New labour's information age policy programme: An ideology analysis

Journal of Political Ideologies

Volumn 10, Issue 2, 2005, Pages 165-183

  Moss, Giles ^a   O'Loughlin, Ben ^a  

^a NEW COLLEGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGY; INFORMATION POLICY;

EASTERN HEMISPHERE; EURASIA; EUROPE; UNITED KINGDOM; WESTERN EUROPE; WORLD;

EID: 20644447098     PISSN: 13569317     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/13569310500097307     Document Type: Article

References (99)

1. We would like to thank the two anonymous referees for their useful comments. Also, we would like to thank Rowan Tomlinson and David Berry for reading earlier drafts, and our doctoral supervisors, Stephen Coleman and Elizabeth Frazer respectively, for their general support.
2. D. MacKenzie and J. Wajeman, The Social Shaping of Technology, 2nd edition (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1999).
3. To be clear, we are not suggesting that ideas and ideologies directly or inevitably determine actions and beliefs in the form of a rigorous causal explanation (if A, then B). Individuals act in terms of interpretations, and so interpretations do have (quasi-causal) 'effects', but they are never governed directly by them. Interpretations can be understood as providing 'warranting conditions' that make particular actions or beliefs more conceivable reasonable, justifiable or appropriate. For a discussion of the notion of 'quasi-causality' in interpretive analysis see: F. Fischer, Reframing Public Policy: Discursive Politics and Deliberative Practices (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003) pp. 157-59.
4. M. Bevir, 'New Labour: A study in ideology', British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 3 (2000), 277-301.
5. M. Callon, 'Some elements of a sociology of translation: Domestication of the scallops and fisherman of St. Brieuc Bay', in J. Law (Ed.) Power, Action and Belief: A New Sociology of Knowledge? (London: Routledge, 1986);
6. S. Clegg, Frameworks of Power (London: Sage, 1989);
7. B. Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1987);
8. J. Law (Ed.) A Sociology of Monsters: Essays on Power, Technology and Domination (London: Routledge, 1991).
9. Bevir op. cit. Ref. 4, p. 277.
10. Bevir, ibid.
11. Also see M. Freeden, Ideologies and Political Theory: A Conceptual Approach (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996).
12. W.E. Connolly, The Terms of Political Discourse, 3rd edition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993);
13. M. Freeden, 'Editorial: Essential contestability and effective contestability', Journal of Political Ideologies, 9(1) (2004);
14. W.B. Gallie, 'Essentially contested concepts', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 56 (1956-1957).
15. J. Goldstein and R.O. Keohane (Eds) Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions and Political Change (Cornelly University Press, 1993).
16. S. Berman, The Social Democratic Moment (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).
17. Berman, ibid, p. 21.
18. Epistemology and ideology have a circular relationship. For example, Hayek viewed science through a conservative ideological lens coloured by his experience of the failure of states in Europe (K.R. Hoover, Economics as Ideology: Keynes, Laski, Hayek, and the Creation of Contemporary Politics (Lanham, MD: Rowan and Littlefield, 2003)).
19. See Chapter 3 of N. Rose, Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003) for a discussion of how 'the crisis of the welfare state' and 'appropriate' responses were defined in British political discourse.
20. M. Callon, J. Law and A. Rip cited in A. Barry, Political Machines: Governing a Technological Society (London: The Athlone Press, 2001), p. 87.
21. M. Bevir, 'Narrating the British State: An interpretative critique of New Labour's institutionalism', Review of International Political Economy, 10(3) (2003). In addition, in the New Labour political 'project', conceptual links and ideational developments may be empirically attachable to (though in our opinion not reducible to) the actions of certain key political actors. Such an analysis is beyond the scope of this article. However, O'Loughlin's forthcoming doctoral thesis, New College, University of Oxford, offers an example of this approach.
22. A. Blair, The Third Way: New Politics for the New Century (London: Fabian Society, 1998), p. 3.
23. A. Finlayson, 'Third Way theory', Political Quarterly (1999),
24. G. McLennan, 'Travelling with vehicular ideas: The case of the Third Way', Economy and Society, 33(4) (2004).
25. In our view, the ideological role of opinion polls and increasingly used government consultations is a potentially interesting and fruitful (though often overlooked) research avenue for students of political ideology. Thomas Osborne and Nikolas Rose have plausibly argued that the 'opinionated public' is a phenomenon that was historically 'made up' or created (rather than simply 'discovered') by social scientific techniques of opinion polling. T. Osborne and N Rose, 'Do the social sciences create phenomena', British Journal of Sociology, 50(3) (1999).
26. A. Giddens, Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics (Oxford: Polity, 1994), pp. 78-104.
27. Finalyson op. cit., Ref. 17, p. 271.
28. On the former, see The Economist and Financial Times in the mid-to-late-1990s and K. Ohmae, The Borderless World (London: Collins, 1990).
29. On the latter, see P. Hirst and G. Thompson, Globalisation in Question (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996).
30. M. Watson and C. Hay. 'The discourse of globalisation and the logic of no alternative: rendering the contingent necessary in the political economy of New Labour', Policy & Politics, 31(3) (2003), p. 390.
31. J. Dearlove, 'Globalisation and the study of British Politics', Politics, 20(2) (2000).
32. A. Blair and G. Schroeder, Third Way/Die Neue Mitte (London: The Labour Party, 1999), italics added.
33. A. Giddens, Beyond Left and Right: The Future of Radical Politics (Stanford: California University Press, 1995);
34. A. Giddens, The Third Way and Its Critics (Oxford: Polity, 2000);
35. A. Giddens, The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (Oxford: Polity, 1998).
36. M. Bevir and D. O'Brien, 'New Labour and the Public Sector in Britain', Public Administration Review, 61(5) (2001).
37. Central Office of Information, Our Information Age (London: Central Office of Information, 2001).
38. N. Fairclough. New Labour, New Language? (Routledge, London, 2000).
39. See F. Webster, Theories of the Information Society (London: Routledge, 2002), for a discussion of social scientific theories of the information society and related concepts.
40. Mclennan, op. cit., Ref. 17.
41. Central Office of Information, op. cit., Ref. 27.
42. Department for Trade and Industry, Our Competitive Future: Building the Knowledge Economy (London: HMSO, 1998).
43. K. Jayasuriya, 'Capability, freedom and the new social democracy', The Political Quarterly (2000).
44. R. Lister, 'Investing in the citizen-workers of the future: Transformations in citizenship and the state under New Labour', Social Policy & Administration, 37(5) (2003).
45. Rose, op. cit., Ref. 13.
46. Fairclough, op. cit., Ref. 28, p. 120.
47. D. Marquand, 'Moralists and Hedonists' in D. Marquand and A. Seldon (Eds) The Ideas That Shaped Post-war Britain (London: Fontana, 1996).
48. For instance, the Sure Start initiative and child tax credits.
49. Home Office White Paper: Respect and Responsibility - Taking a Stand Against Anti-Social Behaviour, March 2003.
50. Donor Information Consultation: Providing Information about Gamete or Embryo Donors, Department of Health, 19 December 2001.
51. Home Office White Paper, Protecting the Public, November 2002.
52. In September 2004 the Food Standards Agency launched a campaign to reduce the level of salt in diets.
53. Commission on Social Justice, Social Justice: Strategies for National Renewal (London: Vintage, 1994), p. 311.
54. A. Blair, Beveridge Lecture, Toynbee Hall, London, 18 March, reproduced in R. Walker (Ed.) Ending Child Poverty (Bristol: Policy Press, 1999).
55. Cited in Fairclough, op. cit., Ref. 28, p. 49.
56. Labour has made efforts to encourage risk-taking and entrepreneurialism amongst businesses. In 1999 Blair offered a £50 million fund for entrepreneurs, administered through regional development agencies; 2001 saw a Research and Development Tax Credit for small firms; and in 2003 the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, doubled the investment limit for Venture Capital Trusts and Enterprise Investment Schemes from £100,000 to £200,000.
57. S. White, 'Rights and responsibilities: A social democratic perspective', in A Gamble and T. Wright (Eds) The New Social Democracy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999).
58. G. Lakoff and M. Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990) suggest that given that some concepts structure our everyday lives, and that some concepts are metaphorical, then metaphors can structure everyday lives. 'Network' is a metaphorical concept, a visual notion of what society 'looks like'. Another would be Durkheim's metaphorical concept of society as 'sui generis', a whole organism that is more than the sum of its parts
59. (J. López, Society and its Metaphors (New York: Continuum, 2003).
60. However, Thompson (G.F. Thompson, 'Is all the world a complex network?' Economy and Society, 33(3) (2004)) suggest that in the social science literature 'network' is no longer a mere metaphor. Incorporating concepts and theories from the physical sciences, several works now assert that physical structures, biological evolution and social life all contain the same network logic as an underlying principle.
61. Thus, 'their social aspects can be accessed immediately by considering them as mathematically specified systems directly analogous to physical ones' (ibid, p. 414). Given that social science literature has informed New Labour's ideological developments, this new use of the network concept might be expected to have effects on future ideological change.
62. M. Castells, The Internet Galaxy: Reflection on the Internet, Business and Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 1.
63. M. Bevir, op. cit., Ref. 15.
64. See Chapter 4 of A. Barry, Political Machines: Governing a Technological Society (London: Athlone, 2001).
65. G.F. Thompson, op. cit., Ref. 48.
66. S. Bastow and J. Martin, Third Way Discourse: European Ideologies in the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003).
67. A figure of 90 percent seems more likely (BBC 'Big changes for government site', BBC News Online, March 1, http://news.bbc.co.uk/ l/hi/technology/3522649.stm (2004) falling short partly because of a realisation that getting people to use services was more important than simply getting services online
68. (M. Cross, 'Hoping to become a favourite', The Guardian, 7 October, 2004). This was mainly because simple, single-department services were 'e-enabled' first, whilst left until last have been multi-departmental services such as renewing tax discs for cars, which requires access to MOT and insurance records held by private companies.
69. Cabinet Office, Channels Framework (London: Office of the E-Envoy, 2002), http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/ documents/ channels_framework_2002-09-30.pdf
70. J. Hudson, 'Digitising the structures of Government: The UK's information age government agenda', Policy and Politics, 30 (2002).
71. M. Cross, 'New head on the block', The Guardian, 9th September 2004.
72. Kahle (2004) 'ID plans cause alarm', 9 June. http://www.kablenet.com/ kd.nsf/Frontpage/B672AA24734E98-C580256EAE003A1F2C
73. J. Hudson, op. cit., Ref. 56.
74. Consider, for instance, the current work of the London Borough of Camden, in collaboration with the Greater London Authority, to develop a modular e-democracy 'tool-kit' as part of the Practical e-Democracy in London Project. For details of the larger Local National e-Democracy project see http://envoy.northlinesnet.com/ (consulted 3 February 2005).
75. Electoral Commission, European Parliamentary and Local Elections (Pilots) Bill, section 6, 2003.
76. DfFE 'The Learning Age' (London: HMSO, 1998).
77. R. Prabhaker, 'Capability, responsibility, human capital and the Third Way', Political Quarterly, 73(1) (2002).
78. Barry, op. cit., Ref. 51.
79. See http://www.dfes.gov.uk/elearningstrategy/
80. UK Online, Annual report, 2002, http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/ assetRoot/04/00/04/01/04000401.pdf
81. Accenture 'eGovernment Leadership: High Performance, Maximum Value', The Government Executive Series, 2004, http://www.accenture.com/ xdoc/en/industries/government/gove_egov_value.pdf
82. See http://getting.ukonline.gov.uk/oee/getstarted.nsf/sections/xhomepage/ $file/home.htm
83. See www.worktrain.gov.uk
84. By 2002 government humbly announced it was only the second best, in the report 'The World's Most Effective Policies for the E-Economy'. See http://www.eenvoy.gov.uk/Resources/ITReportsArticle/fs/ en?CONTENT_ID=4000004&chk=R7qwkr
85. Performance and Innovation Unit, Electronic Networks: Challenges for the Next Decade, 2002, http://www.number-10.gov.uk/su/en/downloads/ su_electronic.pdf
86. Department for Education and Skills, Survey of Information and Communications Technology in Schools, 1999, http://www.dfes.gov.uk/ rsgateway/DB/SBU/b000125/ictfinal.pdf
87. R. Plant, The Third Way (Working Papers, 1998; available from www.fes.de/fulltext[bueros/london/00203.html.)
88. M. Castells, op. cit., Ref. 49.
89. A. Barlow and S. Duncan, 'Supporting families? New Labour's communitarianism and the 'rationality mistake': Part I', Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 22(1) (2000);
90. A. Barlow and S. Duncan, 'New Labour's communitarianism, supporting families and the 'rationality mistake': Part II', Journal of Social Welfare and Family Law, 22(2) (2000).
91. H. Margetts, Information Technology in Government: Britain and America (London: Routledge, 1999).
92. G. Jones, 'Efficiency drive could release billions, says study', Daily Telegraph, February 17, 2004.
93. S. Whittle and M. Cross, 'Two tier trail blazers', The Guardian, March 24, 2004.
94. D.G. Wastell, 'Organizational discourse as a social defence: Taming the tiger of electronic government' (paper presented at the IFIP Working Group, 8.2 Conference, Barcelona, 2002).
95. M. Callon, op. cit., Ref. 5;
96. S. Clegg, op. cit., Ref. 5;
97. B. Latour, op. cit., Ref. 5;
98. J. Law (Ed.) op. cit., Ref. 5;
99. Wastell, op. cit., Ref. 79.