Veteran Care in the United Kingdom and the Sustainability of the ‘Military Covenant’

This article assesses how veteran care can be placed at the centre of our understanding of the modern Military Covenant and located as a key issue in contemporary civil–military relations and public policy. Healthcare and welfare provision have become primary manifestations of how the British state fulfils its duty of care towards military personnel. The article aims to present an overview of current provision for veterans of Britain's modern wars and draw conclusions regarding the state's ability to provide short and long‐term healthcare and welfare requirements to veterans as part of the Covenant under the rubric of ‘Big Society’‐inspired policy shifts engendered by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government.     

The Mystery of the Third Hurdle: Re-electing the Conservative Leader

This article examines one aspect of the contests for the leadership of the British Conservative Party: the 'third' burdle. Since the introduction of formal elections no Conservative leader has been tripped up by the third hurdle (a need to win 'convincingly') but this has not prevented its existence as being taken as fact. This article considers whether it exists at all, and if so, attempts to consider its height. It concludes that if the third hurdle exists it owes more to realpolitik than to precise statistical measurement.     

Concede and Move On? One Nation Labour and the Welfare State

The idea that Labour has already lost the argument on welfare with the Conservatives, and with it the general election, is probably overplayed. If truth be told, Labour's construction and subsequent defence of the welfare state has always been something of a double‐edged sword for the Party, earning it brickbats as well as support, and sometimes as stranding it in the past, committing it to promises that were undeliverable and ultimately self‐defeating. The political response by Ed Miliband and Ed Balls to the welfare trap set for them by David Cameron and George Osborne owes as much to New Labour as it does to ‘One Nation Labour’. That said, the latter does seem to be informing the Party's policy response, in particular its emphasis on restoring the contributory principle. Whether, however, this is practical politics given the inherently hybrid nature of Britain's welfare state and its heavy skew toward help for the elderly is a moot point. And whether ‘One Nation’ actually helps or hinders the Party in its quest for workable policies and a winning electoral formula is similarly debateable. Certainly, however much it is tempted to do so, Labour shouldn't waste too much valuable time trying to counter widespread myths about welfare. Nor should it overreact and obsess about the issue—or, indeed, pour out detailed policy too soon, if at all. Obviously, Labour needs to provide a direction of travel. However, that should focus not so much on welfare itself but on what the Party is proposing on the economy, on housing and on wages.     

Uneven Development, Territorial Politics and the British Health Care Reforms

The paper considers the relationships between the uneven development of the British economy, the political strategies pursued by the Conservative government, and the changes to the character of the NHS in the 1980s which culminated in the NHS reforms. It describes the context in which spatial resource allocation policies in the NHS were operating—one of heightened uneven development, with particularly rapid growth taking place in South East England with harmful effects on the NHS. It shows that one response was pressure by backbench MPs on government for a more equitable distribution of funds. Developments within the NHS are interpreted as strategic attempts to prioritize the interests of key geographical locations within a broader 'two nations' political strategy. Three issues are raised: the usefulness of the idea of 'spatial coalitions' in understanding pressures for change in health care policy; the extent to which spatially-uneven development and the 'two-nations' political strategy influenced the character and timing of changes in health care policy; and the possibility that the politics of the welfare state will increasingly be shaped by territorially-based conflicts.     

The Erosion of Party Politics in Britain

This article looks at the erosion of democratic practice enacted by "New" Labour in Britain under the leadership of Tony Blair. Building on the internal reforms of the 1980s, the process of Labour Party "modernization" has created an exclusive, top-down managerial style of leadership. This type of party leadership and management has far-reaching implications for British politics more generally, not least the role of political parties. The current crisis of the Conservatives and the destruction of representative democracy within the Labour Party pose serious questions regarding the medium-term future of parties as voluntary membership organizations. These changes are placed in the context of a possible longer-term transformation of British political structures in order to exchange the long-established administration of the Conservative Party for a new type of governmental machinery. The aim is not a new "traditional" party of government, but a partyless formation built around a dominant central presidential figure and his office—a change which necessitates abolishing the Labour Party and social democracy as they currently exist. It is argued that this anticipated remedy to a protracted crisis of the British state accords closely to the requirements of neoliberal economic management, while drawing upon developments in the wider global environment. However, if this is to succeed, Blair's "modernizing" tendency needs to be able to articulate a coherent ideology that strikes a popular chord. Thus far, Blair's managerial approach to politics may have scored a few points against the old party ideologies, but it has also undermined attempts to promote an alternative ideology—even one of a "partyless" nature.     

Politics in a Cold Climate: The Conservative Decline in Scotland

An important feature over the last 30 years has been the increasing shortfall in the Conservative vote in Scotland compared with England. The Conservative Party, despite social structural disadvantages in terms of housing tenure and social class, did unusually well until the mid-1950s, particularly among Unionists and Protestants. After considering the historical and religious factors explaining earlier Conservative political strength, it is argued that two factors help to explain the changing politics of the state in Scotland: the establishment of Scotland as a separate unit of economic management in popular perception and the greater dependence on direct state involvement. The Scottish economic dimension has made Scotland an ideological category largely incompatible with Conservative English/British national rhetoric as employed by Mrs Thatcher.     

The Politics of Occupational Pension Reform in Britain and the Netherlands: The Power of Market Discipline in Liberal and Corporatist Regimes

The politics of occupational pension reform has attracted less attention than state pension retrenchment. Yet, in countries with large occupational welfare sectors changes in company provision can be equally important for welfare system generosity. This paper compares recent occupational pension developments in the Netherlands and Britain, exemplars of coordinated and liberal capitalism. The paper argues that despite regime-typical differences in the nature and process of change, recent developments have also been remarkably similar. In both countries retrenchment and individualisation has left most citizens at risk of being less well off in retirement. Corporatist governance in the Netherlands has not challenged the overall orientation of this process, but has merely distributed the costs of retrenchment more fairly than liberal Britain. Instead, the constraints of the globalised financial market directed change: exposure to market discipline, reinforced by national policy actors and international market regulators, made occupational provision vulnerable to retrenchment regardless of regime type. Thus, the significance for levels of social protection of differences between liberal and corporatist governance models of occupational pensions may have been overrated.     

The Quiet Revolution? The Labour Party and Welfare Conditionality

Labour's 2017 general election manifesto contained a pledge to ‘end the punitive sanctions regime’ in the British welfare state. Whilst the specific implications of this pledge were not elaborated, such a policy would nevertheless constitute a profound break with a welfare consensus spanning over twenty years. The depth of the suggested changes on welfare are also evident in the scale of reform proposed to disability benefits, as well as plans—confirmed in August 2018 by the Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell—to pilot universal basic income. Collectively, these policies would seemingly be deeply at odds with public opinion on the benefits system, which over the course of the last two decades has significantly hardened. Yet despite the seemingly radical and controversial nature of the policy, it received very little media or public attention during the election campaign. This article explores Labour's ‘quiet revolution’ on welfare, examining whether Labour's new welfare approach is indeed a bold attempt to reshape public opinion on welfare or, alternatively, a mostly pragmatic reaction to changing social attitudes. The argument presented is that whilst there are persuasive explanations that Labour is responding to a change in the public mood, there is also evidence of a more ambitious goal at stake: the aim of reshaping, not simply responding to, public opinion on the welfare state.     

The Puzzling Lack of a Social Dilemma

Among theories dealing with welfare state policy development, theories of social dilemmas and of key actor-group influence over government policy formation are increasingly holding sway. These theories emphasise that few would risk being unilateral contributors to the systems without any compensating elements. Thus, selective, means-testing systems or stingy universal systems in which some citizens 'contribute' while others 'receive' may risk being regarded as unfair in the eyes of the contributors in spite of the redistributive intentions. The degree of welfare state programme 'fairness' and reciprocity would, then, explain the degree of support for the welfare state. However, by using data from the United Kingdom and Sweden, this article will, first, claim that the social dilemma research turns a blind eye to the fact that public opinion in general as well as key groups appears to be able to yield its support even when welfare states contain distinctly selective elements and low-compensation universal programmes. Second, the article will elaborate on the confusion surrounding welfare state taxonomies as one plausible reason for why social dilemma theories may risk missing the target. Finally, the article will elaborate on the future of the welfare state as we know it. The main points are that given the fact that the welfare states in the two countries really already are conglomerates of different types of welfare programmes and, given a weak relationship between key groups and policy formation, the most likely future for the welfare state is that policies will continue to follow mixed paths.     

Social Policy by Other Means from a Comparative Historical Perspective Continuity and Change in Nineteenth-Century Belgium (1800 ‒1920)

ABSTRACT

While social policies in the past are “by other means” if compared to traditional welfare states, historians have successfully established that they were much more conventional in their own time. Moreover, welfare states are historically grown constructs often still containing many pre-existing elements of precisely such social policies by other means, for example non-state provision. Belgium is an excellent example. Historically both nineteenth-century poor relief and early twentieth-century social insurance were mixed private/public forms of provision and funding. Today the Belgian welfare state still retains fundamental aspects of non-state provision not usually associated with “conventional” welfare states in the core OECD.     

The emerging political economy of austerity in Britain

This paper uses data from the British Election Study's Continuous Monitoring Surveys to investigate reactions of the British public to the economic crisis and the austerity policies the Conservative–Liberal Democrat coalition government has adopted to deal with it. Multivariate models informed by competing valence and positional theories of electoral choice are employed to study the impact of these reactions on support for the Conservative Party and Prime Minister David Cameron and evaluations of the Conservatives' ability to handle important issues. Analyses indicate that there is widespread and growing pessimism about the prospects of resolving the economic crisis in the near future. Since the crisis began in 2008, the dynamics of these bearish attitudes have been closely linked to rising unemployment rates. Differing positions regarding the Coalition's austerity policies exert sizable effects on party support, but these attitudes have not negated the force of valence politics considerations such as party leader images, partisan attachments and global assessments of party performance.     

Better Off Out? Britain and Europe

The largest ever rebellion of Conservative MPs on Europe took place in October 2011 with 81 Conservative MPs defying the Conservative whip to vote for a referendum on Britain's continued membership of the European Union. This resurgence of dissent over Europe has been fuelled by the crisis in the eurozone. The Conservative party is now an overwhelmingly Eurosceptic party, but Conservative Eurosceptics are divided over whether the Government should use the opportunity of the eurozone crisis to take Britain out of the European Union, or whether it should seek to negotiate a looser arrangement, or do nothing at all. Conservative policy on Europe has been further complicated by the coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and by the consequences for the British economy if the eurozone disintegrates. Public opinion is also divided. British policy on the European Union remains ambivalent and muddled because British aims are inconsistent, and because there is no consensus on where Britain's interests truly lie.     

A ‘Property‐Owning Democracy’ or ‘Generation Rent’?

‘A property owning democracy’ has been at the centre of Conservative Party social policy since Noel Skelton coined the phrase in 1924. The idea has been underpinned by contrasting the independent, hygienic, suburban homeowner with the urban, managed, flat‐dwelling, high‐density council tenant. No Conservative‐led government has left office with a homeownership rate lower than when it came to power and the right to buy has enabled this growth to be maintained. However, in 2005, homeownership started to decline and this drop has continued into the Coalition government's term of office with more households now exiting owner‐occupation into the private landlord sector than entering owner‐occupation from private renting. The ‘reinvigorating’ the right to buy is an attempt put a ‘property owning democracy’ back on track but, should it fail, the Conservative Party may turn to more radical policies such as sale on vacant possession of ‘high value’ local authority and housing association houses.     

The Color of Devolution: Race, Federalism, and the Politics of Social Control

In this article, we seek to advance scholarship on the origins and consequences of policy devolution by analyzing state decisions to give local authorities control over welfare policy. The first part of our analysis explores the political forces that systematically influence state decisions to cede policy control to lower-level jurisdictions. In this context, we propose a general Racial Classification Model of how race influences social policy choice. Our findings support this model as well as social control perspectives on welfare provision. Building on these results, we then show how modest but consistent racial effects on policy choices concatenate to produce large disparities in the overall policy regimes that racial groups encounter in the federal system. The empirical findings illuminate the fundamental role that federalism plays in the production of contemporary racial disparities and in the recent turn toward neoliberal and paternalist policies in American poverty governance.     

The Future of Conservatism*

British Conservatism embodies certain basic, though not always compatible, tenets of belief. They have underpinned the Conservative Party, which has been the most successful political party in the history of western Europe. The party was the ‘in’ party in British politics in the 20th Century; the reasons for that success shifted in the 21st century to it principal opponent party. Attempts by Conservative leaders in the first two parliaments of opposition constituted quick‐fix and ultimately doomed approaches to restoring electoral dominance. The party under David Cameron has shifted to a long‐term, grounded approach, learning the lessons of earlier periods of opposition. Though the process remains incomplete, the Conservative Party is placed for the first time in the 21st century to return to being a party of governance.     

Reforming the French welfare state: Solidarity,social exclusion and the three crises of citizenship

The article explores recent debates about citizenship and social provision in France. It examines the essential concepts comparable to ‘social citizenship’, as understood in British debates, and the role that they have played in the development of the French welfare state. Its conclusions are threefold. First, social provision in France is founded on the principle of solidarité, which holds that all citizens face a series of social risks (unemployment and illness) that make them dependent on one another. Second, as the traditional insurance principle (the core of the French welfare state) is founded on socio‐economic conditions (concerning the nature of social interdependence and social risk) that no longer exist, the emergence of these social ills has led to not one but three crises of citizenship: a crisis of coverage, of legitimacy and of participation. Third, while it is too early to draw definitive conclusions, recent policy reforms suggest that the difficulties faced by French welfare are encouraging moves towards the British model of tax‐based (rather than insurance‐based) financing of social provision.     

New Labour and Government in Britain: Change or Continuity?

The 1997 British election marks a major change in British government. Eighteen years of Conservative rule had brought about growing inequality and social division and have generated powerful demands for new directions in public policy, especially in the areas of welfare and public administration. On welfare state reform Labour is constrained by election promises to restrain taxation and public expenditure. New Labour ministers influenced by the New Right have in any case largely rejected traditional social democratic redistributive strategies and are seeking instead new ways of reducing welfare dependency.
The virulent spread of quangos at all levels of government and a marked increase in the centralisation of power in Whitehall have given a new impetus to demands for constitutional reform. Labour's response to these demands is a major program of regional devolution, House of Lords reform and open government measures.
This article explains what 'New Labour' means and discusses New Labour policies on welfare and constitutional reform and their implications for the future of public administration in Britain.     

On the front lines of welfare delivery: Are workers implementing policy reforms?

The impact of policy changes on the local delivery of services has been overlooked in several decades of largely unsuccessful efforts to “reform” welfare. This article uses one case of state-level welfare reform in the early 1990s to examine the implementation of policy changes in local welfare offices. Direct observation of transactions between welfare workers and clients suggests that policy reforms were not fully implemented by street-level bureaucrats. The instrumental transactions that continued to dominate interactions with clients were consistent with processing claims and rationing scarce resources, but they were poorly aligned with new policies aimed at changing the services and message delivered to welfare clients. The failure to fully implement reforms on the frontlines has implications for the achievement of policy objectives and for equity in service provision. Implementation issues will have even greater urgency as welfare is devolved from federal to state governments.     

The Big Society: Back to the Future

This article contributes to the steady flow of critiques of the big society idea contained in The Political Quarterly. It focuses chiefly on two sets of parallels. The first is between the big society and the policies pursued by the Thatcher government which, despite their obvious rhetorical differences, contain many striking similarities, including their neoliberal origins, application of the ‘crowding out’ thesis and uncritically idealised notions of community. The second is between the big society and a policy with the same name pursued doggedly by the Chinese Communist Party for nearly 20 years until being abandoned as a failure. Lessons for the Prime Minister's flagship policy are drawn from the Chinese experience. The article concludes with a welcome for the rediscovery of the social by public policy and some suggestions as to how a more participative and democratic state could follow from this breakthrough.     

Generational accounting and intergenerational welfare

We investigate the intergenerational welfare implications of Generational Accounting when it is used as the basis for intertemporal fiscal policy decisions. In particular, we consider an economy with a PAYGO social security system out of steady state due to a permanent fall in fertility. In a highly stylized CGE overlapping generations model we illustrate that policy recommendations based on a standard application of Generational Accounting may not be compatible with intertemporal welfare maximization. Our model provides an example where such policies are either time inconsistent or welfare-decreasing.