From New Labour to New Conservatism: the changing dynamics of citizenship as self-government

Abstract

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.

Keywords:

• citizen
• citizenship
• governmentality
• neo-liberal
• politics
• state

Notes

1. It is for this reason that liberal government can never be the perfect realisation of doctrinal liberalism because the former is nothing more than an assemblage of techniques and practices that map out the parameters of an operational tackling of a problem-space.

2. See Rose (1993) for more on this aspect of the transition from liberalism to advanced liberalism.

3. See Duncan-Smith's statement that the schemes allows the DWP to ‘pull people in to do one or two weeks' manual work – turn up at 9 am and leave at 5 pm, to give people a sense of work, but also when we think they're doing other work’. Iain Duncan-Smith, quoted in BBC News, ‘Ministers defend plan to force jobless to do work’ [online]. Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/uk-politics-11706545.

4. Other elements of the reforms, such as capping Housing Benefit entitlement, upgrading eligibility criteria for the disabled and chronically ill through the substitution of Disability Living Allowance with Personal Independence Payments, and capping the total amount of possible benefit claimed clearly address the latter.

5. These include New Deal for Young People, New Deal for Lone Parents, New Deal for 50+ and most recently the Flexible New Deal in the Welfare Reform Act 2009.

6. Training courses run as part of the New Deal for Young People, particularly those contracted to the private training company A4e, have also been widely criticised as ‘demoralising’, demotivating and for failing to provide any job readiness. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/7982550.stm and related documentary podcast.

7. While some, such as Levitas (1998) argue that the ‘third way’ philosophy effectively placed unpaid and paid work in conflict, others, such as Driver and Martell (2002) counter that the two sat together uneasily, but not necessarily contradictorily, at the heart of the New Labour vision.

8. Four local authorities have been chosen for pilot schemes: Liverpool, the Eden Valley in Cumbria, Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, and Sutton and Cheam in south-west London.