BIG SOCIETY – What`s the Big Idea?

Liam Hughes

Big Idea

• Jesse Norman, “Big Society”• Philip Blond,”Red Tory”• Rowena Davis, “Tangled Up in Blue”• Mariam Stott, ed, “ The Big Society Challenge” (

www.keystonetrust.org.uk)• Dennis Pullan, “Lessons for Big Society”• Daniel Kahneman, papers on Prospect Theory• RH Thaler and Cass R Sunstein, “Nudge”

The New Landscape

• Fiscal crisis and retrenchment

• Debt and global competition

• Realignment of state, business and civil society

• Transformation of public services

• Big Society

Conservative Manifesto

• More power to communities• Active role in your community• Transfer of power to local government• Local people and staff to have right to

apply to run services• Support for social enterprises and co-operatives• Transparent government data

The hidden roots of BS in political theory

• “Small battalions” of Conservatism - Edmund Burke to Stanley Baldwin - “Anti-Trust” pioneers• Catholic social teaching• Guild socialism - GDH Cole, H.Laski, co-operatives and

mutuals - New Liberalism and H.Belloc• The “Active society” and the “Great Leap

Forward …”

Communitarianism

• Amitai Etzioni• Robert Putnam• Norman Dennis• Writers of faith - Jonathan Sacks - Austen Ivereigh• The “eclipse of community” - Roger Stein - Zymunt Bauman

A creative muddle?

• Big Society, Good Society, Stakeholder Society

• Red Tories – neither big state nor big business

• Orange and yellow liberal democrats

• Blue and purple labour

Asset Based Community Development (J Mc Knight)

• What only the state can do!

• What the state, business and civil society can do together!

• What only we can do, in our neighbourhoods and networks!

(Between Texas and Vermont!)

Some Approaches

• Contracting in “Easyjet Councils”

- Payment for outcomes

• John Lewis and co-operative councils

- Co- design and shared services

• Networks and London Citizens

- Holding to account

Some Risks

• Hollowing out the state - with no functional replacements?

• Accelerated development cycles - from Yorkshire Dairies to Walmart via ????

• The temptations of mutuality - from building societies to ?????!

Some more risks!

• Uneven engagement in BS?

• Post-code lottery and uneven services?

• Blaming the (undeserving) poor

• Pulling down the state and NGOs together

• Entryism for really big business?

• Tocqueville`s prediction

BS and the challenge events

• What is BS?

– a”fig leaf for cuts” or a huge opportunity for rebalancing state and civil society? (where has the business gone?)

• We are already doing it!

- it is already there, isn`t it?

• You are taking away the infrastructure!

- big cuts won`t build BS!