Active Citizenship: Navigating the Conservative Heartlands of the New Labour Project (original) (raw)
Related papers
From New Labour to New Conservatism: the changing dynamics of citizenship as self-government
Citizenship Studies, 2013
This article examines the shift in discourses of citizenship from Britain from notions of entitlement and obligation to those of self-government, and the reciprocity between the responsibilisation of individual and collective citizen-subjectivities. Against the backdrop of debates about society as the telos of government, this article will interrogate the claim that New Conservatism's 'Big Society' represents a unique rationality of government and an alternative formula of advanced liberal rule. By doing so, the article will extend our understanding of 'post-welfare regimes of the social' and illustrate precisely how they operate in contemporary Britain.
Political Ideologies, 2021
This article aims to re-evaluate Margaret Thatcher's concept of citizenship and analyse its evolution during her government (1979-1990). It argues that her ideas concerning individuals and their relationship with the state and civil society were a crucial element of her belief system since at least the 1970s. Despite their importance, however, most analyses of Thatcherism have relegated these ideas to a marginal place. A rigorous analysis of speeches, interviews, memoirs and documents shows that Thatcher had reconceptualized the idea of citizenship long before her home secretary Douglas Hurd attempted to rationalize and re-package her ideas for public consumption. However, by the end of the 1980s, when moderate Conservatives such as Hurd turned their attention to this question, it was widely perceived that the Conservative Party required a more humane and coherent concept of citizenship. The article concludes that Thatcher's ideas about the relationship between individuals, the state and community had a lasting influence on the Conservative and New Labour parties' concept of citizenship.
Citizenship and ideology in David Cameron's 'Big Society'
British Politics, 2023
As the main idea of the governments of David Cameron after 2010, the Big Society intended to place civil society at the heart of the Conservative agenda while also serving as a rhetorical tool to distance the 'modern' Conservative party from the Thatcherite legacy. In comparing Margaret Thatcher's view on citizenship to the one upheld by David Cameron, this article argues that despite many similarities, Cameron broke with Thatcher in the way he reinterpreted the nature of the state, as well as how he planned to remake civil society and to inspire 'active citizenship'. Unlike Thatcher, who believed that a dynamic civil society would spontaneously flourish once the state was reduced, Cameron believed that society could be rebuilt only through the work of the state. From this perspective, it is possible to reassess the academic debate about the Big Society and to regard it not as a means of justifying a smaller state at a time of economic austerity, but rather as an initiative which failed at least in part because of austerity.
Whilst traditional definitions of citizenship, such as that of T.H. Marshall, have tended to emphasise the relationship between individuals and the State, over the past twenty years or so a new definition of citizenship has become popular which has instead highlighted the relationship between corporations and civil society. The notion of ‘corporate citizenship’ seems to have replaced that of ‘corporate social responsibility’ to outline the key duties that corporations owe to society, namely being profitable, obeying the law, engaging in ethical behaviour and philanthropic endeavours. Yet, this paper seeks to argue that, in adopting the term ‘citizenship’, with all its connotations of reciprocity, corporations also seek to lay claim to certain rights from the state. The corporate citizen may thus appear to be very similar to the individual citizen in terms of the rights it may claim from the state in return for exercising duties to civil society. But in practice the corporate citizen is accorded a special citizenship status, acting in partnership with government to deliver certain rights and to determine who may have access to citizenship. As a result, the very concept of social citizenship as defined by Marshall is altered: citizenship is no longer seen as primarily rights-based, as more emphasis is placed on duties; citizenship is no longer universal as some citizens are seen to be more equal/deserving than others; most importantly, citizenship is no longer defined exclusively vis-à-vis the state, leading to serious problems of accountability.
Book Review: Policy Change, Public Attitudes and Social Citizenship: Does Neoliberalism Matter?
Critical Social Policy, 2016
review-policy-change-public-attitudes-and-socialcitizenship-louise-humpage/ Neoliberal reforms have both revealed and effected a radical shift in government thinking about social citizenship rights around the world. But have they had a similarly significant impact on public support for these rights? This unique book traces public views on social citizenship across three decades through attitudinal data from New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Australia. Maxine Montaigne holds the book's comparative angle is an interesting and useful contribution, allowing for a deeper questioning of the role of political history and culture in both the implementation and public acceptance of reform.
2020
This book highlights the parallel transformations of the concepts of citizenship and the welfare state, and their dependence on the dominant political ideology, from the post-war period to the present. Kourachanis presents the welfare state as an integral part of the capitalist state and consequently, suggests that any structural changes to the capitalist state will have major impacts on the texture and content of the restructuring of the welfare state. The research compares different formulations of citizenship and the welfare state, reflecting on social citizenship and the post-war (or Keynesian) welfare state, as well as welfare provision under neoliberalism. The research will be vital reading for academics, researchers and students of social and public policy, political and humanitarian studies, as well as policy makers and members of labour unions and activists.