New Localism Back to the Future

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New Localism- Back to the Future?

• Neil Barnett

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1997- 2002 The Which Blair Project?

• First term focus on delivery
• Evidence based
• A performance led, top down model
• Performance Assessment Frameworks- Health, Social
  Services
• Best Value
• Treasury and Public Service Agreements
• Heightened Inspection

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2002- a turning point?

• 2002- 4 principles of public service delivery
• Local Government White Paper- Comprehensive
  Performance Assessment and freedoms and
  flexibilities
• Foundation Hospitals

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• Recognition that top- down approach not working?
• Linked to choice
• Public Accountability Select Committee (2003)-
  On Target Government by Measurement- a high
  point reached?
• Treasury- Devolving Decision Making (2004)

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• Intervention in inverse proportion to
  performance
• Carrot and stick
• Earned Autonomy
• Focus on self-improvement
• Reduced number of indicators
• Reduced number of Inspections

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• Ed Balls (2004)
• Today it is simply not possible either to run
  economic policy or deliver strong public services
  that meet public expectations using top-down, one
  size fits all solutions of the past
• Modern policy making has clear long-term goals
  clear division of responsibilities, maximum local
  flexibility, maximum scrutiny and accountability.

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• Treasury (2004, Forward)- we know that national
  targets work best when they are matched by a
  framework of devolution, accountability and
  participation- empowering public servants with
  the freedom and flexibility to make a difference
  to tailor services to reflect local needs and
  preferences, to develop innovative approaches to
  service delivery and raise standards and to give
  greater responsibility to front-line public
  service managers. And so it is right to consider
  greater local autonomy, and its corollary,
  greater local democratic oversight

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New Localism

• What do we mean by local?
• Managerial or political, or both
• Several new localisms
• NGLN- enhanced status for Local Government
• Milburn et al point to range of self-governing
  bodies at local level
• Choice
• Personalisation
• More radical- neighbourhood.
• Difficult to unravel because is variously used to
  mean all of these things

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Third Term

• Localism on the agenda
• Local Government- 10 year vision
• Local Area Agreements
• David Miliband in Cabinet
• Foundation Hospitals to be expanded
• Education 5 year strategy
• Conflict- Old and New Labour

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Problems/Issues

• Localism can conflict with desire to join-up
  service delivery
• Freedom/discretion can mean inequality
• Postcode lottery
• Need to balance minimum standards and choice
• More difficult to achieve redistribution
• Dont romanticise locality
• How determine dividing lone between centre and
  locality?
• Third Way- need choice and competition, but also
  solidarity, community.

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• Third Way/New Labour- need to marry equity with
  choice and diversity
• A mongrel concept
• A mixture of pragmatism and populism?
• New Labour finds its way back to some old
  socialist language- community and self
  management
• Hazel Blears-Grass Roots Socialism

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Possible insights and interpretations

• 1. Refinding a socialist tradition
• Contrast with state socialism of post- war
  party- the Morrisonian model, or the Fabian
  model
• Draw on a forgotten tradition- Guild Socialism,
  mutualism, GDH Cole, William Morris, Tawney
• Decentrist socialism

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• But New Labour graft this onto neo-liberal views
  on the economy
• Radical language reapprorpited and mis-used?
• Distance themselves from radical experiments in
  localism of the early 1980S eg- the GLC
• Assumption of consensus
• A managerial and a political balance
• Part of circular argument in administrative
  design?

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• 2. Rethinking Welfare amidst diversity
• Need to reconcile the universal and the
  particular
• 3.New Institutionalist perspectives
• Value of local knowledge
• Balance revisability and robustness
• Constant reconfiguring and adaptation
• Used to looking for administrative solutions,
  now must accept paradox
• Yet we do require some degree of
  fixity/security from public services

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• 4. Managerialism
• The influence of the Excellence School- the
  loose-tight dilemma
• Post- Fordist styles?
• Managing Complexity
• Focus on Strategic Vision
• empowerment and participation
• Learning and innovation?
• Again looking for a balance the same language
  is used by the new right.

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Conclusion

• A mixture of old' language and managerialism
• New Labour attempting to hold together a
  political consensus- inside the party
• Trying to hold together a constituency in the
  country- the importance of choice to the middle
  classes
• Is failure inevitable?- Hood- centralisation and
  decentralisation are mutually repulsive, and
  hybrid approaches can only be reconciled at the
  most general level
• Can the gaps in the language be exploited?- the
  spaces created by the paradoxes which have to be
  settled.