The Think Tanks behind ‘Cameronism’

The Think Tanks behind ‘Cameronism’

Hartwig Pautz

Think tanks are omnipresent in the British media as sources of expertise for journalists andpoliticians; they themselves claim that their ideas form the basis of new policies and that they haveinfluenced the thinking of leading decision-makers. This article aims to shed light on whether thinktanks have played a role in the modernisation of the Conservative party under David Cameronbetween 2005 and 2010. The institutions focused on here are Policy Exchange, Reform, Centre forSocial Justice, ResPublica, Politeia and Civitas. If these think tanks influenced the Conservatives’modernisation, which important impulses did they give and how? The article also addresses themore general question of why think tanks are worth academic scrutiny.

Keywords: think tanks; Conservative party; Cameronism; policy advice

The world of British think tanks is probably the most intensively scrutinisedbesides that of the US. What motivates the study of think tanks is the interest inthe role of ideas for policy change and continuity. Researchers have argued thatin Britain think tanks have played a role in the ‘paradigm shift’ from Keynesi-anism to neo-liberalism that preceded Conservative rule between 1979 and 1997.A number of think tanks from the ‘New Right’—most prominently the AdamSmith Institute, the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Centre for PolicyStudies—produced and popularised new ideas and ‘thought the unthinkable’(Cockett 1995; also Desai 1994; Denham 1996). Think tanks were crucial for the‘economic liberal counter-revolution [which] was the work of individuals; a con-scious act to turn the tide of political and economic thinking’ against Keynesianhegemony (Cockett 1995, 4). Think tanks contributed considerably to the ‘dis-establishment’ of the Keynesian discourse coalition through creating a newnetwork of intellectuals (Singer 1993). This network was key to producing a NewRight ‘critique of the welfare state consensus which seemed coherent and intel-lectually respectable’ (Desai 1994, 31). The New Right think tanks influenced the‘climate of opinion’ (Denham and Garnett 1998) and played an active role in thetransformation of the Conservative party’s one-nation Toryism into a market-radical and individualist New Right ideology (Tesseyman 1999). Andrew Denhamand Mark Garnett made an important argument, also of relevance for this article.They said that the main significance of think tanks lay in the construction of‘ideological fellowship’. This term aptly describes how think tanks provided aninstitutional setting for like-minded neo-liberal political elites who felt supportedand assured by the expertise that think tanks produced (Denham and Garnett2004).

The transformation of the UK’s social, economic and political fabric in the 1980sand 1990s was so deep that the Labour party felt compelled to modernise itself

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doi: 10.1111/j.1467-856X.2012.00518.x BJPIR: 2012

© 2012 The Author. British Journal of Politics and International Relations © 2012Political Studies Association

within the ideological framework set by the New Right (Shaw 2004). Just likeThatcher’s Conservative radicals before them, Labour leaders made use of thinktanks and individual policy entrepreneurs to modernise party policy and ideology(Pautz 2010, 2011b and 2012). ‘New Labour’ was the outcome. In 1997, a rejuve-nated Labour party under Tony Blair constituted a formidable political opponent toa Conservative party that had ideologically ossified and seemed morally bankrupt inthe wake of scandals and sleaze (e.g. Doig 2001). For its modernisation processLabour was rewarded with three consecutive election victories against Tories whothemselves shied away from ‘modernisation’—understood as ‘reprogramming oforganisational goals with the aim of adapting to the political environment’ (Weßels2001, 43). Then, after yet another election defeat in 2005, David Cameron becamethe new Conservative leader. Electoral success followed: the Conservatives did wellin local and European elections and became the strongest party in the 2010 generalelection, though failing to win an outright parliamentary majority. For sure, theeconomic crisis, Britain’s involvement in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, gov-ernmental blunders and the unpopularity of Prime Minister Gordon Brown did nothelp Labour in these elections. However, the positive performance of the Conser-vatives was also a result of the party’s modernisation efforts since Cameron’selection (see Bale 2010). Think tanks played a part in this modernisation. Butbesides the ‘old guard’ think tanks—Institute of Economic Affairs, Adam SmithInstitute and Centre for Policy Studies—a number of relatively new institutionswere particularly involved in this modernisation process. Among the newcomers—most importantly Politeia, Civitas, Policy Exchange, Reform, Centre for SocialJustice and ResPublica—some were far more visible than the older partisan thinktanks. Because the role of these think tanks in the modernisation process of theConservative party while in opposition has not been analysed and because theyform part of a yet unexplored part of the British think tank landscape, the focus ofthis article is on them. This does not mean that other think tanks or other organi-sations and individuals did not play a role in the process under scrutiny. Rather, thearticle should be understood as a first exploration of a process and a set of institu-tions previously neglected by academic observers.

The central questions addressed in this article comprise the following: did these newthink tanks have any influence on the Conservatives’ modernisation between 2005and 2010? If so, which important impulses did they give, and how? What furtherroles, besides being producers and disseminators of ideas, did these think tanksassume?

The article is based on a number of sources, such as party documents, think tankpublications and media reports. The author also carried out six interviews withanalysts from the think tanks discussed in the article, with two MPs closely involvedwith a number of the think tanks, and with four people who are experts withregards to Westminster’s policy community and its think tanks. Using a semi-structured interview protocol, most of the 12 interviews were carried out in spring2011, lasted between 40 and 90 minutes and were recorded. Most of them wereface to face; three were telephone interviews. All interviewees were assured ano-nymity, so that any direct quotations from the interview transcripts are referred toby the think tank name.

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Modernisation under Cameron: Big Society, Localism andCompassionate ConservatismEstablishing direct causal relationships between think tank activity and a party’s ora government’s policy programme is nearly impossible as policy processes arecomplex and involve a multitude of actors. However, we are able to establishcongruence between ideas and the content of policy decisions (Yee 1996). If ideasemerging from think tanks are consistent with policy proposals from leaders ofpolitical parties, this can be taken as an indication of influence. But, findingcongruence does not establish proof of impact. Discordance can be considered as athink tank lacking efficacy in influencing policy, but is not proof for a completeabsence of impact since the policy might have been different without the thinktank’s efforts to exert influence. The congruence approach provides the strategy fortelling ‘as useful a “story” about politics’ as possible, as Guy Peters says (Peters 1998,2). To understand whether think tanks had any impact on the Conservatives’modernisation, a brief outline of the party’s ideological development while inopposition under David Cameron is requisite. After all, the term ‘Cameronism’ is acontested one and certainly the development did not progress in a linear fashion.

Under the party’s leaders between 1997 and 2005—William Hague, Iain DuncanSmith and Michael Howard—attempts to modernise image and policy were aban-doned just before general elections and the party shifted to the right (O’Hara 2009,3). Only after David Cameron’s election did the Conservatives develop a compara-tively consistent modernising discourse (Evans 2008) towards ‘a post-Thatcheritestyle of liberal Conservatism’ (Kerr 2007, 47) which incorporates elements ofneo-liberalism, of New Labour and of one-nation Toryism. Cameron’s ‘compassion-ate Conservatism’ (Cameron 2005a) was certainly never a complete renunciation ofThatcherism but, in a number of policy fields, its further development. Moderni-sation did not develop along a straight course. For example, from the currenteconomic crisis of 2008 onwards, Cameron became more Thatcherite in leadershipstyle, approach and rhetoric than he had been in the first years of his leadership(Evans 2008). Nonetheless, in 2005 Cameron and his fellow modernisers saw theneed for ‘fundamental change’ of their party if the Conservatives were to becomeelectable again (Cameron 2005a). Kevin Hickson concludes that the contemporaryConservative party has been guided by a ‘Thatcherite-influenced One Nation Con-servatism’ (Hickson 2009, 360) which puts a strong emphasis on individual respon-sibility and has a ‘compassionate’ interest in social policy.

The modernisation process between 2005 and 2010 was structured along threeintertwined steps: ‘first of all, the party should be shown as “nice”. Secondly, anideological position needed to be marked out. Thirdly, this position should then befleshed out with policy’ (O’Hara 2009, 2). A number of principles were developedunder Cameron, and a Policy Review, initiated by Cameron immediately after hiselection, proposed a set of policies. Some of these were taken up by the Conserva-tives for their 2010 election manifesto. The three interdependent major principleswere the ‘Big Society’, ‘localism’ and ‘compassionate Conservatism’.

The Big Society and ‘civic Conservatism’ discourse offers a critique of the power ofthe central state and advocates policies that are meant to breathe new life into the

THE THINK TANKS BEHIND ‘CAMERONISM’ 3


local community. Unlike in Thatcher’s days, the emphasis was not on ‘rolling backthe state’ but on ‘rolling forward society’ (Cameron 2007). Accepting that there wasa ‘thing called society’, Cameron said that it was ‘just not the same as the state’(Cameron 2005a; Conservative Party 2006). With this focus on civil society, theTories promoted the idea of a shared social responsibility: ‘we are all in thistogether’ (Cameron 2005b; Conservative Party 2006, 5) in the ‘Big Society’(Cameron 2009) in which the ‘big citizen’ should start a ‘responsibility revolutionto create an opportunity society’ (Conservative Party 2006). Closely connected tothe idea of the Big Society is the Conservatives’ anti-statist emphasis on ‘localism’.The state should not be ‘overpowering’ and all-controlling (Conservative Party2006), but nor should it necessarily only be the market that provides welfare orhealth services. Local voluntary and community organisations should be ‘enabled’by the state to mend Britain’s ‘broken society’ (Conservative Party 2006, 2). For thisto succeed, a new type of active citizen was required: ‘the social entrepreneur is thegreat institutional innovation of our times. At the moment, however, we are notmaking nearly enough use of the potential of the voluntary sector’ (Cameron2007). The last element of the Conservatives’ new discourse is that of compassion-ate Conservatism, which describes a shift from an ‘econo-centric paradigm to asocio-centric paradigm’, as a leading Conservative moderniser described the Tories’renewed interest in social policy and how it should be delivered after many yearsof negligence of the topic (e.g. Letwin 2007).

Think Tanks of the Centre-Right: ‘Old Guard’and NewcomersBefore the research questions are addressed, a short definition of what a think tankis and what it does is in order. Think tanks are non-governmental institutions,organisationally independent from government, political parties or organised inter-ests. They want to influence policy, but have no formal decision-making power;they lay claim to political neutrality while not making a secret of their ideologicalstandpoints. Some carry out little research themselves and commission externalexperts or recycle existing research while others have considerable internalresearch capacities. Think tanks want to change policy through intellectual argu-ment rather than through behind-the-scenes lobbying. They inform decision-makers about policy developments in other countries and can play a role intransnational policy transfer networks (Evans and Davies 1999). Often think tanksare defined as not-for-profit organisations. This criterion implies that only financialprofit motives can compromise the independence of a think tank. However, othermotives to engage with decision-makers and policy-makers—such as wanting togain access to valuable government data, seeking (in)formal positions within theclient organisation or stimulating government’s interest in commissioning policyevaluation—also have a potential impact on the intellectual independence of athink tank. Instead of the not-for-profit criterion, the term ‘financial autonomy’ ispreferable if defined as being not dependent on one single benefactor (Pautz2011a).

Until the mid-1990s, the British centre-right or libertarian think tank landscape wasdominated by a handful of think tanks. Among the key partisan think tanks

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involved in bringing about the paradigmatic change outlined earlier was the Centrefor Policy Studies (CPS). Founded in 1974 as a spin-off from the Institute ofEconomic Affairs (IEA), it helped those around Margaret Thatcher who workedtowards party modernisation to demonstrate their willingness to challenge the‘post-war consensus’ in which they saw their own Conservative party as anaccomplice (Denham and Garnett 1999). A think tank more detached fromThatcher’s Conservatives was the Institute of Economic Affairs, founded in the1950s. Often critical of Thatcher’s actual policies (Müller 1996), it served as themost important ‘conduit and populariser of neo-liberal economic ideas in Britain’(Desai 1994, 29). Its foundation was a direct result of the emergence of the MontPelerin Society—a loose global network of neo-classical economists which formedshortly after the Second World War under the leadership of Friedrich von Hayek(Weller and Singleton 2006). The Adam Smith Institute (ASI), founded in themid-1970s, had a less academic outlook than the IEA and has been accused ofcreating and feeding an appetite for ‘half-digested intellectualism’ in the Conser-vative party of the 1980s and 1990s (Williams 1998, 4). These think tanks were attheir most active in the 1970s and 1980s. The British think tank landscape becamepolitically more balanced when two think tanks with a centre-left orientation—the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) and Demos—were set up in 1988and 1993, respectively, following the realisation that think tanks had been crucialfor the New Right’s victory in the ‘battle of ideas’ and that Labour needed com-parative external engines of change. They were fundamental for the making ofNew Labour.

The 1990s saw the emergence of further think tanks of various political orienta-tions. One of the think tanks studied in this article, Politeia, was founded in 1995.The other four institutions analysed here emerged in the next wave of organisa-tional expansion in the first few years of the new millennium, which saw mostlycentre-right and libertarian think tanks being set up. Between 2005 and 2010, thecentre-right think tank landscape clearly benefited from the Conservative moder-nisers’ desire to emulate Tony Blair’s success in providing the Labour party with amodernised, coherent and electorally presentable image (Kerr 2007). Like Blair,Cameron and his fellow modernisers professed a belief in the power of ideas. Whenelected, Cameron said that ‘we must use the next three years to make the Conser-vative Party the engine room of new political ideas—engaging with academics andthink-tanks, the brightest and the best minds producing detailed policy for the longterm, not policy by headline. We must win the battle of ideas’ (Cameron 2005c; seealso Letwin, quoted in Riddell 2007). In this ‘battle’, think tanks were ‘acting inconcert, to try to build up a policy platform for David Cameron’, as an observer froma think tank said (Expert interview 1, 2006).

The oldest of the new think tanks that played a particular role in the modernisationof the Conservative party is Politeia. Founded in 1995 with the ‘private blessing’ ofthe then Conservative prime minister, John Major, as contemporary observersnoted (Wood 1995, 1), one of its early objectives had been to develop a newConservative take on social policy—a field that had been neglected by the Conser-vative governments of the 1980s and early 1990s: ‘after Thatcher and the focus oneconomics, there was a huge demand in the Conservative Party for thinking onsocial issues, because nobody had put their minds to how we could cope with



demographic change, with increasing demand for health care and with the need forbetter schools’, as an analyst from Politeia put it (Politeia interview, 2011). Politeiathus had a clear political mission, even though it claimed—as all think tanks, inparticular those with charitable status, do—to be standing above party politics. Butthe presence of a cross-party group of politicians on its advisory council, amongthem the Lib Dems’ Vince Cable, Labour’s ‘maverick’ and associate to multiplelibertarian think tanks Frank Field, and Michael Gove MP from the Conservativeparty, cannot conceal that it was meant to push the Conservatives into a rethinkingof their policy agenda. The close links between the think tank and Oliver Letwin,today minister of state at the Cabinet Office, are particularly telling. He is a formerarch-Thatcherite, but as chairman of the Tories’ 2005 to 2007 Policy Review andkey person in the writing of the 2010 manifesto he became one of the keenestmodernisers. He represents exactly the kind of person that a think tank needs togain access to if it wants to inform policy where it is made. Did Politeia, despite itssmall size with only a handful of staff, manage to influence the development of‘Cameronism’? Access is not synonymous with power or influence. Judging fromPoliteia’s lack of presence in media reporting, the opinion of experts on Politeia anda ‘congruence test’, Politeia was not a very effective agent of change with regards tothe policy developments after 2005. Politeia’s sweeping welfare reform proposals—for example, it advocated individually owned welfare ‘savings accounts’ to reducewelfare dependency (Politeia 2008)—and its opposition to the Conservatives’ com-mitment to match Labour spending did not endear it to a party leadership whichanxiously tried to be seen as a party that would do things better than, but notnecessarily different from, New Labour. Politeia, compared to some of the otherthink tanks in the sample, enjoyed relatively little media presence in the crucialyears of the Conservative modernisation; it is a ‘quiet think tank’, as one inter-viewee said (Expert interview 2, 2011), which says it prefers working with expertsin the policy fields rather than with political ‘big hitters’ who may attract attentionbut rarely say anything that goes against the grain of mainstream thinking. Also, itspublications do not use a big narrative in which to embed its policy proposals; forexample, the notion of ‘compassionate Conservatism’ was not especially promotedin its output. Often, it was only mentioned as a platform for speeches by high-profile Conservatives but far less so as a think tank that made the headlines throughits ‘own’ ideas.

In particular after 2004, Politeia began to be outshone on its core topic of socialpolicy by a new think tank, the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), founded by formerTory leader Iain Duncan Smith who, in 2010, became secretary of state at theDepartment for Works and Pensions. And not even Letwin’s role as the chairmanof the Tories’ Policy Review brought Politeia into a close orbit with Cameron’smodernisers as it was not directly involved in the review. Politeia probably enjoyeda more elevated position in the 1990s when it was one element in a strategy tobring social policy to the attention of Conservatives; but its association with JohnMajor and thus with a bygone era was not beneficial to the think tank’s standingwithin the modernisers’ camp after 2005.

The second think tank to be looked at is Civitas. Founded in 2000, it is a spin-offfrom the IEA and its Health and Welfare Unit. The split happened because some atthe IEA thought that topics such as multiculturalism, civil society and the role of the

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family were not given sufficient attention by the IEA, whose focus was predomi-nantly on economic questions. Consequently, former director of the IEA’s Healthand Welfare Unit, David Green, together with Robert Whelan, set up Civitas. It is‘liberal in the English sense of the word’, as a senior analyst put it (Civitas interview,2011). Its strict anti-statism and its attention to policy fields that had not previouslybeen in the focus of centre-right or libertarian think tanks allowed it to ‘cream offfinancial support’ from the IEA (IEA interview, 2011). It is an exceptional organi-sation in the British think tank world, not so much because of the policy fields it isdedicated to but because it has taken its interest in civic society to a practical level.Civitas is a ‘think-and-do-tank’ as it organises Saturday schools for disadvantagedchildren and designs teaching materials. Since 2005, Civitas has also set up anumber of primary schools in London for children who were ‘failed by the schoolsystem and unable to afford the most costly private alternatives’, as the think tanksays itself (Civitas 2008). It is a fairly small organisation, with an annual income of£765,000 in 2009, £975,000 in 2008 and £1,185 million in 2007 (Civitas 2008;Charity Commission 2010c) and a small staff of four. Because it is such a smalloutfit, Civitas commissions most of its output from external authors, often academ-ics and not the ‘big names’ from politics. Civitas itself says: ‘we have never been a“policy” think tank that aims to lobby for immediate changes of public policy’(Civitas interview, 2011) but one that looks at the bigger picture and considersacademic research to be necessary as a basis for all policy work. Similarly to Politeia,the small in-house research team makes it more difficult for Civitas to react todebates quickly so that almost by necessity it has to focus on the long- or medium-term development of policy.

Civitas has never been in the inner sanctum of the Conservative party, and it seemsthat it neither benefited from the party’s modernisation under Cameron nor con-tributed much to this process. Green reportedly claimed that David Cameron’soft-repeated statement that ‘there is such thing as society, but it is different from thestate’ was coined by him (in Adams 2008, 7) but lays no claim to influencing theTories’ Big Society narrative directly through working with the modernisers. Civitaswas also not formally involved in the Conservatives’ Policy Review: while ‘we talkto anyone who listens, and politicians are more receptive when they’re in opposi-tion, we rejected Cameron’s offer’ to take part (Civitas interview, 2011). On anindividual basis, however, Civitas’ director participated in the CSJ’s work on thePolicy Review, and Civitas may have been influential with regards to turning theattention of some Conservatives to the importance of civic society at a time whenmost think tanks on the centre-right were focusing on ‘hard’ economic questions.

The close connection between the IEA and Civitas is not only indicative of thenature of the British think tank world, but also affords a good opportunity toexplain why one of the most prominent old guard institutes was not on the frontline of Tory modernisation under Cameron between 2005 and 2010. WithCameron, the Conservatives broadened their policy agenda from their focus on theeconomy, taxation and a slim state to one that encompassed the environment, the‘Big Society’ take on the role of civic society, the fight against ‘relative poverty’(Cameron 2006) and even a commitment to narrowing the gap between rich andpoor (Letwin, in White 2005). This meant that the IEA was not seen as the mostsuitable think tank to provide the modernisers with policy input to broaden their



agenda and thus their appeal to the voters. In fact, as one IEA analyst said, for someleading Conservatives ‘being associated with IEA had come to be seen as detrimen-tal to how the party was perceived in public’ (IEA interview, 2011). Only with thefinancial crisis did the Conservatives’ focus on economic policy return and thereforethe IEA become in vogue again. A new think tank director—Mark Littlewood,formerly an adviser to Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg—has since 2010 added to theIEA’s reviving fortunes by giving it a more activist campaigning profile.

What could well be the most important think tank for the Conservative moderni-sation discourse is Policy Exchange. Despite its charitable status, it played a similarrole to that of the (non-charity) CPS in the 1970s and 1980s as a vehicle for themodernisers to gain ideological hegemony over the party and to act as an ‘ideo-logical fellow’. Cameron himself said that ‘without Policy Exchange there would beno Conservative revolution’ (quoted in Parker 2008, 4). The think tank is and wasan oft-cited and commented-upon source in the media. The Daily Telegraph hasdescribed it as ‘the largest, but also the most influential think-tank on the right’(Daily Telegraph 2007) and the Evening Standard referred to it as ‘the intellectual bootcamp of the Tory modernisers’ (Murphy 2008). It was founded in 2001 by NickBoles—a friend of David and Samantha Cameron (Langley 2009) and MP since2010—and by Michael Gove. A third leading person in the think tank’s foundationwas ‘moderniser-in-chief’ of the Conservative party, Francis Maude (Adams 2008,4). These Tories had backed Michael Portillo’s attempt to become party leader in2001. Their involvement demonstrates how interested the modernisers were inestablishing a party-external institution which would intellectually support theirmodernisation efforts. Modelled ‘explicitly on IPPR’ and its policy-oriented modusoperandi (Policy Exchange interview, 2011), the think tank has undergone rapidgrowth. Between 2002 and 2008, Policy Exchange’s staff increased from five to 35,and its budget has grown significantly, too: in 2004/05 it obtained £568,203 indonations and in 2008/09 the think tank received £2.6 million (Charity Commis-sion 2010a).

Of all the think tanks looked at here, Policy Exchange appears to be fulfilling the‘revolving door’ function of a think tank and that of a recruitment ground for theparty best. For example, Nick Boles became head of policy for Cameron in 2008 andthe think tank’s chief researcher, James O’Shaughnessy, became a researcher in theConservative Central Headquarters and is then an adviser to Cameron at Number10 Downing Street. Policy Exchange’s work has been ‘downstream’ in the policyprocess; that is, the think tank wants to inform decision-makers with praxis-relevant policy rather than producing grander narratives. Among the policies pro-moted were the ‘free schools’ policy (e.g. Meyland-Smith and Evans 2009) and anadaptation of Julian LeGrand’s Pupil Premium (e.g. Freedman and Horner 2008).Policy Exchange also advocated the use of the private sector in welfare-to-workschemes, has called for the scrapping of Labour’s welfare-to-work and traininginitiatives (Thomson 2010) and has attacked Britain’s welfare system as leading toselfishness and laziness (Browne, in Moore-Bridger 2008). Policy Exchange’s workon free schools was directed by Michael Gove who later became education secretaryunder Cameron. Further work was done on ‘localism’. At the 2009 Conservativeconference, Policy Exchange launched a report entitled ‘Can Localism Deliver?’together with think tank Localis—an organisation whose board and research team

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almost exclusively comprise former Policy Exchange researchers and politicianswith Conservative party credentials. The report backed the Tories’ pledge to scrapregional development agencies—a policy implemented after May 2010—and moredevolution of power to the local level (Forjan and Shakespeare 2009). Not all ofPolicy Exchange’s work focused on specific policies, however. It also discussedbroader ideological questions. In particular two books written by an executivedirector at Policy Exchange were informative for the Tories’ shift from a concernwith the economy to one with poverty, social justice and social exclusion. JesseNorman’s ‘compassionate Conservatism’ and ‘compassionate economics’ (Norman2006 and 2009) tell the story of a different Conservatism and certainly echoed thecall from many voices in the party that a shift from an ‘econo-centric paradigm toa socio-centric paradigm’ (Letwin 2007) was necessary.

According to a former senior member of Policy Exchange, the think tank’s heydaywith regard to influencing the Conservative party was between 2002 and 2006:‘that’s when our best ideas came out. And we were seen as a counterpoint to theTory party which was seen as reactionary in the times before Cameron. But whenCameron became leader Policy Exchange’s exceptionalism was lost, because hisviews were much closer to ours’ (Policy Exchange interview, 2011). Becoming partof this new ‘Conservative consensus’ after 2005 meant that Policy Exchange enjoysformidable access to decision-makers within the party, and therefore ideal condi-tions to exert influence: ‘what Policy Exchange publishes goes straight to Number10, or the opposition as it was back then, because of where they are’, as an analystfrom the CSJ said (CSJ interview, 2011). The significance of Policy Exchange isunderlined by the fact that Policy Exchange’s director of research, JamesO’Shaughnessy, and future special adviser to Cameron, was ‘the brains behind theTory general election manifesto’ (Watt 2010).

Like Policy Exchange, the think tank Reform is, as an IEA researcher put it, a‘recruitment agency’ (IEA interview, 2011) for the Conservatives. Reform is a smallthink tank; like Civitas and Politeia it is a ‘shell organisation’ which mostly dependson commissioning work from external authors. The think tank’s income rose from£328,000 in 2004 to just under £500,000 in 2008 (Charity Commission 2010b).Reform was founded after the 2001 general election by Andrew Haldenby and NickHerbert. The former had been communications director of the lobby group ‘Busi-ness for Sterling’, director of studies at the CPS and head of the political section inthe Conservative Research Department. The latter, a Conservative MP since 2005,understood Reform as ‘something like a campaigning organisation’ for party mod-ernisation and for his own political career in the wake of the election defeat(Reform interview, 2011). After Herbert became an MP in 2005, Reform trans-formed to become a think tank which produces mostly policy-oriented work,moved away from its previous campaigning style and gained more distance fromthe Conservative party. Reform was not directly involved in the Tories’ PolicyReview because the direction of its published work between 2005 and 2010 wouldnot have supported Cameron’s policy agenda. In particular, Reform opposed theConservatives’ pre-2008 promises to match Labour’s spending and what it saw asthe Tories’ unwillingness to fundamentally challenge the public sector—here inparticular the NHS was in the cross hairs of the think tank. Certainty before theoutbreak of the economic and financial crisis, Reform’s advice on welfare reform



was too radical for Cameron’s oppositional Tories, even though today its anti-statism, the emphasis on individual responsibility and its trust in the market notonly to administer benefits but also to make benefit rules seem more in tune withCameron’s government (e.g. Cawston et al. 2009).

Another influential think tank is the Centre for Social Justice, set up in 2004 by IainDuncan Smith, former leader of the Conservative party. The CSJ was important onthree counts. First, it helped to develop a new social policy agenda for the Conser-vative party; second, the think tank was crucial for giving the Conservative party amore caring face; and third, Smith used it to revamp his career. After spending a fewyears outwith the limelight of politics, he established the organisation after his‘Easterhouse epiphany’ during a visit to the poverty-stricken neighbourhood ofGlasgow (Collins 2002) and thus reinvented himself as a compassionate Conserva-tive, as he was later referred to in the press (Thomson 2005). Because at the timethe Tories had little interesting to say on social policy, the work that the CSJ startedproducing attracted considerable interest in the media and in the expert commu-nity. It was during the leadership contest for the Conservative party that a closerelationship between the CSJ and Cameron developed. The CSJ offered eachcandidate a platform to speak about the issues that the think tank was concernedwith. Cameron ‘really seemed to believe in our work’, as a CSJ analyst said (CSJinterview, 2011), and the think tank and Duncan Smith showed a keen interest inworking with Cameron after his election as leader. Thus, shortly after his election,Cameron asked the CSJ to take over responsibility for conducting one of the fivePolicy Reviews he instigated to renew the Tories. Chaired by Duncan Smith himself,the Social Justice Policy Group’s aim was to ‘study the causes and consequences ofpoverty in Britain and seek practical ideas to empower the least well-off’ and to‘make policy recommendations to the Conservative Party on issues of social justice’.With the two reports ‘Breakdown Britain’ (Social Justice Policy Group 2006) and‘Breakthrough Britain’ (Social Justice Policy Group 2007), the CSJ ‘filled the gaps’(Montgomerie 2008) in the Conservative social policy agenda and allowedCameron to present his party’s compassionate face. A number of perspectives onproblems and also policy proposals from these reports were officially adopted by theConservatives before the 2010 elections. For example, the Policy Review Groupurged the Tories to tackle head on the problem of poverty—a ‘difficult issue for theConservative Party’, as Duncan Smith acknowledged (Duncan Smith 2006, 4) andadvised the party that it should accept the concepts of ‘relative poverty’ and ‘socialexclusion’ as a basis of policy-making. With its contribution to the policy reviewprocess the CSJ helped to change ‘the debate about the root causes of poverty, wewant to shift the focus of debate about poverty from money to poor schools, family,dependency, debt, addiction’, as one CSJ researcher said (CSJ interview, 2011).Even before the report Cameron himself had urged the party to rethink its take oneconomic policy, as general prosperity did not simply depend on economic growthand wealth creation but also on fighting poverty (Cameron 2005c). Not long afterthe Social Justice Policy Review Group had taken up its work, Cameron declaredthat the ‘Conservative Party recognises, will measure and will act on relativepoverty’ (Cameron 2006). Oliver Letwin even said that ‘inequality matters. Ofcourse it should be an aim to narrow the gap between rich and poor’ (Letwin,quoted in White 2005). Furthermore, the Policy Review Group identified family

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breakdown as the major cause of Britain’s alleged social crisis. Cameron’s Conser-vatives adapted the title of the Policy Review Group’s first report and startedreferring to the UK as ‘broken’ (e.g. in Dale 2008). One concrete measure proposedby the Review Group, adopted by the Conservatives and widely discussed in themedia, was recognition of marriage in the tax system (e.g. Osborne, quoted in BBC2010). Furthermore, the Tories advocated government assistance for allowingparents to stay at home and care for their young children. Lastly, elements of theConservatives’ idea of the ‘Big Society’ were present in what the Policy ReviewGroup under Iain Duncan Smith proposed. It suggested that local voluntary andcommunity organisations should be seen as key to repairing Britain (Social JusticePolicy Group 2006).

With its official involvement in the Conservatives’ Policy Review, the CSJ helpedthe Conservatives to devise policies for their ‘compassionate Conservatism’ (e.g.Montgomerie 2004; Duncan Smith 2004). The think tank did not develop anygroundbreaking ideas, but allowed the Conservatives to develop their own centre-right profile on this policy field and even to challenge Labour as the traditionalguarantor of social justice, thus changing the climate of opinion to their advantage.

The youngest think tank in this sample is ResPublica. In 2009, it was set up as aprivate unlimited company—unusual for a think tank—by Phillip Blond who hadpreviously worked in think tank Demos’ Progressive Conservatism project. For thisreason, it comes as no surprise that ResPublica is similar to Demos in that it seeksto provoke with unusual ideas. Its advisory board features Conservative MPs andothers associated with the centre-right. Phillip Blond sees himself as a ‘radical’Conservative who, upon launching his think tank, criticised ‘monopoly capitalism’and ‘Reagonomics’ (Shipman 2009, 10). He argued that Conservatives needed to gobeyond repudiating Thatcherism and to embrace Blairism if ‘they really want toshare wealth and mend the broken society’ (Blond 2009). He encapsulated hisvision for the Conservative party in the term ‘Red Toryism’ (Blond 2009 and 2010).During the economic crisis following the 2008 financial crash, his critique seemedto fall on open ears in the party as he ‘had a story to tell. It had an impact on theparty, it has made us more suspicious of banks, bolstered our Big Society stuff. Hiswork came at the right moment’ (Policy Exchange interview, 2011). However,ResPublica’s output has not had the desired effect on the think tank’s role for theConservative party or—presumably—on its founder’s career. It was too conserva-tive on social values and too economically paternalistic to fit into Cameron’s visionof his party. David Cameron made clear, at the think tank’s inaugural meeting, thathe had disagreements with Blond: ‘while I would not say I agree with everythinghe has said or indeed everything he and his think-tank are going to say, I think theyare making some important contributions to thinking in Britain and also contribu-tions that I think Conservatives can particularly welcome’ (Grice 2009; Ivens 2009;Shipman 2009). After an initial flurry of media reporting about ‘Red Toryism’,ResPublica quickly disappeared from the front pages and the notion was not takenup by others outside ResPublica. When Blond first came out with his ideas, histhoughts were a ‘welcome PR exercise for the Tory modernisers before the electionsto present the party as modern and open’, as one observer of and participant in thecentre-right think tank world said (MP interview, 2011). If Blond wanted ResPub-lica only to serve as a ‘vanity think-tank’ (Abelson 2002, 35) to promote his political



career, he failed. If the think tank meant to partake seriously in the debate, then itwas wrong-footed and was too late arriving on the scene, so shortly before theelections and with ‘Cameronism’ already in place.

Analysis and ConclusionDid these five think tanks influence the Conservatives’ modernisation? If so, whichimportant impulses did they provide and how? What role in the modernisers’ policynetwork did think tanks assume?

I have shown that during the dying days of the Major government and especiallyafter the Conservatives’ 2001 defeat, the centre-right or libertarian think tanklandscape changed and expanded. The new think tanks were ideal for the mod-ernisers to gain ‘ideological fellows’ (Denham and Garnett 2004) outside theparty. Cameron’s election additionally stimulated intellectual activity on thepolitical right as Conservative politicians rediscovered the importance of ideas asan ingredient of electoral success. While in opposition, Cameron used think tanksfor developing new ideas and policy and to demonstrate his party’s ‘newness’.Part of this ideational offensive consisted of speeches at think tank Demos byCameron and Osborne and by Gove at the IPPR—both institutions that had beenat the forefront of the New Labour project (Pautz 2010). Thus, the Conservativesmimicked New Labour’s two-pronged strategy: first, to work with institutions andpersons who would normally not be associated with the party so that new audi-ences could be reached and new ideas be brought into the party; and second,Conservative modernisers took New Labour as an example of how to establishways of policy formulation without relying on the party machinery and withoutallowing this machinery too much power over the process. Indeed, in both caseswe witnessed an outsourcing of policy production to institutions outside the partyapparatus.

It is probably true that the ‘agenda-setting capacity of a think-tank (if any) isintangible’ and that ‘think-tanks do not have extensive paradigmatic influenceover official thinking’ (Stone 2000, 219). Nonetheless, the above analysis hasmade it possible to make out centre-right think tanks as amplifiers and evenoriginators of official Conservative discourse such as ‘broken Britain’, whichderived from the CSJ’s study ‘Breakdown Britain’ and its leadership of the PolicyReview Group on social policy. Such terminology struck a chord with the publicand was used to call into question Labour’s policies since 1997 and to raise theConservatives’ own new profile on social policy. The notions of civic conservatismand of localism have had strong advocates within the Tory leadership and were,as the article showed, promoted by some of the think tanks discussed above. Theyafforded ‘ideological fellowship’ to Conservative modernisers. The acceptance ofrelative poverty as a measure to inform policy can also be attributed to the advo-cacy work of the CSJ. The revolving-door function of think tanks was important,too, as the personal networks show. However, it is important to consider thateven though think tanks function as conveyor belts into party and government,they may not necessarily have enough room to carry career-minded people andideas.

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Think tanks did make a difference to the Conservative modernisation underCameron. However, they were not the only or even the major shapers of ‘newideas’, as the example of the Conservatives’ ‘greening’ shows. Few think tanks,apart from the CSJ through a Policy Review Group, dedicated work to this field andmuch of the environmentalist agenda of the party is ascribed to adviser SteveHilton. However, think tanks did serve various important functions: as breedingground, conveyor belt, providers of a modern façade to the party, producers ofpolicy and larger philosophical ideas which influenced party and public, and pro-ducers of headlines.

About the Author

Hartwig Pautz, School of Government and Public Policy, University of Strathclyde, McCanceBuilding, 16 Richmond Street, Glasgow G1 1XQ, UK, email: h.pautz@[email protected]

InterviewsCivitas, interview with author, London, April 2011.Expert interview 1, interview with author, May 2006.Expert interview 2, telephone interview with author, February 2011.CSJ, interview with author, London, April 2011.IEA, interview with author, April 2011.MP, interview with author, London, April 2011.Policy Exchange, interview with author, London, April 2011.Politeia, interview with author, London, April 2011.Reform, interview with author, London, April 2011.

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Documents

The Think Tanks behind ‘Cameronism’