From new labour to Rudd/Gillard: dilemmas, lesson-drawing and policy transfer

From December 2007 until May 2010, both the Australian Labor and British Labour parties were in government. This was an unusual occurrence and had only taken place twice since the Second World War. The concurrent governments, headed by Gordon Brown in the UK, and Kevin Rudd (twice) and Julia Gillard in Australia were a curious mixture of innovation, policy differentiation, and yet beset by a range of underpinning problems. This special issue tracks the policy agendas of these two sets of governments, and examines the links, common dilemmas and policy transfer between these ‘modernised’ forms of British and Australian social democracy. More specifically, this special issue maps the policy agendas of these governments in the realms of political economy (Spies-Butcher and Wilson), social policy (Manwaring), foreign policy (O’Neill), public administration (Legrand), party management (Gauja) and ideology (Edwards and Beech).

The special issue seeks to make a contribution in three distinct ways. First, these empirical cases provide key insights into the wider policy transfer, diffusion and convergence literature. There are significant gaps in how we can understand and conceptualise the links, and transfer of policy, between sets of governments (e.g. Marsh and Sharman 2009; Benson and Jordan 2011; Stone 2012; Manwaring 2015). These centre-left cases provide key insights into the evolving knowledge of policy transfer, diffusion and convergence. As a number of contributors in this issue point out, including Manwaring, O’Neill and Gauja there was learning, transfer and influence between the two sets of governments. Yet, the cases shine a light upon some key limitations in the policy transfer and diffusion literature, especially in seeking to understand why there was influence and/or transfer. The authors in this issue consider the transfers across a range of the Labour governments policy domains, including social policy, political economy, and innovatively, O’Neill considers the policy transfer literature in the domain of foreign policy – an area which tends to be neglected by policy transfer/diffusion writers.

As the policy transfer/literature evolves, the contributions in this issue address some of the key limitations in the policy transfer literature. First, policy transfer heuristics, notably the framework offered by Dolowitz and Marsh (2000, 2012), offer useful, but limited ways of understanding why and how transfer takes place (Evans 2009). Generally speaking, as Evans (2009) and Manwaring (2015) point out, the transfer frameworks tend to be stronger in describing how influence and transfer takes place, rather than giving enough explanatory power to tell us why. For example, the Dolowitz and Marsh (2000) heuristic only gives a limited guide for why there is transfer or influence by locating the transfer takes place on a spectrum from coercion to voluntary. In the discussion between the difference between policy convergence and transfer, Marsh and Sharman (2009) rightly highlight the blurred distinctions between identifying with precision the role of structure and agency when mapping influence and transfer. The key issue here, as explored by Manwaring, and Beech and Edwards in this issue, is that this leaves a lot unsaid about why government’s might seek to borrow from another setting.

Whilst some, such as James and Lodge (2003), suggest abandoning the policy transfer approach, the innovative approach taken by a number of contributors in this issue is to link the transfer literature with other conceptual models to enhance the explanatory power of why there has been influence and transfer. Gauja brings together the policy transfer literature alongside the party ‘contagion’ literature, to examine the ways in which both parties have sought to renew and ‘modernise’ their internal party structures, especially the processes for leadership selection. Examining the realm of social policy, Manwaring links the transfer literature with both the path-dependency literature, and places a strong focus on the ideational struggles of the centre-left to better understand the growing dominance of the ‘social inclusion’ agenda. An upshot of this approach is to highlight how the policy transfer approach needs linkages with other conceptual models to enhance its explanatory power.

Other contributions in the special issue also highlight limitations in the transfer/convergence literature. In a key contribution, Legrand considers the links between the two sets of Labour governments through the lens of public administration, and draws attention to a neglected area of policy – the role of Transgovernmental Policy Networks (TPNs) in facilitating exchange. Le Grand’s task is to use the two sets of Labour governments to broaden the understanding of a multi-level approach to understanding policy transfer – building upon the work of Evans and Davies (1999). Legrand’s case helps reframe the ways we think about issue of structure and agency, by drawing attention to a neglected ‘policy actor’ which resists easy categorisation. A different, but related issue is explored by O’Neill in examining the links and influence of foreign policy between the two sets of governments. O’Neill’s article (along with Gauja’s) raises key questions about the degree of evidence required to show ‘transfer’ rather than just ‘influence’. This raises wider methodological issues about the use and types of evidence, and the processes by which transfer takes place.

Overall, what the contributors offer are insights which extend the knowledge and thinking on policy transfer, diffusion and convergence more broadly.

The second key theme of the special issue is more empirical, and seeks to understand and explore the links, dilemmas and transfer of specific policy agendas between the two sets of Labour governments. A key impetus for the special issue is that it picks up on previous scholarship on the links and influences between Australian and British Labour. As Andrew Scott (2000) notes in his seminal account of the links between the two parties, it was not until the advent of New Labour in the mid-1990s that there was a renewal of links between the two sister parties. Australian scholars, in particular, focussed on the influence of the Hawke–Keating governments on Tony Blair and the New Labour project (Scott 2000; Johnson and Tonkiss 2002; Pierson and Castles 2002; O’Reilly 2007; Kirk 2014). For the British modernisers, the Australian model seemed to offer a new direction in the renewal of social democracy. New Labour learnt from Hawke–Keating’s electoral strategy, but also imported specific policies, including the re-structuring of the tertiary sector (O’Reilly 2007).

In turn, New Labour has become a source of influence, and a striking case (for both proponent and critics) of the renewal of social democracy (Giddens 1998, 2000; Driver and Martell 2000). Since the Hawke–Keating era, the Australian Labor Party (ALP) has at both a state and federal level used New Labour as a source of inspiration. But here, the scholarship has not yet caught up – a key aim of this special issue. This special issue maps some of the key linkages and transfers back to Australia. In Manwaring’s contribution, he explores New Labour’s use of ‘social exclusion/inclusion’ to frame its social policy agenda, and how this was adopted first by a number of Labor state government in the 2000s, before being adopted by the Rudd government in 2007. Manwaring also charts how the Rudd/Gillard government adopted New Labour’s ‘compact’ agenda with the third sector. An underpinning paradox here is that the type of ‘social inclusion’ adopted in both countries signifies an expansion of thinking about poverty and social deprivation, but also a retreat from tackling structural forms of inequality.

O’Neill’s article compares the approaches in foreign policy by both New Labour and the Rudd/Gillard governments, focusing on regional engagement, climate change and foreign aid and development. O’Neill notes a mixed picture of specific transfer between the countries, and on regional engagement there appears to be more that separates the two sets of governments than unifies them. Yet, on action to tackle climate change and the approach to aid and development, O’Neill documents both shared philosophical approaches and some direct influence and transfer from New Labour to Australia.

Gauja’s contribution focusses on the ongoing challenges to reform the two parties. Increasingly, there are pressures on both labour parties to further democratise their internal structures. Gauja explores how the Rudd-led reforms to leadership selection in the ALP were influenced by developments in New Labour, but were predominantly driven by a party which was undergoing a period of chronic leadership instability. In her comparison of the two parties, we can see how in responding to similar electoral and political pressures, the two parties took different routes to internal form and change.

The third key theme of the special issue is that both the Blair/Brown New Labour and the Rudd/Gillard governments present striking cases of ‘modernising’ centre-left parties seeking to recalibrate their values, mission and policies in the neo-liberal age. Both sets of governments faced, and dealt with a range of identity and policy issues that beset the centre-left more broadly. Spies-Butcher and Wilson focus on the common dilemmas facing these governments in the realm of political economy, and the experiments to reform the welfare regimes in both countries. Here, the writers note how Labour in both countries sought to deepen forms of marketisation – influenced by neo-liberal ideas, whilst buttressing the effects with compensatory mechanisms. This was part of a wider governing strategy to appeal to the political centre-ground. Strikingly, Spies-Butcher and Wilson note that a significant consequence – particularly notable in the UK – is the shrinking of the political centre-ground and further fragmentation of the electorate. Both these ‘new labour’ experiments present striking and, perhaps salutary lessons, for the renewal of social democracy.

The special issue concludes with Edwards and Beech’s article on how the two sets of governments have been dealing with New Labour’s legacy in the UK, and the contradictions inherent in the labour movements’ ‘traditions’. To better understand the policy agendas of these sister parties, it is crucial to locate them in the context of social democracy which is in a state of flux, if not crisis (see e.g. Moschonas 2002; Bramston 2011; Lavelle 2013; Bailey et al. 2014). In the UK, there has been a significant backlash against a ‘centrist’ governing strategy; and Ed Miliband’s failure at the 2015 General election reflected a tortuous inability, to re-calibrate British Labour in a post-New Labour context. In Australia, whilst New Labour was of some influence; the Hawke–Keating legacy has proved one key challenge for the ALP. Hence, the fundamental question is how to reformulate a social democratic ‘vision’, when the broad tenets of neo-liberal orthodoxy have been adopted so readily? In sum, the concurrent Rudd/Gillard and Brown governments offered a rare opportunity to examine how modern Labour in both countries is adjusting to the wider identity crisis of social democracy. This special issue offers the first critical appraisal of both the innovations and contradictions of the two overlapping sets of Labour governments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Dr Rob Manwaring is a Lecturer in politics and policy at Flinders University, Adelaide. His book, The Search for Democratic Renewal was published with Manchester University Press in 2014.

ORCiD

Rob Manwaring http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3853-9250