Soft Power and Freedom under the Coalition

State-Corporate Power and the Threat to Democracy

E. Bell

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781137505774
• eBook ISBN: 9781137505781
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This study of five key policy areas, from welfare reform to foreign policy, demonstrates that the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition failed to fulfil its promise to reverse the rising power of the State. It exercised more subtle forms of 'soft power', often in partnership with the private sector, and to the detriment of ordinary citizens.

1

Decentring the State

Abstract: The chapter aims to determine whether or not power has really been devolved from the central state by analysing the peculiarities of coalition politics and the coalition’s localism agenda. It is suggested that localism has largely been a failure in terms of genuinely transferring power from central government to local people. But the strategy has been effective in terms of allowing the government to divest itself of responsibility for policy failure via the responsibilisation of local institutions while opening up new markets for the private sector. The localism agenda may more accurately be considered as a strategy of governmentality than one of simple governance owing to the way in which it seeks to use non-governmental actors to pursue its own agenda.

Keywords: governance; governmentality; localism

Bell, Emma. Soft Power and Freedom under the Coalition: State-Corporate Power and the Threat to Democracy. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137505781.0005.

At the heart of the new coalition government’s plan to shift power from the State to the people was decentralisation. It aimed to reform government at the centre and to devolve decision-making from central government to local communities. This chapter seeks to determine whether or not the coalition succeeded in ‘decentring the State’ and consequently in empowering local communities. It looks at how such an agenda should have been facilitated by the very fact of coalition politics which necessarily implied a move away from the personalisation and over-centralisation of power, so closely associated with the Blair and Thatcher eras. It then discusses the impact of trends away from government by the centre to governance by a range of different institutions, asking whether this has aided the coalition’s decentralisation agenda. Next, the details of the government’s localism agenda are analysed to determine if they have genuinely led to a shift in power dynamics in Britain in favour of local government and communities.

Power-sharing and democratic government

A number of commentators were hopeful that the arrival of coalition government would herald a very different form of politics from the dirigisme that had characterised the New Labour years. Some hoped that the need for consensual, democratic decision-making between the two parties to government would lead to a revival of Cabinet government whereby decisions would be taken collectively by senior ministers and Cabinet Office would serve the Cabinet as a whole, not merely the prime minister, as was often said to have been the case under Blair (Brockwell, 2010; Blick & Jones, 2010, p. 175). It was hoped that rather than decisions being taken unilaterally or bilaterally, often with unelected special advisers instead of with democratically elected ministers (Anderson & Mann, 1997, p. 51; Byrne & Weir, 2004, p. 458), they would be taken by the Cabinet as a whole. Others have suggested that Cameron’s personal prime ministerial power was considerably weakened by the fact of coalition, asserting that ‘unlike past predominant prime ministers such as Thatcher and Blair, [he was] often unable to fully assert himself on either his party or government’ (Bennister & Heffernan, 2014: 15). Indeed, his prerogative powers of ministerial appointment were severely restricted by the fact that he was obliged to appoint a fair number of Liberal Democrats to Cabinet and had to leave the reshuffling of those ministers to his Deputy, Nick Clegg (ibid., p. 3). Clearly, the weakening of power at the very centre of British politics does not necessarily restore power to the people – it may be that power is merely diffused among a range of other political and non-political actors. However, it may strengthen accountability mechanisms, ensuring that democratically elected members of government are primarily responsible for political decision-making, thus restoring the health of democracy. Before power can be shared with members of civil society, it must first be shared at the top.

Yet, in practice, the weakening of prime ministerial power in Britain did not lead to a corresponding strengthening of Cabinet power. While decision-making had to be shared between two parties, it was not shared across government as a whole but remained very much concentrated at the centre, with the majority of decisions being taken by the so-called ‘Quad’ or ‘inner Cabinet’ (Hazell, 2012), comprised of the prime minister, the deputy prime minister, the chancellor and the chief secretary to the Treasury (David Cameron, Nick Clegg, George Osborne and Danny Alexander). This has been described as a ‘semi-formal institution’ where many of the most important coalition policy issues, particularly those with spending implications, were resolved before they were discussed in the more formal institutions of the Cabinet and the Coalition Committee (ibid., 2012). This does not, however, mean that Cabinet was sidelined – according to Hazell, it became an important final stage in signing off policy agreements, even if these were mostly worked out beforehand via informal mechanisms. Yet, nor does it mean that power at the centre was weakened. Indeed, it is alleged that ‘the Quad . . . limited other ministers’ freedom to manoeuvre [since] decisions taken by the Quad [were] handed down to other ministers to implement’ (Montgomerie, 2012). Although both parties to the coalition were equally represented in this closed circle, representing a true instance of coalition power-sharing, with Liberal Democrat views being given much more credence than their numerical presence in government merited, it is reminiscent of the ‘Big Four’ comprised of the most influential personalities in the early years of the Blair government (the then Prime Minister Tony Blair, Chancellor Gordon Brown, the Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott and the Foreign Secretary Robin Cook). Indeed, decision-making through the Quad was criticised as a coalition version of Blair’s ‘sofa government’ whereby decisions were taken informally by select ministers and advisers working outside the Cabinet system (House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution, 2014, p. 27). In further continuity with the Blair years, the ‘Quad’ tended to work in close coordination with a range of unelected ‘experts’, including special advisers, strategists and media communications experts who make up part of Cameron’s ‘inner circle’. These included a number of Old Etonians and personal friends of the prime minister, notably Oliver Letwin, minister for government policy; Jo Johnson, head of his policy unit; Ed Llewellyn, chief of staff; and Rupert Harrison, George Osborne‘s chief economic adviser (Parker & Warrell, 2014). According to Anthony Seldon, they ‘effectively [ran] Number Ten’ (Seldon, 2011), suggesting that the political cronyism of the Blair years has been alive and well in the coalition government.

The extent to which power was truly shared with the Liberal Democrats is also questionable, despite the existence of the informal ‘Quad’ and the more formal coalition committee. The latter, jointly chaired by Cameron and Clegg was set up to solve coalition disputes, but it hardly ever met, informal mechanisms being much more important (Constitution Unit, 2011: 4). There is a general consensus that the Conservatives have remained the dominant partners in the coalition, imposing a number of so-called ‘red line issues’, policies which are not up for negotiation. These include foreign policy (Honeyman, 2012), Europe (Lynch, 2012, p. 77), immigration (Bale & Hampshire, 2012, p. 102) and economic policy (Gamble, 2012a, p. 64). With regard to the latter, Hay argued, ‘for “the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition” one can practically substitute the will of the Conservative leadership. For, it is difficult to see how the process of coalition formation . . . tempered, in any significant respect, any aspect of Conservative economic policy’ (Hay, 2010, p. 394). As is demonstrated in Chapter 4, they actively supported policy in this respect, yet failed to lead it. The fact of being in coalition enabled the Conservatives to legitimate their economic policies of austerity, forcing their political allies to share the blame for the pain inflicted by the cuts while reaping the electoral rewards resulting from an apparent improvement in the economic fortunes of the country (Hayton, 2013, p. 16). Overall, the Liberal Democrats failed to secure key pledges on electoral and Lords reform, and while the Party did manage to spearhead specific policies such as an increase in the tax threshold above which people begin paying income tax, these seem insignificant compared to wide-ranging reform programmes led by the Conservatives (Dommett, 2013, pp. 224–5). So, rather than implementing a new form of bi-partisan politics with greater democratic legitimacy than single-party governments (the coalition parties together commanded 59 per cent of the popular vote at the 2010 election), it would appear that coalition politics actually helped the Conservatives to remain dominant, thus allowing Cameron to strengthen his power at the centre.

The power of government more generally was also strengthened by reforms to the civil service which, far from ‘improving the civil service’ as a way of fixing the ‘broken’ political system (HM Government, 2010a, pp. 26–7), actually threaten to undermine its independence. As of 2013, government ministers were given the discretionary power to appoint their own civil servants, special advisers and external appointees to new ‘Extended Ministerial Offices’ (Civil Service, 2013, p. 31). Civil servants appointed to these offices fulfil very similar roles to those exercised by existing permanent secretaries, helping to formulate policy and handling communications; yet, unlike the latter, they are accountable only to the ministers who appoint them rather than to Parliament as a whole. The government aim was to strengthen accountability mechanisms by making the lines of political accountability more clear-cut but there are fears that this reform will exacerbate the politicisation of Whitehall whereby ministers and civil servants alike are ‘more driven by the news agenda’ than hitherto (Jenkin, 2014, p. 88). Civil servants will find it hard to disagree with the ministers on whom they depend. As one former civil servant argues:

[Extended Ministerial Offices], and those who work within them, would be bound to become extensions of the minister’s personality and beliefs. The real risk is that counter-arguments, difficult facts and embarrassing truths would be much less likely to reach the table, as would officials willing to tell it as it is. (Lewis, 2014, p. 85)

Under such circumstances, it would be extremely difficult for these new civil servants to provide politically impartial advice in the public interest when that is thought to conflict with the political priorities of ministers. Indeed, they may soon lack the expertise that would enable them to do so now that all new permanent secretaries are appointed on fixed-term contracts. As their name suggests, permanent secretaries were previously appointed for indeterminate periods, allowing them to accumulate expertise. In theory, this system was also meant to ensure their political impartiality since they would usually remain in office for much longer than the usual term of a single government. Indeed, the Civil Service Code of Conduct, drawn up in 2010, specifically highlights the need for political impartiality, stating that the role of all civil servants is to ‘serve the Government, whatever its political persuasion to the best of [their] ability in a way which maintains political impartiality and is in line with the requirements of this Code, no matter what [their] own political beliefs are’ (Civil Service, 2010). Yet, an internal civil service document outlining the main qualities required to be a permanent secretary provoked controversy by suggesting that such officials should place the long-term aims of their department over that of their ministers or the government as a whole (Civil Service, 2014).

These civil service reforms reflect the growing complexity of government – indeed, the government itself justified the need for reform specifically on the grounds that ‘the pace and complexity of government [is] ever increasing’ (Civil Service, 2013, p. 31). This may suggest that decentralisation, whether actively implemented or not, is inevitable as power is devolved to an increasingly wide range of institutions. It has certainly become very difficult to retain power at the centre on account of the growth in the size of government over the last century to include not just ministers and a greatly extended civil service but also, more recently, a vast number of ‘quangoes’, quasi non-governmental organisations, and even private contractors providing public services on behalf of government (Weir & Beetham, 1999, pp. 132–3). It may even be suggested that the diffusion of power from the centre that these changes necessarily entail may lead to the greater democratic participation of the people, allowing them to become truly active citizens, thus freeing them from the power of the Central State.

Such a theory may seem to be supported by the shift from government to governance, a trend that has been much commented upon since at least the 1990s. The term ‘governance’ has a multitude of meanings. Rhodes, one of the most prolific writers on the subject, has identified at least six possible meanings of the term: as the minimal state involving at least the rhetorical reduction in the powers of the State; as corporate governance, with reference to new, accountable management structures; as new public management, involving the transfer of market principles to the public sector; as ‘good governance’, focusing on the accountability and the efficiency of state institutions; as a socio-cybernetic system, whereby a multiplicity of actors formulate and implement policy together; and as self-organising networks, understood as autonomous networks of organisations in the public, private and voluntary sectors working relatively independently to deliver policy goals (Rhodes, 1996). What all these definitions have in common is that they, to at least some extent, entail diluting the power of the State or, as Rhodes would have it, ‘hollowing out the state’ (Rhodes, 1994). Osborne and Gaebler also captured this notion when they argued that government’s role should move from that of ‘rowing’ to ‘steering’, meaning that government should dismantle the bureaucratic, centralised State and retreat from service delivery, instead contracting out delivery to non-state actors and contenting itself with controlling the general direction of policy implementation (1993). The discourse of governance may thus be regarded as a liberal discourse in the sense that it seeks to free individuals and other organisations from the absolute control of a central, sovereign State. For Bevir, it is a specifically neoliberal discourse, one that favours a more entrepreneurial pattern of rule and provides a solid justification for minimal state interference in the market and beyond (Bevir, 2010: 30). Governance can therefore be regarded as a reaction against the post-war ‘overloaded’ (King, 1975) ‘rowing’ State and the political consensus that accompanied it, characterised as it was by ‘club government’ (Marquand, 1988) in which policy formulation was highly centralised within a tight-knit community of highly educated administrative experts. On this understanding, it may seem that it is through governance that ‘decentralisation and democratic engagement’ can best be promoted. Yet, as is demonstrated below, this has not been the case in practice.

The governance of freedom

Governance entails transferring power to a multiplicity of actors, involving the public, private and voluntary sectors in the practice of government. Governance thus sits well with influential pluralist accounts of the State which highlight the centrality of groups to the political process, regarding the State as just one political actor among others (Smith, 2006). In these accounts, power is considered to be truly diffuse and shared among all actors involved in the political process. Governance is thus regarded as a very positive political development, as it fits perfectly with liberal notions of how a truly democratic State should behave. Yet, as Smith points out, following Marsh (2002), plurality does not necessarily mean pluralism since ‘the existence of many groups and policy domains does not mean that power is dispersed and that access is open’ (Smith, 2006, p. 30). The same goes for governance: we should be very wary of engaging in zero-sum games, assuming that an increase in the role of the private sector, for example, automatically equates with a diminishing role for the State (Lister & Marsh, 2006, p. 255). Rather than regarding the trend towards involving a greater multiplicity of actors in governance as diminishing the power of the State, as the neoliberal reformers of the 1980s and 1990s had hoped, it would be more appropriate to regard this trend as having led to a ‘congested state’ in which the State remains largely in control of an increasingly complex structure of partnerships and networks (Skelcher, 2000). Indeed, the proliferation of policy networks, particularly under the Blair government, is often heavily criticised by the neoliberal reformers who hoped that reforms in governance would lead to the creation of pure markets in public services, free of State interference (Bevir, 2010, p. 33). Yet, if the power of the State has not diminished, the power of the private sector has undoubtedly been on the rise to the detriment of civil society organisations, a point that will be examined in detail in Chapter 4. Accounts of governance need to recognise that some groups are more powerful than others.

The State remains the most powerful actor of all. Indeed, for a number of commentators, claims that the State has been weakened by governance are dubious. Peters and Pierre, for example, have claimed that ‘rumours of the death of the State are exaggerated’ (2006, p. 221). For Peters, the notion of governance without government is a myth: it is the State that grants power to other actors in governance and can just as easily revoke it (Peters, 1997: 57). Indeed, ‘the authority the State gives to non-state actors is only ever on loan’ (Bell & Hindmoor, 2009, p. 9). Furthermore, regardless of widespread popular criticism of the State, citizens will always expect government to step in when things go wrong (ibid., pp. 15, 31). For example, governments will always be called upon to address problems in the market (Peters, 1997, p. 54), never more so than in the wake of the most recent financial crisis (see Chapter 4). For Bell and Hindmoor, states remain responsible for ‘metagovernance’, even when they govern through markets, associations and civil society. They describe this as the ‘government of governance’ (2009, p. 11). Metagovernance entails the State steering (setting goals for other political actors to meet); measuring effectiveness (determining the evaluative criteria that will determine the success or failure of a particular policy/service); providing resources (be these financial, administrative or coercive); ensuring that democratic principles are respected (guaranteeing legitimacy and the participation of civil society); providing accountability mechanisms (since it is government that is ultimately held to account when things go wrong); and promoting legitimacy (generating confidence and trust in new governance structures) (ibid., pp. 46–55). Only government has the capacity to assume such a function of oversight and general management, largely on account of its monopoly of the legitimate use of violence, meaning that the State alone has the necessary powers of coercion to ensure that governance actors comply with certain rules and regulations (ibid., pp. 55–6).

So, rather than state power being in retreat, it has in reality been transformed and even enhanced, as the subsequent discussion seeks to demonstrate, using concrete examples. This idea is captured in Moran’s notion of the ‘regulatory state’ (Moran, 2007), suggesting that while the State may have contracted out governance to other institutions, suggesting a reduced role for the state, it actually retains an important metagovernance role of regulation, ensuring that those institutions comply with basic rules and standards. An example may be given of private companies who are constantly subject to regulatory control to ensure that they meet certain goals and targets set by the State. But regulation also extends into civil society. Here, regulation can be both liberating and coercive. King provides the example of new regulations ensuring compliance with Human Rights legislation which operate alongside coercive regulations which seek to change the behaviour of the governed, such as antisocial behaviour legislation which uses the threat of penal sanctions to force conformity with certain norms (King, 2007, p. 66). Yet, more regulation is enforced via ‘soft words’ rather than ‘big sticks’ (ibid.). State power is to be exercised through ‘soft power’, through persuasion rather than outright repression. This entails replacing destructive repressive power with productive disciplinary power, in the Foucauldian sense of the term, whereby individuals ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: A Liberal Manifesto
• 1  Decentring the State
• 2  Empowering the People
• 3  Legislating for Freedom
• 4  Economic Policy: From Small State to Big Business
• 5  Exporting Soft Power
• 6  Solving the Paradox of Liberal Politics
• Conclusion: New Directions for Liberalism?
• Bibliography
• Index