New Labour

Abstract

This paper examines the use made by political parties of branding, as a means of establishing party values and winning political support. It looks in particular at the way in which political parties use communication to create, build and maintain political brands.

The paper involves an examination of the recent history of the British Labour Party. After a long period in the political wilderness, the party re-branded itself as “New Labour” in the mid-1990s, and-as New Labour-swept to power in a landslide election victory in 1997, under their new leader, Tony Blair.

Using media coverage and material written by some of the architects of New Labour, the paper will describe the creation of the “New Labour” brand, and look at how it was developed and used to generate political support. The paper will also consider the evolution and development of the brand, as the substance underlying the stated brand values has come to be questioned, not least by so-called “Old Labour” supporters of the party.

The paper will draw conclusions regarding the successful management of a political brand, pointing in particular at the need to ensure that the performance of a party espousing a particular brand supports and reinforces communicated brand values and the brand itself.     

The United Kingdom National Security Strategy: the Need for New Bearings in Security Policy

The first ever UK National Security Strategy statement reflect shifts in perspective on the nature of security concerns and the character of risks and threats in an era of globalisation. However, the UK National Security Strategy itself is a major disappointment. It fails as an attempt to conceive of a genuine strategy. It also fails to engage explicitly and fully with key imperatives for UK security policy, such as Islamist terrorism and the emerging power of China. However, the UK National Security Strategy, despite being weak and disappointing, offers important new bearings on where the National Security Strategy and the government's means to security policy should go from here, identifying areas to strengthen and develop national security structures.     

Federalism, Political Structure, and Public Policy in the United States and Canada

Two of the three large countries on the North American continent—the United States and Canada—share a number of similarities that often make it difficult for the untrained observer to differentiate between the two nations. On the surface, the two are structured similarly as federal systems that, by definition, exhibit shared power between the national government and provincial or state political entities.Although there are other important social and economic characteristics of the two countries that help explain differences in policy processes and outcomes, it is the contention of this article that one gets the clearest sense of what Elazar has called thinking federal by utilizing an analytical approach that joins questions related to federalism with some conceptual frameworks of the public policy field. Two frameworks undergird the argument in this article—the Lowi typology of different types of policies and Deil Wright's typology of different models that describe the American inter-governmental system.In both countries, policies must be sensitive to the greater interdependencies between units of government as well as to linkages between policy areas. The mechanisms or instrumentalities for dealing with policy issues are intrinsically complex. It is also clear that the intergovernmental networks that exist in both the U.S. and Canada are composed of an array of actors. The differing political structures of the systems do impact the types of intergovernmental policies that have emerged in the two countries. The executive dominance so imbedded in Canadian governments has contributed to their ability to adopt and implement certain controversial redistributive policies, such as a national health insurance program. By contrast, the fragmentation of the U.S. system makes redistributive policies more difficult.     

The structure of foreign policy attitudes in transatlantic perspective: Comparing the United States,United Kingdom,France and Germany

While public opinion about foreign policy has been studied extensively in the United States, there is less systematic research of foreign policy opinions in other countries. Given that public opinion about international affairs affects who gets elected in democracies and then constrains the foreign policies available to leaders once elected, both comparative politics and international relations scholarship benefit from more systematic investigation of foreign policy attitudes outside the United States. Using new data, this article presents a common set of core constructs structuring both American and European attitudes about foreign policy. Surveys conducted in four countries (the United States, the United Kingdom, France and Germany) provide an expanded set of foreign policy‐related survey items that are analysed using exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM). Measurement equivalence is specifically tested and a common four‐factor structure that fits the data in all four countries is found. Consequently, valid, direct comparisons of the foreign policy preferences of four world powers are made. In the process, the four‐factor model confirms and expands previous work on the structure of foreign policy attitudes. The article also demonstrates the capability of ESEM in testing the dimensionality and cross‐national equivalence of social science concepts.     

The Use of Force in British Foreign Policy: From New Labour to the Coalition

This article studies the ideational underpinnings of the UK Coalition government's ‘liberal conservative’ foreign policy. It begins by suggesting that an Iraq‐centric account of Blair's foreign policy suggests a grand vision on the prime minister's part that was lacking from his earlier foreign policy adventures, which relied on a more conventional form of British statecraft. The second section contends that the Gordon Brown years 2007–10 and, since the end of New Labour, Coalition foreign policy, can be seen as a response both to the substance and style of Blair's highly personalised stewardship of foreign policy post‐9/11. The war on terror and the invasion of Iraq were accompanied by a seemingly open‐ended democracy promotion around the globe which was quite out of character with past British practice. The article argues, therefore, that under Brown and Cameron cautious pragmatism has tended to win out over the proclamation of grand strategic ambition.     

Bernard Crick: citizenship and democracy in the United Kingdom

Bernard Crick's contribution to citizenship studies can be regarded as part of the tradition so ably represented by T.H. Marshall. I want to argue in this brief article on Crick that on the one hand he is part of the ‘golden age’ of political philosophy that has flourished in the English-speaking world over the last two or three decades, but on the other his work also shows the limitations of that tradition, at least from the perspective of comparative and historical studies in political sociology. His work was unquestionably ‘local’ in its focus on the subject of Scottish independence and the viability of the British Isles under the governance of a multi-national state.     

The Politics of Energy Policy in the United Kingdom

This article examines the evolution of energy policy in post-war Britain. It examines the decline of the politics of production associated with the nationalised energy industries and the rise of the politics of regulation under the impact of privatisation. The article concludes with an examination of energy policy in the context of the recent debates over governance and the hollowing-out of the state.     

The Governance of Fiscal Policy in the United Kingdom and Canada

This article analyzes the governance of fiscal policy in the United Kingdom and Canada under the Blair Government and the Chrétien Government. It seeks to identify whether the capacity of the core executive to steer fiscal policy has been “hollowed out.” The conclusion drawn is that in both the United Kingdom and Canada, far from having been hollowed out, there has actually been a strengthening of the capacity of the Treasury and the Department of Finance, respectively, to steer fiscal policy.     

Need Public Policy Ignore the Third Sector? Government Policy in Australia and the United Kingdom

The policy of Australian governments, both Commonwealth, state and territory, toward those organisations that comprise a third sector of the organised economy is patchy and piecemeal. Absent is any recognition that they constitute a distinct sector; absent too is any recognition of their contribution to economy, society and politics. Such a situation is not inevitable. After identifying some of the gaps and contradictions in Australian policy toward the third sector, this article outlines the many policy initiatives to encourage the third sector or social economy (in European Union terms) taken by the Blair government in the United Kingdom. Given that there is a good deal of policy borrowing between Australia and the United Kingdom, the stark contrast between the two countries in this policy field is puzzling. This article concludes by identifying four developments that led to this policy explosion in the United Kingdom and finds them largely missing in Australia. This leads to a conclusion that a similar range of policies are unlikely to develop here.     

Toward Cultural Analysis in Policy Analysis: Picking Up Where Aaron Wildavsky Left Off

To generate policy alternatives and offer policy advice, the policy analysis and planning literature counsels analysts to assess the values and beliefs of policy actors, as well as the organizational and political contexts in which an analyst's proposed solution will have to be enacted and implemented, but does not further specify what these values, beliefs, and contexts might be. Analysts can anticipate the kinds of political values and the kinds of beliefs about human nature, the environment, and the economy that are likely to be associated with different forms of social organization by relying on Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky's theory of culture. Additionally, this form of cultural analysis will allow analysts to deduce which policy problems are most likely to arise, which policy solutions are most likely to be feasible, and which policy advocacy coalitions are most probable in different cultural contexts.     

New Labour Legacy: Comparing the Labour Governments of Blair and Brown to Labour Governments since 1945

The election of the Conservative–Liberal coalition in May 2010 provides the opportunity to start to map out the record of the Labour governments between 1997 and 2010. This paper deals with the specific question how the Brown/Blair governments performed on public expenditures when compared to the records of UK Labour governments since 1945. Did the public expenditure record of the 1997 represent a departure from that of previous Labour governments? This is important to ascertain since there are strongly held beliefs that New Labour was not committed to Labour's historic commitments of income redistribution and universal benefits. The analysis that follows is constructed around five major public expenditure programmes that reflect Labour's priorities. These include total expenditure, expenditure on health, education, housing and social security.     

美国多元文化教育的理论困境与转向

20世纪90年代以来,在全球化与全球化教育、新保守主义和新自由主义等思潮的冲击下,美国的多元文化教育理论进入反思和深化阶段,并且开始从"民族国家多元文化教育"向"全球社会多元文化教育"转向,在新的发展路径中,多元文化教育仍然面临着如何调适国家、民族利益与全世界共同利益,以及文化诉求、经济诉求与政治诉求的复杂关系。     

Public Support for Climate Change Policy: Consistency in the Influence of Values and Attitudes Over Time and Across Specific Policy Alternatives

This study examines the factors that explain public preferences for a set of climate change policy alternatives. While scholarly work indicates a relationship between attitudes and values on views toward specific issues, the literature often examines general support for issues rather than specific policy proposals. Consequently, it is unclear the extent to which these attitudes and values affect specific policy considerations. This project examines public support for five climate change policy options in two national surveys taken three years apart. The empirical analysis reveals that time is a factor and that those who are liberal, have strong ecological values, report greater concern for climate change, and trust experts are consistently more supportive of the climate policy options considered here. The results shed new light on the nuanced views of the American public toward climate change.