Policy Making in Britain

An Introduction

Peter Dorey

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781473905078
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Introducing you to the public policy making process in Britain today, this book adopts an empirical approach to the study of policy making by relating theory to actual developments in Britain since the 1980s. It covers:

• Ideas, Problem Definition, Issues and Agenda-Setting
• Key Individuals
• Key Institutions
• Parliament and Public Policy Implementation
• The shift from Government to Governance (including marketization, and devolution)
• The increasing role of the private and voluntary sectors in policy delivery
• Internationalisation and Europeanization of policies and policy making
• Evaluation, audits and the New Public Management

Each chapter is enriched by recent real-life case studies and boxes illustrating key arguments, concepts and empirical developments. Taking into account the 2010 election and beyond, the book addresses current issues, developments and debates. The result is a contemporary and engaging text that will be required reading for all students of British politics, public policy and public administration.

1	Problem Definition and Policy Agendas

Policy makers are faced with many demands for action to tackle a multitude of issues at any one time, so our first task must be to understand how and why only a few of those issues are likely to be defined as ‘problems’, and therefore prompt the development of policies to tackle them. It will also be important to acknowledge that even when a problem has been recognized as such, there will usually be more than one political perspective explaining its occurrence and underlying causes, which will thus yield different policy proposals.

As one political scientist has noted: ‘Of the thousands and thousands of demands made upon government, only a small portion receive serious attention from public policy-makers’ (Anderson, 2006: 87). This chapter will consider how the identification of problems, and the policies developed to address them, involves such factors as ideological perspectives, social construction, policy agendas, issue–attention cycles and policy streams. These concepts are all concerned in illustrating how and why some issues become defined as problems, and therefore lead to action by policy makers, while other alleged problems are denied or ignored.

THE ROLE OF IDEOLOGY AND POLITICS IN PROBLEM DEFINITION

Some problems will seem to be obvious or self-evident, such as high inflation, mass unemployment, or record levels of recorded crime, but even in such instances, the relevant figures or statistics will invariably be open to different interpretations, leading to political disagreements over the most appropriate policy response. Critics of a government might condemn it for presiding over record levels of unemployment, but ministers might argue that the rate of increase is slowing down, thereby implying that the numbers of jobless will soon start to fall. Or it might be claimed that Britain’s level of unemployment is still lower than that of other major European economies, so that the apparently awful figures need to be placed in a broader context, whereupon they will not appear quite so bad after all. Such responses imply that existing policies will be continued rather than abandoned in favour of new ones.

A government might be faced with official statistics indicating record levels of crime during its term in Office, but ministers might seek to exonerate themselves by claiming that the figures reflect a greater willingness by citizens to report crime, rather than crime itself having actually increased.

Yet even when there is almost universal agreement over the development, existence or scale of a particular problem, there will invariably be political disagreements over the underlying causes and thus over the appropriate policies to tackle it. For example, high levels of unemployment might be viewed as evidence of a ‘dependency culture’ in which ‘generous’ welfare provision has undermined self-reliance and a work ethic. In attributing high unemployment to moral or attitudinal deficiencies among the unemployed themselves, this perspective will invariably lead to a Right-wing policy response, which both curbs social security entitlement (by imposing tighter eligibility criteria on claimants) and the financial level of benefits paid to each recipient.

Alternatively, high unemployment might be blamed on insufficient investment in economically deprived regions, inadequate provision of education and vocational training and/or failures in the operation of ‘the market’. Such a critique would probably prompt a Left-wing policy response entailing an increase in the role of the state and more public expenditure, in order to create new jobs, boost consumer spending and tackle ‘market failure’.

These two views of unemployment and their markedly different policy responses clearly reflect political ideologies. The Right readily blames individuals for being unemployed, depicting them as feckless, lazy and work-shy people who are happy to ‘scrounge’ off the welfare state and the taxes paid by the hard-working majority; in the language of Conservative ministers in the post-2010 coalition, ‘shirkers, not workers’, and ‘skivers, not strivers’. From this perspective, what the unemployed need is tough treatment and punitive policies to make life ‘on the dole’ as difficult as possible.

In contrast, the Left invariably blames unemployment on structural factors, not least the failings of capitalism, which is deemed to be inherently prone to instability and thus oscillates between boom and slump, whereupon periodic mass unemployment ensues. For the Left therefore it is the economic system that needs to be reformed, while the unemployed ‘victims’ of capitalism deserve sympathy and support, not condemnation.

Another example whereby common recognition of a problem nonetheless leads to markedly different political conclusions about the underlying causes, and thus the most appropriate policies to solve them, was provided by the serious civil disorder that occurred in England in August 2011. Several cities were affected over four or five nights by gangs of (predominantly) young people engaging in arson, assaults, looting, vandalism and other forms of violence, with a few people being killed in the mayhem. Many inner city shops and businesses were destroyed, and many residents were left homeless; some initial estimates suggested that the total cost of the damage would be at least £100 million (Hawkes et al., 2011: 10). Inevitably, it seemed that virtually everyone, be they academics, ordinary citizens, newspaper columnists or politicians along with people commenting via online message boards and other social media, offered their often trenchant views on the underlying causes of the violent disorder, and inter alia the policies that they believed should be enacted in response.

One widely held view, but expressed particularly vigorously by commentators on the political Right, was that the violent disorder was a consequence of decades of excessive social liberalism or permissiveness (originating in the 1960s), which had steadily undermined respect for authority and prevented parents, police and teachers from imposing discipline, often because of an alleged obsession with ‘human rights’ and ‘political correctness’.

This perspective also held that there had been too much emphasis by ‘do gooders’ on trying to empathize with sections of society who were anti-social, to the extent that bad behaviour and lack of personal or social responsibility were rarely, if ever, condemned; it was always assumed to be society’s or someone else’s fault when individuals or certain social groups engaged in anti-social behaviour or criminal activity.

There were also suggestions that the civil disorder was, directly or indirectly, linked to ‘excessive’ immigration. For example, the prominent historian and television presenter, Professor David Starkey, alleged that many white youths had ‘become black’ due to the influence of ‘destructive, nihilistic gangster culture’, which had become fashionable among many young people (Newsnight, 2011). For those subscribing to this explanation of the August 2011 urban riots, the recommended policy responses included: a very much stronger emphasis on law and order; tackling urban gangs; linking entitlement to welfare benefits and social housing to good behaviour; making those found guilty of causing criminal damage either recompense businesses or homeowners through deductions from their social security or be made to clean up the areas they had vandalised; bringing back national service or military conscription (to instil discipline and respect for authority); making it illegal to conceal one’s face in public (a reference to ‘hoodies’); repeal of the Human Rights Act; a halt to immigration.

Against this critique, many liberals and Left-leaning commentators – while condemning the perpetrators along with their violence and damage to property – nonetheless argued that the riots ultimately reflected the scale and depth of growing socio-economic deprivation and poverty in many parts of contemporary Britain, and the extent to which some individuals or groups now felt totally marginalized or excluded from mainstream society; they had ‘parallel lives’ to the rest of the population. This marginalization and alienation from the lifestyles, norms and values of the majority of the population was deemed to be both reflected and reinforced by lack of educational and employment opportunities, and a sense of being routinely ignored by mainstream society and politicians.

The ensuing resentment and frustration was also attributed to the scale of inequality in contemporary Britain, entailing an ever-widening gulf between the rich and the poorest, perceptions of greed and corruption among economic and political elites – MPs’ expenses scandals, bankers’ bonuses, telephone ‘hacking’ by some newspapers/journalists, and so on – and by way of sharp contrast the manner in which the bulk of the coalition government’s cuts in public expenditure (to eradicate Britain’s post-2008 fiscal deficit) were targeted almost entirely against recipients of welfare and citizens heavily reliant on soon-to-be cash-starved public services. For those subscribing to this critique, the proposed policy solutions included: more investment to combat social problems, and provide facilities and support for young people in deprived areas; reducing or reversing the planned cuts in public expenditure; narrowing the widening gap between rich and poor; abandoning the government’s planned reduction in police numbers (which was the Home Office’s main contribution to public expenditure cuts).

Of course, the different sets of policy proposals were not mutually exclusive, and many of those urging the latter range of policies nonetheless agreed that the individual perpetrators of criminal activity in the August 2011 riots should also be firmly punished. The point here, though, is that the riots prompted different explanations of their underlying causes and therefore yielded the advocacy of very different policies to prevent similar civil disorder in the future; these differences broadly reflected ideological perspectives and political values.

THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF PROBLEMS

Along with the role of ideology in defining (or denying) problems, it is also important to recognize that ‘how a problem is defined depends not only on its objective dimensions, but also on how it is socially constructed’ (Anderson, 2006: 83–4. See also Rochefort and Cobb, 1994: 5–7). This refers to the manner in which social or cultural values also play a major part in identifying how, why and when something or someone is defined as ‘a problem’, and therefore warrants attention from policy makers. At any moment in time, a particular set of social values or ‘norms’ (derived from a dominant ideology) is likely to prevail, providing the moral framework in which certain modes of behaviour or lifestyles are deemed acceptable or not and thus permissible or problematic.

Although these will often depict certain values or behaviour as ‘common sense’ or ‘natural’, they will often be socially or historically contingent. This is because many societal values and moral codes vary from one historical epoch to another; behaviour or lifestyles that might be deemed ‘deviant’, ‘outrageous’ or ‘a threat to civilization’ in one era might be widely accepted or even embraced a few decades later. Conversely, some activities or practices that were once accepted as a ‘fact of life’ might be judged unacceptable in subsequent decades. In other words, what is defined as ‘problematic’ behaviour actually varies over time, as cultural, moral and social values change. Some examples of this are outlined below.

Child abuse

The physical abuse of children is not in itself new or novel – some children have always been subject to bodily harm by certain adults – but only in recent years has ‘child abuse’ per se been identified, defined and recognized as a social problem, and so prompted policies to tackle it. What has fostered recognition of child abuse as a problem is the notion that children have certain inalienable rights, not least of which is the right to grow up free from being physically or sexually abused. This itself reflects a change in dominant attitudes in recent decades, for until the 1960s at least, not only was it widely believed that ‘children should be seen but not heard’, but more significantly, it was generally accepted that parents should be entitled to discipline their children as they wished; if that meant hitting their children, either with their hand, a stick or belt, it was no business of the law to intervene. How children were raised in the family home was considered to be an entirely private matter and so not an issue of public policy.

The abuse and ill-treatment of children was not recognized as a ‘problem’, due to the dominance of a particular set of societal norms and values that emphasized the need for discipline and obedience, and unquestioning respect for one’s parents and other members of society in positions of authority, such as teachers and police officers. Hence the old aphorism ‘spare the rod, spoil the child’, meaning that a child would not grow up into a normal and socially useful adult if they were not subject to physical punishment during their childhood. Linked to this widely-held view was the notion that harsh treatment of children was ‘character building’, and would thus better prepare them for the ‘hard knocks’ of adult life that invariably awaited them; parental cruelty was apparently a form of kindness!

It is only relatively recently that the abuse and ill-treatment of children has been defined as a social problem, and resulted in policies to provide children with statutory protection from physical and sexual abuse, and to empower social workers to seek (via the courts) the removal, from the parental home, of children judged to be ‘at risk’. Indeed, in the last decade or so, there has been occasional media-fuelled public anger and political condemnation when local authorities and social workers have failed to notice the physical or sexual abuse and ill-treatment of young children by their parents or step-parents, which has occasionally resulted in the child’s death.

The rights of married women

Another example of a problem being recognized and defined by virtue of changes in social attitudes and the development of much more enlightened values, concerns the status and rights of married women. Until a few decades ago, wives were considered, in the eyes of the law, to be the property or ‘chattel’ of their husbands, whereupon married men were effectively entitled to behave as they wished towards their wives. Consequently, the law often tolerated such atrocities as men hitting their wives and sexual abuse, and marriage was assumed to confer certain ‘conjugal rights’ on the husband to the extent that a wife was always expected to accede to his sexual demands.

Indeed, it is only since the early 1990s that rape within marriage has finally been categorized as a criminal offence (like any other form of rape or sexual assault), while recognition of the crime of ‘domestic violence’ has led both to an expansion in the number of women’s refuges and hostels, and more serious or sympathetic attention by the police. Previously, the police had often declined involvement in ‘a domestic’ when a wife reported her husband for assault, tending to treat such instances as a purely private matter (Hulley and Clarke, 1991: 18).

Sexual relationships

Sometimes, though, changing social values can result in a former ‘problem’ being re-defined, so that it is no longer considered as such by most people. A good example is provided by the history of homosexuality, for until the 1960s, sexual relationships between two men or two women were deemed to be ‘deviant’, morally unacceptable and socially repugnant, to the extent that it was unlawful for two men to have sex with each other, even in the privacy of their own homes (for a discussion of how sexuality is socially constructed as ‘natural’ or ‘deviant’, see Vance 1989; Weeks, 1992: 228–33, 240–6). Although same-sex relationships were decriminalized in 1967, via the Sexual Offences Act (see Dorey, 2006a), it was not until the 1990s that same-sex relationships became more widely accepted by public opinion, albeit with younger people generally proving rather much ‘liberal’ or relaxed about gays and lesbians than their grandparents.

Indeed, such has been the change in either public opinion or the political climate since the 1990s, that legislation has recently been enacted to allow ‘civil partnerships’ and same-sex marriages. Furthermore, same-sex couples in a long-term loving relationship can adopt children (although public opinion is perhaps less tolerant of this particular mode of gay and lesbian equality than it is of same-sex relationships in general).

The point remains though, that as recently as the 1980s, civil partnerships, gay marriages and gay/lesbian adoption of children would have been virtually unthinkable, and any prominent public figure who advocated such policies would have been vilified and deemed unfit or unworthy to hold public office. Certainly, when prominent political figures such as Ken Livingstone, as leader of the Greater London Council (GLC) in the mid-1980s, promoted ‘gay rights’ (in tandem with campaigns and policies to combat racism and sexism), he was regularly denigrated and ridiculed by many Conservatives and pro-Conservative newspapers as the public face of the ‘loony Left’.

Meanwhile, other aspects of sexual behaviour and lifestyles have become much more widely accepted, whereas just a couple of generations ago, they woul...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Also by Peter Dorey
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Boxes
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Abbreviations and Acronyms
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Problem Definition and Policy Agendas
• Chapter 2 Policy Advocates: Political Parties, Think Tanks and Organized Interests
• Chapter 3 The Core Executive, Part One: The Individuals and their Policy Roles
• Chapter 4 The Core Executive, Part Two: The Institutions and their Policy Roles
• Chapter 5 Parliament and Public Policy
• Chapter 6 From Government to Governance
• Chapter 7 The Internationalization of Public Policy
• Chapter 8 Policy Implementation
• Chapter 9 Policy Evaluation
• References
• Index