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New Labour (new + labour)
Terms modified by New Labour Selected AbstractsA decade of fiscal policy under New LabourECONOMIC OUTLOOK, Issue 2 2007Article first published online: 17 APR 200 First page of article [source] New Labour and the Modernisation of British Local Government: A CritiqueFINANCIAL ACCOUNTABILITY & MANAGEMENT, Issue 4 2001Arthur Midwinter The modernisation agenda for local government is based on questionable political assumptions. It has the attributes of a theological concept. This paper examines the concept of modernisation of local government by focusing on three dimensions (1) governance, (2) management and (3) finance. This analysis suggests the modernisation agenda is limited in scope and vision. [source] Gender, Politics and Policy Change: The Case of Welfare Reform Under New LabourGOVERNMENT AND OPPOSITION, Issue 1 2010Claire Annesley Politics and gender scholarship is increasingly seeking to understand the relationship between the presence of women in politics and gendered policy outcomes , the substantive representation of women (SRW). Yet its focus remains squarely on the activities of ,critical actors' in parliaments and women's policy agencies and on ,feminist' rather than ,mainstream' policy areas. In contrast, this article investigates the impact of feminist actors in a range of institutional settings on recent processes of welfare reform in the UK. It finds that the gendered welfare reform introduced by New Labour was initiated and pushed through by a coalition of committed feminist actors across a range of institutions. Crucially, the reforms relied on the existence of ,strategic actors' and ,gate openers', defined as feminist actors in positions of significant institutional power. It makes a contribution to the actor-centred SRW scholarship, develops an institutionalist approach to this research and identifies the need for a political economy perspective to understanding how women can shape policy outcomes. [source] New Labour and the enabling stateHEALTH & SOCIAL CARE IN THE COMMUNITY, Issue 6 2000Ian Taylor BA (Leics) Msc, PhD (Econ) Abstract The notion of the ,enabling state' gained currency in the UK during the 1990s as an alternative to the ,providing' or the welfare state. It reflected the process of contracting out in the NHS and compulsory competitive tendering (CCT) in local government during the 1980s, but was also associated with developments during the 1990s in health, social care and education in particular. The creation of an internal market in the NHS and the associated purchaser,provider split appeared to transfer ,ownership' of services increasingly to the providers , hospitals, General Practitioners (GPs) and schools. The mixed economy of care that was stimulated by the 1990 NHS and Community Care Act appeared to offer local authorities the opportunity to enable non state providers to offer care services in the community. The new service charters were part of the enablement process because they offered users more opportunity to influence provision. This article examines how far service providers were enabled and assesses the extent to which new Labour's policies enhance or reject the ,enabling state' in favour of more direct provision. [source] New Labour and Higher Education: Dilemmas and ParadoxesHIGHER EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 3 2003Roger Brown David Blunkett's Greenwich speech (2000) set out what have become the main themes of New Labour's engagement with higher education, themes which were elaborated in the recent White Paper (DfES, 2003a). This paper draws attention to the dilemmas and paradoxes which arise from the difficulties of simultaneously satisfying the objectives which were set out in the aftermath of the 2001 general election, and from the trade off solutions and policies actually identified. The most fundamental conflict is between the desire to expand the system and the costs of that expansion. The author also identifies a conflict between institutional diversity and hierarchy and between exclusionism and accessibility. The paper concludes by suggesting that exclusionism is still alive and well under the government of a party that still has ,Labour' in its title. [source] Some Reflections on the Relationship between Citizenship, Access to Justice, and the Reform of Legal AidJOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 3 2004Hilary Sommerlad The reflexive, reciprocally constitutive relationship between law and society makes a substantive right of access to justice pivotal to the content of citizenship. It is therefore arguable that the establishment of legal aid, however limited in practice, was fundamental to the expanded citizenship which the post-war settlement sought to achieve. However this social form of citizenship has been attenuated by the reconfiguration of the state and the neo-liberal reconstruction of the public sector. Yet at the same time, the concepts of citizenship and social exclusion have become key discursive mechanisms in this reconstruction, including in the New Labour reform of the legal aid sector. This paper considers the various meanings attributed to the concepts of citizenship, social exclusion, and access to justice through the optic of the history of policy changes in legal aid. The impact of globalization and economic restructuring on social citizenship is explored, both in terms of the experience of recipients of public goods like legal services, and the professionals who supply them. The commensurability of the New Labour Community Legal Service (CLS) model with other models of justice is discussed. The conclusion briefly returns to the theme of law's ,citizen-constitutive' role and considers the potential of the CLS for combating social exclusion. [source] Railtrack is Dead , Long Live Network Rail?JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 2 2003Nationalization Under the Third Way This essay offers, by way of an examination of the proposals to reform the railway industry, a case study of the government's attempt to operationalize the third way. That these proposals are consistent with the third way is identified within this essay and yet they would appear to give rise to the de facto renationalization of the railway infrastructure. In accounting for this apparent contradiction in the (third way) means used and the (old-style democracy) ends achieved, it will be argued that this new form of nationalization is consistent with the third way rather than any socialist understanding of the term. To this extent, therefore, New Labour have attempted to reconceptualize the process of nationalization in pursuit of the ,new mixed economy'. [source] A Revised Role for Trade Unions as Designed by New Labour: The Representation Pyramid and ,Partnership'JOURNAL OF LAW AND SOCIETY, Issue 3 2002Tonia Novitz A key objective of British unions is to develop their representative role so as to establish their relevance to the workforce and thereby reverse the overall decline in trade union membership. To many, the legislative reforms undertaken by New Labour since 1999 offer some hope that this can be achieved. These reforms seem to provide a pyramid of representation, whereby trade unions can establish their relevance when they ,accompany' individual employees in grievance and disciplinary proceedings, and when they act as recipients of information and consultation. By attracting members in this fashion, there would seem to be the promise that unions can reascend to the position of recognized and effective parties in collective bargaining. However, this paper suggests that a barrier to the achievement of this objective is the particular conception of ,partnership' adopted by New Labour, which deviates from that of the TUC. This ,partnership' is essentially individualistic in character, procedural in form, and unitary in specification. These characteristics are reflected in the relevant statutory and regulatory provisions and are therefore likely to inhibit the progression of a trade union to recognition in collective bargaining. [source] ,Modern language' or ,spin'?JOURNAL OF NURSING MANAGEMENT, Issue 5 2004Nursing, newspeak', organizational culture: new health scriptures A new managerial language of modernization has accompanied political restructuring of the National Health Service. Corporate goals of efficiency and audit have been integrated with the ideological manifesto of New Labour in stressing citizenship, inclusion and empowerment. Drawing on the theoretical insights of anthropology and sociology, this article critically reviews the relationship between health policy, organizational culture and nursing practise through an exploration of language in terms of ,rhetoric', ,jargon' and ,metaphor'. It is suggested that beyond the bewildering vocabulary of ,buzz words' is a fundamental contradiction between the ethic of caring and the expectations of Government. Finally thought is given to the role of professional education and training where intellectual engagement with the ritual categories of ,newspeak' is a subversive act. [source] Too much of a good thing: the ,problem' of political communications in a mass media democracyJOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Issue 3 2007Ivor Gaber Francis Fukuyama asks: ,,,is liberal democracy prey to serious internal contradictions, contradictions so serious that they will eventually undermine it as a political system?' This paper argues that one of these ,internal contradictions' is the political communications process and it can be sufficiently serious to undermine the democratic system,but such an undermining is not inevitable. The problem can be described as follows: Democratic systems require that citizens are kept fully informed by governments (and others) in the interests of transparency and ultimately accountability. Hence, all political communications have, as their final objective, the accountability of politicians at the ballot box. Thus all political communications have what can be described as ,above' and ,below' the line content. The above-the-line is the actual content of the message, the below-the-line is the implicit one of ,think better of me and my colleagues think worse of my opponents'. Consequently, no matter how personally honest and open an individual politician might be, the democratic system requires her or him to be always thinking about securing a successful result at the ballot box. Thus we have the ,political communications paradox'. Voters want politicians to be honest and accountable but this very demand means that politicians, implicitly, always have to have another agenda in operation when they are communicating with the public, i.e. securing their approval and then their support. As a result the trust which is a fundamental to the workings of a democratic system is constantly being undermined. This has two effects. First, that governments are obliged to make communications, rather than delivery, their real priority and second trust, not just in politicians but in the political system as a whole, tends to wane over time, which in turn endangers the very system it was designed to underpin. But this decline is not inevitable because the system has some in-built self-correcting mechanisms These include: the rise of new parties and/or leaders who portray themselves as ,new' and ,untainted',New Labour, New Conservatives, etc., an almost regular ,re-balancing' of the power relationship that exists between politicians and the civil service, particularly in the communications field, the rise of new forms of communication that seek to by-pass the institutional roadblocks that are perceived as being the cause of the problems and finally increased attention by journalists and academics to the process of political communications makes it more difficult for politicians to continue with ,business as usual' as far as their communication activities are concerned. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] Spin: from tactic to tabloidJOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Issue 1 2006Leighton Andrews Over the last fifteen years, the word Spin has come to define both the process of political communication, and the practice of public relations itself. The history of the term requires some examination. Arguably, until around 1992, Spin did not have such a widespread meaning,it was simply one tactic in an election campaigner's armoury. Now it seems to embrace the whole process of communication, not only between election campaigners and the media, but also between a Government and its people, or between a public relations professional in any field, and his or her target publics. The development of Spin as a word has gone through a number of stages which will be addressed in the course of this paper. It now has widespread popular usage, which has arisen through two principal processes: The increasing celebrity status of the spin-doctor role: and the usefulness of the word to tabloid sub-editors. By 1997, when New Labour came into Government, the discourse of spin was firmly established. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source] The symbolic state: a British experienceJOURNAL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS, Issue 4 2003Nicholas O'Shaughnessy Abstract This paper aspires to introduce a new word into the political lexicon. It argues that Britain's ,New' Labour Government embodies a phenomenon for which the word ,spin' is descriptively inadequate. New Labour actually represents something much more radical and important than this,an entire regime whose core competence has lain in the generation of imagery. Its directors recognise that, in a sense, words speak louder than actions, and that the production of the correct imagery is politically more significant than the creation and execution of policy, the old concept of governing. While the paper discusses the ethical and the social consequences of this evolution, it also suggests that such symbolic government is the almost inevitable response of governing elites to an inquisitorial and relentless modern media. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications [source] The Government of Health Care and the Politics of Patient Empowerment: New Labour and the NHS Reform Agenda in EnglandLAW & POLICY, Issue 3 2010KENNETH VEITCH This article considers the issue of patient empowerment in the context of New Labour's proposed reforms to the National Health Service (NHS) in England. Through an exploration of some of the key measures in the government's white paper High Quality Care for All, the article argues for a conceptualization of patient empowerment as a political technique of governing. Patient empowerment, it is contended, can no longer be understood solely as a quantitative phenomenon to be balanced within the doctor-patient relationship. Rather, its deployment by the government as a way of governing health and health care more broadly demands that we consider what political functions,including, importantly, it is argued here, managing the problem of the increasing cost of illness and health care,patient empowerment may be involved in performing. In order to assist in this enquiry, the article draws on some of Michel Foucault's work on the art of governing. It is suggested that his understanding of the neoliberal mode of governing best captures the proposed changes to the NHS and the role patient empowerment plays in their implementation. [source] Ethics and Foreign Policy: the Antinomies of New Labour's ,Third Way' in Sub-Saharan AfricaPOLITICAL STUDIES, Issue 2 2001Rita Abrahamsen This article explores how New Labour has attempted to implement its ideas about a ,third way' foreign policy in sub-Saharan Africa. Through an examination of British foreign policy practices, we explore whether New Labour has succeeded in finding a ,third way' between traditional views of socialism and capitalism in Africa. In particular, the article focuses on New Labour's attempts to build peace, prosperity and democracy on the African continent. We conclude that although New Labour's claims to add an ,ethical dimension' to foreign policy have succeeded in giving Britain a higher profile in the international arena, the implementation of such a policy is intrinsically difficult. These difficulties in turn arise from the antinomies embodied in New Labour's policy, or more specifically from the tension between the liberal internationalism of the third way and traditional concerns for the national interest, as well as the contradictions inherent in a commitment to both political and economic liberalism. [source] Whatever Happened to Thatcherism?POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 2 2007Colin Hay Throughout the 1980s and the early 1990s the pages of journals such as this were filled with debate , invariably heated , on the nature, extent, significance and reversibility of Thatcherism. Today the echoes of a once deafening clamour have largely subsided. Thatcherism has all but disappeared from the lexicon of British political analysis. My aim in what follows is to reflect on this passing and what it indicates about the state of our understanding of this once most contentious of phenomena. I do so by considering the two most significant recent additions to the vast literature on the subject, Peter Kerr's Postwar British Politics: From Conflict to Consensus (2001) and Richard Heffernan's New Labour and Thatcherism: Political Change in Britain (2000).1 [source] New Labour: ,The Road Less Travelled'?POLITICS, Issue 3 2003Stephen Meredith This article offers a contribution to the debate in recent issues of this journal concerning the relative ,newness' or otherwise of New Labour. It briefly assesses the significant arguments of the respective academic protagonists and asks if, in responding to a changing social and economic climate, New Labour, the highly focused use of language and rhetoric aside, is, in a significant sense, different to the measured, pragmatic and reformist revisions of the past. It emphasises significant associations and continuities in Labour's recent evolution and the largely rhetorical and politically (and electorally) expedient nature of the party's current designation. It offers an interpretation of New Labour, based around two related observations of the party's historically broad and complex political culture and diverse perceptions and preferences of Labour's traditionally centre-right ,governing elite', that suggests that the post-1994 ,New' Labour party possesses significant precedents within elements of Labour's diverse, centre right ,dominant coalition'. [source] Path Dependency and the Reform of English Local GovernmentPUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 1 2005Francesca Gains This paper uses the concept of path dependency to examine the changes to the political management structures of English local government. We note how the possible experience of decreasing returns among some local authority actors combined with the powerful intervention of politicians within New Labour at the national level led to a significant break from past policy and the imposition of measures to establish a separate executive that was claimed as a radical step forward for local democracy. Using survey data from the Evaluating Local Governance research team (http://www.elgnce.org.uk), we explore the establishment of a separate political executive in all major local authorities and map out the style of decision-making that is emerging. We find that some established institutional patterns reasserted themselves in the process of implementation, but that increasing returns are not as great as some theorists of path dependency would suggest and they may be a force for system change as well as for stability. [source] Whatever Happened to Stakeholding?PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION, Issue 3 2004Rajiv Prabhakar In 1996 Tony Blair declared in a speech in Singapore that stakeholding would define New Labour's programme in office. This speech provoked much interest in the UK among a centre-left keen to forge a ,third way' alternative to state-centred social democracy and free markets. Conservative politicians, however, subjected New Labour to a barrage of criticisms. Startled by the scale of the negative reaction, Blair stopped referring to stakeholding. A common judgement is that stakeholding got no further than the starting block. This paper challenges this, contending that the progress of stakeholding has not in fact been halted under New Labour. Policies such as Network Rail, foundation hospitals and the Child Trust Fund indicate that stakeholding remains a part of New Labour's approach. Recognizing the stakeholder dimension to policy is important because it opens up a new front in the reform of public services in Britain. [source] New Labour and the Public Sector in BritainPUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 5 2001Mark Bevir In Britain, New Labour has a distinctive public philosophy that contains an ideal often found in the socialist tradition,that is, citizens attaining moral personhood within and through the community. Old Labour generally sought to realize such an ideal in a universal welfare state characterized by a command form of service delivery. New Labour has responded to dilemmas, akin to those highlighted by the New Right, by transforming this model of the public sector. It conceives of the state as an enabler acting in partnership with citizens and other organizations, delivering services through networks characterized by relationships of trust. We explore this distinctive public philosophy through its ethical vision and then its implications for welfare reform and the delivery of public services. [source] Doing good by stealth: The politics of poverty and inequality under New LabourPUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH, Issue 2 2001Ruth Lister [source] Intergenerational class mobility in contemporary Britain: political concerns and empirical findings1THE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Issue 4 2007John H. Goldthorpe Abstract In Britain in recent years social mobility has become a topic of central political concern, primarily as a result of the effort made by New Labour to make equality of opportunity rather than equality of condition a focus of policy. Questions of the level, pattern and trend of mobility thus bear directly on the relevance of New Labour's policy analysis, and in turn are likely be crucial to the evaluation of its performance in government. However, politically motivated discussion of social mobility often reveals an inadequate grasp of both empirical and analytical issues. We provide new evidence relevant to the assessment of social mobility , in particular, intergenerational class mobility , in contemporary Britain through cross-cohort analyses based on the NCDS and BCS datasets which we can relate to earlier cross-sectional analyses based on the GHS. We find that, contrary to what seems now widely supposed, there is no evidence that absolute mobility rates are falling; but, for men, the balance of upward and downward movement is becoming less favourable. This is overwhelmingly the result of class structural change. Relative mobility rates, for both men and women, remain essentially constant, although there are possible indications of a declining propensity for long-range mobility. We conclude that under present day structural conditions there can be no return to the generally rising rates of upward mobility that characterized the middle decades of the twentieth century , unless this is achieved through changing relative rates in the direction of greater equality or, that is, of greater fluidity. But this would then produce rising rates of downward mobility to exactly the same extent , an outcome apparently unappreciated by, and unlikely to be congenial to, politicians preoccupied with winning the electoral ,middle ground'. [source] New Labour: A Critique , Mark BevirTHE BRITISH JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY, Issue 4 2006Ralph Fevre No abstract is available for this article. [source] Forcing the Issue: New Labour, New Localism and the Democratic Renewal of Police AccountabilityTHE HOWARD JOURNAL OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE, Issue 5 2005Eugene McLaughlin After providing a brief overview of New Labour's initial attempts to modernise British policing, I analyse why and how the broader political discourse of ,new localism' came to frame the unfolding debate about the need to revitalise police accountability. The article then offers a critical evaluation of the latest Home Office attempt to reorganise the democratic structure of police governance in the UK. [source] New Labour's Escape from Class PoliticsTHE JOURNAL OF THE HISTORICAL SOCIETY, Issue 1 2006James E. Cronin The connection between trade unions and parties of the left is traditionally close across Europe. In Britain the link is more than close: it is intimate, defining, and constitutive of what the Labour Party is and has been since its inception. This link allowed the party to survive during bad times and helped it to govern during good times, but during the 1970s it became less helpful, as policies backed by the unions not only failed to work but were also repudiated by union members themselves in what came to be known as the "winter of discontent" in 1979. New Labour was therefore built on the understanding that its past connection to the unions, and hence to a particular sort of "class politics," needed to be rethought and renegotiated. It is the new defining feature of the Labour Party. [source] Constructing Victims' Rights: The Home Office, New Labour and VictimsTHE MODERN LAW REVIEW, Issue 1 2006Joanna Shapland First page of article [source] New Labour, Same Old Tory Housing Policy?THE MODERN LAW REVIEW, Issue 2 2001Dave Cowan First page of article [source] It's Only Made Things Worse: A Critique of Electoral Reform in BritainTHE POLITICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2008RICHARD KELLY Since it came to power, New Labour has introduced a range of new electoral system into the British political system, implicitly accepting the argument that Britain's traditional electoral system - first-past-the-post (FPTP) - has been a cause of voter disenchantment with Britain's representative democracy. In this article, it is asserted that Labour's reforms have merely compounded this problem, while demonstrating that all electoral systems have significant flaws. Indeed, it is argued that the flaws of the new systems are more serious than those of FPTP and threaten an even greater disconnection between UK politicians and the people they represent." [source] New Labour and the Redistribution of TimeTHE POLITICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2006MARY CAMPBELL First page of article [source] New Labour on Education: Could Do BetterTHE POLITICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2001Tim Brighouse First page of article [source] The Short cut to international development: representing Africa in ,New Britain'AREA, Issue 1 2000Marcus Power Summary Under New Labour, the British Department for International Development (DFID) promises a radical and alternative new ,development agenda' and, more specifically, an end to ,development handouts'. The short cut to international development envisioned by Secretary of State Clare Short is explored in this paper, as is the ,messy' contextuality of writing about development in ,New Britain'. This paper raises questions about New Labour's discussion of the ,moral authority' for international development in ,post-colonial' Britain, particularly in light of the recent ,arms-to-Africa' affair involving Britain and Sierra Leone. The paper argues that Britannia's neoliberal vision of development is not so ,cool' and that, in ethical terms, the development of foreign policy toward Africa has not been consistent. In conclusion, the paper raises doubts about the likelihood of world poverty being halved by 2015 (as the DFID has confidently predicted). [source] | |||||||||||||||||||