The Allure of the “Big Society”: Conveying Authority in an Era of Uncertainty

Abstract

The inception and roll out of the UK Government’s Big Society agenda offers an opportunity to consider the changing modalities of contemporary political engagement. Much of the critical scholarship on the Big Society views it as a rationale to legitimize both a reconfiguration of the welfare state and an austerity programme to reduce government debt. While these interpretations are helpful, they explain only partially the appeal of these agendas for politicians and their political parties. The key question explored in this article is why, despite the hostility and cynicism towards ideological projects such as Big Society, do politicians continue to identify and pursue them? I argue that the Big Society agenda is only in part a rationale for austerity and welfare reform; it also provides a discursive setting for politicians to address societal anxieties by offering a navigable route for the future. Although the Big Society agenda has been roundly derided, its Manichean morality tale offers assurance at a time when politics is being reshaped by neoliberal ideology, changing media practices and globalization processes.

Key Words:

• Welfare reform
• Big society
• Psychosocial

Notes

1. The Big Society as a broad policy agenda can be distinguished from localism – that specifies a legislative programme to encourage non-governmental actors to deliver welfare services.

2. While writers such as Hall and Jacques (1983) have sought to portray Thatcherism as a purposeful political project, Thatcher herself made no attempt to explicitly set out an ideological agenda, although this did not deter her supporters from doing so. Recent studies such as Bale (2012) have sought to reappraise her period in office.

3. While I touch on the policy implications of the Big Society agenda, I do not attempt to evaluate its implications for welfare services such as public housing or social care. For excellent and broad ranging discussions on these issues, see Civil Exchange (2012) and Corbett and Walker (2013).

4. See Jacobs (2013) for a discussion of fantasy in relation to population concerns.

5. There is an implicit split in the Big Society agenda. Drawing on a Kleinian conceptual vocabulary, Big Society constitutes the good object that we are drawn to, whilst Broken Britain is the bad object that we find ourselves captured by.

6. The government has sought to impose a narrative of the sovereign debt crisis in order to attribute culpability onto the previous Labour government. I am grateful to Matthew Wargent for making this observation.