What ontological assumptions underpin David Cameron’s ‘modernisation’ of Conservative Party welfare policy?

This work seeks to explicate the ontological assumptions that underpin the development of Conservative Party welfare policy from 2005 to 2010. The assumptions will be discussed in four themes: structure/agency, social change, human nature and gender. The work shall begin by discussing the ontological assumptions of neoliberalism through the work of Hayek, Friedman, Mead and Murray, using examples from British government. Though dominated by rationalism, intentionalism and gender essentialism, these ideas contain a variety of contradictions and incompatibilities. The modernisation period will then be assessed with analysis of two key policy documents, identifying an experimental range of ontological assumptions in the first document, and a more focussed traditional neoliberal assumption set in the second. When the change is assessed against the Coalition Government’s first welfare policy document, it will be argued that traditional neoliberal ontological assumptions dominate, and although some of the newly appropriated discourses remain, the modernisation period has ultimately produced a refinement of traditional neoliberal ideas. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Stuart McAnulla for his dedicated supervision and invaluable expertise. I would also like to thank Will Langdale and Clare Whitfield for the hours of fascinating conversation and for the proof reading. A special extra thanks to Clare for providing such a shining example for me to follow. Above all, I would like to thank Jenny Pinder, for without her love, support and patience not a word would have ever been written. Introduction “Critical social research begins from questions such as these: how do existing societies provide people with the possibilities and resources for rich and fulfilling lives, how on the other hand do they deny people these possibilities and resources?” (Fairclough 2003: 202). In Britain, “labour market policies have been based on a supply-side policy paradigm according to which economic inactivity and unemployment are not caused by a lack of demand, but by the individual characteristics of the economically inactive” (Garwaite 2011: 371), a paradigm that leads to people being denied the ‘resources for rich and fulfilling lives’ in two ways: abstractly, through “the ontological concealment of life and its possibilities” (Joronen 2013: 358); concretely, as the state “uses the provision of basic needs as both carrot and stick to regulate the behaviour of welfare claimants” (Barker and Lamble 2009: 321). It is within this paradigm that this work hopes to contribute a critical reflection on the “neoliberal subjectivity *...+ that normalises the logics of individualism” (Leitner et al 2007: 1), by questioning the underlying ontological assumptions of welfare policy. Ontological assumptions, philosophies about the nature of being, play a vitally important yet underexaggerated role in the development of welfare policy. Welfare in its broadest sense “refers to the well-being of individuals” (George and Page 1995: 1) and so it would seem impossible to understand ‘well-being’ without first understanding ‘being’. Fairclough identifies three types of assumptions: “existential, assumptions about what exists; propositional, assumptions about what is or can be or will be the case; value, assumptions about what is good or desirable” (Fairclough 2003: 55). Ontological assumptions fall into the existential category but we must acknowledge that this schema is not concrete and that a degree of overlap exists. In order to maintain the focus on ontology as much as possible, four themes will be used to identify specifically ontological assumptions: structure/agency; social change; human nature; gender. These themes do not provide a strict structure for the analysis that is to come because they overlap and interrelate in many different ways. For example, a structuralist position in the structure/agency debate is itself an explanation of social change. However, the themes will guide the analysis and provide direction to the discussion. The actual focus of the analysis is on the ontological assumptions made by the Conservative Party during David Cameron’s period of ‘modernisation’, specifically in relation to welfare policy. By focussing on ‘Cameron’s modernisation’, we are not identifying Cameron as the only or even most important causal agent; instead, we are using his leadership of the party as a timeframe within which to analyse the nature and change of the ontological assumptions that underpin welfare reform. When we refer to Cameron, we are referring to a team of politicians in and around the Conservative Party. The real interest of this work is the ideas, rather than the actors, in the development of welfare policy. Understanding this period is of particular interest for three reasons: firstly, it can be seen as the theoretical precursor to the present government; secondly, the formation of policy in opposition is a more open process, making for a more fruitful analysis of ontological assumptions; finally, the discourse of ‘modernisation’ claims to move away from the more extreme neoliberal ideology of previous Conservative governments, so it important to assess whether this is indeed the case. There are three important steps to this analysis: firstly, we must identify and explain Cameron’s ontological heritage; secondly, we must look at what assumptions were made during the modernisation period itself; thirdly, we must look at the outcome of the modernisation period and the significance of the resultant change. These steps will form the three main chapters of this work and overall it will be argued that the modernisation period represented an exploration and experimentation, but ultimately, the ontological heritage remained largely unchanged. Chapter 1 will discuss this heritage in relation to Fredrick Hayek, Milton Friedman, Lawrence Mead and Charles Murray, using examples from the governments of Margaret Thatcher and John Major, before concluding with a brief assessment of the ideas in relation to New Labour. In this first chapter we will see a variety of ontological assumptions that all broadly ascribe to a neoliberal world-view but exhibit internal tensions and external incompatibilities. Chapter 2 will look at the broader literature on Cameron’s modernisation, which tends to argue that a change in discourse has supported a continuation of ideology. Two primary texts will then be analysed: Breakdown Britain (SJPG 2006) and Breakthrough Britain (SJPG 2007). The first text is seen to contain a range of diverse ontological assumptions that occasionally go beyond the neoliberal paradigm, while the second text is seen as a movement back towards the ideas of Chapter 1 through the deployment of the key concepts of ‘choice’ and ‘responsibility’. Chapter 3 will analyse 21st Century Welfare (DWP 2010), finding that the traditional neoliberal ideas of Chapter 1 have been refined into a model that does combine various strands but ultimately prioritises ‘rationality’. The chapter will conclude by assessing the transition through the three texts, from diversity to consensus, as traditional neoliberal assumptions are reaffirmed and reinforced using newly appropriated discourses and more refined combinations of the various neoliberal strands of thought.