opposing poles of the centre-left spectrum cite Tawney as an influence (Beech 2006, p. 181). Tawney (1938, p. 274) laments that Labour had not fully embraced the value of democracy and a richer conception of civic engagement: ‘For all its democratic faith, the Labour party has been

42

The search for democratic renewal

disposed to acquiesce in a conception of democracy which assigns to it a role rather passive than active.’ Tawney’s concern is that British Labour has taken an overly instrumental approach to democracy. In a powerful and striking ­ ­passage, he stakes a claim for a deeper commitment to democratic ideals (Tawney 1938, p. 276): Democracy ought not to be regarded merely as a political mechanism – a mechanism which, indeed, it is important to preserve, but which, in the absence of a Fascist revolution, can be taken for granted. It ought to be envisaged as a force to be released. The Labour Party, in particular, should think of it, not merely in terms of ballot boxes and majorities, but as a vast reservoir of latent energies – a body of men and women who, when inert, are a clog, but may become, once stirred into action, a dynamic of incalculable power. Its function is not merely to win votes; it is to wake the sleeping demon. It is to arouse democracy to a sense both of the ­possibilities within its reach and of the dangers which menace it; to put it on its mettle; to make it militant and formidable. In attacking the oldest and toughest plutocracy in the world, Labour is undertaking, on any showing, a pretty desperate business. It needs behind it the temper, not of a mob, but of an army.

Tawney’s rallying cry channels a noble romanticism which can be traced back to Shelley and his call for the masses to ‘rise like lions after slumber’ following the Peterloo massacre in 1819. Yet, despite his call for greater democracy, Tawney leaves unexplored a range of dilemmas for those seeking to deepen democracy. Tawney does not deal with the problems associated with a highly engaged citizenry. Indeed, Tawney’s chapter in Equality is a rather rambling affair, and veers off into a range of prescriptions for British Labour (such as foreign policy). Tawney calls for a more ‘active’ democracy, but this is not systematically outlined. Perhaps this lack of detail explains why his influence has appealed to such opposing wings of labour and centre-left politics. Writing in the 1930s, Tawney was not the only advocate for a richer conception of democracy and community. As Beech notes, Ramsay MacDonald arrives at a similar philosophical space to Tawney, but from a very different route (Beech 2006, p. 185). MacDonald’s commitment to democracy and community derives from an interest in ‘­scientific’ and evolutionary theory. MacDonald calls for trade unions to look beyond ‘sectional interests’ and identify with ‘something higher and wider than Trade Union industrial demands’. Further, the ‘­wage-earner must become the citizen’ (cited in Beech 2006, p. 185). But critically, as observed by Beech (p. 185): In some ways the first half of the twentieth century can be seems as a high watermark or zenith of communitarian socialism in the British Labour



Understanding political participation 43 Movement and with that in mind it is argued that the second half of the twentieth century saw little further development of social democratic thought on a communitarian basis until the advent of New Labour.

In British Labour history R.H. Tawney and Ramsay MacDonald remain key advocates for a richer democratic polity. In subsequent years, the focus on community and popular democratic reform (as opposed to British Labour’s long-standing commitment to institutional reform, such as the goal of an elected House of Lords) waned. As Beech makes clear in his chart of the philosophical influences of New Labour, Tony Crosland is often cited as the most important revisionist thinker on social democracy in the post-war period. Yet, in his landmark The Future of Socialism, there is no single chapter devoted to such issues (Beech 2006, p. 185). As Beech notes, Crosland had other concerns, not least how to ensure that greater economic growth marries with wider social equality. Crosland is seemingly ambivalent about the value of community and enhanced civic engagement (Beech 2006, p. 186). Crosland draws more heavily from liberal rather than c­ ommunitarian traditions and worries about ‘busybody’ citizens encroaching on i­ndividual privacy and liberty. It is perhaps then only in the 1980s that ‘community’ and citizenship emerge as explicit concerns in the embryonic New Social Democracy. A pivotal figure is David Owen, and his vision of social democracy is outlined in his 1981 book, Face the Future. Owen is an intriguing figure in British politics, and in the late 1970s was one of Britain’s youngest foreign ministers for Labour, before joining the ‘gang of four’ who split from Labour to set up the Social Democratic Party. Owen’s book gives a strong account of the role of active citizenship and strong community. Blackburn (2011) argues that, while the architects of New Labour were aware (and critical) of ‘Owenism’, it did not have a direct impact on their thinking. However, as Blackburn notes, it is striking that Blair and Owen had a similar ideological trajectory in their thinking. New Labour certainly gave much greater emphasis and programmatic expression to the ideas of enhancing political participation, by creating the ‘active citizenship unit’ and developing other initiatives. New Labour figures such as David Blunkett give a very strong emphasis to active citizenship (Blunkett 2003). In much more recent times, Ed Miliband’s interest in community was sparked by Maurice Glasman and the ‘Blue Labour’ agenda (see Davis 2011 for a further exploration of ‘Blue Labour’). The central issue is that the call for active citizenship and political participation has experienced varied fortunes in the British Labour tradition. (For reasons of brevity, the discussion here has focused ­

44

The search for democratic renewal

more on British rather than Australian labour traditions.) As Beech notes, in the British Labour tradition, New Labour rediscovered a dormant value of community and citizenship not given comprehensive expression since R.H. Tawney, and attempted to invigorate demo­ cratic processes and foster ‘active citizenship’ for non-instrumental reasons. Nevertheless, there is ambivalence in the social democratic tradition about the e­mphasis placed on what Tony Blair called ­ strengthening the ‘­democratic impulse’, which can be linked back to the e­ mergence of social d ­ emocracy and the debates about the purposes of democracy. Classifying participation and engagement The discussion, thus far, has examined competing normative claims about the rightful role of political participation and civic engagement in wider democratic (and social democratic) theory. Given the unresolved, and irresolvable normative debates about democracy and the merits of democratic innovation, we need a framework for evaluating the democratic and consultative experiments considered in this book by NSD governments. To achieve this, we need to shift from the normative debates to more empirical conceptions and classifications of democratic practice. To critically assess these cases of innovative consultation, we need to classify and formulate some criteria to examine their impact. A useful starting point for understanding the role of political ­ participation and civic engagement has been to focus on the ­typologies of engagement. Over time, a number of different ­typologies have emerged which have sought to capture the range and forms of participation (Althaus, Bridgman and Davis 2007; Arnstein 1969; ­ Bishop and Davis 2002). One of most influential c­ontributions to mapping participation is Arnstein’s ‘Ladder of Participation’ (Arnstein 1969). Arnstein (1969, p. 216) argues that ‘citizen participation is a ­categorical term for citizen power’. Bishop and Davis (2002, p. 17) argue that Arnstein idealises the role of the ‘citizen activist’, and in doing so suggest that any participation that is not ‘meaningful’ is ­tokenistic. Arnstein’s ladder (Table 3.1) is a continuum which shows the gradations of power. Arnstein’s ladder also dovetails with Pateman’s (1970) typology, which identifies three main types of participation: pseudo, partial and full participation. The central criticism of Arnstein’s ladder (and Pateman’s work) is that it risks ‘making direct democracy the only test for participation’ (Bishop and Davis 2002, p. 18). More recent attempts



Understanding political participation 45 Table 3.1: Arnstein’s Ladder of Participation (1969)

8. Citizen control 7. Delegated power 6. Partnership 5. Placation 4. Consultation 3. Informing 2. Therapy 1. Manipulation

Degrees of citizen power Degrees of tokenism Non-participation

Source: Arnstein 1969, p. 217.

Table 3.2: IAP2’s spectrum for public engagement (2004) Inform

Consult

Involve

Collaborate

Empower

• Fact sheets • Web sites • Open houses

• P  ublic comment • Focus groups • Surveys • Public meetings

• Workshops • Deliberate polling

• C  itizen Advisory Committees • Consensusbuilding • Participatory decisionmaking

• C  itizens’ juries • Ballots • Delegated decisions

Source: Adapted from International Association for Public Participation 2004.

to classify different forms of engagement and political participation on a spectrum have been made by Bishop and Davis (2002, p. 18). Table 3.2 demonstrates a recent example offered by the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2). The central feature of these typologies is that power is dispersed along a continuum, from minimum to maximum citizen input. Bishop and Davis (2002) argue that, while these typologies might improve on Arnstein’s more overtly normative ladder, they are still underpinned by normative assumptions about public participation. Bishop and Davis (2002, pp. 23–6) propose an alternative typology, and they argue that participation needs to be seen as a set of discontinuous acts, reflecting the range of policy issues at hand. The problem with these typologies is that they are only limited tools for understanding the dynamics of participation. They leave unanswered a suite of questions on the effectiveness of different forms of ­participation, and they are only suggestive about how participation might be evaluated. For example, if two of the forms of consultation

46

The search for democratic renewal

located on Arnstein’s ladder are compared, what criteria might be used to compare them and decide which form, if any, was more or less tokenistic? A limited consultation can still be well executed, even if some groups and individuals in the community may have ‘unrealistic’ ­expectations of the process or outcome. As Ginsborg (2005, p. 191) argues: It is crucial for our purposes to distinguish between consultation and deliberation. The former is what many present-day democratic politicians have in mind when they talk of citizens’ participation. People will be listened to, sometimes patiently, sometimes not, and then politicians will decide. Because the voice of the people, in its raw state, is usually cacophonous and inchoate, it is all too easy for politicians to adopt paternalistic, even dismissive, attitudes towards it. ‘Consultation’ is very often a political ruse, and should be exposed as such. One the other hand, deliberation implies the active involvement of citizens in a decision-making process. It has to do with learning and with empowerment.

The central issue is what criteria can be used to expose consultation as a ‘political ruse’. Ginsborg does not go on to outline this in more detail. While typologies are a useful introduction to understanding the range of ways that government can harness civic engagement, they are limited evaluative tools. Deciding on the appropriate way to evaluate new attempts to foster active citizenship is inherently difficult. As Head (2007, p. 450) notes: Community engagement and participatory processes clearly span a variety of different practices and possibilities. This is no doubt part of the reason for the widespread lack of clarity over criteria for judging the effectiveness of participatory processes.

This book uses a framework which draws on the work of Pratchett (1999) and Beetham (1994). Evaluating consultative experiments in the New Social Democracy Pratchett (1999), in his evaluation of the new modes of civic ­participation, uses a framework based on Beetham’s pioneering democratic audit work in the United Kingdom (Beetham 1994; Beetham et al. 2002). Beetham and colleagues developed a framework to evaluate and audit the strengths and weaknesses of current democratic practice, which has been adopted widely, including in Australia. Beetham argues that, despite the extensive range of normative conceptions of democracy, there are two underpinning principles which can be used to audit the ‘health’ of a democracy; namely, political equality and popular control. In a democratic polity,



Understanding political participation 47

political equality can be used as a measure for ensuring that some citizens do not have greater citizenship rights than others. In more recent times, political equality can be used as an index to identify which groups vote in elections and which do not. Popular c­ ontrol refers to the degree of power the citizenry have over their p ­ olitical representatives. As is commonly pointed out, voting in periodic general elections is a crude aggregation of popular control in mass industrial democracies. Beetham argues that political equality and popular control can be utilised as benchmarks for a range of democratic practices. Pratchett extends these two principles and argues that, in the context of auditing citizen engagement initiatives, they translate into the two themes of representativeness and responsiveness. Simply put, representativeness refers to the degree of inclusiveness evident in the consultative exercise. Responsiveness refers to the degree to which the government agency has taken into account the full range of canvassed opinions. Pratchett argues that these two principles provide a way of examining the democratic standard of different engagement methods, although as explored in the following section, in some respects many of the new modes of participation can be found wanting. The ‘Beetham–Pratchett’ framework is, then, a useful tool to e­ valuate the NSD-inspired case studies considered in this book. However, it should be made clear that the two principles of representativeness and responsiveness provide a critical prism for viewing the case studies rather than being fixed categories. As will be shown, a number of the case studies were never fully intended to be – as one interviewee puts it – ‘a scientific or “Capital D” democratic process’ (Taylor, interview with author, 5 December 2007). In some instances the overarching expectation of the consultation was quite limited, and the case studies need to be evaluated in this context. The reader should not expect to see the full expression of either representativeness or responsiveness in the case studies, but they are flexible criteria for evaluating how far the initiatives sought to address these principles. At face value, the concepts of representativeness and ­responsiveness as auditing tools are straightforward, yet invariably, they seek to capture complex and dynamic political processes. The main issue ­ ­associated with using responsiveness as an auditing principle is the difficulty in showing causality. How far, if at all, did the consultation impact upon the decision-making processes? Consultation only seeks to inform decision-making, so it can be very hard to prove any actual difference the consultative process has had on the end result. The difficulties and complexities associated with using representativeness as an auditing principle are arguably even more complex.

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The search for democratic renewal

Representativeness is a complex and highly contested term (Catt and Murphy 2003; Munro-Clark 1992; Newman 2005; Newman and Clarke 2009). Catt and Murphy (2003) note the complexity involved in weighting the different voices in a consultation, while Newman (2005) and others have used the notion of publics rather than public to ­highlight the heterogeneity of the multiple collective and individual identities of the people who constitute the ‘general public’. Catt and Murphy (2003, p. 409) note: The general public is in fact a particular kind of group, namely the group of people normally resident within the boundaries of the political unit in question, be that a municipality, province, country, region, etc. Groups of this nature may not share a common identity, set of values or shared ­characteristics, as do ethnic or cultural minorities, but they are ­nonetheless, groups with discernible boundaries and distinctions between insiders and outsiders for instance or members and non-members.

The central issue here is that even ‘the public’, a seemingly straightforward political entity, is a complex and differentiated group of people. It follows that achieving representativeness of the public (or publics) is a highly c­ ontentious process. As explored in the case studies, many of the initiatives in this book were designed to appeal to and involve the community. Yet this is a highly politicised concept. In a number of the case studies, the legitimacy of the consultations is based on the involvement of the wider community; however, this has the effect of masking the incidence of inequalities in participation. Newman (2005) and Newman and Clarke (2009) offer a ­thorough ­critique of the role of representation in these new democratic ­innovations. Newman and Clarke (2009, p. 141) argue that many proponents of democratic experiments in citizen engagement apply a fixed and static notion of representation: Representation, then rests, on a narrow view of politics and of identity. It essentialises identity itself, inviting people to ‘stand for’ specific categories: the young or old, black or white, male or female population, without taking any account of the dynamic relationships between the multiple dimensions of personhood.

Newman argues that the net effect can be fostering a process of de-politicisation where ‘more collective or politicised voices are ­ excluded’ (Newman 2005, p. 131). This is not to say that representativeness cannot be used as an auditing tool, but it reinforces the notion that it should only be applied as a critical prism for viewing the different initiatives.



Understanding political participation 49

The following section offers a brief overview of some of the ­suggested models for democratic renewal. Pratchett’s (1999) work highlights how the principles of political equality and popular control can be used to ­indicate the strengths and weaknesses of these new modes of participation, and with their proliferation, there has been a g­ rowing body of ­academic work critiquing and evaluating these experiments in d ­ emocratic renewal (Barnes et al. 2003; Carson 2001; Dryzek 2000; Head 2007; MunroClark 1992; Newman 2005; Newman and Clarke 2009; Pratchett 1999; Reddel and Woolcock 2004; Smith 2005; Williams 2001). A wide array of candidates have been offered as means for a­ ugmenting representative democracy, including citizens’ juries, citizens’ panels, focus groups, ‘community planning’ models and ‘visioning’ events; Smith (2005) provides a useful catalogue of many of these innovations. Pratchett (1999, p. 626) finds many of these ‘new fashions’ in public involvement are inadequate in many respects, arguing that in its drive for democratic renewal, New Labour holds ‘an implicit assumption that any form of participation contributes to democratic practice’. A short summary of the limitations of some of the suggested models for ­democratic renewal is given in Table 3.3. There are many other types of models and forums for citizen ­participation, each with differing strengths and weaknesses. On the whole, the literature on citizen participation initiatives tends to be rather pessimistic (Newman and Clarke 2009). It is apparent that just increasing public involvement per se does not automatically supplement representative democracy (Kerley and Starr 2000). Public debates can be skewed by the ‘loudest voices’, groups with greater powers of mobilisation, or complaints from so-called ‘NIMBYs’ (Not In My Backyard). A central concern is that, more often than not, it is people from higher socioeconomic groups who are able to articulate their concerns through such processes, at the expense of those from lower socioeconomic groups (Abers 2003; Sandercock 1978). Some of the main generic problems and risks with many of these models of democratic experimentation include: • Government agenda-setting can make them political exercises ­(Munro-Clark 1992, p. 17). • Even when legislative or other drivers exist which mandate ­government agencies to consult or use innovative mechanisms, the commitment to do this and the quality of these experiments vary (Brackertz 2006; Colebatch 2006; Petts and Leach 2000). • Some mechanisms can be dull, time-consuming and costly (Althaus, Bridgman and Davis 2007).

50

The search for democratic renewal Table 3.3: Summary of the limitations of suggested models for democratic renewal

Mode of participation

Comment

Citizens’ panels

Citizens’ panels comprise a representative sample of the population. The agenda for the panel’s input and consideration is usually set by the government organisation. Panels can often be under-represented by some socially excluded groups. Panels can also lead to what is called the ‘Hawthorne effect’, whereby the act of being observed in a project or activity can lead people to modify their behaviour. The risk associated with citizens’ panels is that participants can become ‘good citizens’ and no longer represent the wider society. Policies are examined in small non-representative groups. Juries lack formal powers for their recommendations. There is usually no binding verdict and they lack the rigour of the judicial process. Juries can also be dominated by policy elites and networks (see Carson 2001; Segall 2005). ‘The democratic credentials of focus groups are questionable’ (Pratchett 1999, p. 623). Focus groups originated as marketing tools for eliciting consumer responses to a marketing strategy. Most focus groups are not representative of the wider public. The risk with focus groups is that the conversations generated are rather superficial. These events can engage the wider community more fully, but there are usually no guarantees of representativeness. Outcomes are not always formally binding. In addition, long-term visions and goals can be lost in organisational translation.

Citizens’ juries

Focus groups

Community planning models and visioning events.

Source: Adapted from Pratchett 1999, pp. 621–8.

• It can be difficult to ensure legitimacy in decision-making with ­‘representative’ groups (Althaus, Bridgman and Davis 2007; Catt and Murphy 2003). • Some groups can dominate over others (Althaus, Bridgman and Davis 2007). • There can be a lack of resources and insufficient time allocated to the process (Considine 2005). • Tokenism and manipulation can occur (Considine 2005).



Understanding political participation 51

In his summary of the different modes of participation, Pratchett (1999, p. 629) concludes: In short, it is the organisation which defines when and how people can participate, the issues to which their participation can contribute, and the extent to which any initiative will feed into the policy process. At best, this limits the scope for public participation. At worst, however, it is possible to see participation initiatives as self-serving exercises designed to support the internal interest of organisations rather than the broader interests of the community.

In a more recent survey, Head (2007, p. 452) argues that there is little evidence showing that many of the democratic experiments have involved real power-sharing and cites two main reasons: First, governments tend to regain control of these processes through funding, service contracts and regulation. Government institutions find it difficult to devolve power and control. Second, the capacity and motivation of citizens to participate effectively, or to create alternative forums, remains a weakness in community engagement strategies.

It would be wrong, however, to be left with an overwhelmingly ­pessimistic view of such initiatives. Many of the critics have argued that some of these modes of participation can have a role, albeit a limited one. As Pratchett (1999, p. 632) notes, there is a democratic impulse in many public sector organisations, which is laudable. Using the twin principles of representativeness and responsiveness, it is possible to explore the tensions and issues in the attempts by Labour governments in Britain and Australia to find new mechanisms for citizen engagement and for understanding their effectiveness and impact. Labour governments and democratic renewal Understanding political participation remains contested and contentious. In Dryzek’s democratic ‘concourse’, participatory and more deliberative forms of democracy contrast with more instrumental approaches. The social democratic and labour tradition itself has divided views on these questions, which can be traced back to the debates between Bernstein and Kautsky (and others). From the time of R.H. Tawney and until the advent of New Labour, the notion of seeking ‘active citizenship’ and seeking to find new institutional mechanisms for citizen engagement has been relatively weak. Yet New Social Democratic governments in Britain and Australia have made tentative steps to ­democratisation of ­democracy. These competing normative claims about political p ­ articipation help set the context for these consultative and democratic experiments.

52

The search for democratic renewal

The framework suggested by Beetham and Pratchett, with its two principles of responsiveness (popular control) and ­representativeness (political equality), provides a critical lens to evaluate Labour’s ­ ­democratic renewal agenda. Notes 1 With the advent of the internet and new technologies, academic research on the public sphere has moved in new directions. A key development is the shift towards what has been called the ‘affective turn’ (see Chadwick 2012, p. 60). In brief, the Habermasian ideal of the ‘public sphere’ is seen as too rational and therefore attempts to institutionalise it will always fall short of the expectations of enthusiasts for deliberative democracy. New ­technologies and the everyday use of social media suggest a much more i­ ndividualised form of expression and forms of engagement. Critics s­ omewhat disparagingly call this ‘clicktivism’ – suggesting it requires little effort. The challenge for policy makers remains how best to capture and foster forms of engagement in the ‘new’ online environment. 2 A version of Fishkin’s (2002) deliberative poll was during the 1999 Australian referendum on the republic. Interestingly, support for a republic increased dramatically by 20 per cent among those involved in the poll.

4

Political participation: continuity and change

Not only is it the case that the vast majority of citizens are at best ­marginally engaged in civic or political activism, it is also far from clear how even a broader base of participation beyond elections and political parties could help address the decline of representative democracy. Wilks-Heeg, Blick and Crone, 2012

The changing patterns of political participation and support Political participation is part of a dynamic process of exchange between the citizen and the state. In Britain and Australia, as in many advanced industrial societies, the relationship between the state and civil society is changing. The case studies at the heart of this book examine some of the attempts by Labour governments to respond to and shape this changing relationship. In the previous chapter, normative accounts of democratic (and social democratic) thought were outlined to highlight the ­competing views about the desirability of creating ‘active citizens’ and enhancing the political public sphere. This chapter offers empirical accounts of how citizens in Britain and Australia actually engage with the state, with a focus on continuity and change in the patterns of ­political support and political participation. A range of significant changes in the relationship between state and citizen, not least declining levels of trust, have led some proponents of the NSD to find new ways to engage citizens and wider civil society. While the NSD places a strong emphasis on democratic renewal and establishing new mechanisms for public debate, these consultative experiments need to be seen in the ­context of how (and which) citizens currently engage with politics. The main part of this chapter examines dimensions of political ­participation in both Britain and Australia. These indicators of political attitudes and behaviour, mostly drawn from well-established surveys, give us insights into how the relationship between state and citizen is evolving. The first section briefly outlines some competing ideas of

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The search for democratic renewal

why citizens participate, after which how much participation is taking place is detailed. A shorter section then focuses on the sociology of ­participation  – which sheds light on who is participating. The final section briefly c­onsiders the overall patterns and trends in political participation and support and the implications of these for Labour governments’ attempts to find new mechanisms for citizen input and engagement. This chapter, it should be noted, is largely descriptive rather than analytical, its aim being to capture the dynamics of patterns of engagement, rather than necessarily explain the changes. However, its value is that, unlike say Phillip Blond’s very brief survey of some of these changes in his book Red Tory, it offers a much more comprehensive picture of civic and political participation in Britain and Australia. The contribution of the chapter is to synthesise a wide set of data to give a clearer picture of political culture in Britain and Australia, which cannot be found in other academic accounts. Political participation and political support Defining political support and participation is not straightforward, with numerous attempts to classify acts of participation (Almond and Verba 1963; Bean 1989; Birch 1993; Bishop and Davis 2002; Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley 2003a, 2003b, 2004; Verba, Nie and Kim 1978; Verba, Scholzman and Brady 1995). Similarly, measuring political attitudes and behaviour is complex, and caution has to be exercised when analysing survey data which aim to capture the dimensions of political participation and support. For example, it is well known that survey respondents tend to over-report the number of political acts they carry out (Parry, Moyser and Day 1992). Typologies of participation are also evolving, especially as political scientists attempt to capture new forms of engagement through new technologies. It’s also important to note that measuring the amount of political participation by tallying up the number of particular acts (for example, the number of people who signed a petition) leaves a great deal unsaid about the dynamics and mobilisation of political participation (Skocpol 2003). Before examining a range of indicators of political participation it may also be useful to briefly note the extensive literature which seeks to explain how and why people engage. Pattie and his colleagues (2004) usefully summarise a range of theories in this area, making a distinction between structural and choice-based theories and outlining a range of theoretical approaches for understanding participation. Structuralbased theories highlight factors such as socioeconomic status, class



Political participation: continuity and change 55

and other influences in understanding why some groups may or may not participate, while choice-based theories focus more strongly on the incentives prompting certain citizens to participate. Broadly speaking, Pattie, Seyd and Whitely (2004, pp. 138–51) ­identify five competing, but not mutually exclusive, factors to account for why citizens engage or not: Choice-based factors: • an individual’s access to relevant information and how this informs the choice to participate; • the general incentives to participate such as the collective or expressive benefits to the person. Structural factors: • the time, money and other resources people need to be able to participate effectively; • how people perceive themselves in relation to others, and how this might influence political behaviour; • the influence of social capital on political participation. As the writers note, all of the theories have something to offer in terms of illuminating at least some aspects of why citizens participate.1 The choice-based theories are stronger in emphasising the role of incentives in explaining why some groups of people participate and others do not. Likewise, the structural theories draw more attention to the barriers that some groups face in participating. Using data from their citizen audit of Britain to test the five different explanatory models of political participation, Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley (2004, p. 183) argue that: It is clear from the findings that choice-based models are more important than structural-based models for explaining certain aspects of citizenship, particularly participation, while the reverse is true for key aspects of ­attitudes.

Hay (2007, p. 55) makes an important contribution to this debate, arguing that many explanations tend to focus on what he calls the ‘demand side’ of politics (for example, explaining levels of participation by examining levels of social capital). He argues convincingly that ­political science tends to ignore the ‘supply side’ of politics. In this account, the activities of government have been central to explaining increasing levels of political disillusionment (such as falling voter turnout in the United Kingdom). Hay argues that the widespread embrace of neoliberalism has meant that some areas of politics have

56

The search for democratic renewal

been ­depoliticised (by processes such as privatisation), and this can explain some patterns of non-political participation. Hay (2007, p. 87) further claims that there is a growing, dominant political narrative that encourages the public to think that governments have far less agency and capacity than ever before. (This links very closely with the ‘new governance’ narrative outlined in the second chapter, which is one of the defining characteristics of the New Social Democracy.) For Hay, the net effect of this political narrative is that it fosters political ­disillusionment. While this book has a more limited aim – examining cases of the New Social Democracy in action – these debates raise a series of d ­ ilemmas for Labour governments influenced by the New Social Democracy. The types of strategies used to foster ‘active citizenship’ could well be linked to particular assumptions about what motivates political p ­ articipation. For example, it may well be that in New Labour’s more s­uccessful attempts to increase engagement it was able to provide stronger ­incentives than previously existed. Yet at the same time, its embrace of the governance narrative may (unwittingly or not) foster a p ­ olitical culture that sees political engagement, especially voting in Britain, as increasingly futile. At the very least, having a sense of the range of theories which attempt to explain political behaviour sets the important context for examining the various attempts by Labour governments to foster input and ‘active citizenship’. Patterns of political support and participation Dalton (2002), Hay (2007), Marsh (1995), Norris (1999), Nye (1997), and Sawer and Zappalà (2001), among many others, argue that both the political behaviour of and political support from citizens of advanced industrialised democracies are undergoing a transformation, although there is a great deal of debate attempting to explain these changes. Focusing on some of the available empirical data, this section presents as far as possible a general summary of the overall trends relating to citizens’ attitudes and political participation in Britain and Australia as at 2013. Sawer and Zappalà (2001, p. 273) highlight the main trends, which they argue pose increasingly greater challenges to notions of representation in Australia.2 It will become evident that most of these trends are also evident in the British context. These main trends are: • the decline in voter identification with the two major political parties; • the changing social base of mass political parties; • the loss by the major political parties of their agenda development role;



Political participation: continuity and change 57

• the loss of the capacity of the major political parties to aggregate the ­ever-increasing number of interests given expression through social movements; • the rise of postmaterialist voting patterns; • the decline of political party membership; • the rise of non-traditional political parties, minor political parties and independents; • the decline of the importance of geography to politics and ­representation. A key trend to add to this list is the argument that during the past 20 to 30 years, there has been a rise in the prominence of interest movements and interest groups (Marsh 1995). A significant trend which should be applied to the British context is the issue of voter turnout, given that it does not have compulsory voting like the Australian system. This section focuses on outlining the empirical evidence for the ­following indicators of political participation and political support:3 • • • • • • • •

interest in politics; trust and confidence in government; satisfaction with the electoral system; voter identification with main political parties; membership of political parties and trade unions; electoral participation; non-electoral political participation; participation and the internet.

Interest in politics A useful starting point is a recognition that overall trends in people expressing interest in politics in Britain and Australia have remained relatively constant over recent years. The key issue is that if Labour governments are keen to get wider citizen engagement in political and policy processes, then it is essential to know the current levels of disinterest. Goot (2002) argues that about a third of Australians polled between 1984 and 1999 took ‘a good deal of interest’ in politics. Australian Election Study (AES) data confirm this view (Figure 4.1). The number of respondents who show ‘some’ interest in politics has stayed at broadly the same levels since the 1967 survey. There has been a slight increase in those expressing a ‘good deal’ of interest and a ­corresponding slight decrease in those expressing ‘not much’ i­nterest. There are similar trends in Britain. Sanders et al. (2005) find that ­interest in politics tends to rise in election years and, more significantly,

58

The search for democratic renewal 50 45 40

Percent

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

1967

1969

1979

1987 e

1990

1993 e

1996

1998 t

2001 c

2004

2007

2010

ne

Figure 4.1: Interest in politics in Australia, 1967–2010 Generally speaking how much interest do you usually have in what’s going on in politics? Source: AES 1967–2010.

they found that ‘the public’s interest in politics has been remarkably stable for over thirty years’ (Sanders et al. 2005, p. 7). Figure 4.2 gives a more detailed picture of responses to the ­‘interest in politics’ question from the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey and British Election Survey (BES) since 1986. It shows that, broadly speaking, levels of interest in politics have remained fairly constant. On the whole, in both Australia and Britain, the lack of public interest in politics has stayed at broadly consistent levels during the past 20 to 30  years. Crucially, very few people have a high level of interest in politics. Trust and confidence There is evidence that trust and confidence in elected officials and political institutions in the advanced democracies have fallen (Dalton 1999; Klingeman 1999; Norris 1999; Nye 1997). Nye (1997) argues that confidence in political institutions has fallen across western democracies and suggests that the marked decline in the United States may be prophetic for other established democracies. Nye reports that in a survey of 11 countries, confidence in political institutions fell in six countries, was mixed in four (including the United Kingdom) and rose in one country (Australia was not part of this sample). Norris (1999, p. 26) also agrees that



Political participation: continuity and change 59 40 35

Percent

30 25 20 15 10 5 0

86 989 990 991 994 995 996 997 998 999 000 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

19

re t

e

te

t

e

t

er

c

ne

t

Figure 4.2: Interest in politics in Britain, 1986–2010 How much interest do you generally have in what is going on in politics? Source: BSA 1986–2010.

in the established democracies, during the last decades of the twentieth century, growing numbers of citizens have become increasingly critical of the major institutions of representative government.

There seems to be a clear pattern demonstrating that citizens tend to strongly support democratic principles, but they generally have low confidence in their own governments (Dalton 2002). Klingeman (1999) suggests that Australians tend to have high levels of support for democracy as a principle (83 per cent expressing support for democracy as an ideal form of government), but only 23 per cent were supportive of the ‘regime performance’. Figure 4.3 shows overall levels of trust in the Australian government, with respondents asked whether they believe politicians put the national interest over their own interests. While there is no clear trend, it is e­ vident that most respondents polled believe that politicians will ­‘usually’ put themselves before the nation. There was some decline in those who reported that politicians can ‘sometimes’ be trusted. In Britain, there is a similar picture. Bromley, Curtice and Seyd (2004, p. 12) describe survey data which show that public trust in ­government has fallen. Figure 4.4 shows that the proportion of those who ‘almost never’ trust British politicians has steadily increased over time. If ­anything, levels of distrust are higher in Britain than Australia. A general picture emerges showing that both Britain and Australia have experienced some degree of declining trust and confidence in ­government, although the decline has not been at the same rate or at

60

The search for democratic renewal 50 45 40

Percent

35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

1993

1996

1998 t e e e

2001

2004

2007

2010

et e t e e e

et e tr te

tr te

Figure 4.3: Trust in government in Australia, 1993–2010 In general, do you feel that the people in government are too often interested in looking after themselves, or do you feel that they can be trusted to do the right thing nearly all the time? Source: AES 1993–2010.

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

1986 1987 1991 1994 1996 1997 1998 2000 2001 2002 2003 2005 2006 2007 2009 2010

Figure 4.4: Trust in British governments, 1986–2010 How much do you trust British governments of any party to place the needs of the nation above the interests of their own political party? Source: BSA 1986–2010.



Political participation: continuity and change 61

the same time. The impact of these trends is more uncertain. The level at which weak trust is ‘unhealthy’ for a democracy is unclear. The ‘age of deference’ may be over, and a more sceptical citizenry may be an ­important development. Crucially, there is evidence that suggests that declining confidence in politicians affects political behaviour. Dalton (2002), Norris (1999), and Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley (2004) all argue that falling political trust has important consequences for advanced industrial democracies. Dalton (2002, p. 170) argues that the relationship between attitudes and behaviour is complex. For example, increased disaffection from politicians can lead to an increase in some forms of political activity (such as protests) but a decrease in others (such as voting). Dalton (2002, p. 179) surveys some of the available evidence to investigate the link between falling trust and levels of political behaviour, and he finds mixed results. He adds that the strongest manifestation of growing ­distrust is likely to be in the public’s changing expectations of ­government. He notes: A growing number of contemporary citizens are disenchanted with political parties, and these sentiments are generating support for reforms to … improve the system of representative democracy. (Dalton 2002, p. 181)

Dalton’s analysis suggests that falling trust and confidence might lead to an increase in calls for democratic reform, and these calls are likely to take different forms, reflecting the different political contexts of each political system. While the causes of this decline in trust are disputed, along with the possible implications for the legitimacy of the democratic polities, there is broad consensus that there has been a change.4 The central issue is that the decline in trust and confidence reflects a dynamic and changing relationship between the state and civil society. As discussed in Chapter 2, NSD proponents are seeking to cultivate an ‘active citizen’, but they are doing so in the face of falling levels of political trust. The positive upshot is that NSD calls for democratic reform may well be meeting a wider public demand. The difficulty is that ­NSD-influenced governments may struggle to ‘sell’ these reforms in the face of low levels of trust. Voter identification with the two major political parties The main political parties dominate political life in both Britain and Australia. An important indicator of political attitudes is voter identification with the two major parties and, for both, it is an important indicator of political support. Significantly, a decline in the strength of voter identification with the major parties has been noted in both Britain (Power Inquiry 2006; Sanders et al. 2005) and Australia (Marsh 2005).

62

The search for democratic renewal 70 60 50

Percent

40 30 20 10 0

87 989 990 991 993 994 995 996 997 998 999 000 001 002 003 004 005 006 007 008 009 010 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 er tr n r trn t er tr n

19

Figure 4.5: Strength of party identification in Britain, 1987–2010 Would you call yourself a very strong, fairly strong, or not very strong supporter of (political party named)? Source: BSA 1987–2010.

In Britain, as Figure 4.5 shows, the proportion of survey respondents expressing ‘not very strong’ allegiance to a political party has increased. In the 1960s, almost half the British electorate identified ‘very strongly’ with one of the three national parties. This group of very strong identifiers fell to 29 per cent in 1974 and declined to about nine per cent in 2005 (Sanders et al. 2005). A similar picture emerges in Australia. As Figure 4.6 shows, the proportion of respondents who express a ‘very strong’ identification with a political party has declined. This disengagement from the main party groupings in Australia is also evident in a number of other indicators. Figure 4.7 shows the primary vote for the main parties, as demonstrated in the voting patterns in the federal lower house (House of Representatives). Indeed, in recent times, the primary vote for the Australian Labor Party (ALP) has reached record lows. Since proportional representation was introduced in the federal upper house (Senate), the share of the vote for minor parties and independents has also grown steadily from five per cent in 1949 to over 20 per cent by 2007. It is also highly striking that the 2010 general and federal elections in both Britain and Australia resulted in hung parliaments: the first in the UK since 1974, the first in Australia since 1940. While the main parties still command significant support, it is evident that there is some



Political participation: continuity and change 63 60 50

Percent

40 30 20 10 0

1967

1969

1979

1987 1990 er tr n

1993 r

1996 trn

1998

t

2001 er

2004 tr n

2007

2010

Figure 4.6: Strength of party identification in Australia, 1967–2010 1967–79: Thinking of the federal parties (name of federal party preferred), how strongly do you feel: very strongly, fairly strongly, or not very strongly? 1987–2010: Would you call yourself a very strong, fairly strong, or not very strong supporter of (name of party)? Source: AES 1967–2010. 94 92 90 88 86 84 82 80 78 76 74 72

1987

1990

1993

1996

1998

2001

2004

2007

2010

Figure 4.7: Combined first preference vote for main parties in Australian House of Representatives, 1987–2010 Source: Australian Politics and Elections Database: http://elections.uwa.edu.au/ listelections.lasso.

r­ealignment between voters and the major parties. Miragliotta (2010) notes that there is no single driver to account for the rise of the minor parties, with institutional and political factors playing a key role (see Hauss and Rayside 1978; Hug 2000). Two key factors do seem to help

64

The search for democratic renewal

explain the growth in popularity of minor parties – first, the ­weakening association between class and voting behaviour; and second, the ­introduction of state funding (Miragliotta 2010, p. 260). This trend poses significant dilemmas for the Labour parties and their attempts towards democratic renewal. The majoritarian electoral ­systems in both Britain and Australia’s lower houses can mask this ­distancing between the public and the traditional two-party systems. In both Britain and Australia, the Labour parties have to work hard to attract an increasing number of voters whose allegiance to the party is weaker. It is unclear what impact this will have on attempts to ­introduce new forms of democratic renewal. Notably, when New Labour attempted to introduce regional assemblies, this proposal was met with widespread indifference and scepticism. It may be that where democratic renewal is only seen to serve the interests of the major ­parties, it is unlikely to have wider public support. Membership of political parties and trade unions Membership of a political party is a key indicator of political p ­ articipation. Party membership is notoriously difficult to measure because political parties are usually reluctant to publicise their numbers, so estimates can only be proxy indicators. Mair and van Biezen (2001) show that party membership has consistently dropped significantly across Europe. In the United Kingdom, it was estimated that there were nearly 1.7 million political party members (4.12 per cent of the electorate) in 1980, which had fallen to 840,000 members (1.92 per cent of the electorate) by 1998 (Mair and van Biezen 2001, p. 16). In 2005, membership of the British Labour Party was estimated to be under 200,000. In 2004, only two per cent of the British population – around 880,000 people – were members of a political party (Maloney 2006, p. 99).5 Similar trends are identifiable in Australia. Membership of the Australian Labor Party was estimated at between 200,000 and 350,000 (7–10 per cent of the electorate) in the 1950s, dropping to 75,000 in the 1970s and 50,000 in 1993; in 2001 it was estimated at just 36,500 (Jaensch, Brent and Bowden 2004). In 2008, overall party membership was less than one per cent of the adult population (Sawer, Abjorensen and Larkin 2009, p. 135). Similarly, trade union membership has fallen. In the United Kingdom, membership stood at 11.7 million in 1975; it peaked in 1979 (at 13.2  million) and was 7.7 million in 2002 (Beetham et al. 2002, p. 212). In December 2006, trade union members made up about 28.4 per cent of the workforce. In Australia, there has been a similar decline in trade union membership. The Australian Council of Trade Unions



Political participation: continuity and change 65

(ACTU 2009) estimates that 51 per cent of the workforce were union members in 1970, but by 1996, that figure had fallen to around 35 per cent and to 25 per cent in 2001. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS 2009), there were 1.786 million employees who were trade union members in August 2006 – comprising 20 per cent of the workforce. These declining levels of party and trade union membership have important implications for the party system and Labour governments in particular. While governments derive their main source of legitimacy through the number of parliamentary seats won, political parties derive their legitimacy from a range of different sources. The Labour parties are, in theory at least, the political voice for the wider labour ­movement. All parties require ‘foot soldiers’ to assist with their campaigns. In the 2007 Australian federal election, the active work of the ACTU in m ­ obilising trade union members through their anti-‘Workchoices’ ­campaign was seen as a significant factor in securing a Labor victory (Sawer, Abjorensen and Larkin 2009, pp. 92–3). The traditional sources of Labour support are changing, and as the parties in Britain and Australia modernise, shoring up their democratic legitimacy becomes a priority. In Britain, there is evidence that membership activism is dropping to critical levels (Seyd and Whiteley 2002, pp. 108–9). In Australia, Labor historian Rodney Cavalier believes that the ALP’s party membership will not recover (Cavalier 2010, p. 186). Yet in both countries, the leadership is attempting to stem this tide, influenced by Maurice Glasman’s ‘Blue Labour’, Ed Miliband is ­seeking to recruit 10,000 Labour community activists. In 2011, Julia Gillard also pledged to recruit 8,000 more new members to the ALP. Whether these efforts to re-embed labour in wider civil society will prove successful remains an open question. Electoral participation Particularly in the United Kingdom, voter turnout is seen as the most significant indicator of political participation. Figure 4.8 shows that voter turnout has been declining since 1945. Significantly, the 2001 ­election – New Labour’s second election after their 1997 landslide – saw a dramatic decline in turnout. The 2001 result, with only 59.4 per cent of the electorate voting, was the lowest turnout since 1918, with turnout clearly falling since 1992. However, caution should be exercised when interpreting these figures. Sanders et al. (2005) suggest that turnout was low in both 2001 and 2005 primarily because the results were largely perceived to be a foregone conclusion. (While that may be the case, it could be countered that the 1987 victory was also a foregone

66

The search for democratic renewal 90 85 80

Percent

75 70 65 60 55 50

45 950 951 955 959 964 966 970 974 974 979 983 987 992 997 001 005 010 1 1 1 2 2 1 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 Feb Oct

19

ter

rn

t

Figure 4.8: Voter turnout at British general elections, 1945–2010 Source: House of Commons Research Papers 01/54, 05/33 & 10/36.

c­ onclusion, but turnout was higher than the 1983 election.) Bromley, Curtice and Seyd (2004) do not see this as a crisis of d ­ emocracy, given the other patterns of political participation that exist (which are explored later). However, the Power Inquiry (2006) h ­ ighlights the low turnout as being a result of increased public disillusionment with the main political p ­ arties and the current political system. In Australia, the use of compulsory voting assigns a different ­context to the relationship between voters and the political system. Farrell and McAllister (2006, p. 124) present data showing that voter ­registration has been largely stable since 1946 (at around 83 per cent), although there is ‘relatively high non-compliance by the young’. Using AES survey data, Farrell and McAllister (p. 140) argue that if voting were v­ oluntary, then turnout would be about 80 per cent, which is high among the established democracies. That said, it remains open to i­nterpretation whether voluntary turnout would be as high as 80  per cent. A common issue with surveys on political participation is that respondents can sometimes overstate their overall levels of likely engagement, in part to demonstrate that they might wish to be ­perceived as a ‘good citizen’. Rodney Smith (2001, p. 29) argues that a number of factors skew the picture in relation to voting in Australia. Smith argues that, if voting were a voluntary act, overall electoral participation might be lower than the high levels of turnout suggested by Farrell and McAllister (2006). Notwithstanding this, the issue of voter turnout is much more



Political participation: continuity and change 67

prominent in Britain than in Australia, and the falling turnout under New Labour has been a cause of concern and debate both for the party and in the wider political commentary. It hints at a wider disillusionment with the two-party system, which, although not at the United States levels of abstention, is a strong undercurrent of British politics in particular. Non-electoral political participation Political participation is a much wider set of activities than the act of voting. Survey data from both countries suggest that Britain and Australia share similar patterns of non-electoral forms of political ­participation (AuSSA 2005; Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley 2004). Using these sources, broadly speaking there are similar percentages of people in both Britain and Australia who report taking part in a demonstration (about 5 per cent), signing a petition (just over 40  per  cent), contacting a politician (just over 10 per cent), and attending a political meeting (about 5 per cent). The main difference seems to be that more Britons ­(approximately 60 per cent) are likely to donate money to p ­ olitical organisations than their Australian counterparts ­(approximately 25 per cent). As the trend data in the next section confirm, the overall hierarchy of acts of non-electoral participation has remained relatively stable. The most commonly practised acts of participation are those that require the least effort and resources. In Britain, there is some evidence to suggest that non-voting acts of participation have increased (Bromley, Curtice and Seyd 2004). For example, BSA surveys show some general increase in respondents who indicated that they had signed a petition (Figure 4.9). These trends are reinforced by comparing the most recent results of the two largest audits of political behaviour in Britain (Table 4.1). Pattie and his colleagues (Table 4.1) argue that the trends, particularly the increase in the use of boycotts, show an increase in individual participative acts at the expense of more collective forms of behaviour. These findings were reinforced by the Power Inquiry, which argues that, while electoral participation has decreased, other forms of participation have either remained constant or increased (Power Inquiry 2006, p. 16). While it is difficult to make a precise comparison with Britain, it seems that Australia has similar levels of non-electoral forms of political participation (Figure 4.10). The overall hierarchy of participation has remained stable in Australia. Perhaps the most interesting recent development is the decrease in the number of people who have sought to persuade another person in ­relation to their voting behaviour. There has also been an increase in the

68

The search for democratic renewal 60 50

Percent

40 30 20 10 0

1983

1986 ne ne n e

1989

1991

et t n r te t r e e n r er

1994

n tr t n e n t

2000 nt ct P nt ct r e r

2002

2003

2005

ern ent e rt en t e n e e

e

Figure 4.9: Acts of political participation in Britain, 1983–2005 In the past twelve months, which of the following activities have you undertaken? Source: BSA 1983–2005.

Table 4.1: Changes in political participation in Britain, 1984 and 2000 Act Stated that they voted in general elections (not actual turnout) Stated that they voted in local elections (not actual turnout) Signed a petition Boycotted certain products Contacted a public official Contacted a politician Attended a political meeting Attended a demonstration Took part in a strike Took part in an illegal protest

1984 (%)

2000 (%)

83

72

69

50

63  4 25 30  9  5  7  1

42 31 25 13  6  5  2  2

Source: Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley 2004, p. 81.

number of Australians who have attended a political meeting or rally and/or contributed money. Yet these still remain activities undertaken by a very small number of people. Papadakis (2001, p. 47) identified a ‘growing willingness to participate in extra parliamentary activities’ in Australia.



Political participation: continuity and change 69 100 90 80

Percent

70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

1993

1996

c eet n

1998

t c n r

2001 e

2004 te er ntr te

2007 n ne

2010

Figure 4.10: Acts of political participation in Australia, 1993–2010 1993–98: During the election campaign, did you do any of the following things? 2001–10: Here is a list of things some people do during elections. How often did you do any of these things during the recent election? (Thus, for 2001–10 results, the responses of ‘frequently’, ‘occasionally’ and ‘rarely’ are combined for the data below.) Source: AES 1993–2010.

McAllister’s judgement is that ‘Australia, by any standards, is a politically conventional society’ (McAllister 1997, p. 248), identifying a ‘political culture that is conservative, largely apolitical, and encompassing an English working-class distrust of politics and politicians’, and he also finds a degree of stability not found in other Anglo-Saxon countries (p. 265). A similar judgement is made by Rodney Smith (2001, p. 39) in his observation, ‘Compulsory voting aside, almost no political ­participation is widely practised in Australia.’ Smith also emphasises that this does not mean that Australians cannot be or are not mobilised, but rather that the net effect is that most Australians look to their political institutions rather than personal involvement to resolve issues of ­conflict. Overall, in Britain and Australia, there is some evidence to suggest that patterns of non-electoral participation are changing, with increased use of electronic technologies, and a preference for ‘chequebook’ ­participation. This suggests that there are limits to the extent to which citizens wish to engage in democratic processes, indicating the need for caution when exploring how proponents of the New Social Democracy might seek to reinvigorate the public realm and find new mechanisms for civic engagement.

70

The search for democratic renewal

Organisational membership in Britain and Australia A key facet of non-electoral participation is organisational membership. Voluntary and civic organisations play a vital intermediary role in liberal democracies. Figure 4.11 provides a snapshot comparison of organisational membership in Britain and Australia. What is clear is that membership of voluntary organisations is much higher in Australia, a view confirmed by Passey and Lyons (2005, p. 78). Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley (2004, p. 102) compare trends in organisational membership in Britain over time and report a decrease in the number of people who are members of at least one organisation from over 30 per cent to just over 15 per cent from 1959 to 2001. While there are some fluctuations in the (smaller) amounts of people who are members of two or more groups, there has been a decline in membership of voluntary associations. Andrew Leigh (2010) uses survey data to examine active membership of organisations in Australia between 1967 and 2004 (Figure 4.12). Crucially, Leigh finds a significant reduction in the number of people who are active in organisations. In the same chapter (p. 28) he also records a ‘collapse of associations’ in Australia, with worrying consequences for the vibrancy of civic life in Australia. For proponents of the NSD, a vibrant and active civil society is a desirable part of their overall plans for democratic renewal. The NSD notion of a vibrant democracy assumes relatively high levels of group membership. As the case studies presented in later chapters demonstrate, 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

2001 2001 03

Figure 4.11: Types of organisational membership in Britain (2001) and Australia (2001–3) Sources: UK data – Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley 2004, p. 98; Australia data – Passey and Lyons 2004.



Political participation: continuity and change 71 35 30 25 20 15 10 5 0

1967

1969

1979

2001

2004 2

1

Figure 4.12: Active membership of organisations in Australia, 1967–2004 Source: Leigh 2010, p. 13.

NSD-influenced Labour governments have set targets for v­ olunteering and organisational activity because it links with their overall vision for fostering active citizenship. In the case of Britain, the decline of group membership is evident, as is the decline of member activism in Australia. Whilst it is beyond the scope of this chapter to explain these trends, Leigh (2010) gives a useful summary of some the key suspects and the impact on levels of social capital in Australia. These include: the impact of working hours; commuting times; television; feminisation of the workplace; levels of cultural diversity; use of impersonal technologies; and finally, ‘tipping points’ – the point at which a civic organisation’s vitality is so low it ceases to be viable. Leigh’s survey points to ‘no single smoking gun’ (p. 149). In relation to the decline of activism in NGOs, Stoker (2006) points to the increasing professionalisation of the sector as a key factor. Similarly, Whiteley (2011) argues that the increasing professionalisation of political parties helps explain declining levels of party activism and membership. Political participation and the internet The use of new technologies, the spread of internet use and social media are inevitably changing the dynamics of political participation (Chadwick 2006; Norris 2001). The use of the internet as a tool for civic

72

The search for democratic renewal

engagement is a relatively new phenomenon, which means the research is still evolving. The impact of wikileaks, YouTube, and smart phone technology used during the ‘Arab Spring’ are cited as examples of how technologies are changing the relationship between state and citizen. Most political parties and significant interest groups have a d ­ edicated online presence. In theory, the expansion of the internet offers new possibilities for political and civic engagement through the use of ­ ­e-petitions, cheap ways of informing a membership base and online discussion forums. Governments are responding with e-government ­ strategies (for example, New Labour’s focus on technology in the 1999 White Paper, Modernising Government). In Australia, the Victorian government ­ initiated a wide-ranging parliamentary inquiry into e-democracy in 2005. ‘Information Victoria’ is a dedicated government team with the remit to open up the democratic conversation through the use of ‘new media’. In 2010, nearly 85 per cent of the UK population and 75 per cent of the Australian population had access to the internet. Computer access and home ownership of personal computers have grown rapidly. The rate of internet use in both countries has increased at broadly similar levels (see Figure 4.13). The use of the internet, like traditional forms of political participation, is highly stratified. People from higher socioeconomic groups are much more likely to own computers and have access 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0

1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010

Figure 4.13: Internet users as a percentage of population in Australia and the United Kingdom, 1995–2010 Defined as ‘people with access to the worldwide network’ Source: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.P2?cid=GPD_44.



Political participation: continuity and change 73

to the internet (Chadwick 2006, p. 73; Norris 2001). In Australia, ABS (2006) data confirm that younger people, more affluent people, people with more formal education, non-Indigenous Australians, able-bodied people and employed people are all more likely to have access to the internet. In one of the earliest studies of the impact of the internet on political participation in the United Kingdom, it is reported that: The internet reinforced some existing biases and simultaneously expanded the participation of other under-represented groups: almost one third of e-participators were ‘educated upper middle-class’ citizens (the ‘usual suspects’), while manual workers comprised only 16 per cent of those that participated via the internet. (Ward, Gibson and Lusoli 2003 cited in Maloney 2006, p. 111)

In the same study by Ward, Gibson and Lusoli (2003), it was found that those aged between 15 and 24 years (although a relatively small group in the survey sample) were among the heaviest users of the internet – ‘outsurfing’ those in the 45–54 years age range. A common trend is that younger people tend not to engage in traditional forms of political participation to the same extent as older groups. For example, voter turnout for younger people is consistently lower. This is instructive because it offers hope to those who seek to use the internet as a new way of engaging disenfranchised groups with the political process, but it also simultaneously reproduces commonly found patterns of inequality. Early research on the growth of the internet for political purposes tended to concentrate on the ‘digital divide’ – measured simply by the number of people who have access to new technologies and those who do not. Increasingly, the digital divide concept is expanded to reflect a number of ‘divides’ in terms of access, skills and economic opportunity (see Chadwick 2006, p. 52; Mossberger 2009). However, the increasing use of the internet does not necessarily mean that the public are using it for political or civic purposes. The 2003 study by Ward, Gibson and Lusoli suggests that the use of the internet for civic reasons is still relatively low, although they found evidence that some interest groups used the internet to help mobilise their members and supporters. In overall terms, Ward and his colleagues report that the internet makes a modest contribution to participation and mobilisation. Whilst the ­internet does not universally lower the costs of participation, it may bring some new individuals and groups into the political process – notably younger people … it seems most likely to assist the increasingly prominent development of protest networks, flash and single issue campaigns. (Ward, Gibson and Lusoli 2003, p. 667 cited in Maloney 2006, p. 111)

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The search for democratic renewal

At this stage, how the internet is impacting upon overall patterns of political engagement remains an open question. An interesting feature of the case studies reported in this book are the early, tentative uses of the internet by Labour governments to find new mechanisms to involve citizens in policy-making processes. What is clear is that the internet is transforming how citizens gain their political knowledge, and the use of technologies is changing the dynamics between state and citizen. The sociology of participation Studies of political behaviour have long claimed that political ­participation is stratified. From the ground-breaking work of Almond and Verba (and their colleagues) from the 1960s, survey data confirm that rates of participation are affected by factors such as age, gender, occupation, religion, class, income, ethnicity etc. From their US study, Verba, Scholzman and Brady conclude that the voices of citizens ‘may be loud and clear, but they are decidedly not equal’ (1995, p. 511). In Australia, Bean’s (1989) study compared the sociology of participation in Australia with the five countries in Almond and Verba’s classic study Civic Culture. Using regression analysis, Bean shows that p ­ articipation in Australia broadly fits with well-established patterns in other advanced industrial societies.6 Bean (1989, p. 466) argues that: In fact age has the largest direct effect of any variable (.22), while Trade Union membership (.10), occupation (.09) and residential location (−0.7) have independent effects as well, whereby union members, white collar workers and rural residents are more likely to engage in voting than ­non-unionists, blue collar workers or city dwellers respectively.

Interestingly, Bean (1989, p. 471) observes, ‘Ethnic background is somewhat surprising for its lack of effect [on participation] … It may be that barriers to political participation felt by immigrants to Australia in a previous era have largely been eroded by the 1980s.’ Overall, Bean concludes that ‘political participation by the mass citizenry in Australia reflects patterns found in many other parts of the world to a very ­considerable degree’. Rodney Smith (2001) provides a useful survey of patterns of gender participation: participation rates for men were higher in the 1960s, but this is now changing and the ‘gender gap’ is closing. The familiar ­patterns of inequality are seen when the sociology of membership of voluntary organisations is examined (Table 4.2). What is striking about this research is that there are negligible differences in rates of membership by age and gender. However, people from higher socioeconomic



Political participation: continuity and change 75 Table 4.2: Membership of voluntary organisations in Australia by demographic group, 2003 Characteristic Gender Female Male Age 18–34 35–49 50–64 65+ Education Year 12 or less Trade/cert. or diploma Bachelor’s degree + Occupation Manager/professor Associate professor/trades Advanced/intermediate clerical Elementary clerical and labourers Income $0–$31,199 per annum $31 200–$77,999 per annum $78,000+ per annum Total N = 2057

% 86 87 86 88 88 82 80 90 95 94 87 86 79 79 90 93 86

Note: membership includes all respondents who are members of one or more organisations. Source: Passey and Lyons 2005, p. 67.

groups are more likely to be a member of a voluntary organisation than people from lower socioeconomic groups. From this snapshot, it can be observed that the sociology of ­participation in Australia is not strikingly different from that of other advanced industrial countries: inequality of participation is a p ­ ersistent feature of Australian politics. However, the differences between rates of participation for some social groups should not be overstated. Levels of membership of voluntary organisations are still relatively high for ­low-income earners, as they are for higher-income earners. Moreover, some inequalities in participation have decreased over time, ­particularly the differences in rates of participation between men and women.

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The search for democratic renewal

Like Australia, inequality of participation is a characteristic of British civic life. Table 4.3 gives a useful comparison of political participants and non-participants as outlined by Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley (2003b). The findings of the British citizen audits confirm the general trends of participation found in other advanced industrial societies. Affluent people, better educated people, older people, people from the dominant ethnic group and men all tend to participate at higher levels (to varying degrees). These patterns are confirmed by Beetham et al. (2002). Beetham and colleagues’ study also confirms that people aged 18–25 Table 4.3: Characteristics of political participants and non-participants in Britain

Characteristic All Age 25 and under 26–45 46–65 66+ Gender Male Female Class Professional Clerical Manual Household income Under £10,000 £30,000–£39,000 £70,000+ Education 15 years and under 16–18 19 years + Ethnicity White/European Asian Black African East Asian

Number of political actions: 0 (%)

Number of political actions: 1–4 (%)

Number of political actions: 5+ (%)

14

49

37

12 12 13 21

52 47 47 54

35 41 40 25

14 13

50 48

35 39

 7 13 18

44 52 54

49 35 28

20  9  6

52 46 40

28 45 54

19 14  6

53 49 42

28 37 52

14 18 16 19

49 52 52 52

38 31 32 30

Note: number of respondents N = 3120. Source: Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley 2003b, p. 628.



Political participation: continuity and change 77

tend to express less interest in politics and are less likely to participate in voluntary activities (2002, p. 219). Research into ethnicity shows the differences in the types of participatory acts undertaken by various ethnic groups. Beetham et al.’s survey data (2002, p. 219) show that black Britons and Asian Britons are equally as likely to be involved in voluntary groups as white Britons, while people from ethnic minority groups are also more likely to be involved in organisations and groups which represent the interests of their own ethnic background. Given the persistent social and economic inequalities experienced by many ethnic minority groups in the United Kingdom, it is not surprising that their priorities may be to build up the infrastructure for their own communities. Recent evidence on gender-specific civic participation in Britain reveals a gap between the levels of males and females, but this has d ­ iminished over time, and like Australia, in many areas the differences between men and women are negligible (Childs 2004; Norris, Lovenduski and Campbell 2004). Women are more likely to be involved in ‘cause-­ orientated’ activities, such as signing a petition, but they are significantly less likely to be involved in campaign activities. Women are also less likely to join voluntary organisations than men (Childs 2004, p. 422). Surveying the available evidence, the overall patterns and trends in people who participate in politics in Britain and Australia are roughly comparable. One of the traditional gaps in political participation – gender – has declined to almost negligible levels in both countries. While the ethnic compositions of Britain and Australia are different, there are similarities in the differential rates of participation. In both countries, there is still a discernible pattern of older people being more likely to express an interest and being more active in politics than younger people. Nevertheless, there are persistent patterns of inequality of p ­ articipation, and Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley (2003a, p. 633) caution that: There is a very real danger that the voice of the less privileged and the less resourced is becoming excluded from the participative, consumerist, atomised politics of the twenty-first century.

These long-standing patterns of inequality of participation – ­ articularly the tendency for people from lower socioeconomic groups p to be less civically engaged – have important consequences for NSDinfluenced Labour governments. Equality remains a defining aim of Labour politics, even in its recent incarnation in the NSD. The New Social Democracy has a broader focus on social inequality, particularly through its conception of ‘social inclusion/exclusion’ (see Wilson 2009). Moreover, the NSD, after rediscovering a dormant value in

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The search for democratic renewal

the social democratic tradition (stretching back to Eduard Bernstein and R.H. Tawney), seeks to cultivate a form of active citizenship which redresses some of the long-standing inequalities of political and civic participation. As Labour politics has shifted from a more class-oriented project to a broader social one, so its ‘subjects’ have moved from the ‘working class’ to the ‘citizen’. As a policy goal, the aim of achieving broader social equality supplants a narrower goal of class equality. In this respect, these trends and patterns of inequality of voice and participation take on greater significance in NSD politics. Political participation and the New Social Democracy This chapter has provided a more empirical focus for the understanding of patterns of political and civic participation. Some of the main findings confirm that: • Both Britain and Australia have seen a decline in trust in politicians, although trust in other professions has also fallen. • The extent of the public’s general interest in politics remains largely unchanged and generally rather low. • There has been some decline in voter identification with the major political parties. • Political party membership and trade union membership have been declining in Britain and Australia. • Falling voter turnout is a key feature of recent general elections in Britain, and there is some loss of support for the major political parties in Australia. • There is an increase in other forms of non-electoral participation in Britain (particularly individualistic acts); although there is some evidence of similar trends in Australia, they are not as pronounced as they are in Britain. • Group membership in Britain and Australia is declining, particularly levels of membership activism. • The impact of the internet on patterns of political participation is still an open question. Governments in Britain and Australia are placing their hopes on e-government strategies to invigorate the public realm. • Political participation remains highly stratified, and the less resourced and poorest groups are far less likely to engage. Some of these longer-term trends have been driving the New Social Democracy’s programme of democratic renewal. In the United Kingdom at least, the focus on falling voter turnout has been a particularly d ­ ifficult



Political participation: continuity and change 79

issue for the legitimacy of New Labour. Contrary to claims made by writers such as Phillip Blond (2010), these trends do not represent a crisis of democracy, but rather pose a new set of challenges for (Labour) governments in Britain and Australia. The call for the ‘­democratising of democracy’ is underpinned by these wider social trends. The cases in this book provide some clues as to how Labour-driven ‘top-down’ ­innovative attempts at consultation might address some of these wider issues, such as fostering active participation and countering low levels of trust. Moreover, a number of the case studies show NSD-influenced Labour governments seeking to define and set specific targets for addressing some of these wider issues, such as inequality of voice. Citizens are engaging with the state in different ways, and there is some evidence that, although the main parties still dominate the political system, their dominance is weaker. Richardson (2002, p. 23) argues that all democratic governments have a ‘burden of legitimation’. The problem for Labour parties, rather than their Conservative counterparts, is that, with falling party membership and trade union membership, the traditional sources of legitimacy are weaker. In the British context, one of the apparent dangers of the detachment of the main political parties from wider civil society is that far-right parties, such as the British National Party (BNP), are filling this democratic ‘void’.7 In the 2005 British general election, nearly 17 million people (out of just over 44 million registered voters) did not vote. The Blair government only secured about 35 per cent of those who did manage to vote (Electoral Commission 2005). Britain’s ‘first past the post’ electoral system concealed the weaker base of New Labour’s support. Ironically, dissatisfaction with the political class also skewed the referendum result on changing Britain’s electoral system. In Australia, while this debate is not as high-profile, it is apparent that Australians have, at best, a ­complicated relationship with their political parties: Citizenship and the responsibilities attached to being a good citizen remain highly valued in Australian society. That many Australians nonetheless feel government is unresponsive suggests that the fabric between citizens and government is not without its loose threads. (Bean and Denemark 2007, pp. 77–8)

These issues pose searching questions for Labour governments and their programmes for democratic renewal. The changing relationship between the state and civil society has put pressure on government to be more responsive. The irony is that while citizens seem dissatisfied with aspects of democracy, the NSD’s response is to give citizens a further dose of the same medicine – more democracy.

80

The search for democratic renewal Notes

1 It should be noted that this is not a definitive list of theories to explain levels of political participation; but the value of Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley’s (2004) work is that they seek to test the main hypothesises empirically. 2 Sawer and Zappalà’s list of the main trends is neither comprehensive nor uncontentious. Inglehart’s postmaterialism thesis is disputed (Haller 2002). In sum, Inglehart argues that citizens in advanced industrial societies are undergoing a process of value change. Inglehart argues that there is a shift in ­cultural attitudes, with younger generations tending to value lifestyle issues more highly than older generations (especially those who lived through the Second World War), who tend to value issues such as physical wellbeing and safety (Inglehart 1977, 1990). The broad thrust of his argument has been ­supported by Charnock and Ellis (2003), Dalton (2002), and Sawer and Zappalà (2001). However, Tranter and Western (2003) dispute that ­postmaterial values have strongly taken hold in Australia. Among Sawer and Zappalà’s list of other trends (2001, p. 290), some are difficult to show empirically, such as ‘the loss of the major parties of their agenda development role’. This chapter focuses on more clearly ­measurable  patterns of political participation. It does not seek to exhaustively prove all of the possible main trends; instead it has the more modest aim of giving a snapshot of some of the significant patterns in Britain and Australia. 3 The main sources of evidence for these different indicators of participation and support are the Australian Election Study (AES), the British Election Study (BES) and the British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey. These are ­long-established social surveys which ask a broad representative sample of the public a range of questions. Datasets for the tables used in this book were downloaded from the relevant websites which host the survey data: The Australian Social Science Data Archive (http://assda.anu.edu.au/data.html); The British Social Attitudes Information System (www.britsocat.com/Body.aspx?control=HomePage); The British Election Studies Information Site (www.besis.org/Body.aspx). More recently, Australian political scientists have established an equivalent to the BSA survey in the Australian Survey of Social Attitudes (AuSSA) (http:// aussa.anu.edu.au/). While only two surveys have been generated to date, it still provides a source of useful information. 4 A range of explanations for long-term levels of falling trust have been offered (Bromley, Curtice and Seyd 2004; Leigh 2002; Nye 1997). Nye (1997) examines a range of different hypotheses for explaining declining trust in the United States. Nye suggests some of the more convincing reasons include the growth of the role of government, cultural change following the Second World War, the impact of the mass media and changes in the economic base of the advanced industrial societies. Interestingly, the research from Bromley, Curtice and Seyd (2004, p. 13) in the United Kingdom suggests that none of the longer-term sociological trends ‘receive much support from our evidence’.



Political participation: continuity and change 81

These authors suggest that shorter-term issues such as allegations of sleaze are more likely explanations for the decline in trust in Britain. 5 While there is clear long-term evidence that party membership in Britain (and also Australia) has declined, this overall story should not obscure shorter ­patterns of levels of party membership. The membership of New Labour grew significantly in the run-up to and beyond the 1997 general election. Following the 1992 general election defeat, Blair and the party leadership had made the recruitment of new members a significant priority. From 1993 to 1997, it grew from just under 300,000 to 450,000 (Seyd and Whiteley 2002, p. 33). However, despite this boost in numbers, the levels dropped rather quickly to pre-1992 levels. It is estimated that during New Labour’s last years in office, the membership levels slumped to around 177,000. Following the election loss in 2010, Ed Miliband’s elevation to leadership once again saw a surge in membership levels, but these did not reach the same levels as at the peak of New Labour in the late 1990s (Weaver 2010). 6 Bean (1989) uses multivariate regression analysis to outline the correlation between various acts of participation and other variables such as gender, age and so on. A more detailed explanation of this methodology and the full list of variables examined by Bean are contained in his article. 7 In Britain, the BNP has aggressively and strategically worked to gain ­electoral support with effective local campaigning and often by targeting already ­disengaged white working-class voters. In Burnley (a Lancashire city where a race riot took place in 2001), the BNP doubled its seats on the local council to eight at the May 2003 elections, and its vote increased elsewhere. In 2009, the BNP secured two seats in the European Parliament, linked in part to expenses scandals which engulfed the main political parties at this time.

5

New Social Democratic governments in Britain and Australia

Yet Gillard’s reinstatement of the centrality of markets leaves Labor with some dilemmas that Rudd’s trenchant critiques of neo-liberalism had  at  least sought to address. For, if there are no significant problems  with  relying on markets then why do we need social democratic parties? Carol Johnson, 2011

The New Social Democracy in Australia and Britain This chapter introduces four cases of the New Social Democracy in action. It describes the Australian roots of the NSD and ­reinforces the renewed links between the British and Australian Labour ­parties. An aim of the book is to help bring Australian Labor back into wider d ­iscussions about the varieties of social democracy. The chapter then focuses on four cases of Labour governments directly influenced by the NSD, beginning with the ‘chemically pure’ case ­ of New Labour (1997–2010). This chapter also addresses two key areas neglected in the g­ rowing ­literature on New Labour: the links between its ­ external  ­ programme  for  democratic renewal and the ­internal reforms that sought to embed the party more widely with civil society. The chapter charts the preoccupations and activities of three Australian Labor governments: the Victorian Labor government headed  by Steve Bracks (1999–2007), the South Australian Labor government headed by Mike Rann (2002–11), and the federal ­ Rudd g­ overnment (2007–10). The timelines for the various Labour ­governments are outlined in Figure 5.1. In all the cases, there is a clear interest in democratic renewal and an effort to find new ways to engage citizens in policy-making processes. Broadly, the chapter examines the cases in chronological order.



NSD governments in Britain and Australia 83 Year

Gov’t 90

91

92

93

94

95

96

97

98

99

00

01

02

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

10

11

12

UK (Nat.) Australia (CW) NSW VIC QLD WA SA TAS ACT NT

Key: Labour government Labour minority government Conservative/Liberal government

Figure 5.1: Labour governments in Britain and Australia

Australian roots of the NSD The roots of the NSD politics are disputed (Giddens 1998; Pierson and Castles 2002; Sheil 2000). It is commonly assumed in the UK that the main NSD influence came from the repositioning of the ‘New Democrats’ in the United States under former president Bill Clinton. However, it is clear that the antecedents of Tony Blair’s Third Way (as it was then called) can be traced to the earlier Hawke–Keating Labor governments in Australia (1983–96) (Johnson and Tonkiss 2002; Mendes 2000; O’Reilly 2007; Pierson and Castles 2002; Sheil 2000). In the words of Paul Keating, ‘We didn’t call what we were doing the third way. For Australia, we saw it as the only way’ (Pierson and Castles 2002, p. 683). In the literature, the influence of the Hawke–Keating governments on New Labour tends to be either downplayed, or more commonly, not acknowledged at all. For example, Bevir (2005), Newman (2001) and Crouch (2011) make no reference to it, and, indeed, Australian social democracy is often excluded from mainstream accounts of social d ­ emocracy. To take one recent example, Merkel et al.’s 2008 collection Social Democracy in Power does not include

84

The search for democratic renewal

Australia, nor does the ­chapter in that collection on the UK acknowledge the influence of Australian social democracy. Chris Pierson (2001) makes a c­ompelling  case that Australian social democracy is highly d ­ istinctive and often overlooked in wider discussions of social ­democracy. Scott’s work (2000) on the modernisation of Australian and British Labour establishes the groundwork to understanding the Australian influence on the NSD. O’Reilly’s work (2007) develops this further, and clearly outlines the links and policy transfer between the Hawke–Keating governments and New Labour. Bob Hawke boasted that he had told Blair and Brown ‘what it was all about’ (O’Reilly 2007, p.  12). Blair cites Paul Keating as a mentor (‘Lessons from influential Australians, both mates and mentors’, Sydney Morning ­ Herald, 2 September 2010). Blair has also been explicit about the influences of the Australian Labor Party, commenting that ‘in many ways the ALP has far greater s­ imilarities than a lot of European parties and we share many of the same positions’ (cited in Johnson and Tonkiss 2002, p. 7). The main reason for New Labour’s interest in the ALP was primarily due to its electoral success and its professionalised campaigning ­techniques. There was also an issue of timing, as Down under, economic and social reform in the 1980s was led by parties of the left not right – parties intent on building broad electoral support for pragmatic market-led policies. (Driver and Martell 2006, p. 42)

The Hawke–Keating model was a source of inspiration for New Labour for several reasons. First, it was a right-wing Labor government which provided an innovative response to the challenges posed by ­neoliberalism (Johnson 1989). Hawke and Keating undertook a wideranging programme of privatisation and financial deregulation, which to some extent overturned prior social democratic orthodox thinking. In Hawke’s distinctive, charismatic style, he boasted his government has been ‘responsible for more free-market ­economics than had been dreamt of’ by previous coalition governments. (O’Reilly 2007, p. 27)

Second, this government introduced a range of policies, such as the Child Support Agency (CSA), which appear to resist categorisation on the traditional left–right spectrum. Third, Blair and Brown admired the fact that Hawke and Keating’s success was linked to the degree to which the party leadership could control policy-making. Hawke ­benefited from internal party reforms initiated by Bill Hayden, which



NSD governments in Britain and Australia 85

helped ‘modernise’ the party (Bramston 2011, p. 49; O’Reilly 2007, p. 20). There has been significant debate in Australia about whether the Hawke–Keating governments betrayed and/or broke with the Labor tradition (see Johnson 2011, p. 563). For some, their embrace of neoliberalism suggests that they did (Maddox 1989, 1991). However, even those still critical of the direction taken by Hawke and Keating argue that they broadly operated within Labor traditions (Bramble and Kuhn 2009; Johnson 1989, 2008, 2011; Pierson 2001). This debate is fiercely contested and foreshadows a similar debate about New Labour (Fielding 2003; Hay 1999; Ludlam 2004; Marquand 1998; Moschonas 2002; Pierson 2001; Shaw 2007). These debates underscore the difficulties associated with defining the NSD and whether it is actually a ‘new’ form of social democracy. For the purposes of this book, the concept of the NSD as defined remains useful because earlier incarnations of the social democracy (for example, Crosland-ite revisionism in Britain) did not have to deal with the dominance of neoliberalism. What was distinctive about New Labour – while clearly drawing on labour and social democratic traditions – was that it did, rhetorically at least, attempt to define itself as a ‘new politics’. Driver and Martell’s work (2002, 2006) in this respect is crucial as it reminds us that New Labour was a ‘postThatcherite’ project, adopting aspects of neoliberalism but within a social democratic tradition. Bevir (2005, p. 48), in an important contribution to the debate, argues that the Third Way–NSD is a ‘shared framework’ of ideas held by senior Labour figures, along with a wider network of policy advisers and key social scientists, effectively combining the ideas of the NSD into a coherent package. Crucially, he asserts (2005, p. 61) that ‘competing positions exist within New Labour’, yet ‘we can aggregate most of these positions without too much simplification’. To this extent, we can identify a tacit acceptance of many of the tenets of the New Social Democracy in Britain and Australia, but there are limits to which NSD ideas were embraced in both countries. For New Labour (as with the Hawke–Keating era), the NSD was driven by the modernisers and the leadership. In Britain, the left wing of the party was sceptical from the outset about New Labour. Former Labour MP Tony Benn described New Labour as a ‘new political party. I’m not a member of it. It’s probably the smallest political party in the history of British Politics, but they’re all in the cabinet so it makes it quite powerful’ (Stone 2000). Given the hard years of opposition, the party was by and large content to support a new agenda, which was seen as credible and would deliver

86

The search for democratic renewal

the election victory so desperately sought. New Labour is rightly seen as the purest form of the NSD in action (Callinicos 2001; Fitzpatrick 2003; Giddens 2002). As Ludlam and Smith argue: Herbert Morrison, deputy Labour leader and grandfather of Peter Mandelson, once replied impatiently to the question, ‘What is socialism?’ that it was ‘What the Labour Government does’. Perhaps it is too soon to answer the question, ‘What is modernising social democracy?’ with the reply that it is ‘What the New Labour Government does’. But given the wide variety of social democratic programmes that history offers us, and the complexities revealed … it may turn out to be as concise an answer as can be offered. (Ludlam and Smith 2004, p. 14)

While the New Labour government was the closest expression of the NSD, even advocates of the NSD, such as Giddens (2003, p. 5), have argued that, at times, New Labour deviated from the modernising agenda. Despite the Hawke–Keating governments being an embryonic form of the New Social Democracy, their embrace of the NSD is arguably weaker than that of their British counterpart. Mark Latham, the most vocal exponent of the NSD at the federal level, was only party leader for a short time. His defeat at the 2004 election perhaps damaged his vision of a modernised social democracy. Another key NSD advocate, former Western Australia Premier Geoff Gallop (a close personal friend of Tony Blair), was perhaps limited by the confines of state politics to promote NSD ideas more widely. The diffusion of the NSD in Australia is also related to Australian federalism and the party’s dispersed structures. As Parkin and Marshall (1994, p. 20) observe, ‘The ALP is not simply, or even primarily a “national” entity … the ALP is a complex and dynamic amalgam of interest and values’. Yet, to some extent, despite the name never being adopted, many of the key ideas of the NSD found ­expression in Australia, often led by a modernising leadership. New Labour, New Social Democracy and democratic renewal Democratic renewal remains a key strand of thinking and practice for New Labour (Beech 2006; Bevir 2005). While Tony Blair called for a strengthening of the ‘democratic impulse’, the democratic renewal agenda ebbed and flowed under his leadership. Strikingly, Gordon Brown released the 2007 Governance of Britain Green Paper just after assuming the leadership, attempting to make democratic renewal a more explicit part of his agenda. In New Labour’s first term, aspects of the democratic renewal agenda found expression in the ‘modernising



NSD governments in Britain and Australia 87

g­ overnment’ agenda (Cabinet Office 1999a). There were a plethora of early initiatives, such as the People’s Panel, which were attempts to find new mechanisms for citizen involvement in policy-making. Democratic renewal was integral to the evolution of New Labour and there are some key markers in its emergence (Driver and Martell 1998; Hughes and Wintour 1990). Following Labour’s dismal showing at the 1987 election, Neil Kinnock instituted the most wide-ranging policy review in British Labour’s history. Democratic renewal was a key strand of the policy review, with the ‘citizens and consumers’ strand of the policy review chaired by David Blunkett and Jack Straw. It dealt with issues such as devolution, reform of the House of Lords and the replacement of the British majoritarian electoral system with a more proportional one. The governance proposals in the policy review were, on the whole, measured and cautious. There was much discussion of the point that Labour should concentrate on one big overarching idea. Hughes and Wintour (1990, p. 65) report that: Blunkett’s personal preference was that Labour should rally around the notion of a participatory democracy – the approach he adopted with considerable success as leader of Sheffield City Council.

For New Labour, framing its political narrative around the ‘citizen’ was a mechanism for forging support from different social classes. New Labour, more explicitly than its predecessors, wanted to broaden its electoral appeal beyond its traditional working-class base. While the citizen and consumer strand of the policy review was infused with Blunkett’s zeal for participatory ideals, the all-encompassing theme of the review became modernisation. Following the defeat at the 1992 general election, the modernisation process continued under the new leadership of John Smith (Cronin 2011; Seyd and Whiteley 2002). Smith charged the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) to set up the Commission on Social Justice. The commission’s 1994 report, Strategies for National Renewal, played a key role in influencing Labour’s subsequent policy agenda, with the commission reinforcing Labour’s democratic renewal agenda and including proposals such as a call for a national volunteering service (an idea which resonates with Kevin Rudd’s 2020 Summit in Australia, but also in the Big Society agenda in the UK). New Labour’s democratic renewal agenda had two main strands: constitutional reform and modernising government, the latter a move to find new mechanisms for both dialogic and consultative citizen engagement. New Labour cast this broad agenda as transcending the ­traditional left–right divide (Labour Party 1997, p. 1). The 1997 m ­ anifesto calls for

88

The search for democratic renewal

a ‘new politics’ and a commitment to democratic renewal to counter general public cynicism of the political elites (Labour Party 1997, p. 4) New Labour’s democratic renewal agenda led to a suite of changes, including: devolution in Scotland and Wales; reform of the House of Lords; encouraging democratic innovations in local government; and establishing regional bodies and a plethora of partnership agencies. Some of these initiatives fared better than others and, notably, the attempt to set up regional chambers floundered badly. Yet, for all the achievements, there were tensions and ambivalence within New Labour about how far it wished to promote this agenda. Blair famously did not share John Smith’s passion for constitutional reform (Cronin 2011). The approach to devolution was inconsistent, with the New Labour leadership making a number of blunders by attempting to install their preferred leaders in the devolved chambers. For New Labour, there was an overriding tendency to devolve responsibility, but centralise control (Fitzpatrick 2003). Constitutional and electoral reform remains a fault line in the Labour Party. Blair established the Jenkins Commission to examine reform of the UK’s majoritarian general electoral system, but did nothing with its findings. The party had no official position on the 2011 referendum on electoral reform, with Ed Miliband actively favouring a change to the Alternative Vote system, while New Labour stalwarts such as David Blunkett were staunchly in the ‘no’ camp. Similarly, there was ambivalence about how far citizen engagement should be integrated into the plans to modernise the public sector. In the landmark 1999 Modernising Government White Paper, many of the NSD themes concerning government were outlined. The g­ overnment should be an ‘enabler’ and ‘responsive’ (Cabinet Office 1999a). From the outset, New Labour introduced a raft of measures to achieve better input for citizens in policy-making, including: making public services available 24/7; a focus on e-government; and new statutory duties enabling local authorities and other public agencies to consult with the public. New Labour set out a clear rationale for these initiatives: Although the public can express its dissatisfaction with its public service through the ballot box, this can be a blunt instrument, removing whole local or central governments intermittently and often not addressing the underlying reasons why things are wrong. The risk is that particular parts of the public sector can therefore be left to fail too long. (Cabinet Office 1999a, p. 8)

Along with responsiveness, New Labour promoted the greater use of consultation processes throughout the public sector. Like the Rudd



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government’s much later ‘Blueprint for Reform of the Public Services’, there is a strong focus on improving responsiveness. However, as with the constitutional reform agenda, there was a reluctance to cede power from Whitehall. Fawcett and Rhodes (2007, p. 103) suggest that in this wider agenda ‘there was no consistent vision and it was a recipe for, and a classic example of, muddling through’. As outlined in Chapter 2, Labour’s focus on enhancing citizen voice into policy-making also reflects broader structural changes in the public sector. The influence of the NPM and shift towards ‘governance’ has also driven some of these changes. New Labour and internal reforms In tandem with its external democratic renewal agenda, in the hard years of opposition Kinnock, Smith and Blair set about modernising and reforming the party. Between 1979 and 1999, the Labour Party’s internal structures underwent significant reform. The detail is outlined elsewhere (Heffernan 2003; Mair 2002; Seyd and Whiteley 2002; Shaw 2004), but significant changes in the process include: • Party members are included in the mechanism to elect the party leader. • Since 1997, no single Labour MP has direct funding from a trade union. • Trade unions have 50 per cent of the vote at annual conference (it was 90 per cent in 1979). A key feature of Kinnock’s reforms was to increase the powers of the party leadership (Seyd and Whiteley 2002, p. 5). Modernisation was consolidated, rather than accelerated, under John Smith’s brief period as party leader. The reform process was resumed when Tony Blair assumed the leadership in 1994, culminating in the rewriting of Labour’s constitution (Clause IV). In 1997, the party membership formally endorsed New Labour’s ‘Partnership in Power’ (PiP) proposals for significant internal reform (Labour Party 2008). Seyd and Whiteley (2002, p. 19) characterise this as a shift away from delegatory democracy to ­plebisicitary forms of democracy. The net effect of the reforms was to downgrade both the power of the National Executive Committee (NEC) and the Annual Conference (Seyd and Whiteley 2002, p. xvi). The main innovation of the PiP process was to establish a bi-annual policy-making cycle, which encouraged greater solicitation of external views.1 New Labour’s PiP reforms are indicative of its approach to consultation and decision-making and the link with latter initiatives to

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engage more widely, such as the ‘Big Conversation’ exercise (explored in the next chapter). A number of themes and tensions underpin the PiP reforms (Davies 2001, p. 170; Heffernan 2003; Seyd and Whiteley 2002, p. 24): • Most party members were broadly supportive of the PiP reforms (and the new consultative forums), but only a minority thought they had some influence over policy. • A preference was expressed for plebiscitary forms of democracy, which simultaneously create new forums for internal dialogue while strengthening the power of the party leadership. • The party membership can only modify a predetermined agenda set and ‘managed’ by the leadership. • Consultation is fused with promotional activities There was a good deal of unease and cynicism both from within the National Executive Committee and the wider membership about some of the leadership’s attempts at consultation (Davies 2001, p. 170).2 The PiP reforms reinforce some competing tensions in New Labour’s modernisation agenda. Policy-making is streamlined and professionalised, but over time the measures do not seem to have slowed the hollowing-out of the party. Despite an influx of members in 1997, and a later increase when Ed Miliband assumed the leadership, overall party ­membership is in decline and at record low levels. New Labour also made tentative steps towards making the party engage more widely with civil society when in opposition. Following the 1987 defeat, Neil Kinnock initiated the ‘Labour Listens’ campaign. (Similar ‘listening’ exercises have become a more recent political ­phenomenon (Tonn 2005).)3 At the time it was widely dismissed as a superficial and symbolic exercise (Henneberg and O’Shaughnessy 2002), but this narrow reading of the exercise ignores some of the wider dynamics in an early attempt to consult. As a consultation initiative it was widely recognised as a failure, but it did succeed on some other levels (Hughes and Wintour 1990, p. 100), in that it reinforced that the party was making a new commitment to engage and consult more widely. Labour Listens may not have generated any new ideas, but it did crystallise a number of agendas. In part it reflected the Labour Party needing to draw support and legitimacy from outside its declining ­membership base. In both New Labour’s external and internal democratic renewal agenda there is a revitalised attempt to reconfigure the relationship between the state and the citizen. As noted previously, not since the time



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of R.H. Tawney and Ramsay MacDonald has the party shown such an interest in re-activating new forms of citizenship. Yet New Labour’s democratic renewal agenda was beset by a set of competing tensions and contradictions. The agenda lacked a clear vision and was often complicated by New Labour’s centralising impulses. Ultimately, New Labour was deeply ambivalent about the processes of democratic renewal. It promised a ‘new politics’, and offered hope of revitalising state–citizen relations, yet this came at a cost too high for the party – a loss of control and central oversight. Democratic renewal ‘Down Under’: the New Social Democracy in Victoria and South Australia If the Hawke–Keating era was a key reference point for New Labour, then New Labour has in turn been an influence on the ALP. Following the demise of Paul Keating’s government in 1996, Australian Labor re-emerged and eventually dominated at the state level. Australia’s vigorous form of federalism often allows for innovative and distinctive governments at the state level – perhaps most notably in Don Dunstan’s Labor leadership in South Australia during the 1970s. During the period 2002–8, Labor held office in every state and territory. This section examines two of the leading cases of a modernised New Social Democracy at the state level in Australia – the Bracks government in Victoria (which took office in 1999), and the Rann government in South Australia (which won office in 2002). Labor’s interest in democratic renewal – involving a new ­emphasis on invigorating state–citizen relations – was not confined to Victoria and South Australia. Geoff Gallop in Western Australia, Peter Beattie in Queensland and the Bacon–Lennon Labor governments in Tasmania were also highly activist and innovative in seeking to find new mechanisms for citizen engagement and input. Of all the Premiers, ­ Geoff Gallop stands out as a leading vocal exponent of the New Social Democracy and it features in a number of his writings on social ­democracy (Gallop 2001). As Western Australian Premier, Gallop led a process called ‘Dialogue with the City’, an attempt to introduce a form of deliberative democracy in the state, which focused on the future ­challenges for Perth (see Hartz-Karp 2005). Gallop (2007) identified this period of state Labor dominance as one of ‘strategic government’, with many of the Labor states developing strategic plans, combined with a renewed focus on consultation and citizen engagement. Perhaps the most sustained attempt to introduce new deliberative and discursive mechanisms for citizen engagement took place under

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Tasmanian Labor. Under the initial leadership of Jim Bacon, Labor introduced the ‘Tasmania Together’ initiative, which involved a twoyear consultation process to develop a series of targets for the state government. What is striking about this initiative is that the process is enshrined in legislation. This was a significant commitment to introducing deliberative forms of citizen involvement into wider policy-making processes. In different ways, Peter Beattie – a popular and charismatic Premier in Queensland – also took an innovative approach to finding new mechanisms to engage citizens in policy-making. In 2001, Beattie established the Community Engagement Division in the Department of Premier and Cabinet. Beattie’s government developed ‘an integrated, multi-layered approach to listening to and involving citizens and communities in the deliberations of the Government’ (cited in Brown and Keast 2003, p. 5). Beattie’s government rediscovered ‘Community Cabinets’, and these were to be adopted more widely by a number of Labor states, with Kevin Rudd also making them a part of his new approach to governance. (New Labour under Gordon Brown also toyed with them.) The dominance of the ALP at the state level witnessed a period of policy experimentation with dialogic and consultative processes not previously seen in Australia. Steve Bracks and Labor in Victoria, 1999–2010 Ironically, the Victorian Labor government led by Steve Bracks is ­distinctive because it was accused of lacking distinction! The Bracks government is a fascinating case of how a ‘modernised’ social democratic government seeks to find a new ‘narrative’ that falls within the Labor tradition; it was also, notably, a case of a government, in part influenced by NSD thinking, actively searching for its own identity. A key component of Bracks’s attempts to find meaning was enacted through the ‘Growing Victoria Together’ (GVT) process, culminating in a statewide strategic plan: Bracks’s aim was to create a more ‘vibrant democracy’ in Victoria (Department of Premier and Cabinet 2005, p. 20). The Bracks minority government surprisingly took office in November 1999, having not been expected to defeat Jeff Kennett’s Liberal ­government. Kennett had governed Victoria from 1992 to 1999 and dominated Victorian politics during this period, his government gaining a reputation as one of the most ‘actively reformist’ state governments by pursuing a vigorous neoliberal agenda. When Kennett took office in 1992, his government inherited a relatively large public deficit from



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the previous Labor administration and immediately instigated a brutal programme of budget-cutting and privatisation. Costar and Economou (1999, p. 90) estimate that in Kennett’s first term, 55,000 public ­servants were retrenched; in addition 350 schools were closed (along with large-scale retrenchments); and mass sackings occurred in the transport sector. They also report the sale of the state’s electricity and gas utilities, along with the ambulance service, a number of prisons and some smaller public service agencies. The Kennett approach ultimately paved the way for Bracks: Kennett’s style was to be CEO of Victoria … he pursued his objectives with an at times breathtaking disregard for consultation and a dismissive ­attitude towards any opposition. These traits were to be his undoing. (Costar and Hayward 2005, p. 96)

While Bracks deliberately sought to distance himself from Kennett, he also wanted to differentiate his government from the previous Labor administration led by John Cain. Cain was Premier from 1982 to 1990, and for much of this time enjoyed strong popularity ratings in the Victorian electorate. As Premier, Cain promoted a broad social ­democratic agenda, with a particular focus on social justice. However, Cain’s ALP government imploded with the onset of the 1990–91 ­recession and presided over a ‘number of spectacular financial collapses’ (Costar and Hayward 2005, p. 93). Cain was ultimately forced to resign as a result of the parlous state of the public finances. Steve Bracks had worked for Cain in 1990 as an adviser and witnessed these events ­first-hand, ­consequently adopting ‘a cautious political style and fiscal conservatism’ (Costar and Hayward 2005, p. 93). In the interim between Cain’s and Brack’s leadership, Joan Kirner ­succeeded Cain as Labor Premier in 1990, and remained opposition leader for a short period after the ALP’s 1992 defeat to Kennett. Kirner was a more popular figure than Kennett, and the hope for Labor was that this would help them achieve an unlikely election victory. Whilst from the ‘socialist left’ faction, Kirner distanced herself from this ­background by overseeing a number of cuts to the public sector and promoting forms of privatisation. Unlike Cain, Kirner also faced a much more fractious and divided party, with key players publicly seeking to undermine her agenda. Ultimately, she was unable to reverse the damage that took place under her predecessor’s era (see Curtin 2006). When Steve Bracks assumed the leadership, he developed a more inclusive and engaging approach to policy-making than Jeff Kennett. While the Kennett ‘revolution’ was a form of shock therapy to the state, it posed interesting dilemmas for Labor. A key hallmark of the New Social

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Democracy is its greater acceptance of neoliberalism, which explains how the Bracks government accommodated, rather than reversed, a large part of the Kennett legacy. Moreover, as Crowley and Coffey (2007, p. 28) argue, ‘after the election there was a sense of not knowing what the Bracks government stood for’. Sound economic management and democratic renewal were part of the response to this dilemma. The Bracks government decided to hold a conference loosely modelled on Bob Hawke’s Accord Summits,4 bringing together key stakeholders to map out a new agenda for the Labor government. From the outset, there was a clear influence of ‘third way’/NSD thinking. The Bracks government was enthusiastic about engaging with the Victorian business community and it is striking that it received more positive support for its budgets from this community than from the wider ­community sector. With its strong emphasis on caution and pragmatism, the Bracks government also provides an interesting parallel with New Labour. For Blair, pragmatism was a key component of New Labour’s attempt to eschew ideology in favour of a ‘whatever works’ approach (Labour Party 1997). Bracks’s pragmatism led to a cautious policy approach, and his government was dogged with a ‘do-nothing’ label (Economou 2001). Also a hallmark of his term was Bracks’s ‘nice guy’ tag, which reflected a strong consensual political conviction that lasted for three terms, whereby he sought to make policy ‘without making enemies’ (Costar and Hayward 2005, p. 111). Here, there are clear echoes of Mouffe’s (2000) critique of New Labour, in that it sought a ‘politics without adversary’. Mouffe’s (and others’) criticism of this approach is that, while superficially it is ‘consensual’, it masks a capitulation to the forces of capital at the expense of labour. Indeed, Bracks’s government was very proactive in courting the private sector. John Brumby, Bracks’s treasurer (and eventual successor as Premier) drove this process and was ‘successfully pursuing another agenda heartily approved of by business, but not recognisably Labor’ (Costar and Hayward 2005, p. 111). This was a criticism levelled at New Labour (Giddens 2000, p. 21), and also the Hawke government (Johnson 1989, p. 96). The Bracks administration, and its GVT agenda, has been accused of being a mechanism to foster a consensus where none existed, and of concealing a conservative, incremental agenda (Davidson 2000). There is, however, a limit to how far the term ‘New Social Democracy’ usefully describes the Bracks administration. In its purest form, the NSD agenda involves a high degree of state activism and reform, which the Bracks government never aspired to achieve. Perhaps it could be described as ‘NSD-lite’. Nonetheless, the politics of the NSD, particularly New Labour, was an influence. According to one senior



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figure in the Victorian government at that time, one of the aims of the GVT process was to ‘leverage third way ideas’ (Public servant, interview with author, 15 February 2009). Shortly after the Bracks government took office, Geoff Mulgan (former Director of the No. 10 Strategy Unit under Blair) and Tom Bentley (former Head of the thinktank Demos) – both closely aligned to New Labour – met with a number of Victorian government figures. The Bracks Labor era remains an intriguing case of an embryonic variant of the New Social Democracy. It was far more avowedly probusiness than its Labor predecessors, and part of its appeal was that rhetorically and stylistically it was more inclusive and less abrasive than the Kennett ‘slash and burn’ treatment. However, it was a Labor government operating in, and largely accepting of, neoliberal constraints on state-level policy-making. From Mike Rann to Jay Weatherill: South Australian Labor (2002–12) There are striking parallels between the Rann-led Labor government in South Australia and the Labor government of Steve Bracks in Victoria. Like Bracks, Rann unexpectedly won office, at the 2002 state election. The Rann government also went on to develop a statewide strategic plan and introduced new mechanisms for consultation and civic ­engagement. However, while the Bracks government was shaped by its overtly neoliberal predecessor, Rann’s government was largely shaped by two previous Labor legacies: the ‘Dunstan Decade’ (1970s) and the collapse of the State Bank in 1992 (Macintyre 2006). The legacy of the former Premier Don Dunstan’s Labor government, first elected in 1967, is one of the most significant in the Australian Labor Party’s history. The Dunstan government displayed a reforming zeal that initially predated and then coincided with the political earthquake of former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam’s federal government. Dunstan’s highly activist brand of social democracy encompassed a  wide range of issues, including gender equality, gay and lesbian rights, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander issues and the environment (Macintyre 2006; Parkin and Patience 1981). Dunstan’s government introduced both world-first and Australia-first legislation. Mike Rann served as Dunstan’s press secretary, speech writer and adviser, and is explicit about the legacy and importance of this period of reform on his own politics. Rann ­dedicated his first 100 days in office to Dunstan’s legacy. Dunstan retired early due to ill health in 1979, and following a single term of Liberal government the ALP resumed office in 1982, with

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John Bannon as Premier and Rann as his press secretary. In contrast to reforms of the Dunstan era, the dominant theme of Bannon’s period in office was caution. However, it was under Bannon that the other most significant recent event took place – the collapse of the State Bank of South Australia in 1992. The collapse led, in the short term, to Bannon’s resignation, but in the longer term saw a period of Liberal Party rule throughout the 1990s and heavy damage to Labor’s economic management credentials. The Dunstan and Bannon eras thus cast a shadow over Rann’s Labor government. Mike Rann freely acknowledges the influence of British Labour, and New Labour in particular. Following the rout of Labor at the 1993 state election, Rann, as the newly installed opposition leader, u ­ ndertook a series of ‘Labour Listens’ meetings with community and interest groups across the state, an idea borrowed from Neil Kinnock (Manning 2005). Rann’s ‘Labour Listens’ had a similar outcome to that of its British p ­ recursor, in that it had little tangible impact on policy, but was an attempt to re-engage the party more widely. At best, it gave some ­community groups the opportunity to articulate their concerns to Rann and his shadow ministry. Some of these issues prefigure the more substantive 2006 consultation for South Australia’s Strategic Plan (SASP). As with the Bracks government, the term New Social Democracy captures the main characteristics of the Rann government. Importantly, Rann’s government was cautious and pragmatic (Macintyre 2006; Manning 2002), in part a consequence of the broader support it was forced to seek in 2002 as a minority government. It was widely tipped that three conservative-minded Independent MPs would side with the Liberal Coalition, but unexpectedly they were enticed to join with Labor (Manning 2005; O’Neil 2003).5 It is characteristic of the Rann government that they continued this political alliance, despite its becoming unnecessary after its landslide win at the 2006 state ­election. Strikingly for Australian politics, the Labor minority government included National Party MP Karlene Maywald. Yet Maywald argued that by joining with Labor she had not compromised her conservative ideals: ‘quite frankly, the Rann Labor Government have ­demonstrated that they are probably more conservative than the last Liberal ­government’ (Parkin 2005, p. 467). The consensus-driven approach is acknowledged by Rann, who stated that the responsibility of a state government ‘is to provide effective and safe administration’ (Adelaide Advertiser, 20 March 2006). Critics may argue that Rann’s focus on pragmatism, caution and ­consensus, while the central themes of the NSD, were at the expense of a more redistributional politics. It is clear that Rann’s consensus approach was a



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‘modernised’ NSD that seeks political legitimacy beyond the traditional class-based politics of the wider Labor movement. The influence of the NSD can be detected elsewhere in the Rann government’s policy agenda. Rann has been described as a ‘policy bowerbird’, picking up ideas regardless of their original context (‘Oregon on the Torrens’, Adelaide Review, 12 November 2004). Again, this reflects a distancing of Labor from its ideological moorings, and in this there are echoes of New Labour’s ‘whatever works’ approach to policy. At the 2006 election, Rann used a ‘pledge card’ outlining the five key manifesto commitments – a device used by the Blair Labour opposition in 1997. Rann also established the Social Inclusion Board (SIB) modelled on New Labour’s Social Exclusion Unit. The synergies with New Labour are well documented (Macintyre 2006, p. 129). At times, the Rann government was highly populist, particularly on criminal justice issues, and this was influenced by New Labour (Manning 2005).6 A key characteristic of the NSD is a need to formulate policy in areas traditionally seen as the preserve of the conservative-minded opposition (Giddens 1998). In this respect, Rann and his t­reasurer Kevin Foley were never shy in adopting strong policy approaches in areas such as defence, economic management and criminal justice. The Rann government, like other broadly NSD-influenced governments, was fiscally conservative and avowedly pro-market to an extent not seen by previous Labour/Labor governments. Manning argues that Rann’s treasurer Kevin Foley ‘takes every opportunity to chasten his colleagues’ remaining social democratic spirit with reminders of the need for caution and prudence … [this] message and the Premier’s populism define this government’ (Manning 2004). It is characteristic that the peak body for the private sector, Business SA, was broadly supportive of Rann’s policy approach (Macintyre 2006). The other interesting aspect of the Rann government, which also has resonances with New Labour, was its willingness to institute new forms of governance. Rann set up five independent boards and brought in prominent outsiders to head these up. The most influential of these boards are the Economic Development Board (EDB), the Social Inclusion Board and the Premier’s Roundtable on Sustainability.7 A unique feature of these boards is that the heads of the EDB and SIB are members of the Executive Committee of Cabinet, an arrangement that breaks with Westminster parliamentary traditions (Manning 2005).8 Again, there are similarities with Gordon Brown’s brief flirtation with ‘GOATs’ – government-of-all-the-talents – in which prominent outsiders were co-opted to steer government policy (Kettle 2009). The key issue is that these new governance arrangements are part of a wider search for

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democratic legitimacy, especially as Labor’s traditional sources, such as its declining membership, are now weaker. The Rann government also invited Geoff Mulgan, and then latterly John McTernan, to take part in the ‘Thinkers in Residence’ programme. Mulgan is Tony Blair’s former No. 10 Head of Strategy, and his ­residency in 2008 was focused on issues of social ­innovation.9 McTernan was also an adviser to Blair, and his residency in 2011 focused on c­ o-production. In both cases, Mulgan and McTernan provided strategic political advice to the Premier and members of his Cabinet. Of all the Labor state governments, the influence of British New Labour is most evident on the Rann Labor government. While it did not use the term ‘New Social Democracy’, its aims displayed distinct ­similarities to NSD policy agenda. This modernised brand of social ­democracy is also evident in the state’s strategic plan, and as explored later in this book the search for democratic renewal remains a key strand of the South Australian Labor government’s agenda. Indeed, when Mike Rann finally left office in 2011 – earlier than he had wished – his ­successor, Jay Weatherill, sought to demarcate his approach to politics by making even stronger commitments to consultation and ­dialogue with the South Australian community. Labor in South Australia, as in the other cases in this book, remains committed to an agenda of increased civic engagement and input. The Rudd Labor federal government (2007–10) After 11 years in the electoral wilderness, the federal ALP finally won office in 2007 under the leadership of Kevin Rudd, promising a new era in Australian politics. Rudd’s Labor was a reformist modernising brand of social democracy, drawing some inspiration from New Labour. Part of Rudd’s policy agenda was to reinvigorate Australia’s democratic structures and explore new mechanisms for citizen engagement. The reasons for the rise of the ALP’s fortunes under Kevin Rudd are complex, with a range of factors combining to defeat John Howard’s Liberal coalition government. Notably, Howard’s strident and overtly neoliberal ‘Workchoices’ industrial relations policy was instrumental in losing the coalition vital electoral support (Brett 2007). Labor, backed up with a strong campaign run by the Australian Council of Trade Unions, managed to translate public fears about Howard’s reforms into electoral support. The 2007 election was seen as one of the world’s first elections judged, in part at least, on the issue of climate change, with the Liberal Coalition seen as increasingly out of touch with the wider Australian public on this issue. Australia was only one of two advanced indus-



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trial countries (the other notable exception was George W. Bush’s US ­government) that had refused to sign the Kyoto treaty. In a potent symbolic gesture, Rudd signed the treaty as his first act as Prime Minister. Other domestic issues also featured prominently during the campaign, particularly health and education: Rudd had adopted the mantra of seeking an ‘education revolution’ as part of the ALP’s policy package.10 While Rudd’s ‘New’ Labor government displayed clear similarities with New Labour, and indeed was influenced by key New Labour personnel, there are also differences (Button and Murphy 2007). New Labour in Britain was ultimately a painful process of modernisation stemming from the 1979 defeat. In Australia, the process of reform was truncated and took place in a more haphazard way. When Rudd took over the leadership in 2006, he had inherited a party that had already undergone different stages in its ‘modernisation’. The Hawke–Keating era was a crucial marker in this process, as it was one of the first social democratic parties in the world to fully experiment with neoliberal ideas. Since the 1996 defeat, the ALP had seen four l­eaders, Kim Beazley (twice), Simon Crean, Mark Latham and finally Rudd. Labor in opposition was, at times, a shambolic spectacle and the process of rebuilding the party was as painful as it had been for its British counterparts (see Crabb 2005). Mark Latham was the most enthusiastic advocate for NSD and Third Way ideas, and his leadership was the most concerted attempt to adopt an explicitly NSD agenda (Latham 2001). Rudd eschews the term ‘Third Way’, but he nonetheless remains committed to a modernised social democracy: Long before the term ‘Third Way’ was popularised in the policy literature of the 1990s, social democrats viewed themselves as presenting a political economy of the middle way, which rejected both state socialism and freemarket fundamentalism. (Rudd 2009)

In a key article in response to the 2008 global financial crisis, Rudd ­outlines his views on the role of a renewed social democracy in the face of neoliberalism, with much of his thinking according with the principles underpinning the NSD. The motif of the ‘enabling’ state retains a central place in his thinking. Rudd also espouses a fiscal conservatism: In macroeconomic matters, the government is ‘conservative’ and ­‘responsible’ … In its fiscal conservatism, the trajectory of the Rudd government is consciously continuous with the Howard years. In microeconomic matters it is, however, different; creative and activist. (Manne 2008b, p. 26)

As Johnson notes, this fiscal conservatism does have precedent within the Labor tradition, citing the Australian Scullin government (1929–31),

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and Bill Hayden (Whitlam’s final treasurer), who ‘questioned Keynesian orthodoxies’ (Johnson 2008, p. 1).11 Fiscal conservatism, in itself, does not fully define the NSD, but it is an integral part of its ideological underpinning. Rudd’s Labor was undertaking a wide-ranging programme of ‘nationbuilding’ – particularly as a neo-Keynesian response to the global ­economic crisis. Interestingly, ‘much of this work … [was] undertaken in the form of public-private partnerships, the preferred model of the Labor States in recent years’ (Manne 2008b, p. 26). The model of Private Finance Initiative (PFI) or Public Private Partnership (PPP) was arguably the main policy instrument of Britain’s New Labour in ­economic matters. Rudd and many of his colleagues were influenced by the ideological repositioning of the role of Labour governments in the NSD, Rudd sharing the same desire to transcend the traditional left–right political divide: Watching the traditional Right and Left in today’s policy debates ­sometimes reminds you of seeing your kid trying to put on last year’s jumper only to realise it no longer fits. The old Right and Left thinking is often an ideological straitjacket. (‘Moving beyond Brezhnev and Hayek’, The Australian, 4 August 2008)

As Manne (2008b) notes, Rudd invokes the notion of appealing to the ‘reforming centre’, and this strongly echoes the similar Blair-ite rallying cry to the ‘radical centre’ (Fitzpatrick 2003; Manne 2008b). In essence, Rudd’s reforming centre represents a position distanced from both the socialist left and the neoliberal right. Unlike the traditional left, the reforming centre understands and embraces the significance of market forces. (Manne 2008b, p. 25)

This is a classic formulation of the appeal of the NSD. Manne c­haracterises Rudd’s position as one of ‘beyond neoliberalism’ and notes the influence of David McKnight’s book Beyond Left and Right (McKnight 2005).12 As leader, Rudd also made an appeal to i­ nvigorating and including ‘community’ in policy-making processes. In this agenda, he drew inspiration from the more NSD-influenced Australian Labor state governments, including the Bracks, Beattie, Carr and Rann ­governments.13 A striking example is Rudd’s adoption of ‘Community Cabinets’ as a consultation mechanism. Significantly, the Rudd government clearly had some interest in ideas related to democratic renewal and finding new ways of enhancing citizen participation. As considered in more detail later in the book, the



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2020 Summit was one of the most prominent early examples of this. Democratic renewal finds expression in the ALP’s 2007 platform, which under the chapter for ‘reforming government’ included the following commitment: Labor will pursue new and innovative measures designed to foster greater participation and engagement of the Australian population in the political process.

There was also a similar commitment in the party’s 2010 platform. Democratic renewal in part relates to Rudd’s thinking about the reconfigured role of the state. An enabling state requires a new relationship with civil society and suggests new linkages between the state and ­citizen. Within some parts of the ALP’s ranks and leadership there is some interest in democratic renewal. On constitutional reform, the issue of the republic remains at an impasse, especially following the 1999 referendum defeat. While Rudd initiated a consultation on introducing a bill of rights, no tangible policy change ensued. The Rudd democratic renewal agenda, despite some promise, delivered very little. The use of Community Cabinets was arguably the most prominent and symbolic initiative in this regard. To some extent this agenda was stalled and paralysed by the election of the Gillard minority government in 2010 and Rudd’s swift removal as leader in the run-up to the election. Julia Gillard has less interest in democratic renewal than Rudd. Interestingly, in the run-up to this election, at Tom Bentley’s suggestion,14 Labor suggested holding a citizens’ panel on the issue of climate change – an attempt at a circuit breaker for an issue which had ultimately derailed the Rudd government. Yet this was widely seen as an awkward and instrumental use of a consultation technique. Its function was a masking device to detract attention from Labor’s policy u-turn. In this sense, it cannot be considered as fulfilling Dryzek’s (1996) criterion of authenticity for democratic processes. Such tokenistic gestures also tend to undermine the wider agenda for democratic renewal. Gillard’s term as Prime Minister lasted just over three years, and she was replaced again by Kevin Rudd. Rudd echoing New Labour (again), promised ‘a new way’, but the ALP was ejected from office at the 2013 federal election. It remains unclear if re-elected Rudd would have resumed an interest in democratic renewal. Internal reform and democratic engagement Like New Labour, the ALP has itself undergone significant reform, and it is useful to briefly recount part of its ‘modernisation’ in this respect. In 2010, Labor veterans Steve Bracks, Bob Carr and John Faulkner

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released the National Review (2010) on the health of the party. As ­perhaps expected, it made for rather grim reading. The ALP, like its British counterpart, faces a declining, ageing and increasingly inactive membership. Indeed, many members expressed their dismay to the National Review team of their sense of alienation from the leadership and decision-making in the party. The recommendations from the National Review, including the use of primaries for pre-selections, have largely been ignored by the leadership (see Cook 2011). The 2010 National Review (Bracks, Faulkner and Carr) is the latest in a long line of attempts to reform internal party structures, all of which have subsequently been sidelined by the party’s leadership. The 2002 Hawke–Wran report also examined similar issues, and many of its recommendations, such as reinvigorating the policy-development process, were ignored (see Bramston 2011, Ch. 5). For Bramston, the period in opposition from 1996 to 2007 was Labor’s ‘lost decade’, in part because it failed to effectively modernise the party and its structures (2011, p. 4). Previous party initiatives include the 1979 Hayden Report, which led to a range of changes, such as increasing the size of National Conference, and the 1965 Wyndham Plan. Some commentators lament that the ALP, unlike New Labour, has not had a ‘Clause IV’ moment (Bramston 2011). The Kinnock–Smith–Blair process of party modernisation, while messy and painful, at least arrived at some settlement in the rewriting of Labour’s constitution. By contrast, the modernisation process for the ALP has been far more piecemeal. New Labour has been much more energetic in attempting to include party members in policymaking, and initiatives such as the ‘Big Conversation’ illustrate a party prepared to engage more widely than the ALP. While this section does not offer a full catalogue of changes and reforms to the ALP, it is worth noting a few broad changes. Over time, the size of party conference has increased, but arguably its role as a s­overeign ­decision-making body has been down-graded. Second, the trade union bloc vote has decreased over time. Third, and as noted ­ elsewhere, increasingly the leadership dominates control of policy over the rank and file. A notable feature of the Hawke–Keating era was its ability to maintain party discipline, and this was a lesson shrewdly learnt by Blair and Brown and other New Labour modernisers. Bramston (2011) also suggests that the ALP should re-activate its policy commissions – in effect mimicking New Labour’s Partnership in Power reforms. This, as already noted, is a s­ trategy containing hidden risks, in that plebiscitary forms of democracy can enhance further the power of the leadership. Both the ALP and the British Labour Party face significant problems in the early 2010s. Party membership is dwindling and the



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­ rofessionalisation of the party is decoupling it from wider civil society. p Efforts such as the ‘Big Conversation’ are attempts to make the party more relevant to the lives and problems of the wider public. Party leaders in both the UK and Australia have signalled that recruiting new members remains a priority. Moreover, both parties are toying with ideas of linking their parties to a ‘community development’ role. British Labour, under the Movement for Change label, and inspired by Maurice Glasman’s Blue Labour approach, is seeking to recruit a small army of Labour Party community organisers. At the ALP’s 2011 National Conference there was however only tentative support for exploring the ‘community organising’ role of the party. Centre-left parties then are caught in a range of dilemmas about reform and modernisation. In the face of long-standing social changes in the class structure and the changing paradigm of political participation, the Labour parties in Britain and Australia are grappling with how to deal with declining membership and activism. Ultimately, the pervasive ‘win’ has been for leadership control over the party, which in the Hawke–Keating and Blair–Brown eras enabled a more professional party to emerge. Yet this has a hidden cost. Political parties, and not just those of centre-left, are seemingly becoming little more than recruiting agencies for election candidates. While there is some interest in ideas of democratic renewal, or reconfiguring how the party relates and links to wider civil society, Labour is struggling to find new ways of wider engagement. The New Social Democracy in Britain and Australia Since the 1980s, the neoliberal agenda has marked and transformed both British and Australian politics in dramatic ways. Neoliberalism has left an indelible impact on the labour movement in both countries, while the parties continue to grapple with a confluence of other factors, including the new public management reforms in the public sector and changing patterns of civic engagement and support. Labour’s traditional sources of support and legitimacy have been significantly undermined. As part of its response, the ‘modernising’ New Social Democracy seeks to find new ways to engage and consult with citizens. Democratic renewal has been part of the response to dealing with the dominant paradigm of policy-making, which seeks to introduce and expand market ­mechanisms into the public realm. In different ways, the Labour governments considered in this chapter are seeking to renew ­democracy and shore up new sources of legitimacy. The following chapters e­xamine a range of specific attempts at innovative forms of consultation and

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engagement, which illustrate the tensions and contradictions at the heart of this agenda. Notes  1 Partnership in Power built upon earlier reforms agreed in 1990 and after the bruising 1992 election defeat. In 1990, the party conference approved the NEC statement ‘Democracy and Policy-making in the 1990s’, which approved in principle the rolling programme of policy development and the National Policy Forum to oversee the process (Labour Party 2008). After the 1992 general election, the conference agreed to set up the interim National Policy Forum, the new Joint Policy Committee and the Policy Commissions. One of the reasons why the New Labour leadership could introduce the new policy-making regime post-1997 was that the membership had already been ‘softened up’ with these earlier measures.  2 Liz Davies was a former Labour local councillor who eventually served on Labour’s National Executive Committee from 1998 until 2000, backed as part of the ‘grassroots’ campaign by party members to improve internal party democracy. She eventually left the Labour Party to join the Socialist Alliance, before eventually leaving the alliance. Davies provides a thoroughly interesting account of her time on the NEC (Davies 2001).  3 In 1997, William Hague, then leader of the freshly defeated Conservative Party, undertook a ‘listening tour’ of the UK with over 50 visits, and apparently met 8,000 people. The phenomenon of listening exercises is also an occurrence in Australian politics. Mike Rann, while opposition leader, undertook a listening exercise in South Australia modelled on the British Labour Party’s ‘Labour Listens’ (Manning 2005). More recently, Kevin Rudd, on assuming the Labor leadership, undertook a national ‘listening tour’ to demonstrate his receptiveness to the wider public.  4 The Accord Summits were an innovation of the Hawke government (Singleton 1990). In essence, Hawke forged an agreement between the interests of capital and labour. The ALP brokered a deal with the trade union movement for wage restraint – negotiated through its peak body, the Australian Council of Trade Unions – to enable the private sector and the business community to reduce unemployment and increase wider employment. There were two main summits, the first held in 1983, and the later tax policy summit held in 1985.  5 An interesting sub-plot of how the Labor minority government took office is the deal struck by Rann with the Independent MP Peter Lewis to hold a constitutional convention, with a view to introducing some form of ­citizen-initiated referenda (CIR). It shows some interest, mainly driven by an independent MP, in exploring opportunities for democratic renewal in South Australia.  6 Rann’s populism over ‘law and order’ issues is demonstrated by his ­politicisation of the ‘Nemer’ case, which saw a wealthy young man with



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a powerful lawyer secure a suspended sentence for shooting and harassing another man; see Manning (2005) for details.  7 The other two most significant boards are the Premier’s Council for Women and the Premier’s Science and Research Council.  8 The other striking break with Westminster traditions is the terms by which the Independent MPs were part of Cabinet. These ministers were permitted to absent themselves from Cabinet discussions if they were in major disagreement with the government on an issue. In return, they would respect Cabinet confidentiality and support the government on the floor of the house (O’Neil 2003).  9 There have been 18 different ‘Thinkers’ since the programme was established in 2005. The programme was a prominent example of the Rann government’s willingness to experiment with new forms of governance. The programme was eventually disbanded by Rann’s successor Jay Weatherill. 10 Rudd’s focus on an ‘education revolution’ has distinct echoes of Tony Blair’s and New Labour’s focus on education at the 1997 British general election. At the 1996 annual conference, Blair famously delivered his mantra, ‘If you ask me my three priorities, I will tell you education, education, education.’ 11 James Scullin was Australian Prime Minister from 1929 until 1931. Unfortunately for Scullin and Labor, two days after they took office the New York stock exchange collapsed and the Great Depression began. Scullin’s government attempted a number of deflationary economic policies, much to the disapproval of the wider Labor membership. 12 Interestingly, Anthony Giddens, the so-called architect of the Third Way, wrote a book with the same title before McKnight (see Giddens 1994). 13 Commentator and writer George Megalogenis is critical of the records of Beattie, Bracks and Carr in office and, in turn, their value as a source of inspiration for Rudd. In Megalogenis’s view, ‘none was an agent of change’ (‘A show about nothing’, The Australian, 19 April 2008). 14 In 2012, Tom Bentley was Julia Gillard’s Deputy Chief of Staff. He was formerly Executive Director in Steve Bracks’s Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet. Previously he was a director at Demos and also adviser to David Blunkett (when Blunkett was Education Minister for the New Labour government).

6

National conversations

Today we are throwing open the window on our democracy, to let a little fresh air in … What we are looking for from this summit are new ideas for our nation’s future … And if we succeed, a new way of governing our nation. Kevin Rudd, 2008b

As we have seen, a feature of the New Social Democracy is a ­commitment to democratic renewal, and seeking to find new ways of involving c­ itizens in policy-making processes, and in both Britain and Australia there have been a number of initiatives that have attempted to achieve this – through ‘national conversations’ about the future of the nation. This chapter focuses on three such examples. While  it is ­tempting to d ­ ismiss these initiatives as tokenistic – or, as the media ­frequently describe them, as ‘talkfests’ – this reading simplifies and silences some of the competing tensions that underpinned these ­initiatives. The three cases considered in this chapter were all in their own way ­ground-breaking and innovative approaches to bringing both the public and the expert ‘voice’ into the emerging NSD politics. The ‘People’s Panel’ was a consultation initiative which ran for the first term of former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s New Labour government. Touted as a world-first, the panel consisted of 5,000 members of the public and was broadly representative of the British population. Its remit was to inform the development of New Labour’s public sector modernisation programme. Intriguingly, the panel was closed down after one term. The second initiative considered is New Labour’s ‘Big Conversation’. This is arguably the largest consultation ever undertaken by a British political party and was designed to initiate a ‘national conversation’ with the British public about the future of the country and inform the content of New Labour’s 2005 party manifesto. The third case is Kevin Rudd’s federal Australian ‘2020 Summit’ held in April 2008. The summit, which took place in Parliament House over



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a weekend and included 1,000 of Australia’s ‘brightest and best’, was part of a package of consultative measures seeking to elicit ideas about the future of Australia. Rudd hoped that the initiative might herald a new form of governance for the country. Each of these cases was unprecedented in terms of scale and, to some extent, their innovation. The aim of the chapter is to use the cases to illustrate the tensions, competing aims and contradictions that lie at the heart of the wider NSD agenda for democratic renewal. As outlined in Chapter 3, a useful critical prism to view these cases is through the principles of ‘representativeness’ and ‘responsiveness’. It is worth r­ eiterating however that no single consultation event is without flaws and nor indeed would we expect any consultation to give full expression to these principles. It is also recognised that no single case can offer the full story of how these modernised social democratic governments attempt to create new spaces in the public realm for dialogue and debate. The aim, rather, is more modest, in that the cases offer some indication of how Labour’s search for a more dialogic form of governance is evolving. The People’s Panel Since the 1990s there has been a growth in the use of new participatory methods. As Pratchett (1999) argues, this was partly driven by new public management reforms associated with the Thatcher–Major Conservative governments. In the discourse of the NPM, public services use techniques from the private sector (such as focus groups) to deliver their services to fit the needs of consumers of public goods (Clarke 2005). New Labour was keen to expand this agenda at the national level, imposing statutory requirements on the public sector to consult on its services (for example, the 2000 amendment to the Race Relations Act 1976). The People’s Panel was a part of New Labour’s attempts to ­modernise the public sector: If public services are to serve people better, the government needs to know more about what people want. Rather than imposing solutions we must consult and work with people. That is why we have set up the People’s Panel. (Cabinet Office 1999a, p. 19)

The idea for the panel came from Lord David Clark and it was based in the Cabinet Office, which had the main oversight of the panel, although it was run on a day-to-day basis by the market research company, MORI (now IPSOS MORI). It is estimated that by 2001, the People’s Panel had cost in the region of £1.27m (Gregory 2002, p. 16).

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The 5,000-strong panel comprised members of the public and had a profile that represented the key demographics of the United Kingdom, including gender, age and region. Detail of the recruitment to the panel is outlined elsewhere (MORI 1998, p. 3), but it is noteworthy that it initially proved challenging to recruit younger people, people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and full-time workers (MORI 1998, p. 10). Over the life of the panel there were six main waves of research, although only three of the waves were directly comparable. Between each main wave, some government departments and statutory a­ gencies used the panel for some smaller discrete research projects. The panel was closed down after one term with one of the reasons for its closure being that panel members were increasingly dissatisfied with public s­ervices under New Labour’s reform agenda (‘Public services given thumbs down by the People’s Panel’, Public Finance, 9–22 August 2002). In essence, New Labour was no longer prepared to fund a ­consultative mechanism which was only telling them ‘bad news’. By comparing data from the three main waves it is possible to determine the extent to which panel members’ attitudes changed (or remained stable). The results are mixed: For most services there has been no overall change in satisfaction since 2000. GPs, primary and secondary education remain highly rated by users; road and pavement maintenance have still got the lowest scores. The Passport Agency has recovered, in the public’s view, from its well-­ publicised problems in 2000; museums seem to have benefited from free entry; and satisfaction with bus services has improved. Satisfaction has declined with respect to some universal services e.g. the police, train ­companies, street cleaning and street lighting. (MORI 2002, p. 3)

Of the 28 different services on which panel members were polled, satisfaction levels remained constant for two services, increased for 11 services and decreased for 15 services. Notably, satisfaction with local secondary schools, the National Health Service (NHS), the Inland Revenue, local councils and, significantly, the police, all decreased. Panel members’ views were also sought on how they rated the quality of information provided by the relevant service. Of the 24 public services polled, only six services saw an increase in satisfaction, while 18 services showed a decrease in satisfaction with the provision of information, although for many of these services, the decrease was small (MORI 2002, p. 11). Caution should be exercised in interpreting the findings from the People’s Panel, particularly given the small sample and the short timeframe. Yet, in many public services, it does seem that the panel’s net



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satisfaction did decline, and for a number of key services, such as NHS hospitals and the police, this decline was significant.1 However, MORI argues that part of the explanation for the decline in net satisfaction is a drop in the number of those members reporting being ‘very’ satisfied, with the number reporting being ‘fairly’ satisfied remaining the same or increasing slightly (MORI 2002, p. 13). Significantly, MORI argues that the drop in satisfaction levels was highest among Labour’s traditional core support (unskilled and skilled workers, and those supporters living in the North), with this ‘perhaps reflecting raised expectations among core Labour voters after the election, which have yet to be met’ (MORI 2002, p. 17). It is also worth noting some of the other 30 different uses made of the People’s Panel from 1998 to 2002. Three supplementary research reports also examined the views of older panel members, those from the ethnic minorities and those living in deprived areas. The findings from these reports broadly reinforce the overall patterns of inequality of voice and political participation outlined in Chapter 4. Two evaluations of the People’s Panel were commissioned over its lifetime (Evaluation Associates 2000; Gregory 2002). The assessment of the People’s Panel in this section draws together the findings from both of these reports and supplements them with interviews conducted in 2007 with a number of the key figures involved in the panel. Unusually for such a government initiative, the People’s Panel received some press attention in the British print media. A number of British tabloids ran critical pieces on the panel. The Daily Mirror (25 July 2001) described the panel as ‘a giant focus group’. Accusations of ‘government-by-spin’ dogged the government, with both the government and MORI attempting to refute the worst of these allegations (Cunningham 1999). The first evaluation of the panel reported that the organisation faced unrealistic expectations about what it might be able to deliver (Evaluation Associates 2000, p. 2), while the second expressed some ambivalence about whether the panel was a research tool or a policy instrument (Gregory 2002, p. iii). Of all the cases considered in this book, the People’s Panel is the only one that made a systematic attempt to address the issue of representativeness, although this was an ongoing challenge. The panel had a high level of attrition (panel members who no longer wished to participate in the exercise), and there was some evidence of conditioning (panel members were no longer representative of the wider public as a result of their involvement in the panel) (Evaluation Associates 2000, p. 15; Gregory 2002, p. 21). The panel was subsequently boosted by new members,

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but this diminished its value in tracking attitudinal change over time (Gregory 2002, p. 7). Later research suggests that asking people a general question about their satisfaction can give misleading results (Page 2007, slide 32). Satisfaction levels are driven by a range of factors, including age, political affiliation and personal experience. A general question about satisfaction does not investigate these nuances. Moreover, the overall management and oversight of the panel were additional factors limiting its impact on policy (Evaluation Associates 2000, p. 10). However, none of these issues were among the most significant problems with the People’s Panel. These are described below. The key test of the People’s Panel is its impact on policy. A senior public servant involved in the panel made a distinction between microlevel and macro-level input on policy (Public Administration Committee 1999). There is evidence that the panel had a clear impact on policy at the micro level, when it was used for small, discrete projects. For example, panel findings were used to: support a report proposing extending opening hours for some key public services; revise a leaflet on the use of GM (genetically modified) foods; gain insights into the mechanisms for public sector appointments; and supplement a consultation on some housing benchmarks for a Green Paper. The impact of the People’s Panel on policy at the macro level is much harder to demonstrate. Indeed, a minister with the oversight of the panel at one time, Jack Cunningham, sought to contextualise the role of the panel (1999): The question posed in the title of this evening’s lecture is ‘Do People’s Panels represent the people?’ The answer is no, they do not. That is not what they are for. People’s Panel’s inform elected representatives who do [emphasis in original] represent the people of this country, both in the House of Commons and in government. They also inform the public servants who serve the government of the people, so that all can be better informed about their views, in particular about service delivery.

Cunningham reinforces the view of government as the final arbiters of decision-making. Cunningham argues that the panel would not ‘dictate’ policy, but rather that it ‘does provide people a real voice in policy making as their views are taken into account’. The complexity of showing causality was reinforced by a senior public servant who suggested: At the macro level on a major policy area like electronic government, it will have an impact over time, but I cannot say yet that there is a causal effect. I do not think there will ever be a causal effect. (Rees 1999, cited in Public Administration Committee 1999)



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This raises a series of difficult issues. There seems little incentive for a member of the public to have been involved with the People’s Panel when its impact was apparently so marginal. This factor may explain the high rates of attrition. The linkages between the panel and the governmental decision-making processes were unclear, which meant that the panel’s overall influence on government policy was weak. In effect, the panel was a legitimising device for the modernising government agenda, rather than a potential source of information with the power to challenge dominant ideas about how government services could be improved. To this extent, the People’s Panel was marginal to New Labour’s reform agenda, which was largely predetermined. Ian McCartney, former minister for the Cabinet Office and former Chair of the Labour Party, characterises the People’s Panel as a ‘useful innovation’, albeit with limitations: It was a useful exercise in gauging information at any point in time. I wouldn’t say that as an exercise I would use … [the panel] for long term planning, or major changes ... I think they are worthwhile, but on their own they are not sufficient. (McCartney, interview with author, 14 December 2007)

Aside from the technical issues of its operation, it is worth considering the other dimensions of government responsiveness to the People’s Panel. For example, New Labour’s lack of responsiveness to the panel is ultimately shown by its ambivalent commitment to the project. At the political level, what emerges from interviews with senior figures is that within the Cabinet there was clear disagreement about its role and place. Interestingly, Tony Blair only discovered the existence of the panel almost a year after it had been operational. According to Geoff Mulgan, former head of No. 10’s Strategy Unit, the People’s Panel was not considered much certainly by Blair, and it certainly came as a bit of a surprise to him when he first heard about its existence, to be honest. (Mulgan, interview with author, 5 December 2007)

One of the other difficulties is that the minister with responsibility for the panel changed four times during the period from 1997 to 2003.2 Each of these people had varying degrees of commitment to the panel: Cunningham was very keen on it. But, I think the problem was … then there were various successive Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancasters who were not keen on it at all … I think the famous quote from Lord Gus Macdonald, basically he said to us ‘I don’t want to build a gallows to hang myself on thank you very much’. (B. Page, interview with author, 5 December 2007)

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Geoff Mulgan (interview with author, 5 December 2007) argues that the panel evolved quickly, with the longer-term consequences not considered: ‘basically it had very little influence on decision-making, so even at the centre was never really integrated to processes’. The lack of political commitment to the panel was also underscored by a similar lack of commitment from the wider research community across government since a number of senior figures were very hostile to the panel. These internal divisions were masked, and after New Labour’s election win in 2001 the panel was shelved. The People’s Panel is an important parable in New Labour’s search for dialogic forms of governance. The attempt – a world-first by a national government – to institute a citizens’ panel demonstrates a genuine willingness to innovate and consult with the wider public. It had important symbolic value and to a large degree there was a good deal of openness and transparency in publishing its findings. As one of the reports notes, the People’s Panel was a ‘bold experiment’ (Evaluation Associates 2000, p. 2). However, the People’s Panel suffered from confusion over the nature of its primary role. As a longitudinal research tool it was not a success, and what is also clear from the literature is that citizens’ panels may not be best suited to operate at a national level (Gregory 2002, pp. 28–9). The suggestion that the panel was abolished due to the increasingly critical views of its members over New Labour’s public sector reform agenda only tells part of the story (McHugh 2002). Ultimately, it was the lack of widespread and sustained support for it at both a political level and in the public service that led to its closure. The People’s Panel can rightly be seen as a ‘bold experiment’, but ultimately, a failed one. New Labour’s ‘Big Conversation’ (2003–5) The Big Conversation is the largest consultation ever undertaken by a British political party. The aim of the exercise was to hold a wideranging public debate which would inform New Labour’s 2005 general election manifesto. Unlike the People’s Panel, the Big Conversation ­ was not a government initiative, but a vehicle for the Labour Party. Tony Blair announced the initiative at the Labour Party conference on 1  October 2003. For Blair, the consultation was about engaging the party more widely, and as he phrased it, ‘real politics with real people’ (Blair 2003). Matthew Taylor, then Labour Party Director of Policy, is widely credited with being the originator of the Big Conversation. Blair’s announcement was unexpected, with the relative lack of prior planning proving challenging:



National conversations 113 It was all pretty much back of the envelope stuff. No-one knew that Tony was going to announce it, he announced and then we had to make it up after that. (Taylor, interview with author, 5 December 2007)

The Big Conversation was timed to fit into the party’s bi-annual policy process. At this time, New Labour was in the middle of its second term, and its initial shine was waning. Indeed, the turnout at the 2001 election was the lowest since 1918. According to Matt Carter, General Secretary to the Labour Party at that time: I think the shock to the system came in 2001 where having delivered some institutional reform … there was a clear sense that the public was broadly content with what the government was doing and yet democratic participation was falling … There were also at that point discussions about how the party needed to change to better engage externally with the electorate, in part, there was a sense that it [the Big Conversation] was political … you saw a combination of different events that made one think that perhaps the party should be more open and engaging. (Carter, interview with author, 3 December 2007)

In addition, New Labour was dealing with the backlash from a number of largely unpopular policies. Pre-eminent amongst these was the Blair government’s decision to support the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.3 Matthew Taylor is candid about the political functions of the initiative: The purposes of the Big Conversation were explicitly political: it was because in the wake of the Iraq war, public service reform, the party was restless, there was a need to engage with it. I also felt, so did many other people in the party, that we needed to go out and get the party engaged in issues before we had to make decisions about them, rather than waiting to make a decision and then trying to win permission for it afterwards. (Taylor, interview with author, 5 December 2007)

While many of the techniques used in the Big Conversation were not particularly innovative, the scale was unprecedented (British Council 2004), comprising as it did a series of high-profile regional meetings, a dedicated website, a large number of local public meetings – ­predominantly run by local constituency parties (CLPs) – and an open call for written submissions. To start the debate, New Labour produced a prospectus called A Future Fair for All (Labour Party 2003). The prospectus has 13 main sections covering broad policy areas such as health and education. There was a chapter on ‘democracy and citizenship’, which outlined how New Labour would continue its democratic renewal agenda. In the

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foreword, Blair hoped that the Big Conversation would help promote better dialogue between state and citizen (Labour Party 2003, p. 2). Interestingly, some ministers had mixed views about the value of the Big Conversation (Lilleker and Lees-Marshment 2005). The prospectus set the parameters for the consultation. It simultaneously opened and closed the issues that were open for debate. For example, none of the questions invites participants to question the merit of specific New Labour policies.4 Some of the questions also contain an implicit impetus for participants to agree with the thrust of New Labour’s approach (Labour Party 2003, p. 72). Other questions were much more promotional and rather heavy-handed, seeking to praise the government (2003, pp. 15, 72), although many were relatively open and seem genuinely designed to provoke further dialogue. There is also a good deal of candour about the success and failure of New Labour’s reforms: ‘Some of these experiments have been very successful, others less so and some have made no difference either way’ (Labour Party 2003, p. 67). In terms of the response to the Big Conversation, the British Council (2004, p. 3) estimates that it led to 4,000 submissions from local parties (including two-thirds of all constituency parties), over 40,000 individual submissions, and 15,000 submissions on the website. The actual number of public events is hard to determine, and a sound estimate is at least in the region of 500.5 The Big Conversation triggered a good deal of mostly negative response from the other political parties – the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats were equally scathing – and the media. Some b ­ ackbench Labour MPs also expressed some reservations about the exercise. In terms of the dynamics of the consultation, it is useful to focus on the high-profile regional meetings and the online consultation.6 For the most part, the Labour Party used third-party organisations to run the regional events (including the Guardian newspaper, the carmaker Ford, and the supermarket Asda), which was a deliberate attempt to make connections outside the party’s usual stakeholder list. Most of the events had an overarching theme. There are no publicly available lists of attendees at any of the regional events, but broadly speaking there was a mix of Labour supporters and members, organisational or other representatives, and the wider public. In some cases, advertisements were placed in the local media to recruit participants, with the Labour Party then selecting appropriate participants. Jo Gibbons, former Director of Events, Visits and Scheduling for No. 10, who organised part of the logistics for the Big Conversation, argues:



National conversations 115 The overall objective was quite a hard to thing to do, we did not just want to hold open meetings, as these tend to be dominated by political activists … the meetings had to be controlled but not too controlled. (Gibbons, telephone interview with author, 14 November 2008)

Some of these meetings were judged more successful than others. One influential factor was the skill of MPs when they were used as facilitators, with some having more expertise than others. Jo Gibbons reported that on the whole, ‘the younger MPs tended to be better as facilitators’. Another factor was that many participants were briefed or were ‘expert citizens’ with pre-set agendas. Gibbons argues that ‘the more real the public were, the more dynamic the events were’ (Gibbons, telephone interview with author, 14 November 2008). This was an issue also identified by Estelle Morris, then Arts Minister, at an event held in Liverpool: Later [Morris] pointed out that the problem with such consultations is that most of the participants are already engaged with politics and can ‘talk the jargon’. Indeed, one of those present in Liverpool called for ‘cross-sectoral new templates of practice’, a phrase unlikely to make the missing millions race to the polling stations. (The Times, 6 February 2004)

In addition to the regional meetings, the Labour Party established a dedicated website for comments and submissions from the general public (www.bigconversation.org). The online consultation proved problematic for Labour, since unfortunately there was another website with a similar name. A consultant called Jamie Roy had established the website www.thebigconversation.org as a forum for a consultation on the National Health Service. Roy accused New Labour of h ­ ijacking his idea and, according to one report, ‘irreparably damaging’ his brand (Hollingshead 2006). The main criticism levelled at the Labour Party was that its website was excessively moderated. To get the web discussion started, party officials interviewed a number of people they knew to be broadly sympathetic to Labour, subsequently posting the most positive extracts from these interviews as comments (Tonn 2005). Capitalising on the confusion over websites, Jamie Roy posted all the negative comments on his website. In addition, there were a number of live online discussions with government ministers, which Stephen Coleman (2004) suggests were more monologic than dialogic. Evaluating the Big Conversation By using the principles of responsiveness and representativeness (Pratchett 1999), we can get a clearer view of the impact of the Big Conversation. In terms of responsiveness, the initiative seemed to have very little direct influence on the party’s manifesto. Ultimately, Labour’s

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policy-making processes are formulated from within its senior ranks, with little direct input from external sources. In the summer of 2004, at the end of the Big Conversation, Labour’s National Policy Forum produced a report outlining the findings of the Big Conversation (Labour Party 2004). The coverage of the Big Conversation in this report is generally good. In the 192-page document, there are 30 separate references to the Big Conversation and an additional 40 comments and submissions. There are a small number of quotes from the Big Conversation which seem to have been selected on the basis that they fit closely with the New Labour agenda (for example, extolling the virtues of extending patient choice or the Sure Start scheme). However, these types of comment are the minority, the vast majority being generalised statements about values or issues, rather than specific solutions (for ­example, Labour Party 2004, pp. 53, 142). It is also worth reflecting on the content of the ‘democracy and citizenship’ strand in the internal report which followed the Big Conversation, as it broadly restates New Labour’s approach to democratic renewal. Interestingly, the deliberations arising from the Big Conversation seem to have very little impact in this section of the report. The report calls for a greater emphasis on devolution, a new civic activism, the reinvigoration of political parties to increase trust and more responsive public services. The report only makes two specific policy proposals for ­decisions at annual conferences.7 The Big Conversation is, perhaps surprisingly, not mentioned in the party’s 2005 manifesto. There is little evidence that it had an impact on the democracy section of the manifesto, with proposals in the 2005 manifesto including moves to further devolution, additional reform of the House of Lords and further equality legislation to establish a single equality commission. Compared with the ‘big bang’ set of proposals in the 1997 manifesto, the 2005 manifesto is rather tame. To a large extent, the aim of the Big Conversation was not to directly inform policy-making, but rather to stimulate public debate. Matt Carter, then General Secretary of the Labour Party, argued that the main aim was to maintain, ‘dialogue between the party and the public, or at least those parts of the public interested in having a dialogue with the party’ (Carter, interview with author, 3 December 2007). This view was shared by Matthew Taylor (Taylor, interview with author, 5 December 2007). Taylor also argues that in some policy areas it did have an impact, particularly on Tony Blair: So family-friendly working – which Tony [Blair] had been previously ­reasonably sceptical about because he was anti-regulation and pro-­business,



National conversations 117 through the Big Conversation process he became more keen and more willing to countenance further steps to family-friendly working. There’s no question in my mind about that.

Geoff Mulgan argues that, to the surprise of a number of Labour politicians, the public were much more supportive of a ban on smoking in public places than they expected (Mulgan, interview with author, 5 December 2007). While the Big Conversation was a highly managed process, its responsiveness was also limited by other factors: there was a lack of capacity within the party itself to handle and deal with the sheer volume of the submissions. In terms of representativeness, it is also crucial to investigate how far it sought to deal with issues of inequality of voice. There is no clear evidence available to confirm the types of people who engaged with the process. Anecdotally, it seems that there was substantial involvement by Labour Party members and people active in their local community. In terms of wider public participation, some aspects of the Big Conversation fared better than others. At the regional meetings, efforts were made to invite people who were not considered political activists, although it is striking that, even where people who were not activists did attend, they were not always comfortable about speaking out. The Big Conversation website offered the opportunity for wider public input, perhaps especially younger people, but while innovative, it did not tackle the ‘digital divide’. The written submissions sent to the party, as far as can be shown, were mainly from organised community, voluntary or business groups. In sum, the Big Conversation was targeted at a mix of party members, key stakeholders and the wider public with an interest in the debate. No real attempts were made to create forums and consultative mechanisms to achieve a greater equality of voice. The Labour Party did not take specific measures to target the voice and input of marginalised groups. In essence, inclusion and exclusion took place simultaneously. While this was one of the most far-reaching consultations ever undertaken by a political party, it did very little to reach out to some of the most disadvantaged groups: it sought to include more voices than before; however, it risked privileging some voices over others. As explored at the end of the chapter, the Big Conversation had a number of competing aims, resulting in tensions relating to how the exercise was conducted. It remains a bold initiative by New Labour and certainly defies simplistic criticism that that it was purely tokenistic. Yet, despite its size and scale, to some extent it heralded a weakening in New Labour’s democratic renewal agenda.

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The search for democratic renewal The 2020 Summit

The 2020 Summit was federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd’s boldest attempt to expand the public realm in Australia. Conducted over a weekend in April 2008 in Canberra, it was attended by 1,000 ­delegates  – Australia’s ‘best and brightest’ – with the aim of ‘shaking the tree’ for new ideas on the future of the nation (Rudd 2008a, 2008b). Over a year later, the Rudd government published its formal response to the summit, making a commitment to nine new proposals, including the development of the first bionic eye. The summit was divided into ten main streams, and was, in effect, a series of ten minisummits, each comprising a hundred delegates. The 1,000 participants were invited in their own right rather than as representatives from any particular organisation. Like the Big Conversation, the government called for ideas about democratic renewal: The Government is also examining ways in which Australians can ­increasingly deliberate in the making of government policy through a range of mechanisms, including community cabinets, as a part of a commitment to contemporary democracy. (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet 2008a)

While the summit appears to have been Rudd’s idea, there are two indirect sources of policy inspiration: Bob Hawke’s ‘Accord’ Summits and a series of vision forums held by Craig Emerson when he was a Queensland Labor government minister (Johnson 2008). The 2020 Summit was part of a wider package of activities and ­processes which attempted to broaden the ‘national conversation’.8 These included ­specific ethnic minority community events, a National Youth Summit and over 500 school events. In addition, more than 3,600 i­ ndividuals and groups made almost 8,800 public submissions, including 3,000  ideas posted on the Australia 2020 Summit website. The format for the summit was an amalgamation of large plenary sessions, more traditional ‘town hall’ style meetings and smaller group meetings (see Davis 2008 for further detail). One of the main complaints from a number of delegates was that there was insufficient discussion time. In his opening address, Rudd asked each stream for one ‘big idea’, and other concrete policy ideas, including one that was cost-neutral. Rudd both simultaneously raised and dampened expectations about the prospects for political renewal. The organisers used professional facilitators, and as with the Big Conversation, there were concerns that either contentious ­proposals were



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diluted or the wording for some ideas was ‘botched’ (Manne  2008a). A  number of accounts are available on the public record describing participants’ experiences of the summit (see Fawcett, Manwaring and Marsh 2011). Robert Manne, Professor of Politics at La Trobe University and a prominent Australian public intellectual, gives a very lively account of his experience in the governance stream (Manne 2008a). The limited discussion time proved debilitating: Despite the experience and intelligence of those participating, the meeting was chaotic. It was not even clear whether the details of the small groups’ decisions had been accurately recorded … The other concrete proposals for making government accountable had transmogrified overnight into meaningless motherhood statements … As time began to run out, the level of chaos increased. The meeting now resembled a Mad Hatter’s tea party rather than a symposium. Often the loudest voices prevailed. Sometimes it was not even clear what the vote was about. Even though there was a near-complete consensus about a two-stage program for the creation of the republic, at the very end of the meeting David Marr intervened with a dramatic plea that the republic be included. He was told that the idea was actually top of our list. Marr’s confusion was understandable. In our haste, no one could be certain what was decided. I certainly was not. (Manne 2008a, p. 4)

In what was an impressive logistical feat, by the end of the weekend the organisers had handed each participant an initial report summarising the main ideas and discussions that had taken place. A number of participants raised concerns that it either excluded or diluted key ideas (‘2020 bagged by unhappy summiteers’, The Age, 24 April 2008). There is also evidence that some of the more critical participants were marginalised from the debates and that other more prominent participants had more influence. Participant Harry Evans, the Senate Clerk, suggested that the pressure to include ‘big and exciting’ ideas meant that the more practical ones were excluded from this report. On 31 May 2008, the Rudd government published the 2020 Summit final report, which outlined the proceedings in detail, noting all the key ideas and priorities. The government made a commitment to respond to all the ideas raised in the report by the end of the 2008, with the report making it clear that, ‘despite its title, the … [Final report] … is not the end: the Australian Government wants the national ­conversation to continue’ (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet 2008a, p.  2). The final report included a clear set of recommendations and ideas relating to the themes of ‘collaborative governance’ and citizen engagement. Moreover, there is an explicit plea for the use of more deliberative m ­ echanisms such as citizens’ juries, electronic

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town hall meetings and participatory budgeting. This was linked to a ­suggestion for ‘augment[ing] representative democracy with ­deliberative ­democracy’ (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet 2008a, p. 311). Usefully, and also in a clear commitment to transparency, ‘areas of ­disagreement’ were highlighted at the end of the report. The government’s response was published on 22 April 2009. Rudd argued that the government had already been working on many of the ideas (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet 2009), also announcing a commitment to nine ‘practical ideas’, the most eye­ catching of which included a deployable civilian capacity to respond to emergencies, the development of the bionic eye in Australia and a dedicated children’s channel. The media response to these ideas was, at best, lukewarm (‘Labour adopts some big plans, mostly its own’. The Australian, 23 April 2009). One of the main complaints was that, while the 2020 Summit overwhelmingly favoured the creation of an Australian Republic, this was not included in the list of key ‘big ideas’. In its response, the government argued that the global financial crisis had a significant impact on how it dealt with the ideas from the summit. A total of 183 ideas from the governance stream were considered by the Rudd government in its response document. In reply, it grouped together many of the overlapping and related ideas, and made 68 ­separate responses to the 183 governance ideas. In five broad areas, the government indicated its ongoing or new action, and these included part of the Council of Australian Governments (COAG) reform process; a consultation on human rights; new freedom of information legislation and an e-government agenda. In one amalgamated and general reply the Rudd government responded to 30 ‘community engagement’ ideas, which encompassed a whole range of specific proposals and included the establishment of: • • • •

a commission for participatory democracy; a public digital channel with access to policy debate; a charter of community engagement; a citizens’ cabinet (based on a UK model, and in 2008 being trialled in Queensland).

The government’s response to this suite of ideas is instructive and highlights its overall approach to this agenda. The Government agrees with the idea of enhancing community engagement. The Government’s approach is to trial different and innovative



National conversations 121 ­ echanisms and draw specific suggestions across several streams in that m context … the Government will develop better ways to increase interactive consultative processes using new technology to communicate and hear from people … The Government is also considering holding a set of forums that will bring together experts, business and community ­representatives and others with a strong interest in a number of topics to promote a collaborative approach to challenging issues and better inform government decision making. (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet 2009, pp. 215–16)

Overall the Rudd government’s approach could be characterised as either ‘wait and see’ or lukewarm. It liked the ‘idea’ of enhancing p ­ articipation, but there was very little specific action to drive the ­democratic renewal agenda forward. While additional oversight for this agenda is given to the Statutory Information Commissioner role, it is fair to say that the government’s response to this agenda is weak and disappointing, for a number of reasons. First, many of the ideas and suggestions were quite general. And while there was support for d ­ emocratic innovation, a clear set of mechanisms was not readily adapted. As Pratchett (1999) and others note, citizens’ juries and ­participatory budgeting are not without their own problems and internal tensions. Co-convenor of the 2020 Summit Professor Glyn Davis concurs: In part because the mechanics of how to do it, how to build it into our system of representative democracy aren’t clear … and not enough thinking has gone into that … but I was surprised by the agenda in how often it came up and how often I am reading about deliberative democracy, and … I felt that the Summit has a chance to show that you could do productive work with citizenship, albeit with a pretty skewed group of citizens, and, yes, we haven’t had any real sense of whether there is going to be any real engagement with it. (Davis, interview with author, 23 June 2009)

Second, the government’s ‘wait and see’ approach to democratic renewal reflects the issue’s status as a second-tier concern for Rudd and his colleagues. Community Cabinets and the 2020 Summit are the limits of its action on this agenda. The commitments made in the response document are tentative and suggestive; for example, the Rudd government agreeing to ‘consider’ holding a set of public forums on these issues (Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet 2009, p. 36). Despite the high-profile attention attached to the question of a republic, this issue was deferred. Third, it is arguable that the most radical ideas of democratic renewal require some significant devolution or delegation of power. The Rudd and Gillard governments were reluctant to travel further in this direction.

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Evaluating the 2020 Summit The principles of representativeness and responsiveness provide a c­ ritical lens through which we can evaluate the effectiveness of ­consultative ­initiatives, such as the 2020 Summit. In terms of representativeness, we see that Rudd explicitly called for the ‘brightest and the best’, which was coda for those in academia, the professions, and generally those already engaged in, or who had made a contribution to, the wider public policy debate. A small number of members of the public did attend, but it was an event dominated by policy elites (Burchell 2008). However, this was balanced by a clear direction from the co-convener Glyn Davis that other characteristics of the selected participants should be broadly representative of the wider Australian community. In many respects, the 2020 summiteers did broadly represent certain characteristics of the wider public, and women comprised 51 per cent of the participants (Nethercote 2008). The higher age profile of the participants was balanced by the Youth Summit, which had taken place a week earlier and which had been designed to provide a more appropriate forum for younger people. Nethercote (2008) also notes that those aged over 75 were disproportionately under-represented; and on a state-by-state basis, participants from the Australian Capital Territory – although this is not too surprising given the dominance of policy elites based in Canberra – and the Northern Territory were over-represented. A deliberately prominent Aboriginal ‘voice’ at the summit perhaps explains the ‘over-representation’ of participants from the Northern Territory (Davis 2008, p. 385). There were some accusations that conservative participants were marginalised during the conference, and that the spirit of bipartisanship was ‘superficial’ (Steketee 2009). Nethercote (2008) also suggests that it is highly unlikely, given the dominance of elite groups, that the summit proportionately reflected all socioeconomic groups. However, it should be reiterated that, arguably, when ‘representativeness’ is applied to the wider ‘package’ of 2020 activities, there was a broader mix of people. Yet, like the Big Conversation, there was no specific attempt to engage with people from lower socioeconomic groups, while there were some concerns raised about the lack of direct voice from disadvantaged groups (‘No place for the poor in talks on hardship’, The Australian, 19 April 2008). Ultimately, the 2020 Summit was an elite exercise. This raises a series of complex issues for advocates of political consultation exercises such as this. Prime Minister Rudd did stipulate that among those attending the summit there should be a number of ‘ordinary’ Australians. There is an inherent difficulty and challenge in bringing together people with expert forms of knowledge and those



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who make contributions either based on personal experience or with ­localised forms of knowledge. As co-chair Glyn Davis explains: Interestingly, the Prime Minister decided to arrange that there were some ‘ordinary Australians’ there by allowing talkback radio and others to pick to a few; they were a small number, and a number of them were just badly out of their depth, which was a fair indication that if you have not participated in policy discussions there was a lot to take up ... you might think you know a lot about schools but in a room full of people who really lived and breathed this stuff your view about how schools should operate was just a little uninformed ... so there was a minimum threshold for expertise that was needed to make the policy discussion worthwhile. (Davis, ­interview with author, 23 June 2009)

David Burchell (2008) views the 2020 Summit through the prism of Michael Young’s satire ‘The Rise of the Meritocracy’, and observes: After all, what was the 2020 Summit if not a celebration of the triumph of the meritocracy, a ritual homage to the best and brightest, in all their ceremonial glory?

One of the risks of elite consultation events is that they privilege technocratic and ‘expert’ forms of knowledge over local, anecdotal and culturally diverse forms. The difficulty is that the formal representativeness of the 2020 Summit (for example, the 50–50 gender split) masks this privileging process. Elite exercises reinforce the notion that elites have most of the answers to complex policy questions, in effect weakening the case for involving the non-elites in shaping their own lives and destinies. In terms of responsiveness, there is a clear and tangible link between the 2020 Summit and the Rudd government’s wider policy agenda. The most positive feature of its response document is the high level of transparency in recording all the ideas. The Rudd government clearly indicated the proposals to be taken forward, those to be considered further, those that others may wish to pursue, and the ideas not being acted upon. While it is beyond the scope of this case to outline the government’s response to all the policy areas, it seems reasonable to conclude that some areas would fare better than others. A specific focus for this book is to examine the fate of the ideas related to democratic renewal. Given that the summit itself was touted as potentially heralding a new form of governance, it is not unreasonable to suggest that these ideas might get some traction. First, it should be reinforced that augmenting representative democracy was a clear and popular demand in the 2020 Summit. Second, while there were numerous calls for better mechanisms for dialogue and

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exchange between the state and civil society, there was a ­corresponding lack of specific proposals for achieving this. Where specific proposals were made (such as the greater use of citizens’ juries), it was not always clear how they should link with the existing architecture of ­representative democracy. Third – and for a number of the reasons outlined above – the Rudd government’s response to this agenda was timid and unambitious. There was little direct commitment to the issue of democratic renewal beyond holding Community Cabinets. Like New Labour’s Big Conversation, after initial interest, the status of the democratising of democracy is a second-tier concern in the politics of the NSD. While there were a number of claims that the 2020 Summit agenda was already ‘fixed’ or ‘foisted’ upon participants, these claims oversimplify the processes of the summit. In considering the government’s response, it is worth noting how some ideas were more likely than others to be promoted. As Geoff Gallop, governance stream participant and former Premier of Western Australia, observes: There were two types of people at the Summit, those with an ‘idea’ (pure and uncomplicated by the necessities of compromise) and those with ideas but keen to find a politically acceptable middle ground. This second group was more consensus-minded. As open as the summit was it was always difficult for the first group to get leverage. The limited time available for them to advocate and explain was also a constraint. The fact is middle-of-theroad ideas that looked achievable always occupied the best position, even if some pushed the limits of Australian politics (for example, the republic). (Gallop, telephone interview with author, 5 June 2009)

Of the three cases discussed, the 2020 Summit is arguably the most robust and well-developed consultation initiative in the NSD reported in this chapter. It was a genuinely innovative attempt at consultation, and there were significantly high levels of transparency and accountability. The Rudd government was, to a certain extent, open and receptive to the idea of a ‘national debate’, and the 2020 Summit was a useful focal point for this aim. While it was designed to influence government policy, it also served a specific political function. The 2020 Summit was a highly effective ‘circuit-breaker’ from the legacy of the Howard Liberal government era. Nonetheless, it was a top-down and elite exercise, with these inherent tensions and difficulties. Moreover, the Rudd government’s response to the wider call for democratic renewal is, at best, measured and cautious, and at worst disappointing. In terms of democratic renewal for the Rudd (and Gillard) government, the 2020 Summit itself may remain its key, albeit flawed, achievement.



National conversations 125 The aims of national conversations

There are a number of common themes that cut across all the cases in this chapter. A striking feature of both the Big Conversation and the 2020 Summit was that both were innovative attempts at consultation, with a strand in both focusing on ways to rejuvenate democratic renewal. In both countries, however, the agenda for democratic renewal appears to have waned a good deal. There is a clear sense of the New Social Democracy experimenting with new forms of consultation, on unprecedented scales, and yet ultimately pulling back from furthering the search for a more dialogic form of governance. It is also clear that the cases shared a number of common aims, and when evaluating these initiatives the wider political aims served by such exercises become more obvious. Focusing on New Labour’s Big Conversation offers insights on all three cases. The Big Conversation, like the other two cases, was far more than just a ‘PR stunt’, as some critics suggested. To dismiss any of these exercises as purely tokenistic leaves a good deal unsaid about their multiple and, at times, contradictory political aims. First, the Big Conversation was both a diversionary and legitimising device. It was diversionary in that it was an explicit attempt to promote attention away from the debate about the invasion of Iraq. Like the 2020 Summit, it also had the function of being a political ‘circuit-breaker’ – because it attempted to bring in the voice of progressive elites ostracised during the previous Howard era. All the cases had a legitimising function. In this sense, promoting debate was more important than the actual impact on policy, which in most cases was minimal. These were devices that sought to bring in a wider range of ‘publics’ (including a largely neglected Labour Party membership for New Labour’s Big Conversation) to give tacit support to the broader reform programmes of these New Social Democratic governments. Further, the Big Conversation, and to some extent the 2020 Summit, was a campaigning device.9 It was a deliberate attempt to gain and build a broad coalition of support for the Labour Party’s next manifesto. It was, in part, a strategy to educate the voters about the realities of government and reinforce the theme of active citizenship and individual responsibility. Despite the attempt to open up new spaces for dialogue and debate, the overall upshot was to reinforce centralised forms of power and control (Lilleker and Lees-Marshment 2005; Tonn 2005). This links to another underlying function of the Big Conversation and also the 2020 Summit – their therapeutic role (Tonn 2005). Journalist Andrew Rawnsley observed that the ‘the deeper meaning of the Big Conversation … is less about learning from the country and more

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The search for democratic renewal

about educating the country in the toughness of choices’. This is a view shared, in part, by Roy Hattersley, former deputy leader of the Labour Party. Hattersley’s (2003) view of the Big Conversation is that, while the ‘dialogue is a monologue in disguise’, it is to be encouraged as it showed an ‘admission that the public can not be taken for granted’. The 2020 Summit was therapy in that it offered a safety valve for Australia’s policy elites. Finally, these were all listening and educative devices and represented an attempt at more dialogic politics. There was, within with set parameters, an attempt to hear the everyday political concerns from people outside London and also provide some mechanisms for dialogue. Most clearly in the case of the Big Conversation, it had the effect of pulling New Labour’s initiative in a number of different, and at times contradictory, directions. However, these attempts to listen and conduct dialogue also had to sit alongside the other goals of therapy, legitimation and diversion. These interlocking aims perhaps reinforce both why New Labour put so much effort into it, and yet ultimately explains why it had very little direct impact on policy. The next chapter examines two significant attempts at fostering civic engagement and democratic renewal at the regional level. Notes 1 This case does not, of course, show if the actual quality of public services declined – and public opinion is but one, limited, indicator. Indeed, from 2000, public spending on public services increased significantly (Shaw 2007, p. 146). 2 The ministers in charge of the People’s Panel were: David Clark (May 1997– July 1998); Jack Cunningham (July 1998–October 1999); Mo Mowlam (October 1999–June 2001); and Gus Macdonald (June 2001–June 2003). 3 At this time, New Labour also introduced a number of other controversial domestic policies. In 2003, the party introduced plans to allow universities to charge ‘top-up’ tuition fees of up to £3,000 per year (hitherto most ­undergraduate degrees cost £1,100 per annum). The Education White Paper introduced in January 2003 was in direct contradiction with the 2001 ­ Manifesto. The proposal to create ‘foundation hospitals’ was introduced to enable top-performing NHS hospitals to apply for ‘foundation’ status, which meant that they could operate with greater independence from central government. New Labour hoped that this would drive up standards and enable greater patient choice, while critics feared it would lead to a two-tier public health service (Pollock 2004). 4 Given that a central aim of the Big Conversation was to move debate away from the invasion in Iraq, it is interesting to note how the prospectus dealt



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with this issue. There is no specific question on Iraq, but a rather more general one: ‘What responsibilities do we have to help people liberate ­themselves from dictatorial regimes elsewhere in the world? How do we reconcile this with the right to non-interference?’ (Labour Party 2003, p. 75). The main document only has a very brief mention of the issue and states, ‘whatever our differences over the war in Iraq – and they have been deeply felt within the Party – that country needs to be rebuilt as a democracy and successful economy. Withdrawal at this stage would simply leave the country in the hands of foreign extremists’ (2003, p. 75). The party leadership was keen to ensure that the issue of Iraq was not a prominent part of the Big Conversation, with the focus on mainly domestic issues. 5 Much of this section is drawn from a range of newspaper articles about the Big Conversation. For ease of reference these are listed here: ‘Revealed: Labour’s Big Conversation is a fix’, Daily Telegraph, 29 November 2003; ‘Blair launches consultation amid scorn’, The Guardian, 28 November 2003; ‘Critics turn a deaf ear to Blair’s Big Conversation’, The Register (online), 1 December 2003; The Times, 6 February 2004; ‘Comment’, The Guardian, 4 December 2003; ‘Blair’s Big Conversation turns into big d ­ isaster’, Mail on Sunday, 11 April 2004; ‘Big Conversation? A big con, more like’, Daily Mail, 29 November 2003. 6 Much of the detail for this section comes from a telephone interview with Jo Gibbons, Tony Blair’s former Director of Events, Visits and Scheduling for No. 10 (Gibbons, telephone interview, 14 November 2008). Any ­inaccuracies are due to the author. 7 The two specific proposals were to, in principle, support the idea of lowering the voting age to 16, but await an Electoral Commission report before formally committing to this proposal (Labour Party 2004, p. 98). Second, the Labour conference was invited to vote on the wording of the section on reform of the House of Lords (Labour Party 2004, p. 106). 8 There were a number of minor controversies that took place in the lead-up to and over the course of the summit weekend, such as the failure to provide halal food for the Muslim participants. Adverse publicity was generated when the $60,000 media contract was awarded to the company whose CEO was the wife of a government minister. There was also a running dispute that 2020 summiteers were heavily weighted towards those in favour of creating an Australian Republic. This linked to a similar accusation that the environment stream was hijacked by the coal industry. Finally, there were public criticisms of the cost of the summit, which one media report speculated reached $1.9m. 9 See ‘Comment: good to talk, hard to listen’, The Observer, 30 November 2003; ‘Talking is not enough’, The Guardian, 19 March 2004; Hattersley (2003).

7

Engagement at the regional level

The fallacy of expertise bedevils public policy. Mark Bevir, 2010

‘Strategic Labor government’ at the regional level National-level Labour governments in both Britain and Australia are amongst a number of centre-left governments rediscovering an interest in democratic renewal. As we saw in the previous chapter, both parties remain formally committed to this agenda of democratic innovation, and their own consultative experiments, despite a number of significant flaws, reveal an appetite for engagement and renewal. The search for democratic renewal has also been taking place at the regional level. At the time New Labour took office, Labor in Australia was steadily reaching a position of dominance at the state level. From 2002 until 2008, Labor held office in every state and territory in Australia. At the time when John Howard’s Liberal Coalition dominated federal politics, Labor states were busy finding ways to engage and consult with the public. Gallop identifies a number of motifs which link the Labor states and territories during this era of strategic government. First, there was a focus on developing a statewide strategic plan. These plans set performance targets in a wide range of policy areas. Second, there was a focus on consultation and bringing a citizen voice to the new policy initiatives. Third, there was a focus on whole-of-government responses to a range of policy issues. Finally, there was a commitment to fostering a political vision which moves beyond purely economic goals to include social and environmental targets. In a range of states and territories we can see evidence of this agenda. This chapter focuses on two cases of innovative attempts to reconnect the state with the citizen at the regional level in Australia: the Victorian Labor government headed by former Premier Steve Bracks and the case of South Australia led by former Premier Mike Rann.



Engagement at the regional level 129

As Gallop notes, the focus on strategic government was a direct response to the challenge of the new public management and the reconfiguration of the role of the government; he also argues that ­ importing the market model into the public sector creates internal contradictions, especially between efficiency and equity outcomes. ­ Gallop suggests that Labor’s period of strategic government was an attempt to respond to the ‘narrow thinking’ of NPM (Gallop 2007, p. 30). Yet there is perhaps a certain irony to Labor’s turn to ‘strategic ­government’. Gallop sees the development of Labor’s statewide plans as a response to the NPM and, indeed, planning has often been a key instrument of social democratic and Labour governments. Yet one of the main sources of inspiration for the Labor states appeared to be the strategic plans developed by a number of states in the United States. In the 1980s, during the period of Reagan’s ‘New Federalism’, a range of US states and public agencies developed strategic plans – largely modelled on corporate planning processes – which were key signifiers of the NPM. As Berry (1994) argues, in the 1980s a cohort of new US  ­governors were activist on social policy, but were ­fiscally c­ onservative, signalling obvious parallels with the New Social Democracy. A number of Labor Australian states looked to their US counterparts to find new policy tools to invigorate economic growth and meet wider social goals, with South Australia and Tasmania directly influenced by the State of Oregon’s ‘Oregon Shines’ state plan. While Labor may have considered the NPM too ‘narrow’, it adopted and refined one of the main instruments used in the US to further this agenda. Although the focus of this chapter is efforts by Australian Labor states to enhance civic engagement and new forms of citizen-centred policy-making, there have been similar efforts in the UK. Arguably, David Blunkett’s work in Sheffield in the 1980s was an early precursor to this trend. At the regional level, the Scottish Parliament and the Welsh Assembly have introduced measures in democratic renewal which attempted to move beyond what Coleman calls the ‘archaic Westminster model’ (see also Coleman 1999, p. 19). The Scottish Parliament’s handling and support of e-petitions has been noted as ­particularly innovative (Smith 2005, p. 99). Zittel and Fuchs (2007) also catalogue other attempts to foster participatory forms of governance at the regional level, with mixed results. As Zittel and Fuchs note, in many cases more minimalist forms of participatory engagement were developed, in part because politicians feared ceding control. Although the focus of this chapter is on efforts towards democratic renewal at

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the regional level in Australia, similar efforts have been taking place elsewhere. The other key issue is that while governments of different hues have shown some interest in democratic renewal, this book is interested in how centre-left governments experimenting in the New Social Democracy have linked this to a reinvigorated political agenda. The cases in South Australia and Victoria give important insights in this regard. It is worth reiterating at this point that other Australian states were also innovating in this area (see Althaus 2008). Crowley and Coffey compare the ‘Tasmania Together’ process with the initial part of Bracks’s ‘Growing Victoria Together’ (GVT) agenda. The Tasmania Together exercise was one of the most concerted efforts to introduce forms of deliberative democracy at the regional level in Australia. Hartz-Karp (2005) outlines Geoff Gallop’s ‘Dialogue with the City’ initiative in Western Australia, and Reddel and Woolcock (2004) offer a critical overview of the efforts towards citizen engagement that took place in Queensland. Rather than offer a sweeping critique of all these initiatives, this chapter offers a richer, more qualitative perspective on the GVT process in Victoria and the largest consultation that had ever taken place in South Australia with South Australia’s Strategic Plan (SASP) in 2006. These detailed accounts are emblematic of Labor governments wrestling with the legacy of the NPM and making tentative steps towards a more dialogic polity. In both Victoria and South Australia, these initiatives offer key insights into Labor’s search for forms of democratic renewal. Growing Victoria Together The new Victorian Labor government was caught off guard when it won the 1999 state election and was quickly put under pressure to ­formulate a clear and distinct policy direction (Crowley and Coffey 2007), the establishment of the GVT process being a direct outcome. A  summit was convened to assemble key stakeholders to discuss the future of the state. According to Professor David Adams, Deputy Director in Bracks’s Department of Premier and Cabinet, the GVT Summit had three main aims: • to establish what the potential new role for a fresh Labor government might be by widely scanning the policy field; • to get stakeholder buy-in and measure momentum around issues; • to be seen as major players on the national stage in preparation for subsequent Victorian COAG agendas such as the Human Capital Agenda.



Engagement at the regional level 131 This third objective is not well understood by most observers and not widely discussed. (Adams, email, 13 February 2009)

The summit served a predominantly symbolic function in bringing together a range of different groups, many of whom had been excluded under the previous regime of Jeff Kennett. With 102 delegates from the business and community sectors, along with some government and political stakeholders, the summit was held over two days on 30 and 31 March 2000 in Parliament House and, in neat symmetry with the Accord Summits, was chaired by former Prime Minister Bob Hawke. The format of the summit, the main theme of which was economic growth, was not particularly innovative, nor was it an experiment in deliberative politics. A useful overview of the background and development of the GVT process is offered by Adams and Wiseman (2003). By and large, participants at the summit were broadly endorsing an agenda already developed by Bracks and his ministerial team. The summit’s main importance, according to Economou (2000, p. 570), ‘lay more in it being a symbol of the Bracks government’s intention to pursue a much more consensus-oriented approach to policy-making than its ­predecessor’. The summit attracted a good deal of media interest, with some ­suggesting that it was a mere ‘talkfest’ with little in the way of tangible outcomes (‘Cracks appear in Bracks charm’, The Age, 30 December 2000). A more substantive criticism was that it sought to bring consensus where none existed. Indeed, this has been a damning criticism ­levelled at NSD politics (and New Labour in particular; see Mouffe 2000). There was some media speculation that one of the main reasons for Bracks holding the summit was to help diffuse unrest in the Victorian business community, with Davidson (2000) arguing that, while the summit seemed to offer consensus, this masked a move by Labor to appease the business community, rather than the community sector: In this age of irreconcilable differences, government is required to make decisions. There is no Hawke magic that will change this, because there is no happy family of interests that will emerge today and tomorrow to allow Bracks to govern by consensus … Either his government will repair the damage to the physical and human infrastructure left by the Kennett government, or his government will – consciously or not – sanctify the Kennett inheritance by meaningless stunts like this.

Apparently, Bracks had exhorted the GVT participants to ‘find and champion common ground’, but this seemed elusive, given the clear divide between business and the unions at that time (Barber 2000).

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One  of the most disputed issues was the construction industry’s campaign for shorter working hours, which was strongly resisted by Business Victoria and its allies. Peter Barber (2000) notes: As the delegates broke into three-hour workshops, agreement on all but the importance of dialogue seemed beyond them … The problem is the summit has been charged with producing a vague motherhood statement – a communiqué on how to boost the economy and create jobs – when the real issues are beyond consensus … and while most of the ‘stakeholders’ paid tribute to this new consultative style today, when it comes to the core issues, Steve Bracks cannot please everyone.

Outcomes from the GVT Summit At the end of the summit, the Bracks government drew up a communiqué summarising the main issues and outlining how it would continue the GVT agenda. The main commitments were to develop a state plan, adopt a ‘triple bottom line’ approach to growth, undertake a consultative process to set targets for the state’s future and establish the Victorian Economic Environmental and Social Advisory Council (VEESAC). The role of VEESAC, which was chaired by the Premier, was to ‘enrich policy development and build community partnerships’ (Department of Premier and Cabinet 2000, p. 3). The Bracks government also introduced a suite of policy proposals that built on the GVT Summit. These included establishing the Department of Victorian Communities (DVC) to coordinate work on this agenda; rolling out a programme of Community Cabinets; setting up a number of community partnerships; and establishing a community fund to provide seed funding for locally based community activities. According to one senior public servant who was involved with the summit: One of the most significant outcomes from the GVT Summit was establishing the Department of Victorian Communities. This was designed to find an institutional ‘home’ for strengthening the relationship with the wider Victorian community. (Anon., interview with author, 15 February 2009)

The GVT State Plan was released in November 2000, nine months after the summit and just over one year after the Bracks government had been elected. The state plan is described as a ‘signpost document which attempts to break from the Kennett era but also appeases both private and public sector interests’ (Crowley and Coffey 2007, p. 29). Setting out ten strategic issues that constitute the Bracks ten-year vision for Victoria, along with economic and social concerns, the GVT plan has a focus on democratic renewal and providing a government ‘that



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listens and leads’ (Department of Premier and Cabinet, Victoria 2001, p. 6). There is an explicit commitment to ‘improving confidence and participation in democratic decision-making’ (Department of Premier and Cabinet 2001, pp. 4–5). When we compare the GVT plan with the later South Australian counterpart, it is striking how much more specific and measurable South Australia’s Strategic Plan is. The GVT plan states that community participation will be enhanced and ‘more Victorians from all backgrounds will have the opportunity to have a say on issues which matter to them’. Yet there is very little detail on how this might happen. The approach to reinvigorating democracy in Victoria is top-down and centralised, and driven by rather generic goals. Under Steve Bracks, Labor went on to win three subsequent elections, with Bracks standing down in 2007. Under John Brumby, Labor lost the 2010 election. For most of the Bracks era, the GVT plan was the springboard for the government’s policy agenda and its wider democratic renewal agenda. The Bracks government’s approach to inclusive politics The GVT Summit and subsequent plan initiated a broad democratic renewal agenda, and by examining some of these initiatives we can gain an overview of the extent of democratic renewal in Victoria. Community Cabinets Of all the initiatives, the most high profile was one designed to enhance the relationship between the Victorian government and wider civil society by rolling out a programme of Community Cabinets. These are essentially regional ‘town hall’ style public meetings that require all members of the Cabinet to attend and give the public an opportunity to meet the relevant Cabinet minister to highlight their issue of concern.1 Community Cabinets also have strengths and limitations as a consultative mechanism: on the positive side, they offer a new forum for civic engagement and they are often a rural or regionally based event. This addresses a common issue that the large capital cities dominate the media and political agenda. Community Cabinets have an important symbolic value in showing that government listens to the wider communities (Davis and Weller 2001). A further strength is that, since they are episodic, Community Cabinets fit more closely with existing patterns of political participation. As Stoker (2006) notes, most people prefer to engage only on an ad hoc basis and Community Cabinets can meet this intermittent need. Community Cabinets also have the capacity to

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provide local communities with direct and unmediated access to their political representatives, potentially promoting greater understanding between the government and the wider public. Community Cabinets can also be a useful mechanism for managing public expectations. However, Community Cabinets are not without their limitations. The central problem is that they tend to attract those people who are already politically engaged, which in turn can reinforce the ‘inequality of voice’. For some, such as Skidmore (2006), this might not necessarily be a drawback, since the atypical, locally active community leaders have a crucial role in disseminating information and representing wider constituencies. However, the risk of inequality of voice remains a concern. An additional issue is the link between public accountability and the episodic timing of Community Cabinets. Community Cabinet meetings tend not to return to the places they have already been held, and there are issues about how the local public can hold ministers accountable for what is ‘promised’ during the course of the Community Cabinet. Furthermore, it has been suggested that state-level Community Cabinets are often dominated by representatives from the relevant local council. Local councillors and public servants working in local government use the forums to lobby the state government.2 In effect, while they are promoted as a vehicle for public involvement, they can be framed as a new form of exchange between the state and local tiers of government in Australia. At best, Community Cabinets can provide a new forum for civic ­dialogue, but there is little real integration with the wider government decision-making process. Ministers might hear more direct and local views (either critical or supportive) on a particular issue, but Community Cabinets in themselves are not decision-making forums. Power remains strictly centralised, and on a scale such as Arnstein’s ladder (1969), they are at the information-sharing end of the spectrum. Despite their important symbolic value, their built-in power bias towards the government in terms of access to power, resources and information is a central characteristic of these events. This means the Community Cabinet has access to a greater array of strategies to control the dialogue (Williams 2004). VEESAC Established to assist in implementing and institutionalising the wider GVT agenda,3 the Victorian Economic Environmental and Social Advisory Council (VEESAC) was heavily involved in the formation of the first iteration of the GVT plan, with a number of its members ­providing a range of detailed comments about the strategic goals in the  plan. VEESAC was seen as an institutional symbol of Bracks’s



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search for consensual politics and was to some extent independent of government. The Premier chaired the first meetings, attaching a great deal of importance to this role. VEESAC was given licence, albeit with a minimal budget, to have a cross-portfolio role to examine a range of policy areas, and could draw upon a range of expertise. Ultimately however, VEESAC has to be considered as a failed political exercise. Significantly, it was wound up only a year after it had been established. Aside from its members’ comments on the first state plan, its impact was largely negligible. From the outset, what its precise role was and how it linked to the wider public sector were not clear. For example, there were numerous discussions about whether VEESAC should have an input into budget deliberations, with the Bracks Cabinet eventually deciding that it would not be a part of this process, a decision which ultimately downgraded its role and significance. Tensions also existed between VEESAC and the Victorian public service, with VEESAC attempting initially to challenge public sector performance in meeting the broad GVT goals. This was met with resistance. The council only had credibility with the Department of Premier and Cabinet and for as long as Bracks chaired the main board meetings. A noteworthy experiment in governance (a defining characteristic of the NSD), VEESAC was a powerful symbol of an attempt to build a more inclusive era in Victorian politics. Yet, for all its symbolic value, it is interesting to note how relatively quickly VEESAC was dissolved. Indicators of Community Strength project A more substantial outcome from the GVT Summit was the Indicators of Community Strength (ICS) project, a large-scale mapping exercise which aimed to collate a detailed knowledge of Victorian society.4 A key recommendation from the GVT Summit was that ’a new system of Victorian social benchmarks and indicators’ be set up, with community involvement (Salvaris et al. 2000, p. 3). The state government commissioned a team of consultants from Swinburne University to identify a suite of indicators for establishing a ‘community wellbeing’ index. This was the flagship project led by the newly established Department of Victorian Communities (DVC)5 and was one of the most successful projects initiated by the Bracks government. The overall aim was to establish community benchmarks (with public involvement), with the government regularly reporting on progress in addressing them (Salvaris et al. 2000). A notable feature of the project was that it was designed to be ‘a powerful way to strengthen democracy by making present and future governments more accountable’ (Salvaris et al. 2000, p. 4). The initial report on the project identifies a range of problems, including

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a lack of long-term goals for the state’s ‘social and community development’, and ‘the need to repair damaged communities and “re-engage” ordinary citizens’ (Salvaris et al. 2000, p. 4). The ICS records levels of civic engagement, social trust, group membership and involvement in local community activities (Department of Victorian Communities 2004, p. 24) Overall, the ICS data confirm that Victoria has very similar patterns of inequality in trust, participation and civic engagement to other Australian states (and other advanced industrial societies). An early study using the Victorian data highlights these inequalities (Vinson 2004). The ICS project gives rise to a number of observations. First, it is a very substantial and impressive area of the government’s work. Significant resources were devoted to this project, and the then newly established Department of Victorian Communities used this project to build up a comprehensive picture of Victorian communities that was clearly lacking under the Kennett era. Second, there is some evidence that the project provided new forms of knowledge which, to some extent, challenged how the Victorian government should tackle patterns of inequality of engagement and trust (Adams and Wiseman 2003, p.  20). Third, the project goes beyond pure measurement and polling opinion, insofar as the state government did set up a number of partnership agencies to increase levels of participation. The ICS project, however, was not without its limitations. It remains unclear how far the supporting partnership agencies have delivered any meaningful improvement in reducing inequalities in civic participation. While the project produces a large amount of data at the local level which is available to policy-makers, the wider community and the private sector, it is unclear how far, if at all, these data were being used by external stakeholders. A further concern is that the degree to which the wider public has been involved in shaping this project is unknown. The initial scoping report explicitly called for community involvement in the project (Salvaris et al. 2000). Yet the project was a predominantly top-down measuring tool for civic engagement. There was also some hope that the project might lead to new and innovative forms of policymaking (Adams and Wiseman 2003), but whether the project has had a transformative impact is also unknown. Evolution of the GVT agenda Finally, it is worth reflecting on the evolution of the broad targets in the GVT agenda which relate to the search for a vibrant democracy. In 2005, the GVT plan was revised and updated. As part of this process, the Department of Premier and Cabinet ‘led consultations with m ­ inisters



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and departments’ and ‘carefully considered the views and priorities of Victorians from all walks of life’ (Department of Premier and Cabinet 2009, p. 2). As far as can be shown, the consultation process was largely an internal exercise. The revised version of the GVT plan does not differ significantly from the first version, with the section on public participation mostly unchanged (Department of Premier and Cabinet 2005, p. 20). Some of the main achievements of the Bracks government are outlined in the revised plan, including reforming the Legislative Council, increasing the involvement of Victorians on consultative and advisory boards, holding Community Cabinets, and reforming the freedom of information legislation and the powers of the Auditor-General (Department of Premier and Cabinet 2005, p. 20). Bracks’s reform of the Legislative Council is widely seen as his government’s major achievement in this agenda (Costar and Hayward 2005). While this and other outputs from the GVT were not inconsiderable, especially given that the Bracks government was a minority one in its first term, there is an argument that much of this was ‘catch-up’ from the Kennett era. However, the achievements made in relation to democratic renewal were incremental and modest but not particularly innovative. Since 2002, the Victorian government has published annual progress reports on its push for a vibrant democracy, with the government polling Victorians on their political efficacy and the degree to which they feel they can have a say on issues that are important to them. From 2001 to 2008, there was a slight increase in the number of Victorians who reported positive political efficacy (Department of Premier and Cabinet 2008, p. 428). There is also some evidence that Victorians were more likely to report that they are involved in the political process. With interesting parallels to New Labour’s People’s Panel, Victorian government data also show that, from 2001 to 2008, public satisfaction in a range of public services also dropped (Department of Premier and Cabinet 2008, pp. 427–8). Yet how far the increase in levels of political efficacy can be directly traced to the actions of the Bracks government is an open question. It remains unclear what actions the government took that may have had a direct effect on these results and, indeed, the government does not directly indicate what may have caused the shift. It may well be that, compared with the Kennett era, Bracks’s symbolic turn to a more inclusive style of policy-making may have helped to shift public perceptions, rather than realising any specific policy objectives. By 2009, the GVT agenda was waning in Victoria. According to one well-placed source in the Victorian public service, ‘by way of  ­context, GVT is dying a slow death here in Victoria – the monitoring is

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c­ ontinuing, but active policy development based on GVT is ­questionable’ (Anon., interview with author, 20 March 2009). This was not surprising for a number of reasons. First, sustaining a long-term policy agenda is in itself a difficult and onerous task. Second, Steve Bracks resigned as Premier on 27 July 2007, and the GVT was very much his policy agenda. Bracks’s successor, John Brumby, was under pressure to show some continuity with the previous era but also to set his own political agenda. Third, a series of other issues have sought to displace the centrality of the GVT agenda. For example, the 2008 global economic crisis has stretched the economic capacities of both state and federal governments. In addition, in February 2009 more than 200 lives were lost in Victoria in one of the most devastating bushfires in Australian history, and this reshaped the government’s agenda. Fourth, as noted elsewhere in this book, democratic renewal is a secondtier political priority which rarely dominates party political activity and wider public and media attention. Representativeness and responsiveness in the GVT agenda A useful starting point for reviewing the GVT agenda according to the extent of its representativeness and responsiveness is a reconsideration of the scope and aims of the GVT Summit. Designed to serve a number of political and policy aims, it provided a catalyst for Labor’s new policy agenda, it raised the profile of Steve Bracks and it secured stakeholder buy-in. Compared with the Tasmania Together process, the GVT Summit and agenda was more an overt political project than a broader exercise in developing public policy (Crowley and Coffey 2007). As one senior public servant involved with the GVT Summit reports, it was ‘developed on-the-run … and was not designed to be a full democratic experiment’ (Anon., interview with author, 7 March 2009). Here, there are clear parallels with New Labour’s Big Conversation. The GVT Summit, while ostensibly a mechanism for dialogue and discussion, was mainly designed for political and promotional purposes, although these political aims do not diminish the impact of its achievements (Crowley and Coffey 2007, p. 35). Contextualising the aims of the GVT Summit then helps shape the understanding of how the two principles of representativeness and responsiveness were addressed by the Bracks government. Representativeness invites a discussion of the types of people and groups who participated in the GVT Summit. From the outset, the targeted participants were representatives from the main business and ­community groups and organisations and those who might be termed



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loosely ‘opinion formers’. The summit was not intended to engage the wider public and it was an elite exercise. It is also noteworthy that the wider public and Victorian civil society were not directly involved in shaping the first GVT State Plan. There are, however, risks in taking a top-down approach to strategic planning, a view confirmed by a senior public servant involved with the GVT Summit: The participants at the GVT Summit were mainly drawn from the wider political and policy elite. The weakness of this approach is that it can privilege ‘expert’ forms of knowledge over more local and anecdotal forms. (Anon., interview with author, 5 February 2009)

In some of the other GVT initiatives, while the Bracks government was generally interested in inequality of voice, it was far less committed to embedding this principle in its activities. The short-lived VEESAC was an elite vehicle, and as noted above, Community Cabinets can be highly unrepresentative of the wider public. While the ICS project maps patterns of inequality of voice and participation, in the underpinning specific programmes attached to this project there was far less engagement with the population groups often excluded from the policy process. In terms of responsiveness, it was clear from the outset of the GVT Summit that the direct impact on policy was designed to be minimal, with no formal mechanisms between the summit and the government’s response established (Crowley and Coffey 2007, p. 20). The initial postconference communiqué was mostly drafted by government advisers and public servants. These various aspects of the summit reinforce the view of a tightly controlled government agenda with little real scope for participants to directly influence the agenda. Responsiveness also proved a challenge in some of the other GVT initiatives. Community Cabinets, while often a useful vehicle for discussion, tend to have very little influence over decision-making. Lack of responsiveness was also a key factor in the demise of VEESAC, and from the outset, its role in terms of steering the GVT agenda was unclear, meeting with resistance, particularly from within the public service. While the ICS project scores well in terms of representativeness, it does less so in terms of responsiveness. Government use of the data was patchy, and the data did not have any direct impact on policy decision-making. Overall, Labor’s approach to creating a more vibrant democracy in the state was mixed. It was a clear improvement on the exclusive approach of the previous Kennett administration, although Labor’s search for dialogic government was tentative, limited and largely more symbolic than representing a genuine shift in relations between state and

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civil society. Ultimately, while the Bracks government was undoubtedly keen to achieve a more vibrant democracy, the overall level of ambition was limited, a lack of ambition coincidentally highlighted by one of Tony Blair’s key advisers: Perhaps the most challenging question about targets is the political one – how ambitious should they be … in comparison to the many politicians in other countries with whom I have discussed this question, Blair’s ministers have shown considerable courage in setting goals for which they can be held to account both by the public and the media. Just to give one comparison, the targets in Growing Victoria Together, the document on which the Premier of that Australian state Steve Bracks has based a successful career, are cautious and gentle. Bracks took the view that it was better to underpromise and overdeliver, a phrase often used in No. 10 during my time here. As a strategy, this appears to involve less risk, but there is a hidden risk involved in accepting incremental rather than transformational change. (Barber 2007, p. 81)

South Australia’s Strategic Plan The focus now shifts to South Australia. Like Steve Bracks, Mike Rann presided over a minority Labor government in its first term. The Rann Labor government was also a striking example of Gallop’s era of ‘strategic government’. The centrepiece of Rann’s policy agenda was to be South Australia’s Strategic Plan, originally called the State Strategic Plan (SSP). In 2006, the Rann government undertook the most wide-ranging consultation ever to have taken place in the state, with the aim of updating SASP. A key strand of the plan was to find ways of increasing and strengthening forms of political participation across the state. This case focuses on the effectiveness of the consultation process, and the efforts made by the Rann government to enhance democratic processes in South Australia. The origins of SASP lie in the new governance arrangements set up by Rann, demonstrating obvious parallels to the Bracks government. Shortly after its election the Rann government established the Economic Development Board (EDB) to help improve the economic stability and productivity of the state. In 2003, the government convened an Economic Summit (largely based on Hawke’s Accord Summits and also Bracks’s GVT Summit) to consider the second of two reports produced by the EDB: Around 280 delegates, comprising much of the State’s political, ­governmental, industrial, union, ethnic and community leadership, largely endorsed the thrust of the report. Normally adversarial participants



Engagement at the regional level 141 seemed readily to reach a consensus: the Summit was not only a ‘significant step forward’ according to the secretary of the United Trades and Labour Council but the start of ‘a new journey of prosperity’ according to the CEO of Business SA. (Parkin 2003, p. 462)

As a result of the Economic Summit, in March 2004 the State Strategic Plan was launched. The initial plan had over 80 targets, covering economic, social and environmental policy areas, with a commitment made to report progress on the targets every two years, and revise and consult on the plan every four years. The initial plan contained a number of specific targets in relation to civic engagement, including increasing the number of women in leadership roles, increasing levels of volunteering, halving the number of informal votes (where the ballot paper has been completed incorrectly or left blank) at state elections and increasing turnout at local elections. Generally, these targets were more specific than those contained in the Growing Victoria Together plan, although the early approach of the Rann government to enhancing political participation might best be described as cautious and technocratic. As noted earlier, the blueprint for SASP is the State of Oregon’s Plan ‘Oregon Shines’.6 Jeff Tryens, the Executive Director of the Oregon Progress Board, spent eight weeks with the Rann government assisting in SASP’s development, including the so-called consultation process. Arguably, the most crucial aspect of the 2004 plan is that it was created without any significant public consultation, a point reinforced by Jeff Tryens in an interview: ‘as a plan the first cut of SASP was pretty good; however, there was virtually no community buy-in, outside of the EDB and a few advisory boards’ (Tryens, interview with author, 28 March 2007). The first progress report on the plan was published in June 2006 by the SASP Audit Committee – and in its view, progress on meeting the targets was ‘mixed’ (SASP Audit Committee 2006, p. 3). The Audit Committee also recommended the need to improve community ownership of SASP (2006, p. 2). Consequently, a consultation process was established, with the government establishing the SASP Update Team in 2006, headed up by Jeff Tryens, to lead on the community engagement process. The Update Team comprised 26 ‘community leaders’, appointed mostly from the main external government advisory boards. The consultation process was designed by Tryens, and had four main stages. First, a series of 14 regional meetings (‘Talking Regions’) was held across the state from April to June 2006. The next stage involved a series of six meetings (‘Talking Targets’), which looked at each of the six

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themes of SASP in detail. During this time, from April to June, a series of ten community forums was held. Finally, a Community Congress was held in July to pull together the findings of the consultation. The SASP Update Team had produced a preliminary report following the main consultation, and this provided the basis for the deliberations at the Community Congress (SASP Update Team 2006b). Following the Congress, the Update Team produced a final report with all the formally agreed recommendations (SASP Update Team 2006a). The ‘Talking Regions’ consultation events were all-day meetings, and ‘invitations were sent to broad range of community leaders representing a broad cross section of the community’ (SASP Update Team 2006b, p. 7). The main agenda item was to discuss the strengths and weaknesses confronting each regional area. Attendance levels varied between 20 and 80 participants, with most meetings securing over 50 participants. These were followed by ‘community forums’, which were open to any member of the public. Overall, attendance levels at these meetings were generally very low, and indeed at one regional event, no one attended. As a result, the SASP Update Team requested that: ‘In future we recommend further consideration of how to engage more people at the “grass roots” level’ (SASP Update Team 2006b, p. 7). A range of factors may explain the poor attendance at the public forums. Attendance at public meetings tends to be low and mainly comprises those already engaged in civil society. Given that the ‘community leaders’ were already invited to the regional planning meetings held during the day, it is likely that these are the same people who would otherwise have attended a public meeting. An additional factor may relate to the perceived benefits and incentives for attending the public meetings. As noted earlier, research suggests that incentives can play a strong role in increasing levels of participation. Despite being generally well advertised, the public forums were marketed as events where the public could learn more about SASP targets, rather than have an active role in shaping its contents. Each of the six ‘Talking Targets’ held during May 2006 was structured around one of the core SASP themes, with the most relevant government agency leading the design and management of the events, often in partnership with other agencies. Attendance at these events ranged from 90 to 240 participants. The community engagement process involved a blend of different techniques, including some efforts to use web-based technologies. At the end of the consultation, the Update Team produced a preliminary report, which fed into the Community Congress held in Adelaide on 8 July 2006. This was an invitation-only event to all those who had participated in the earlier part of the consultation. There was broad



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agreement at the congress that the consultation had been useful and was seen as a positive initiative from many in the community sector. Following the congress, the Update Team organised 11 working groups to further refine the recommendations on how to improve the plan, including further community engagement. At the end of the lengthy consultation, the SASP Update Team produced a final report on revising the plan (SASP Update Team 2006b). The main recommendations included: ‘regionalising’ the plan; establishing a Community Engagement Board to continue the engagement agenda; setting an overarching vision for SASP; increasing the profile of Aboriginal issues; and making specific changes to the over 80 targets (SASP Update Team 2006b, pp. 1–2). Responsiveness and representativeness of the SASP consultation The 2006 consultation was the most wide-ranging consultation ever undertaken in South Australia and was a key instrument used by a Labor government seeking to find levels of engagement across the state. In the process, it reviewed and updated a range of targets designed to increase overall levels of civic engagement. Premier Rann deemed the consultation a success, making a number of grand claims about its impact: After nearly three years, our Strategic Plan has taken root in communities across South Australia. People from all over our state, from all walks of life, have taken part. The Plan has helped change the way South Australians see their future, and their idea of what they need to do to make a better future … We have changed the Plan to take account of the views and priorities of the thousands of South Australians we spoke to across the state. (Government of South Australia 2007, p. 2)

While assessing the consultation according to the principles of responsiveness and representativeness, this discussion also challenges the Premier’s triumphalism. The design of the consultation process shaped who participated. The main target audience comprised community sector organisations and a broadly defined group of ‘community leaders’, along with ‘interested individuals’. As Jeff Tryens notes: My focus was on engaging community leaders in shaping SASP. In many ways SASP is just too far removed from everyday life for the average person to get excited about … If additional money had been available, we would have run some focus groups on the plan, and possibly done some additional survey work. (Tryens, interview with author, 22 March 2007)

The attendance lists taken at most of the thematic and regional events indicate that a large number of government officials and public sector

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agencies fed into the process. There is also some evidence that some of the policy staff from particular government agencies were highly active in shaping the dialogue associated with specific targets.7 These policy officers were operating, in effect, as policy activists (Yeatman 1998). On the plus side, this was arguably an important development, as technical expertise is useful in ensuring that the targets are able to be measured. In addition, agencies such as the South Australian Government’s Office for Women (OfW) were active in both involving their stakeholder groups and also contributing directly to the process – in the case of the OfW, ensuring that gender-based outcomes were embedded into the plan. This proved important, given that women constituted only a third of participants at the regional events. However, this evidence of policy activism reinforces the government domination and control of the agenda. Government agencies are better resourced and in a potentially stronger lobbying position than their community sector counterparts. Of course, this is not necessarily an undesirable outcome, but this process and the levels of engagement are quite different from what Mike Rann called the ‘community consultation’. So, while women and Aboriginal groups were under-represented in the consultation process, effective lobbying from government agencies meant that additional and more demanding targets were devised in relation to gender equity and Aboriginal disadvantage. Overall, the public involvement in the consultation remains the ­weakest aspect. On the one hand, it could be argued that this is not a significant cause for concern, insofar as the relevant peak, community and voluntary organisations were invited to engage. Yet the effort to engage ‘ordinary’ South Australians was tokenistic, static and unimaginative. The government’s commitment to addressing inequality of voice was ambivalent in this respect, while its rhetoric about the success of the ‘community consultation’ masks the underlying patterns of inequality of voice and over-inflates the actual level of engagement and legitimacy of the plan. There is also further evidence that the Rann government has used consultation to dismiss and marginalise certain groups – not least in discussions over anti-terrorism measures (‘Ethnic Muslim leaders smarting from Rann’s one-sided discussions’, Independent Weekly, 30 October–5 November 2005). The principle of responsiveness helps to shape the discussion about how far the government responded to the consultation, and the degree to which ‘community’ awareness and ‘ownership’ of the plan increased. The government commissioned surveys before and after the consultation to track public awareness of its plan, with awareness rising from 15.7  per cent to 23.2 per cent (Department of Health 2006, p. 9). The survey data confirm that the largest increase in knowledge of the



Engagement at the regional level 145

plan was for South Australians aged 40–49 (Department of Health 2006, p. 10). There was also evidence that more men had heard of the plan than women, and there was also significant regional variation (Department of Health 2006, p. 11). Despite low levels of knowledge of and familiarity with the plan, nearly 90 per cent of respondents endorsed the idea of a strategic plan, with over 40 per cent of respondents reporting that they would be willing to participate in community projects that would seek to achieve its targets (Department of Health 2006, p. 37). As noted in Chapter 4, caution should be exercised here, as respondents often over-report their keenness in order to meet ideals of being a ‘good citizen’. Moreover, most respondents considered that local and state governments were the main agents responsible for the plan, despite government attempts to spread ownership. By 2010, the findings from the government’s household survey suggest that about 30 per cent of South Australians had heard of SASP. There is also evidence of a shift in levels of a­ wareness and engagement from the South Australian ‘third’ sector. Initially, ­community and voluntary groups were taking a ‘wait and see’ approach (SASP Update Team 2006b, p. 3). Their initial scepticism reflects the fact that the original 2004 plan was drawn up without direct public involvement. By the end of the consultation, the government reported much greater community ownership (SASP Update Team 2006a, p. 2). During the consultation process, the SASP Update Team was keen to promote it as a bi-partisan agenda. The former National Party MP and elder statesmen of South Australian politics, Peter Blacker, was instrumental in selling the strategic plan agenda at the regional meetings in locations from which Labor does not traditionally garner much electoral support. Blacker saw SASP as an opportunity for regionally based South Australians: My initial gut reaction was that is a government initiative but I changed my mind very quickly ... The Premier was pretty generous in doing this ... [consulting on the Plan]. (Blacker, interview with author, 28 March 2007)

Blacker was highly energetic and active in the regional consultations, especially by inviting along local community leaders. The final recommendation to ‘regionalise’ the plan by producing a series of regional sub-plans is largely due to his efforts. Blacker went on to chair the SASP Community Engagement Board. In terms of responsiveness, the main tangible outcome from the consultation was that the plan was updated and revised, with the new version launched on 25 January 2007. The revised SASP includes an appendix which details all the original targets and revisions along with

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the additional targets. Significantly, the updated version of SASP contains 98 targets, an increase of 14 from the 2004 plan. Overall, only eight of the original targets were unchanged, although the vast bulk of changes were relatively minor – often making the existing target more precise or measurable. These new recommendations can be clearly tracked back through the two main community engagement reports produced by the SASP Update Team – and they closely correlate with the overall feedback garnered during the exercise. The South Australian Government’s control of the agenda largely replicated the ‘consultation diamond’ suggested by Althaus, Bridgman and Davis (2007, p. 105), where control was most heavily asserted at the outset and in shaping the final recommendations. Tanya Smith, former Deputy Chief Executive of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, who played an important role in the consultation, offers a key insight into the government’s role in designing the consultation: Advocates of community engagement need to acknowledge that to some extent the wider public are empty vessels. How questions are asked does shape the recommendations that emerge.  For example, talking about priority concerns in an open-ended way produces a different response to a question about ‘targets’ or ‘goals’. (Smith, interview with author, 28 March 2007)

This is an interesting insight, with clear parallels with Roy Hattersley’s critique of the Big Conversation (see Chapter 6). To some extent, there were tensions about how far the state government wanted to relinquish control of the SASP agenda. On the whole, there was a high degree of transparency in the consultation process, but according to one insider, the decision to publish the final appendix (outlining all the changes) was highly controversial, and did not initially have unanimous agreement. From the outset of the process, there was a clear signal by the Rann government that this consultation was the beginning of a wider attempt to open up dialogue with the broader community (SASP Update Team 2006a, p. 5). The degree to which this has changed is an open question, although it is perhaps telling that Jeff Tryens reports: My biggest disappointment is that the process has not brought about greater change in the hearts and minds of state officials about the benefits of working with the community. (Tryens, interview with author, 22 March 2007)

SASP targets and civic engagement In this section, the SASP targets that relate to civic engagement are considered. Like the GVT there was a focus on enhancing overall



Engagement at the regional level 147

levels of participation. During the 2006 consultation, very minimal discussion was undertaken about the targets relating to civic engagement. However, the participation targets were directly addressed at the Talking Targets meeting held on 25 May 2006. The Update Team noted that the participants at this meeting demonstrated support for targets which could better capture the desire to build and measure social capital, community capacity and/or democratic participation. For example, the target on informal voting was not considered a particularly good indicator of quality of political participation. (SASP Update Team 2006b, p. 27)

In common with other cases in this book, there seems a general desire for democratic renewal, although unfortunately accompanied by few specific recommendations. The SASP Update Team (2006b, p. 27) noted that many of the participants argued that the emphasis on civic engagement should be more than ‘just representation through formal political processes’. The revised SASP launched in 2007 shows the progress made in some of the civic engagement and participation targets. There are three specific targets relating to increasing the number of women in leadership roles (such as increasing representation on government boards). It is striking that there was ‘progress’ in meeting the targets, but that they are ‘unlikely’ to be met. There are two specific political participation targets. The first related to reducing the number of informal votes at state elections. Little or no progress was made in meeting this target and it was replaced by what was considered a more appropriate target – increasing first-time voter registrations. The second target aimed to improve voter turnout at local elections, but there was no evidence of any real progress in meeting this target. An additional target related to increasing volunteering rates, and one insider commented that the initial target had been revised because it had initially been set too low. Overall, progress on this agenda is mixed. As a result of the 2006 consultation, additional targets were introduced. Targets relating to Aboriginal leadership and multiculturalism were added, along with a supplementary measure recording the number of people who were engaged in the local community (SASP Update Team 2006a). Interestingly, the Rann government did consider including a specific target about ‘participation in civil society and democratic processes’, but this was ultimately rejected (SASP Update Team 2006a, p. 72). This reinforces the difficulty in devising specific targets or mechanisms for democratic renewal. Participants at the consultation clearly indicated

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some interest in devising such a target, but the government could not find one that was suitable. Since the consultation, and following the Victorian Labor Government’s example, the Rann government has commissioned a survey of ‘Indicators of Community Strength’ for the state (Starr, Rogers and Hirte 2007), a report that confirms the overall patterns of inequality of participation. It is striking that in Burnside (one of the most affluent areas), over 80 per cent of parents report being ‘actively’ involved in their children’s school, compared with just over 50 per cent of respondents based in Port Adelaide (one of the poorest areas). Volunteering and other indicators are almost twice as high in the more affluent areas. The government has monitored some aspects of civic engagement in its household surveys; for example, the 2010 survey reinforces a picture of regional variation in levels of local community engagement (SA Health 2010). However, beyond some research and monitoring, no direct action has been taken by the state government to address inequality of voice and engagement. In both representativeness and responsiveness, there are aspects of the 2006 consultation which the government views as a success. Yet to label this a ‘community consultation’ is a misnomer. In 2010, the government repeated the consultation, producing a third iteration of SASP. In many respects, the 2010 consultation reached even more South Australians – it is claimed over 9,000 – and crucially there seemed to be direct engagement with some marginalised groups. However, the aims of the 2010 consultation were perhaps even more generic, in that South Australians were canvassed in rather broad terms about their vision for the state. The 2006 consultation was perhaps a missed opportunity: inequality of voice was not a high priority and the effort to engage with people from lower socioeconomic groups was minimal and unimaginative. The focus on reaching large numbers of people came at the expense of attending to the persistent levels of inequality of civic engagement. Both the GVT and SASP cases show Australian Labor states engaged in the process of ‘strategic’ government and in both there was a clear effort to find new ways of engaging with the public. Yet, in both instances, the overall impact on democratic renewal is ‘thin’. As considered in the final chapter, a worrying dimension is that the move to the enhancement of overall levels of engagement seems to be marked by a weakening attachment to tackling inequality of participation in any meaningful way. These were both ‘big picture’ initiatives, seemingly engaging more people than ever before and yet, beyond some rather overly enthusiastic hyperbole, the search for democratic renewal was tentative, and at times lacklustre.



Engagement at the regional level 149 Notes

1 Interestingly, the use of Community Cabinets has received wide support across Australian Labor (See McCann 2012). Former ALP party leader Mark Latham is a noted enthusiast (‘Community Cabinets are a worthwhile ­exercise’, The Age, 22 January 2008). In the era of Labor’s ‘strategic government’, they were first adopted at a state level by the Queensland Labor Premier Peter Beattie. While Beattie is not a noted ‘policy entrepreneur’ (Wanna and Williams 2005, p. 71), at that time Glyn Davis, now Vice Chancellor of Melbourne University, was working for Beattie and assisted in rolling out the programme. Community Cabinets have since been adopted by other Australian states including South Australia. On election in 2007, Kevin Rudd rolled out a programme of federal Community Cabinets. As noted elsewhere, Geoff Mulgan unsuccessfully tried to get Tony Blair to run them in Britain, and Gordon Brown subsequently adopted the idea near the end of his period as PM. 2 This suggestion was made to the author by a public servant in the South Australian government, and was made under the condition of anonymity. 3 The comments and observations on the role of VEESAC in this section are drawn from five interviews with public servants in February and March 2009, under the condition of anonymity. 4 In recent years, a number of Labor governments have begun measuring civic and community engagement on similar indices. New South Wales was the first Australian state to develop a pilot project and it has been followed by other states including South Australia (Salvaris et al. 2000). There are also similarities with New Labour’s citizenship survey, which was run from the Home Office. 5 The DVC was later renamed the Department for Planning and Community Development (2009). 6 A number of other potential models were considered for SASP, before the Oregon model was chosen. According to one senior South Australian public servant, the Tasmanian and Victorian models were also considered but ultimately rejected (Anon., interview with author, 15 March 2007). Unlike Tasmania, the South Australians preferred to have a government-driven rather than community-driven initiative. The Victorian GVT plan was also rejected as it was considered that the targets were too generic. 7 This observation was made by a participant at several of the planning events, under the condition of anonymity (Anon., interview with author, 15 March 2007).

8

Beyond the glittering facade

Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better. Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho, 1983

The New Social Democracy and democratic renewal Centre-left politics, as ever, is undergoing change and renewal. The New Social Democracy is perhaps the most coherent attempt to reinvigorate and modernise social democratic politics in recent times. As outlined in Chapter 2, what was originally termed the Third Way has evolved into a wider set of ideas that have been adopted, to varying degrees, by Labour governments in Britain and Australia. To some extent, the origins of the NSD lie with the Hawke–Keating Labor governments from 1983 to 1996 (O’Reilly 2007), although the British New Labour government is arguably the purest form of the NSD in action (Callinicos 2001; Fitzpatrick 2003). The Labor state governments in Australia, along with the Rudd–Gillard federal Labor governments, have adopted elements of the NSD. A central theme of the NSD is what Giddens (2000, p. 61) calls the ‘democratising of democracy’. NSD-influenced Labour governments seek to reinvigorate the relationship between the state and civil society. Inherent in the process of the democratising of democracy is a call for ‘experiments with democracy’. There is a strong demand for new forms of exchange between the state and the citizenry to supplement the ­existing apparatus of representative democracy. A significant driver for the call for democratic renewal is connected to the changing structural patterns of political participation in a number of advanced industrial societies, including Britain and Australia. In response to these underpinning structural changes and in attempts to cultivate a form of active citizenry, proponents of the NSD argue for experiments with ­democracy, which include citizens’ juries, local referenda and the use of more ­deliberative methods of engagement.



Beyond the glittering facade 151

We have seen that experimenting with democracy by i­ntroducing new consultative and dialogic mechanisms can create new sets of complexities. There are underlying tensions inherent in the call for the democratising of democracy, not least the difficulties associated with linking them to existing representative structures and a narrow focus on ‘representation’ (Newman and Clarke 2009). What is clear is that some of these issues are not resolved merely by changing the mode of dialogue and consultation. Despite these difficulties, Labour governments have shown a genuine willingness to innovate and create new forms of consultation. The cases examined in this book are only a few examples among many diverse attempts to reconnect with the citizenry. For New Labour this has been evident in its programme to ‘modernise’ public services and in its efforts towards constitutional reforms. Gordon Brown’s Governance of Britain White Paper sought to breathe new life into this agenda.1 In Australia, the various state governments have been leading the charge in this respect. ‘Tasmania Together’, Western Australia’s ‘Dialogue with the City’ and the growing use of Community Cabinets are all prominent examples of attempts to reconnect with civil society (Carson 2001; Wiseman 2004). Kevin Rudd’s Labor government achieved a significant amount of public (and other) engagement with the 2020 Summit. In different ways, these Labor governments are searching for a more dialogic and citizen-centred form of policy-making. This concluding chapter reflects more broadly on Labour’s agenda for democratic renewal. In doing so, it revisits the central questions posed by this book. Why has Labour been so active on this agenda? How far have these initiatives been able to herald a more dialogic era of governance? What are the tensions and competing aims at the heart of many of these initiatives? These questions are addressed in the following way. First, the case studies are compared, focusing on the principles of representativeness and responsiveness (Pratchett 1999). Second, the themes and issues common to the case studies that fall outside this framework are considered. Third, the emergence of the ‘Big Society’ agenda and its links with Labour’s approach to democratic renewal are examined, the Big Society being the flagship policy agenda of David Cameron’s Conservative Coalition government in the UK, by which localism and civic engagement are to be reinvigorated. The Big Society is partly inspired by the work of Phillip Blond, who has recently been promoting this agenda in Australia. As explored below, while governments of all hues have shown an interest in finding new mechanisms to enhance the citizen ‘voice’, in Australia and Britain this has largely been an agenda driven by Labour. The Big Society agenda is an attempt

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The search for democratic renewal

to reorient centre-right politics onto the same terrain. The emergence of the Big Society offers some penetrating insights into the limits of the NSD’s call for democratic renewal. Finally, the book reflects on the potential future direction for the democratic renewal agenda in Britain and Australia. Comparing the cases As outlined in Chapter 3, the two main criteria for evaluating the case studies are the Beetham–Pratchett principles of representativeness and responsiveness (Pratchett 1999). Responsiveness is derived from the concept of popular control, while representativeness derives from the notion of political equality. Pratchett (1999) adopts these two principles as an auditing tool for examining new ‘fashions’ in engagement. Table 8.1 summaries the comparison between the case studies, using these two main principles, along with a number of other criteria considered later in this chapter. Responsiveness What impact did these initiatives have on policy? First, a cautionary note: consultation, by definition, is not decision-making (Catt and Murphy 2003). Seeking a direct causal impact on policy might well be a quest destined to fail. More often consultation only works to better inform the decision-makers, a view reinforced by New Labour minister Jack Cunningham about the People’s Panel (Cunningham 1999). Yet, examining the link between consultation and decision-making is important as it indicates the degree to which there is a genuine commitment to engage and seek input. As outlined in Chapter 3, it is worth noting too that the degree of civic engagement and input can vary, even between different government-run consultations. For example, the International Association for Public Participation (IAP2) uses a ‘spectrum’ of engagement. The issue here is that unless a consultative mechanism has a clearly binding link with policy output, it is difficult to accurately ­measure and gauge the influence of the participants. In all five cases, there was some clear evidence that the consultations had some impact on government decision-making processes. For the People’s Panel, this was more evident at the micro level than at the macro level. Similarly, the Big Conversation provided useful background ‘noise’ to the formation of the Labour Party’s 2005 manifesto. The impact was greatest where the feedback from the consultations made specific, limited and technocratic recommendations. This was

Highly. Evidence of attrition.

Mixed. Targeted at Labour members and the wider ‘interested’ public.

New Labour: People’s Panel 1998–02

New Labour: Big Conversation 2003–05

Representative?

This process informed the content of the internal working document for drafting the manifesto, but impact on specific policy was minimal.

Yes, at the microlevel, but not at the macro-level.

Responsive?

Mixed. Set broad parameters for thematic discussions, but some topics – such as Iraq – were off limits. In other areas there was a willingness for participants to lead the agenda.

Yes. Panel members were passive recipients of government-set questions.

Governmentdominated agenda? Innovative?

Moderately. Citizens’ panels are not new mechanisms for consultation, but this was the first time one was used by a national government. Not much, although Improved on highly discursive ‘Labour Listens’. features in more Use of the internet informal public for comments was sessions. an early attempt at e-government. The regional meetings were not particularly innovative in format.

No. Some panel members were selected for some focus group work.

Deliberative?

Table 8.1: The five case studies in comparison

Mostly. The 2020 Summit had its origins in earlier models, but it had some innovative features in scope and design. No, although it was a highly discursive interchange, but hampered by tight time limits. Mostly not. Government set the broad areas; participants gave concrete proposals; and government decided on the final ideas.

Mixed. Clear impact on a small number of policies. Democratic renewal response was rather weak.

Mixed. Elite exercise, but participants broadly reflected some demographic characteristics at the summit.

Australia: 2020 Summit 2008

Wide-ranging, and to some extent, a new approach for South Australia. However, it reapplied some traditional formats, such as poorly attended public meetings. Not much highquality deliberation, although some evidence in working parties on targets.

Government did not seek a radical overhaul of the plan. Many amendments were minor, often technical changes, although new targets were included.

Yes, within strict limits. A highly transparent process in many respects.

Targeted at key stakeholders and ‘community leaders’. Some groups overrepresented regions; others were underrepresented, for example, women. Poor public response.

South Australia: Consultation on South Australia’s Strategic Plan (SASP) 2006

Not really. It was a reformulated version of Hawke’s Accord Summits.

Not to any high standard, more ‘positioning’ of key actors.

Mixed. Government set the agenda, but there were clear outlets for participants to highlight issues.

Mixed. Government forged some consensus for the GVT plan.

Targeted at main stakeholders, opinion formers and interest groups in the Victorian community.

Victoria: Growing Victoria Together (GVT) Summit 2000

Innovative?

Governmentdominated agenda? Deliberative?

Responsive?

Representative?

Table 8.1  (Continued)



Beyond the glittering facade 155

particularly apparent in the cases of SASP and the 2020 Summit. At this level, most of the cases can be considered successful. An additional feature of government responsiveness relates to the issue of transparency. Among the case studies, there were a small number of commendable examples of a commitment to openness and transparency. The appendix to the revised SASP is one example, where a clear rationale was given for all of the changes to the over 80 targets. The quick turnaround of the initial report of the outcomes of the 2020 Summit was a good measure in building confidence, and like SASP, the government response document at least attempted to respond to all 946  ideas. The research reports from the People’s Panel were made publicly available through the Cabinet Office website. However, ­transparency was a far less prominent feature of the other cases, in which the commitment to transparency was short-lived. For example, there was some despondency because the openness in the SASP c­ onsultation did not lead to a wider ‘culture change’ of greater t­ransparency across the South Australian public service. However, these positive features from the cases risk a more complex picture being obscured, since a number of underpinning themes complicate the evaluation. First, a central question is: how closely were the consultations linked to existing decision-making structures? Here, the picture is mixed. Arguably, the People’s Panel is the case which was most removed from decision-making processes. Ultimately, the panel was abolished because it lacked widespread support, both within Blair’s Cabinet and across the public sector. The GVT Summit was not designed to link closely with the decision-making functions in any explicit way, but arguably it served a legitimising function for the broad policy agenda already initiated by then Premier Bracks. SASP and the 2020 Summit were more closely linked to the decision-making processes, and this is perhaps indicated by the fact that these are the cases with the highest degrees of transparency. Second, a number of the cases of consultation were attempts at ­ consensus-building, particularly the Big Conversation, SASP and the 2020 Summit. Ideas and suggestions that had broad support, ­particularly where they dovetailed with Labour political goals, were much more likely to succeed. This focus on consensus carries hidden risks. Activist or radical counter-politics can be managed out of the process (Newman and Clarke 2009; Young 2003), while problematic agendas can be sidelined during the process. For example, in the view of the South Australian Council of Social Service (SACOSS), the peak ­community sector body in South Australia, the consultation on SASP marginalised calls for a stronger focus on poverty. Despite Rudd’s

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claims that he wished the 2020 Summit to be non-partisan, consensus ideas were likely to get more traction. The abolition of the People’s Panel was the clearest example of the degree to which New Labour was prepared to receive negative feedback. The third feature of a number of the consultations was the blending of promotional, educational and consultative aims. In some cases, this blending took on an overly political focus. The Big Conversation was designed, in part, to shift the national debate away from the Blair government’s deployment of troops in the invasion of Iraq. Moreover, the Big Conversation was an exercise in downplaying public expectations of what an NSD government could achieve, while also teaching the public about the tough grind of politics – or to use Weber’s famous phrase – ‘the strong and slow boring of hard boards’ (Weber 1967, p. 128). This promotional aspect was also apparent in a number of the other cases. The South Australian case is illuminating in this respect – where there was a significant disparity between the funding for a broad-based public awareness campaign and the much more limited funds allocated for the consultation itself. The public awareness campaign cost between $700,000 and $1m, and to a large degree, it was a promotional device for the Rann government (as well as the state plan). A lack of funds was cited as one of the reasons why the state government did not engage in a more ‘grassroots’ campaign. At some of the public events during the SASP consultation, public engagement and feedback were blended with efforts to promote the South Australian Government’s activities. Likewise, Crowley and Coffey (2007) see the GVT Summit as serving a highly politicised function, not least as a vehicle for pushing (former) Premier Bracks onto the national stage. The key issue is that the political rhetoric used by Labour governments often tends to inflate the achievements of these limited exercises in consultation, suggesting that they achieved a much richer form of community engagement and support than the evidence indicates. Consultation is confused with deeper community engagement, and this has the effect of hiding the often multiple and conflicting processes taking place. Consultation is fused with education, political legitimacy and promotion. The interplay of these processes has the effect of limiting the impact on policy-making. As Stewart (2009, p. 18) notes, the political purposes of consultation are not often ‘brought out into the open’. The paradox at the heart of a number of these consultative experiments is that they were often marketed as non-partisan, consensus-building affairs, but they were designed to help sustain and promote the new social democracy. These were ‘political’ forms of democratic experimentation, not necessarily to secure electoral gains, or even achieve rich



Beyond the glittering facade 157

forms of consultation, but rather to begin reconfiguring the relationship between state and citizen around a ‘new’ social democratic political ­settlement. Representativeness As argued in Chapter 4, inequality of voice remains a consistent and enduring feature of politics in advanced industrial societies (Pattie, Seyd and Whiteley 2004; Verba, Scholzman and Brady 1995). Groups from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are far less likely to participate and engage than people from higher socioeconomic groups. A comparison of the case studies enables an indication of how far the Labour governments recognised inequality of voice as a policy priority and the steps they took to address this issue. Not only is representativeness a complex concept, but even when it has been identified as a high policy priority, it remains an elusive goal (Barnes, Sullivan and Newman 2009). The fate of the People’s Panel is instructive. This is the only one of the case studies which actively sought to engage a broadly representative sample of the British population. Yet the panel suffered from high levels of attrition (whereby panel members from lower socioeconomic groups increasingly dropped out) and there is some evidence of conditioning (whereby panel members were becoming decreasingly representative of the wider public by the very fact of their involvement in the panel). So, even the case which ‘scores’ highest in representativeness is found wanting. The other four cases did not embed equality of voice as a high priority in their overall aims. The target groups in these cases tended to be those who were already engaged in the policy process, or members of the public who were most able and keen to engage. The South Australian example is typical. The 2006 consultation on South Australia’s Strategic Plan was targeted to key interest groups in the state, along with a loosely defined group of ‘community leaders’. The engagement of the public was minimal, with one public event notably scoring a nil attendance. That said, the consultation still engaged over 1,600 South Australians – not an unimpressive feat. Likewise, the ‘Growing Victoria Together’ Summit and the 2020 Summit were, in effect, elite events. As David Burchell reminds us, the spectre of Michael Young’s satire Rise of the Meritocracy (1958) haunts the 2020 Summit. There are, of course, sound policy (and political) reasons for engaging those people who are already engaged (Skidmore 2006). Yet when the case studies are considered in light of their innovation, they are found wanting. The methods and incentives adopted to attract people who

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might not traditionally engage in such events (particularly in the SASP and Big Conversation cases) were not particularly inspiring or innovative. The barriers that people from lower socioeconomic groups face were not adequately addressed. In the case of SASP, the public forums were almost an afterthought, without any real attempt to consider and develop forms of engagement better suited to the needs of people from disadvantaged groups. There are a number of risks and unstated problems associated with the relatively low priority placed on addressing inequality of voice. First, there is the danger that political elites and public officials can become convinced that the public are uninterested in what might be seen as esoteric debates and consultations. Without concerted efforts to engage with people from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, a mutually reinforcing gap between policy-makers and citizens can be created. The NSD champions different forms of co-production and governance, but these policy agendas are ‘top-down’, not citizen-driven. NSD governments may well be pursuing (perhaps diluted) social justice agendas, but in their ‘big picture’ consultations, they are not making clear efforts to engage with those groups most likely to be affected. For Labour governments, where the link with the working classes is weakening, these consultative practices actually do very little to re-establish direct links with the most disadvantaged groups. Second, the incentives for people from lower socioeconomic groups to participate need to be reconsidered. If ‘publics’ are conceived as multidimensional and heterogeneous groups of individuals and collectives, then it follows that a diversity of means of attracting their ­participation is needed. Traditional methods such as public meetings have failed to achieve a greater equality of voice and tend to exclude people from lower socioeconomic groups (Newman 2001). Third, the risk is that expert forms of knowledge become privileged. For example, there was a concern raised that the GVT Summit ­displaced more local and anecdotal forms of knowledge. An interesting feature of the 2020 Summit was that – apparently – the few ‘ordinary’ ­participants in each stream struggled to engage with the policy debates. This remains something of an unresolved tension in the NSD thinking for democratic renewal. The democratising of democracy, at least in the case studies considered here, aims to cultivate an activated and ­ ‘responsibilised’ citizen, but it privileges the use of experts as intermediaries in the connection between the state and civil society (Clarke 2005, p. 463). The consultations considered in this book seem to offer little progress towards establishing stronger links and forms of dialogue between the policy community and the wider public.2



Beyond the glittering facade 159

These problems are evident in other attempts at consultation by Labour governments. The increasing use of Community Cabinets, both in Britain and Australia, is instructive. They are generally considered a worthwhile endeavour by government, but the issue of inequality of voice is given very little attention. The problem is masked by some of the rather grand, rhetorical claims made by the various Labour governments about the extent to which the community is engaged in these mechanisms. By not placing a higher value on addressing inequality of voice, these consultation efforts do very little to tackle entrenched existing inequalities. Institutionalising and sustaining the consultation A key theme which connects all of the case studies is the i­nherent difficulty in institutionalising forms of consultation and community engagement, and then sustaining dialogue with civil society. A ­striking case is the Victorian Economic Environmental and Social Advisory Council, which was established following the GVT Summit but ­ disbanded a year later. In South Australia, the Rann government set up the Community Engagement Board (CEB) to continue the dialogue with South Australians, utilising ‘alliance partners’ – loose partnership arrangements with an array of non-governmental organisations (NGOs). Yet the CEB comprises chairs of other government boards, and in reality it could not be said to be grounded within wider South Australian civil society. It is not ‘community-owned’. (This compares starkly with the Tasmania Together process, where the leadership was much more embedded in the local community.) Both Blair, during the Big Conversation, and Rudd, at the outset of the 2020 Summit, claimed that they wanted their national debates to continue. In neither case did this occur. For Blair, new policy p ­ riorities ­displaced much of the Big Conversation’s agenda. For Rudd, the one-year anniversary of the summit passed by mostly unremarked. Ultimately, the global financial crisis displaced much of the momentum generated by the 2020 Summit. The People’s Panel was a relatively short-lived institution, which lacked wider legitimacy and staying power. With the exception of the People’s Panel, a key element of the other cases of consultation was to seek ways to institutionalise or set targets for political participation. In all cases, the imperative to address ­political disenchantment (and a number of issues outlined in Chapter 4) was seen as a policy priority, along with the need to find new mechanisms to invigorate the relationship between the state and civil society. In all cases, the responses were rather weak and timid. The 2020 Summit response document is perhaps something of a ‘damp squib’ in its

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g­ overnance section. With a reliance on Community Cabinets, the Rudd– Gillard governments took a ‘wait and see’ approach to democratic ­innovation. The Victorian and South Australian Labor governments limited their activities to the measurement of indicators of community strength, rather than proceeding with more experimental or deeper forms of engagement. The key issue is that both institutionalising and sustaining momentum from these consultations is inherently difficult. Many of these consultations were forged – to borrow a phrase from former Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson – in the ‘white heat’ of the policy environment. More often than not, policy is developed and implemented at high speed to link in with short-term political aims. The architect of the Big Conversation, Matthew Taylor, recalled his surprise when Blair announced the national debate at Labour’s annual conference. Likewise, the 2020 Summit was developed quickly and without a clear model to guide the organisers. In part this explains why a number of the cases of consultation were not fully considered and could not be described as full democratic experiments. In this respect they conform very much to policy as a process of ‘structured interaction’, or Lindbolm’s ‘muddling through’ than more rational accounts of policy-making (Maddison and Denniss 2009, p. 6). It is tempting for academics to lament the inability of policy-makers to fully work through initiatives from clearer guiding principles – such as the Beetham–Pratchett auditing framework applied in this book. However, this ignores a reality of policy development: policy is ­expedient, is often done ‘on the run’, at high speed and without full consideration of its impacts. The difficulty is that, without attending to issues such as inequality of voice, new ‘innovative’ consultations are likely to continue to replicate the same problems. Consultations as deliberation None of the case studies sought to be formal exercises in deliberative democracy. Therefore, to criticise them for failing to meet standards of deliberation is unfair. However, deliberation is a useful prism for examining the discursive practices across the cases. This links to the earlier debates outlined in Chapter 3 about the political public sphere. In all the cases, we see Labour governments seeking to create new spaces for public or elite debate and discussion. A general theme is that, at their best, some of the cases facilitated meaningful discussion, but not deliberation (to the standard of an exercise in deliberative democracy). The Big Conversation, particularly the regional meetings with smaller groups, did feature a good deal of



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authentic discussion and debate, which stands in stark contrast to the rather woeful ‘Labour Listens’ event that was attempted in the 1980s in the UK. However, a concern is that discussion was between participants rather than with policy-makers; at times, the Big Conversation was between participants but not always with New Labour. To some extent, this enabled New Labour to neutralise and manage potentially difficult discussions and deflect responsibility away from itself. The SASP working parties that formulated the final recommendations from the consultation were highly discursive. Comprised of both public servants and non-government stakeholders and having a specific focus, these small groups did facilitate a degree of deliberative activity. Similarly, the smaller group discussions and the final stream discussions at the 2020 Summit apparently featured some deliberation. However, the extremely tight deadline at the 2020 Summit was a severe constraint on its being a fully deliberative experiment. Some of these cases offered promising examples of discussion and limited deliberation. However, none of them was fully discursive, and the risk is that, where such limited discursive mechanisms are used, it is easier to control and marginalise activist or contrary agendas. These consultations suggest a two-way exchange between government and citizenry, but in reality, aspects of the case studies represented one-way mechanisms for input. Feedback to participants was limited and in many cases was non-existent. Overall, Labour’s attempts to rebuild and strengthen the political public sphere were rather weak. These were fleeting initiatives which left very little in the way of a lasting legacy. The 2020 Summit seemed to be the high point of the Rudd–Gillard governments’ attempts to seek new mechanisms for voice and debate. In part, this reflects ambivalence about the value of such efforts. As we saw with the People’s Panel, there was very mixed support for such a venture. The democratising of democracy has a number of highly vocal and influential supporters, but this does not necessarily translate into much wider support across the labour movement. As explored in Chapter 3, R.H. Tawney noted that there are plenty in the labour movement who remain happy to preserve a passive as opposed to an active democracy. The broader political aims of the attempts at democratic experimentation often worked to undermine the efforts to extend the public sphere as a site for rational–critical debate. The issue is that while there were sometimes crude efforts to regulate the flow of communication (such as heavy-handed moderation of discussion boards), the fusing of promotional and educational, as well as ‘listening’, ends served to neuter the public space. How this agenda unfolds in the future is an open question,

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particularly with the growing use of social media and ICT to foster engagement. From the perspective of public policy practitioners, then, there are always lessons to highlight where deliberative consultation can be more successful, or edge closer towards the ideal of the public sphere (e.g. Åström and Grönlund 2011). Yet the ongoing effort to improve consultation and democratic innovation sits alongside the political project of the advocates of the NSD seeking to find ways of creating ‘active citizens’. For the centre-left, there are political benefits in creating highly individuated persons and seeking to capture and co-opt their voices in new ‘innovations’. The focus on ‘active citizens’, rather than traditional interest groups, can have the effect of diluting political criticism of the NSD agenda. The political public sphere becomes further diminished where the push to create large-scale, individuated consultative mechanisms ­co-exists alongside cruder mechanisms; such as the use of gagging clauses in the contracting out of services to the third sector in order to politically neuter their advocacy work. In this sense, the NSD agenda does not place the ideal of the public sphere centrally into its political agenda. As noted elsewhere, particularly in the literature on e­ -democracy (see Papacharissi 2009), the focus is moving beyond the ideal of the public sphere and toward the ‘affective’ turn – the politics of everyday emotions. Here we might envisage a future where the centre-left might foster forms of ‘clicktivism’, but safe in the knowledge that the NSD can remain embedded and accommodated within neoliberal settings. This is not to say that many on the centre-left do not seek broader or even more ‘authentic’ forms of engagement, but NSD benefits politically from a more shallow form of democracy, or at least a highly individuated one characterised by ‘narcissistic’ forms of civility (Papacharissi 2009). Ultimately, the NSD effort at democratic renewal is an attempt to reconfigure a social and political movement built upon collectivist ideals to accommodate a world characterised by a more reflexive and individuated citizenry. In this sense, the NSD signifies the shifting away of the centre-left both from securing greater ‘equality of voice’, but also abandoning hopes for new forms of collective action. At best, it seems like a failure of imagination to build new collective identities in the ­so-called ‘information age’. At worst, it operated sophisticated forms of social control through the effort to create ‘active citizens’. The faltering democratic renewal agenda Geoff Mulgan, former Head of the No. 10 Strategy Unit, describes the Big Conversation as



Beyond the glittering facade 163 an oddly mixed sort of experience, quite good in many ways in terms of conception; problematic in execution … symbolising, in some ways the more controlling ‘spin’ era of politics, rather than a more open dialogic one. So, I think it was very much a transitional device rather than being a kind of end-point. (Mulgan, interview with author, 5 December 2007)

The motif of this case as a transitional device is a powerful one, and in many respects it is tempting to apply this label to all of the case studies in this book. It is accurate to see all of these ‘big picture’ consultations as part of the process of achieving a more dialogic government. However, the label of transitional device implies a path-dependent, and perhaps inevitable, movement towards a more dialogic politics. This view casts the cases in this book as bold experiments, albeit with significant flaws. In this view, the Labour governments are continuing to experiment in democracy, and in Beckett’s words, ‘fail better’. However, for a number of reasons, the progress of the democratising of democracy agenda in Britain and Australia is stalling. By 2010, the New Labour project was exhausted, and indeed New Labour’s attempts to use democratic renewal as a source of policy inspiration made little impact on its electoral fortunes. On 1 June 2009, then Prime Minister Gordon Brown established a National Council of Democratic Renewal, which was, in effect, a Cabinet sub-committee (‘Gordon Brown launches council of ministers to try and restore trust’, The Guardian, 2 June 2009). Yet, while the new council was modestly welcomed, it was a last desperate throw of the dice, being another ‘top-down’ response to these issues and detached from civil society groups, such as the Joseph Rowntreesponsored Power Inquiry or the ‘Open Democracy’ organisation, both of which were keen to re-activate this agenda. Giddens’s verdict on New Labour’s democratic renewal agenda is telling: ‘I don’t think New Labour did an awful lot, I mean I got a lot more from other experiments in other countries’ (Giddens, interview with author, 10 December 2007). In Australia, the wave is turning against Labor. At the state level, since the highpoint of the early to mid-2000s, Labor has steadily been thrown out of office in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia, and in 2012, the Northern Territory. The Bracks GVT agenda ended before Labor lost the election, with Bracks’s successor John Brumby showing less interest in this agenda. Perhaps South Australia might remain the exception to some extent. Earlier than he wished, Mike Rann was deposed as South Australian Premier and was succeeded by Jay Weatherill. Weatherill is keen to make consultation and discussion a hallmark of his government. Indeed, he argues that his government is moving away from Rann’s ‘announce

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and defend’ approach to politics and placing a stronger emphasis on ‘discuss and decide’ (The Australian, 9 August 2011; Weatherill 2011). Weatherill made a commitment to ‘renew our community’s role in our democracy and decision making’. Yet despite this rhetorical commitment there has not yet been an attendant policy response, in comparison with the efforts made by enthusiasts such as Peter Beattie or Geoff Gallop for this mode of politics. Likewise, while Weatherill puts a focus on ‘inclusion’, if and how his government seeks to redress inequality of participation is a more open question. In March 2014, the ALP unxpectedly won the SA state election. However, it remains unclear how far its commitment to democratic renewal will continue. At the federal level in Australia, the agenda has come to an end with the fall of the Rudd–Gillard governments in 2013. The 2020 Summit is the most prominent example of its efforts to remake Australian democarcy, with, at the time, a great deal of personal investment by former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. With Rudd quickly despatched as a leader in the run-up to the 2010 election, the Gillard government showed some continuity with the agenda for democratic renewal, but even less enthusiasm than the Rudd government. Rudd adopted a ‘wait and see’ approach to democratic renewal, perhaps best exemplified in the 2020 Summit response document. These were cautious, pragmatic, fiscally conservative Labor governments that seemingly wanted to strengthen what Tony Blair called the ‘democratic impulse’, but with a very limited desire for experimentation. While the Gillard government continued with Community Cabinets, it marginalised other issues such as the question of an Australian republic. Perhaps even more damaging is that Gillard used the democratic renewal agenda in instrumental ways. In the run-up to the 2010 election, Labor was damaged by its inability to pass the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS), an emissions trading scheme (‘Gillard seeks citizens’ group on ETS policy’, Sydney Morning Herald, 23 June 2010). Gillard attempted to shelve the issue by instituting a citizens’ assembly to debate the merits of an ETS and wider climate change issues. The proposal was condemned in the media as a rather crude approach to politically reframing an issue which had damaged Labor’s credibility. Labor’s call for a citizens’ assembly was not seen as a genuine effort to engage the public, or sections of it; rather, it was perceived as a cynical political fudge to fix a damaging electoral problem. As explored earlier, this lacks what Dryzek (1996) calls authenticity. Unfortunately, acts like these do very little to instil wider confidence in the utility and merits of experiments in democracy. In both the UK and Australia, Labour’s opportunity for further democratic experimentation has come to an end.



Beyond the glittering facade 165 From the New Social Democracy to the Big Society

If the NSD is in retreat in the UK and Australia, then at the time of writing, the centre-right is resurgent. In the UK, the 2010 general election brought a formal end to the New Labour era. The hung parliament delivered a coalition government, with David Cameron’s Conservative party achieving office with assistance from Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats. In 2009, prior to the election, David Cameron had introduced his concept of the Big Society, subsequently reiterating it in the face of mounting criticism. Intellectually, the two most significant contributions to the content of the Big Society have come from Phillip Blond and his book Red Tory (2010) and Conservative MP Jesse Norman’s book The Big Society (2010). In part, the popularity of the Big Society discourse can be explained by the very lack of a substantive enrichment of the democratic realm by New Labour. New Labour’s inconsistent and half-hearted record on democratic renewal has enabled the centreright to attempt to colonise this terrain and seek to activate new forms of citizenship. The Big Society may well prove to be a cautionary tale for the centre-left more widely in its pursuit of a more dialogic polity. In the 2009 Hugo Young Lecture, Cameron set out his vision for the Big Society. Cameron argues that ‘big government has helped atomise our society’, placing the fault squarely at the door of New Labour. Cameron argues that Labour’s rich intellectual tradition of ‘radical liberalism’ has ‘lost out’ to the Fabian tradition, which has led to the dominance and expansion of the central state. Under New Labour, this approach was at its zenith, with Gordon Brown’s ‘top-down, fiddling, and micro-managing approach’. Even more uncomfortable for Labour is Cameron’s eagerness to point out that that gap between richest and poorest widened under the period of New Labour – although as critics rightly argue, he remains coy about the era of Thatcherism in this regard, where indeed the gap between rich and poor widened more substantially than it did under New Labour. Cameron outlines the three main themes of the Big Society: decentralisation, transparency and accountability (Cameron 2009). The aim of decentralisation is to devolve Whitehall’s powers to local communities (but not necessarily local government). In this, Cameron hopes that local people can take greater responsibility for resolving social problems. Second, Cameron calls for greater transparency in the workings of government, especially in making more information available about the use of government spending. The third theme is a focus on encouraging greater ‘accountability’, in this sense steering away from what he perceives as the inherent paternalistic strain in the previous Labour regime.

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Cameron identifies three main groups as being instrumental in c­ reating the Big Society; social entrepreneurs, ‘community activists’, and thirdly, ‘the significant percentage of the population who have no record of getting involved – or a desire to do so’. In creating the Big Society, Cameron argues that civic institutions such as local post offices will be strengthened, with central government and the civil service requiring new skills to enable this transformation to take place. In practice the Big Society policy agenda entails a range of initiatives and programmes. Initially, the government aimed to train and recruit 5,000 community organisers across the UK. This target has now been downgraded to 500 (Bunting 2011). There are a number of ‘vanguard’ areas created for the Big Society, which notably included Liverpool, which withdrew from the programme in early 2011. There is a pilot for national citizen service (interestingly, this is similar to the recommendation of the Commission of Social Justice established by former Labour leader John Smith). Using funds from dormant bank accounts, a Big Society Bank was created to support social enterprises and the like. In legislative form, the most significant attempts to institutionalise the Big Society are the 2011 Localism Act and the 2012 Public Services (Social Value) Act. The implementation of Cameron’s Big Society has proved difficult. It attracted high-profile criticism from the former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams and further negative publicity when unpaid adviser Lord Nat Wei stepped down from his post in 2011. The Public Administration Select Committee investigated the Big Society agenda, and reported that, ‘we have received little evidence to suggest that there is a coherent Big Society policy agenda which is understood by Whitehall’ (2011, p. 9). The committee also noted confusion amongst the public about this agenda, and that ‘Ministers have not set out clearly what success means for the Big Society project, nor produced metrics for success’ (2011, p. 53). Cameron has subsequently relaunched the Big Society agenda a number of times since the party took office in 2010. The Big Society and the Third Way Despite the protestations of left and right, there are obvious commonalities between the Third Way and the Big Society agenda. Both sets of ideas have been accused of being vague and incoherent, and both have sought to offer a ‘new politics’ which has attempted to forge a new political discourse beyond categories of left and right (Norman 2010, p. 4). Like the Third Way, the Big Society is a political project which evolved out of the opposition’s long, painful years in the political



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­ ilderness, operating as a guiding philosophy for David Cameron much w in the same way that the Third Way did for Tony Blair. In both cases, the actual policy content has proved at times vague, contradictory and problematic in its implementation. Like the NSD, there is also a debate as to where the Big Society fits within its wider political tradition. As we saw in Chapter 2, a lively debate prevails over whether the NSD is a betrayal of social democracy. Similarly, there has been a debate over whether the New Conservatism, from which the Big Society was spawned, is a significant break from Thatcherism (Corbett and Walker 2012, p. 487; Edwards 2011, p.  98). Some critics see the Big Society as little more than code for ‘small ­government’, public sector spending cuts and a reheated form of ­neoliberalism. Others see David Cameron’s reclamation of the term ­‘society’ – which is seen as a riposte to Margaret Thatcher’s famous claim that ‘there is no such thing as society, just families and individuals’ – as a definite attempt to create a ‘New Conservatism’, which sheds the skin of Thatcherism. There are a number of advocates of the NSD who share the view with conservative thinker Phillip Blond that, ‘… essentially neither left nor right has the answers to the problems we face’ (Blond, interview with author, 18 April 2013). The notion of the Big Society is not new in itself, and both Norman and Blond draw upon the work of Edmund Burke and Michael Oakeshott in their reformulation of conservative thinking. Rutherford (2010) notes some of the more recent key markers in the emergence of the Big Society agenda, including the 2003 paper by Greg Clark on Labour’s ‘Command State’ and the Centre for Social Justice established by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan-Smith. An underlying theme of the Big Society is that ‘Broken Britain’ can be ‘fixed’ through this revival of localism and civic renewal. Kisby (2010) notes too that there are links with Douglas Hurd’s attempt to humanise Thatcherism with his call for ‘active citizenship’. To some extent, both the Third Way and the Big Society suffer from being misunderstood –often wilfully by their critics. The Third Way was dismissed too readily as a capitulation to neoliberalism, when in truth it was more complex than this – even if the practice of New Labour deviated from the wider set of ideas from which it emerged. Likewise, some critics failed to understand how the UK Liberal Democrats could find common ground with the New Conservatism. As Kelly (2011, p.  24) points out, the Big Society renews a long-standing and ‘complex relationship between liberalism and conservatism’. How then should the Big Society be categorised? Driver and Martell argued persuasively that New Labour was a post-Thatcherite p ­ roject,

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still operating within the social democratic tradition, but largely accommodating of neoliberal economics – a view shared by Phillip ­ Blond (2010, p. 127): ‘on every crucial economic question New Labour was the continuation, extension and intensification of Thatcherism’. The Big Society and the New Conservatism might well be the inverse of this ­definition of the New Labour model – a post-Blairite project. Rather than making a clear break with the neoliberalism of the Thatcher– Major–Blair governments, the Big Society is a conservative post-Blairite project, which rejects a crude variant of neoliberalism, but accepts some aspects of New Labour’s social policy legacy. New Labour was a vocal champion of active citizenship, greater responsibility, d ­ ecentralisation and forms of localism (under the aegis of centralised control), all of which have been adopted by Cameron’s coalition government. Indeed, former Labour minister Tessa Jowell called the Big Society, ‘a ­brass-necked rebranding of programmes already put in place by a Labour government’ (‘David Cameron launches Tories’ “big society” plan’, BBC News Online, 19 July 2010). In both the NSD and the Big Society there is a strong emphasis on reinventing the role of the state, activating civil society and ‘modernising’ the public sector. Breaking with neo-liberal tenets, Cameron represents a band of conservatives intent on rediscovering the role of the state, wanting it ‘… to act as an instrument for helping to create a strong society’ (Cameron 2009). Likewise, Phillip Blond casts the state as having a crucial role in reviving civic life: In my view it has to involve the state … because if you are poor … because it is the only source of wealth … so how can we use the state differently to achieve these outcomes … and [my] new thinking … is that public ­service’s approach [has] to be … the great error of the left is centralisation and standardisation and I think that things have to be decentralised and personalised so that the people are dealt with differently according to their different needs … it [the state] is dencentralised personalised and holistic. (Blond, interview with author, 18 April 2013)

So, despite the protestations of their adherents, there is much common ground between the NSD and the New Conservatism. Blond also offers a striking verdict on the Third Way (2010, pp.  ­127–8). He despairs that, despite the claims that the Third Way offered a ‘new politics’, ‘what emerged theoretically, and later in practice, was … a repetition and strengthening of the old left–right opposition unified as the worst legacy of both: the market state’ (p. 127). There is some truth to this judgement of New Labour, although it obscures the attempts of a number of New Labour ministers such as David



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Blunkett and Hazel Blears to create a more participatory civic realm. To take a small example, New Labour introduced a citizenship survey as part of a range of initiatives to reactivate British civic life. The citizenship survey may have been a measurement tool, but it did signal an interest in civic renewal. The survey has since been cancelled by David Cameron’s Conservative Coalition. It could potentially have been a useful barometer of success for the Big Society agenda, and indeed, the Public Administration Select Committee noted the absence of effective success indicators for the Big Society. Blond tends to caricature New Labour and the Third Way, treating them rather statically. There were, after all, competing strands within New Labour thinking. However, he does offer an important insight into how Giddens views civil society (Blond 2010, p. 131): Giddens sought a renewed and recovered role for the state because he despaired of any other source or site of power – he wrote of social movements and associations of citizens as ‘sub-politics’ and stated: ‘The idea that such groups can take over where government is failing is or stand in the place of political parties is fantasy’. This understanding of civic associations as merely special interest groups decries their real capacities and eulogises instead the role of the social investment state – having displaced society, the state will now provide the social capital to compensate for the damage that the market is doing.

Blond is both half-right and half-wrong on this. It is more accurate to describe New Labour as inconsistent or ambivalent in its relationship to civil society groups. On the one hand, Blond gives a very narrow reading of Giddens. In The Third Way, Giddens is emphatic that there should be a renewal of civil society, arguing, contrary to Blond, that: ‘State and civil society should act in partnership, each to facilitate, but also to act as a control upon, the other’ (Giddens 1998, p. 79). While Giddens argues that the state has a role in protecting individuals from special interests in civil society, he strongly cautions that ‘the state can swamp civil society’ (1998, p. 85). Giddens is clear that the state and civil society should be a clear buffer for each other. It may well be the case that New Labour’s record on this was, at best, mixed, but Blond only offers a one-eyed critique of New Labour as a result. Blond is correct in claiming that both Giddens and Tony Blair saw the risks of special interests within civil society subverting wider governmental goals. Consciously or not, this draws upon rational or public choice concerns about the problems of collective action. Indeed the cases in this book show NSD governments determined to find ways of engagement that resist direct interaction with key interest groups. Blond, on the

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other hand, has a tendency to romanticise and homogenise civil society, and arguably the success of his version of the Big Society rests upon a less critical treatment of civil society. Democratic renewal and the Big Society Democratic renewal is a theme in the wider Big Society agenda. Both Blond and Norman describe the UK as suffering from a ‘­ post-democratic politics’ (Blond 2010, p. 8; Norman 2010, p. 81). For Blond, the key problem is what he calls the ‘disappearance of British civil society’ (2010, p. 3), and he argues that: There are only two sources of power in our country: the state and the market place. All other sources of independent autonomous power have been crushed. We no longer have, in any effective independent way, local government, churches, trade unions, cooperative societies, publicly funded educational institutions, civic organised or locally organised groups that operate on the basis of more than single issues … these civil spaces have either vanished or become subject-domains of the centralised state or the monopolised market.

The risk with Blond’s analysis is that it can lead to a nostalgia towards these disappearing civic institutions. Moreover, both Blond and Norman take aim at the efforts of New Labour to re-create and enhance the public sphere through initiatives such as the Big Conversation, which are not autonomous sources of power from the central state. Norman is critical of the efforts of New Labour to create new mechanisms for participation – ‘the result has been called “faking civil society”…’ ­ (Norman 2010, p. 29). Blond’s chapter ‘The Democratic Crisis’ in Red Tory, directly addresses the problems of British democratic culture, marking the growing distance between the public and political elites (Blond 2010, p. 61). Here, he notes a few of the trends in civic engagement and political participation outlined in Chapter 4 of this book, including a ‘decline in varied and more involved forms of political participation’ (p. 63). While Blond is critical of New Labour’s efforts at democratic renewal, his own prescription is not too dissimilar in some respects. Blond argues that democratic renewal will require a new civic culture of political association and participation, which will need to be matched (if not facilitated) by radical new forms of politics: devolving power, budgets and decisions to the lowest level possible; changing the architecture of institutions to encourage amateur involvement; extending indirect political participation by mechanisms such as easing



Beyond the glittering facade 171 and localising the selection and de-selection of candidates, and extending direct participation where constructive, facilitating and empowering selforganising associations in civil society; tapping into new technologies in order to inform the public, build networks and nudge participation. (Blond 2010, p. 63)

While Blond does not acknowledge it, New Labour was making tentative steps in this direction, and there is much overlap between his own prescriptions and New Labour’s. Ultimately, in his chapter on the democratic crisis, Blond only makes two main suggestions – more budgetary devolution and the election of ‘micro-mayors’. Later in the book he makes a call for the creation of ‘a new power of “civil association”’ (Blond 2010, p. 272). Interestingly, in an interview with the author, Blond acknowledged some dissatisfaction with this chapter: If I had the chance to rewrite that chapter again I’d do it quite differently really, I think we are in a situation where democratic representational democracy has destroyed participative democracy and … there is an alienation of people from the representational process and in certain parts of Europe that is really frightening because you have fascists – genuine fascists – genuine hard core racists – who could easily get up to a quarter of the vote. (Blond, interview with author, 18 April 2013)

For Blond, the issue is that democracy has its limits, and that in a sense democratic renewal requires a blending of other forms of legitimacy: I think we have to be much more sophisticated about what democracy is and what legitimacy is, many things aren’t democratic but are legitimate – the Pope, the Monarch. Democracy has its limits, and a pure democracy is often very dangerous and very undemocratic … so I think democracy is not the only source of legitimacy and in some cases democracy can become illegitimate. What I always like to do is blend democracy with other forms of legitimacy and produce a variegated legitimacy. (Blond, interview with author, 18 April 2013)

Yet within this thinking it remains unclear about the role and appetite for democratic experimentation. Here perhaps there is some political difference between the Big Society and the NSD call for democratic renewal. The Big Society agenda is much more reticent about introducing new democratic innovations. The detail on the revival of localism and neighbourhood groups seems wedded to very traditional forms of political participation – town hall meetings and the like. The NSD on the other hand was emphatic in seeking to make greater use of citizens’ juries and other dialogic mechanisms. This is due, in part, to a

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l­ong-standing reluctance by Conservatives to tinker with parliamentary democracy. Significantly, while both Norman and Blond remain critics of New Labour, both overlook the acute problem with many of New Labour’s (and indeed the wider NSD’s) efforts at democratic renewal – its lack of attention to inequality of participation and engagement. The push towards localism rests on an underlying assumption that there will be an equal response from local ‘communities’. This remains the central weakness of the Big Society agenda: it makes no significant effort to understand inequalities of voice and participation, at least in the two books which give most detail to its ideas. Yet when questioned on this, Blond offered the following insights: … what I would say to that is that it [the gap of inequality of voice between rich and poor] is on the watch of representational standard democracy that that has happened … what’s interesting about our conventional settlement is that it is producing an outcome quite like the Russian settlement or the Chinese settlement … obviously it’s not to the same degree or extent, but it is going in that route … so we’ve stopped being a society that ­pluralises and distributes power but on the watch of the kind-of statist left, the ­pro-minority left, minorities have been stripped of power … (Blond, ­interview with author, 18 April 2013)

For Blond, the left is largely responsible for the issue of inequality of voice, and the Big Society has the opportunity to revive working-class communities: I think that it is about recreating working-class organisations, workingclass associations because in my view the left has destroyed working-class infrastructure and working-class society … it has destroyed it through the state by making people dependent on the state by having rights without having to put anything in and having one-way entitlement. (Blond, ­interview with author, 18 April 2013)

Whilst Blond might lament the death of working-class organisations, it remains very unclear how they might be reinvigorated under a Big Society agenda, not least within the context of shifting patterns of political and civic participation with a move towards greater political consumerist forms of engagement. The Big Society, like the NSD, also has a normative agenda in creating ‘active citizens’ – they might be active at the local level (Blond’s own preference for engagement); but like the NSD’s ‘active citizens’, they appear more like well-intentioned members of the local ‘Rotary’ (decent, predominately white and middle class local community members) but strangely apolitical and neutered. This isn’t said to cause offence to the Rotary organisation – it no doubt



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makes important contributions to its local areas – rather it offers a striking example of the de-politicised, localised forms of engagement envisaged by the Big Society. As noted above, during the era of New Labour several of the largest demonstrations took place in London (the Countryside Alliance, Opposition to the Iraq Invasion) – these were the very type of forms of citizenship that neither the NSD nor the Big Society seeks to cultivate. To a large extent, the fault here lies with the proponents of the NSD and with New Labour. As noted in the cases in this book, the lack of attention to inequality of voice is a persistent feature in the attempts to find new ways to engage citizen participation and dialogue. In practice, the NSD has introduced ‘big’, or elite mechanisms for democratic exchange, but pays far less attention to those groups who are unlikely to, or do not, participate. It is therefore no surprise that centre-right politics, which has far less commitment to forms of equality than centreleft politics, should pay so little attention to this issue. While Blond does argue that the state-first Fabianism of New Labour has let down the working class, his own chapter on the democratic crisis fails to note how this is even more acute for the very same people. Overall, the critique of the Big Society agenda is becoming more widespread. Corbett and Walker provide a useful synopsis and identify that, despite the rhetoric, the Big Society agenda has only entailed ‘puny’ efforts to instigate forms of ‘people power’ (2012, p. 487). Furthermore (like New Labour), it prioritises responsibility over rights; it is a rhetorical cover for the public sector cuts and austerity measures, and in practice commercial and consumerist interests dominate over citizenship strands in the Big Society narrative. Concerns that ‘the centralising tendencies of the small state mentality have not diminished’ prevail (Corbett and Walker 2012, p. 487). Interestingly Blond himself argues that the coalition has failed to carry this agenda further: The tragedy is that government has adopted a laissez-faire approach to the delivery of the big society … but there is no civic infrastructure on which to base this innovation … With these ideas cut off by spending cuts and sidelined by the Treasury as a Prime Ministerial distraction, the battle for the big society has probably already, needlessly, been lost. (Public Administration Select Committee 2011, p. 11)

By the mid-point of the coalition’s term in office, the Big Society agenda is floundering, remaining poorly understood and with limited public support. It remains unclear too, whether the Big Society will take root in Australia. On 7 September 2013, the Liberal National Coalition resoundingly won the federal election. Despite the emphatic victory it

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remains unclear what precisely the coalition stands for, aside from its opposition to Labor’s Carbon tax/pricing and mining tax policies. Will Abbott’s coalition government implement an antipodean version of the Big Society? Blond has been active in promoting this agenda, having met a number of times with Tony Abbott, the Liberal Party leader. By 2013, Blond has made two visits to Australia, delivering a number of talks on the Big Society and making an appearance on the ABC’s Q&A programme. Whelan (2012) claims that some within the party are seeking its broader adoption. Blond is ambivalent about its potential take-up, optimistic yet sensing that the centre-right has failed to shake off a dogmatic approach to neoliberalism: … as to my ideas, in a way I think it is quite analogous to the UK situation, I think that they are likely to be adopted and I’m quite close to several [senior Liberals] … I meet them when I’m there and they meet me and I talk to them about the ideas, but I’m really involved in a mass conversion of the right from where they are … Now, a lot of the right don’t like me, you know, a lot of them hate me … a lot of standard right wing think tanks were furious when I came over and got the kind of traction I did … which is fine … I think the right has taken a completely damaging path and I want to be one of the people who marks out a new settlement. And I think that in Australia … like elsewhere ... it is not clear what the Liberal party stand for and I think that there isn’t a liberal vision for Australia just in the way there isn’t really a Labor party vision for Australia. I think it is running with market liberalism and then with a kind of Big Society thinking as a correlate and I don’t think that’s enough. (Blond, interview with author, 18 April 2013)

The policy transfer literature might give some indication of whether the Abbott government adopts a Big Society-style agenda (Dolowitz and Marsh 2000). Dolowitz and Marsh provide a useful framework for examining whether policy programmes and practices become adopted in another setting, focusing on who is involved, the degree of transfer and the constraints. It is possible to envisage perhaps five scenarios which might be described as follows: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

No Big Society. The ‘Queensland Model’ Big Society. A Nostalgic Big Society. The ‘Corporate’ Big Society. The Technological Big Society.

In the first scenario, there is a distinct possibility that the Big Society won’t take off in Australia. Australia’s federal system might be a



Beyond the glittering facade 175

t­echnical complicating factor, despite the Abbott government in 2014 facing Liberal governments in almost all the states and territories. These Liberal state governments are all quite different. Yet, as Blond acknowledges, there are many parts of the centre-right hostile to this agenda, especially its critique of neoliberalism. Perhaps more acutely it remains unclear if there is a genuinely influential champion of the Big Society in Australia. As O’Reilly (2007) notes, one of the main reasons that New Labour was able to emulate aspects of Hawke–Keating’s NSD was the crucial role of key figures in both parties to facilitate the policy exchange. In contrast, whilst Phillip Blond might be an active promoter of his ‘big society’, it is not clear that there is an organisation or person with sufficient clout to enable his agenda to take root in Australia. A second scenario is one that Blond partly fears – austerity/neoliberal measures with Big Society thinking as a correlate. The Queensland state government under Campbell Newman is the most overtly neoliberal government committed to reducing the size and scope of the state, expecting the third sector to pick up the heavy lifting of dealing with social policy issues. In this view, the Abbott government might invoke the rhetoric of something like the Big Society as it reduces government spending to meet its commitment to putting the government’s finances into surplus. This might overlap with the third scenario – a ‘nostalgic’ Big Society. As Brett (2003) argues in her influential account of the Australian Liberals, the party has a long history of civic engagement. Brett argues that one of the most striking historical episodes to illustrate this point was that the Liberal Party was formed in 1944 with the crucial support of the Australian Women’s National League (2003, p. 117). Historically, ‘for Liberals, citizenship was not primarily a status conferred by the state but a capacity of individuals on which the polity depended’ (2003, p. 63). Brett argues that the modern incarnation of the Liberal Party has moved away from this traditional view of citizenship as it embraced neoliberal ideas; and (like strains of NSD thinking) it conceives of citizens as consumers (2003, p. 172). It could well be that the Abbott government seeks to resurrect this sense of citizenship as duty – perhaps harking back to a time when the Liberal Party was much more embedded in civil society. Yet, despite some rhetorical measures, it seems unclear how the Liberals will deal with a much more individuated and reflexive citizenry. A further two scenarios might also be considered – technological and corporate versions of the Big Society. In the former, we might see the Liberals joining the zeitgeist and seeking to promote the use of social media and other forms of e-democracy to revive civil society. Yet  the

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struggle to promote forms of e-democracy is an ongoing one, and much of the literature is pessimistic about its potential. A corporate Big Society would perhaps see the Abbott government revisiting the ideas and approach adopted under the previous Liberal government led by John Howard (1996–2007) (see Staples 2007). In this revived model, large scale NGOs, particularly faith-based ones such as the Salvation Army, might be the recipients of further contracting out of government services. This is analogous to the UK situation, where large ‘corporate’ NGOs are squeezing out the smaller ones in the competitive bid to win government funding. A key part of this strategy is to both increase the corporate NGO sector, but politically neutralise its voice through ­gagging clauses and the like. The currency and test of the Big Society may well be if it can gain ­purchase in a country such as Australia. If the Big Society rhetoric does take root in Australia, it might combine a number of the d ­ ifferent ­scenarios suggested above. As we have seen in the Australian cases in the book, NSD-influenced governments in Australia have also given little attention to inequalities of participation and engagement. As the centre-right attempts to occupy this political ground, the ongoing concern remains that the most economically and socially disadvantaged groups will continue to be marginalised from the new forms of dialogic and civic exchange. Experiments in the New Social Democracy In the UK, the Big Society is part of the Conservative Party’s attempt to rebuild and reinvigorate its politics. The Big Society agenda also acutely shows up some of the deficiencies in the New Social Democracy, especially its call for experiments in democratic renewal. The NSD call for strengthening the ‘democratic impulse’ is beset by a number of tensions and contradictions. First, there is an ambivalence about how high the priority for democratic renewal should be for Labour governments pursuing a broad NSD agenda. For the most part, democratic renewal is a second-tier and underdeveloped strand of NSD politics, which can lead to inconsistent and paradoxical outcomes – perhaps most exemplified by New Labour’s constitutional reform programme (Driver and Martell 2002, 2006; Flinders 2004; Gamble 2003a; Norton 2007). Second, some initiatives in the democratic renewal programme entail a devolution of responsibility, but a centralisation of power (Fitzpatrick 2003). The process of devolution is one-sided and it reduces the incentives for local communities to engage in the new mechanisms for dialogue. Third, while the NSD expresses rhetorical concern about



Beyond the glittering facade 177

inequality of voice, particularly that of lower socioeconomic groups, in practice, it does not seek to engage people from these groups directly. Fourth, a fusion of consultative and promotional practices is demonstrated in the initiatives, such that promotional activity can undermine the authenticity of the consultation (Fairclough 2000, p. 124). Labour governments use such mechanisms to promote their own successes and propagate their own narrative, without an equal reciprocal movement to openly engage. Fifth, there is a tension and simultaneous push for both centralisation and decentralisation (Newman 2001). New Labour is a classic case of a government pushing for devolution, while seeking to impose centralised control over such measures. Furthermore, it is unclear how some of the experiments with democracy link to the existing architecture of representative democracy. Finally, critics argue that the NSD pays little attention to, and offers a very static notion of, representation (Newman 2001, 2005; Newman and Clarke 2009). The risk is that policy-makers make a static and homogeneous use of social characteristics such as gender and race. The process of consultation can reify the complex interplay of factors that create a ‘public’. As noted above, it seems that the British and Australian Labour governments have a limited appetite and opportunity for continuing experiments with democracy. While the desire of the proponents of the NSD to foster democratic renewal is laudable, they may do better to seek democratic renewal through initiatives devised by wider civil society that have a more lasting impact, rather than impose ‘top-down’ solutions. A starting point may well be to seek new forms of engagement with people from lower socioeconomic groups and to make a reduction in patterns of inequality of voice and participation the policy focus, rather than the more generalised form of ‘active citizenry’. There is a risk, of course, from over-generalising about the prospects of the NSD agenda for democratic renewal on the basis of the cases in this book. Yet these small discrete cases are useful as they show us micro-level dimensions of the NSD in action, which more ‘big picture’ accounts of democratic change tend to dismiss (see Marsh and Miller 2012, p. 116). Given the lacklustre success of the search for democratic renewal, it may well be that the NSD’s call for the ‘democratising of democracy’ is less of a revival of centre-left politics, but further ­evidence of its exhaustion. Giddens’s Third Way remains one of the highest profile attempts to address that issue. A number of commentators noted how quickly the Third Way label was dropped (Clift 2004, p. 36; Hamilton 2006). Giddens’s preferred label, ‘New Social Democracy’ has not gained anything like the same amount of political traction as the ‘Third Way’. Yet, the fundamental raison d’être of the NSD – how

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Labour parties respond to the dominance of neoliberalism – is still an ongoing and unresolved issue. The lack of a coherent answer to the democratic renewal strand of those debates has left some of the Labour governments considered in this book struggling to enhance the links between state and civil ­society. In effect, the ‘big picture’ consultations are a glittering facade to these deeper problems. The NSD concept of the ‘enabling state’ has not provided a clear enough blueprint for a genuine engagement with civil society. The NSD has meant a weakening of New Labour’s formal commitment to equality and redistribution of wealth and resources (Shaw 2007). Labour’s experiments with democratic renewal have done little to challenge the existing economic structures of power and resources. While the NSD has an interest in creating ‘active citizens’, in practice this has meant a generic call for rather anodyne forms of engagement that do little to challenge the prevailing forms of domination the NSD professes to be so concerned with. The Labour parties in Britain and Australia are no longer ‘mass parties’, and as a result there has been an attendant weakening in their direct and unmediated engagement with the poorest and most deprived groups. The parties have attempted to remedy this loss by replacing it with a more generic interest in ‘democratic renewal’. The answer is not necessarily one of institutional and policy design – creating more responsive and effective dialogic mechanisms – but it does require a rethinking of these wider ideological issues. The NSD has been, for a time at least, one powerful response to the dilemmas Labour parties face in relation to neoliberal orthodoxy. It deserves to be taken seriously, and its achievements noted. Yet as its influence wanes (particularly with the demise of New Labour), other competing paradigms will be needed to exert an influence over Labour politics and should include a renewed focus on addressing the problems of inequality of voice and participation. In the UK, ‘Blue Labour’ was offered as one such alternative. Democratic renewal is not the sole preserve of Labour politics, and the risk for the centre-left is that this agenda can be co-opted by the centre-right, as is evident in the Big Society agenda. The hallmark of the NSD is its changing focus on equality. In effect, it has signalled a weakening commitment to securing greater economic equality, replacing this with a greater interest in activating new forms of citizenship. Yet, if the case studies reported here are to be salutary lessons, then overall it is clear that the NSD pays very little attention to tackling the structural forms of inequality of political participation and engagement. This suggests a further dilution of a commitment to wider equality in the social democratic tradition. There is,



Beyond the glittering facade 179

then, a case for this ideal to be re-awakened. It is time to dismantle the glittering facade. Notes 1 Shortly after Tony Blair resigned as party leader on 27 June 2007, Gordon Brown initiated a whole swathe of policy initiatives with the aim of injecting fresh impetus into the New Labour ‘project’, while also stamping out his own policy terrain. In July 2007, Brown delivered a speech to parliament setting out the key themes of the Governance of Britain Green Paper. Brown was much more interested in constitutional and democratic renewal issues than Blair and his statement explores a range of governance questions, including the need to address citizen disengagement, and also whether the UK should develop a written constitution. The Governance of Britain agenda continued with a number of consultations on a range of these themes. In July 2008, the government launched a consultation on the discussion paper ‘A National Framework for Greater Citizen Engagement’, exploring the greater use of ­citizens’ juries and the like (Ministry of Justice 2008). As noted in Chapter 2, in 2008, New Labour began 22 pilots of participatory budgeting across England and Wales. In addition, the Civil Renewal Unit in the Department of Local Government and Communities rolled out the ‘Together We Can’ ­strategy for civic renewal. In sum, there is evidence that Brown was perhaps more interested in these than Blair, but given that the ‘National Framework’ was a discussion paper, and Brown’s tenure as PM was short, the actual amount of experimentation was limited. When New Labour lost the 2010 election, there was an impression that it was a case of ‘too little, too late’. 2 Research by Lowndes, Pratchett and Stoker (2001) may go some way to addressing these issues and providing a framework for governments to use when planning their consultative work.

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Index

Abbott, Tony 174–6 ‘Accord’ Summits, the 94, 104, 118, 131, 140 activist (politics) 39, 44, 115, 117, 155, 161 community 65, 166 policy 144 ACTU see Australian Council of Trade Unions ‘affective’ turn 52, 162 ALP see Australian Labor Party Australian Council of Trade Unions 65, 98, 104 Australian Labor Party 6, 8, 104, 150, 163–4, 174 carbon ‘tax’ 174 constitutional reform 29 democratic renewal and 25, 41, 91 factions 93 identity and 10, 11, 85 influence on Tony Blair 84 membership 64–5 New Social Democracy and 83 primary vote 62 Rudd government 98–103, 151 social democracy and 3, 82 South Australia, in 95–8, 140–1, 160 State level in Australia 128–30 Victoria, in 92–5, 130–2, 160 ‘Workchoices’ and 65 attitudes to politics 16, 37, 54–6, 56, 61 Bacon, James Alexander (Jim) 91–2 Bannon, John 96

Big Society 7, 28, 87, 151, 165–76 in Australia 174–6 Beattie, Peter 91, 92, 100, 105, 149, 164 Beazley, Kim 99 Benn, Tony 85 Bernstein, Eduard 40–1, 51, 78 Blair, Tony 14, 30, 41, 167 Big Conversation and 169 Gordon Brown and 179 party reform and 89 Blears, Hazel 169 Blond, Phillip Big Society and 151, 165–70 democratic crisis and 79, 170–3 Blue Labour 10, 43, 65, 103, 178 Blunkett, David 43, 87, 88, 105, 129, 169 Bracks, Steve 133, 138, 156 Government and 92–5 ‘Growing Victoria Together’ and 130–2 party reform 101 political change 140 Brown, Gordon 26, 84, 86, 92, 97, 163 constitutional reform and 151, 179 Community Cabinets and 149 criticism of 165 Brumby, John 94, 133, 138, 163 Cain, John 93 Cameron, David 7–8, 151, 166, 167, 169

200

Index

capitalism 16, 17, 36, 37, 38, 41 advanced capitalist societies 7, 24 capital 94 see also market Carr, Bob 100, 101, 102, 105 Carter, Matt 113, 116 centralisation see decentralisation centre-left parties 4–5, 11, 13, 40 New Labour and 84 citizen assemblies 164 citizen juries 9, 21, 45, 49, 50, 119, 121, 124, 150, 170, 179 civic culture 35, 56, 69, 74, 170 civil society 5, 29, 61 Big Society and 168–70 e-democracy and 175 far right and 79 labour and 9, 65, 90, 103 liberal party and 175 limits of 34 New Social Democracy and 15, 17, 18–21, 23, 26, 27, 41, 70, 158–9, 163 Clark, David 107, 126 class 33, 40–1, 54, 73–4, 76, 78, 81, 97, 158, 172–3 distrust of political parties 69 New Labour and 87 structure 103 voting behaviour and 64 see also socioeconomic groups clause IV 89, 102 Clegg, Nick 165 ‘clicktivisim’ 52, 162 Clinton, Bill 83 COAG see Council of Australian Governments coalition government Conservative-Liberal Democrat (UK) 151, 165, 168–9, 173 Liberal-National (Australia) 84, 96, 98, 128, 173–4 collaborative governance 119 Community Cabinets 92, 100, 101, 118, 121, 132–4, 139, 149, 151, 159, 164

consensus (politics) 45, 94, 96, 124, 131, 155, 156 Conservative Party, the (UK) 14, 19, 22, 25, 28, 104, 107, 114, 131, 165, 176 see also Hague, William; Major, John; Thatcher, Margaret consultation 3, 7, 9, 39, 101, 107, 151, 160 Australia in 26, 91, 128 Australia 2020 Summit 118–24 Big Conversation, the 112–17 classifying 45–7 deliberation and 160 ‘Labour Listens’ 90, 96, 104, 153, 161 New Labour and 88–90 New Social Democracy and 14, 17–18 representativeness and 152 responsiveness and 157 see also Community Cabinets Council of Australian Governments 124, 130 Crean, Simon 99 Crosland, Charles Anthony Raven (Tony) 43, 85 Cunningham, Jack 109–11, 126, 152 decentralisation 21, 27, 177 Big Society and 165 New Labour and 168 New Social Democracy and 14, 28 deliberative democracy 6, 36, 38–9, 52, 120, 121, 160 in Tasmania 130 in Western Australia 91 see also ‘affective’ turn deliberative poll 10, 39, 45, 52 democracy ‘crisis’ of 66, 79, 171 defining 31 developmental 32 e-democracy 162, 175 improving representative democracy 49, 61, 123, 150 limits of 34



Index 201



strategic government and 128–9, 140 gender 33, 74–7, 81, 95, 177 2020 Summit and 123 South Australia’s Strategic plan and 144 see also women GFC see Global Economic Crisis Giddens, Anthony 2 Blond, Phillip and 169 democratic renewal 20–1 New Labour and 12, 163 New Social Democracy and 12–14 role of the state and 18–20 Gillard, Julia 65, 101, 103 Democratic renewal and 164 Glasman, Maurice 10, 43, 65, 103 Global Economic Crisis 99, 100, 120, 138, 159 governance 24–8, 56, 89, 97, 107, 119, 135 Gray, John 12 ‘Growing Victoria Together’ (GVT) see strategic plans

participation and 32–3 plebiscitary 89, 90, 102 ‘realist’ 33 social democracy and 40–4 support for 59 see also deliberative democracy; democratic audit; devolution; New Social Democracy; participatory democracy democratic audit 7, 46–8, 160 devolution 24, 121 Big Society and 175 New Labour and 21–4, 87–8, 116 New Social Democracy and 28 see also decentralisation ‘digital divide’ 73, 117 disillusionment, political 20, 35, 55 Dryzek, John 30–2, 36, 51, 101, 164 Duncan-Smith, Iain 167 Dunstan, Don 91, 95–6 electoral participation see voting electoral systems alternative vote 80 majoritarianism 40, 64, 87, 88 proportional 62, 87 Emerson, Craig 118 equality 1, 15–17, 41, 43, 74 gender and 95 ‘inequality of voice’ 7, 15, 79, 109, 117, 134, 139, 144, 157–9, 162 internet use and 73 legislation 116 participation and 74–8, 136, 148, 164, 172–3, 177–8 political equality 46, 49, 152 Tawney, RH on 41 e-petitions 72, 129 expenses scandal (UK) 26, 81 Fabianism see social democracy factions 93 Faulkner, John 101, 102 Foley, Kevin 97 Gallop, Geoff 14, 26, 86, 91, 124, 130, 164

Habermas, Jürgen 6, 29, 34, 36 public sphere 36–7, 52 Hague, William 104 Hattersley, Roy 126, 127, 146 Hawke, Bob 84, 94, 131 Accord Summits and 84, 104, 118, 140 Wran report and 102 see also Hawke-Keating governments Hawke-Keating governments 10, 83–6, 91, 99, 102–3, 150, 175 ‘Hawthorne effect’ 50 Hayden, Bill 100 Held, David 32 Hollande, François 4 Howard, John 98–9, 124, 128, 176 internet, and politics 14, 52, 57, 78 political participation 71–4 see also social media

202

Index

Jenkins Commission, the 88 joined-up-government see whole-ofgovernment Jospin, Lionel 4 Kautsky, Karl 40 Keane, John 31 Keating, Paul 83, 84, 91 see also Hawke-Keating governments Kennett, Jeff 92–5, 131–2, 136–7, 139 Kinnock, Neil 87, 89, 90, 96, 102 Kirner, Joan 93 Kok, Wim 4 Labour party, the (UK) see New Labour Latham, Mark 14, 16, 18–21, 86, 99 differences between Blair and Giddens 21 Lennon, Paul 91 Liberal Party, the (Australia) 92, 95–6, 98, 124, 128, 173–5 Luxemburg, Rosa 40 McCartney, Ian 111 MacDonald, Ramsay 42 MacPherson, Crawford Brough (CB) 33 Major, John 25, 29, 107, 168 citizens charter and 29 market failure 15, 24 free-market 84 market economy 11 Marquand, David 21, 27, 85 marxism 40 meritocracy 77, 123, 157 metagovernance 27 middle class see class Miliband, Ed 10, 43, 65, 81, 88, 90, 103 Miliband, David 13 Mill, John Stuart 32–3 minor political parties 57, 62, 63, 64 Morris, Estelle 115 Mulgan, Geoff 19, 21, 95, 98, 111–12, 117, 149, 162–3

neoliberalism 6, 9, 13, 24, 28, 55, 84–5, 103, 175 Big Society and 167–8, 174–5 Kevin Rudd and 99–100 ‘New Federalism’ 129 New Labour active citizenship and 20, 41, 49, 51, 87 Clause IV and 89, 102 communitarianism and 16–17, 43 constitutional reform and 3, 21–3, 64 defeat 2 democratic renewal and 86–8 e-government and 72 governance and 25, 27 Hawke-Keating influence on 83–4 identity of 10, 11, 85–6 internal reforms 89–91 National Executive Committee (NEC) 89, 90, 104 National Policy Forum 104, 116 New Social Democracy and 2, 4 party membership 81 ‘pragmatism’ and 94, 97 public private partnerships 100 Newman, Campbell 175 New Public Management 5, 24–7, 30, 89, 103, 107, 129–30 New Social Democracy 11 Big Society and 166–70 criticisms of 16–18 defining the 12–14 democratic renewal and 20–3, 39 ‘democratising of democracy’ 27, 28, 34, 35, 38, 79, 124, 150–1, 158, 161, 163, 177 European variants 4, 11, 13 main themes 14–16 roots 83 Third Way and 2 see also Third Way new technologies see internet, and politics Norman, Jesse 165–7, 170, 172 NPM see New Public Management



Index 203

‘Oregon Shines’ see strategic plans Owen, David 43 participation, modes of 46–7, 49, 51 see also ‘clicktivism’; e-petitions; internet, and politics; volunteering; voting participatory budgeting (PB) 26, 120–1, 179 participatory democracy 4, 6, 26, 29, 33–4, 38, 51, 129, 171 Kevin Rudd and 120 New Labour and 87, 169 Parti Socialiste 13 Pateman, Carole 6, 33–4, 44 policy transfer 3, 84, 14 political culture see civic culture political participation 10, 51, 53 changing patterns of 53, 56–7, 78, 103, 151, 170 classifying 44–5 electoral forms 65 identification with political parties 61–4 group membership 70–1 internet and 71–4 measuring 54 political party and trade union membership 64 social capital and 55 sociology of 74 non-electoral forms 67 trust and politics 58 see also attitudes to politics postmaterialism 57, 80 ‘Power Inquiry, the’ (UK) 66–7, 163 public choice see rational choice public sector 51, 89, 129 cuts to 93, 167, 173 ‘modernising’ 88, 106 reform 13, 25, 103, 107, 112 see also New Public Management Prescott, John 23 Prodi, Romano 5 Rann, Mike 82, 104, 140, 163 Government and 9, 95–8

rational choice 19, 169 Reagan, Ronald 129 referenda 21, 23, 29, 31, 52, 79, 88, 101 citizen-initiated 104 Reinventing Government 24 Republic, Australian 3, 23, 29, 52, 101, 119, 120–1, 124, 127, 164 republicanism 25 Rhodes, Rod (R.A.W.) 24, 25 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 32–3 Royal, Ségolène 4–5 Rudd, Kevin 98–101, 106, 151, 160, 164 Australia 2020 Summit 118–21 constitutional reform 29 ideology 16 Schmitt, Carl 35 Schröder, Gerhard 4 Schumpeter, Joseph 6, 33 Smith, John 22, 87–9, 102, 166 social class see class social democracy 3, 4, 10–11, 13, 14, 17, 44, 83, 85, 86 Australian 83, 95, 98 Fabian 10, 165, 173 ‘old’ 13–15, 17 participation and 39–40 revisionist 43, 85 social inclusion 77, 97 social media 52, 71, 162, 175 social movements 10, 18, 57, 169 socialism 13, 19, 40–2, 86, 99 socioeconomic groups 74, 77, 108, 122, 148, 157–8, 177 see also class South Australia’s Strategic Plan (SASP) see strategic plans strategic government 25, 91, 128–9, 132, 140, 148 strategic plans 91, 128–9, 139 ‘Oregon Shines’ 97, 129, 141, 145 South Australia 95–6, 98, 130, 133, 140–3, 145, 153 Victoria 92, 132, 134 Straw, Jack 87

204

Index

Tawney, Richard Henry (R.H.) 41–4 Taylor, Matthew 47, 112–13, 116, 160 Thatcher, Margaret 25, 167 public sector reforms under 107 Thatcherism 25, 85, 165, 167, 168 third sector 145, 162, 175 Third Way 11, 14–15 Big Society and 166 Kevin Rudd and 99 New Labour and 11 New Social Democracy and 2 see also New Social Democracy trade unions 42, 89, 102, 104, 170 membership 2, 41, 57, 64, 70, 74, 79 unions see trade unions volunteering 71, 141, 147, 148 National volunteering service 87

voting 19, 32, 37, 47, 56, 57, 61–4, 66, 68, 74 age, proposals to lower in UK 127 compulsory 66, 69 informal 147 Walzer, Michael 34 Weatherill, Jay 95, 98, 105, 163–5 Whitlam, Gough 95 whole-of-government 25, 128 women deliberative democracy and 38 movement 10 New Labour and 17 participation and 75, 77 see also gender working class see class Young, Iris Marion 39