Counter democracy
Last week, at the kind invitation of a Fellow, I was the lunch guest of a Middle Eastern bank.
The conversation turned quickly to UK politics and then to the US. The bankers were united in their sympathy for what they saw as our long term decline of that of our Atlantic cousins. They were in awe of the progress being made by China both at home and in extending its influence around the world, especially Africa. They were also contemptuous of American claims that China is taking unfair advantage by holding down the value of its currency. Their view was both the US and the UK and many other Western nations need to go through a long process of adjusting public expectations and restructuring their economy. But they considered this impossible due to the nature of our politics and democracy. ‘You need a benign dictatorship’ said one ‘but you have a crazy democracy’.
As America elects a House to oppose the President it elected two years ago (which will surely lead to logjam at best and chaos at worst) these words ring true. The Coalition in this country can be commended for being brave on the public finances (as I have said, this is a gamble which worries me but which I hope succeeds). However, there must be real question marks still about whether the people will react with such equanimity when the cuts start to bite. This piece by my former IPPR colleague – and former Brown advisor – Gavin Kelly suggests not.
I have spoken in the past about the way the consumerist myth of democracy (that politicians should give us what we want even when what we want is impossible or contradictory) saddled with us with the triple deficit of unsustainable consumption, unsustainable public spending and the generational legacy described by David Willetts in his book ‘The Pinch’.
I have just put a new book on my must-read list (currently 157 and rising). It is ‘Counter democracy, politics in an age of distrust’ by the French political historian, Pierre Rosanvallon. In it he argues that democracy performs two central tasks: first it is concerned with mechanisms for agreeing the common good and the parameters of a just society, second, it is dedicated to preventing the abuse of power by elected representatives. The emphasis placed on each of the two tasks changes from era to era.
Currently, for a variety for reasons – the decline of social deference and class based affiliation being the most significant – it is the second task of democracy which is the one which receives by far the greater predominance. One symptom is the tendency to devolve more and more decision making power to institutions which are more trusted than political parties to act in the public interest – the courts, the Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee, the Office of Budgetary Responsibility etc.
But surely in the face of challenges and opportunities ranging from climate change and ageing to globalisation and technological innovation – it is the first task – the definition and pursuit of the good society which is now the most urgent. If political discourse is to focus on developing a common account of progress and winning consent for us all to play our role in its pursuit then we urgently need new ways of thinking about and practicing democracy
Family, character and class – the Cameron view
Our Trustees’ AwayDay (which was neither away nor a day, but very useful nevertheless) having finished, I find myself with a rare opening in my diary. How better to fill it than reading David Cameron’s speech on character and parenting delivered yesterday at Demos.
And what a fascinating speech it is. I hope it justifies this long post.
Let me start with some of the things I really liked about it.
It has a strong core narrative. It isn’t just a list of facts or sound bites. It is genuinely interesting. A couple of points made me pause, just to let them sink in. Like this for example:
‘ Commercialisation and the culture of children’s rights means that children are treated like adults while a great knot of rules and regulations and over-the-top bureaucratic nonsense means that increasingly adults are treated like children. With a culture of suspicion and paranoia that is increasingly preventing adults from even interacting with young people. We can’t go on like this. It’s time we gave children back their childhood and got adults to behave like adults’.
There was also a reassuring recognition of past mistakes
‘This is relatively new territory for the Conservative Party. In the past we’ve been guilty of giving the impression that to build a responsible society, all we needed was freedom for the individual plus a strong rule of law from the state. We didn’t talk enough about what happened in between.’
There were also elements which showed that the modern Conservative Party is willing to support policies previous Tories might have ruled out on principle. For example:
• Extra spending commitments: Sure Start, Health Visitors, a National Citizen Service for Young People, and the implicit cost of delivering on the pledge to let head teachers expel pupils unilaterally (Referral Units are very expensive).
• Criticism of the media: ‘The media needs to show some restraint as well. The premature sexualisation of our children has already gone way too far. There is way too much arbitrary violence in the lives of children too young to understand irony or fantasy. Businesses have got to understand that parents don’t like it and want it to stop’
• And a willingness to regulate when it is needed even where this adds burdens to business:
‘we’ll introduce Flexible Parental Leave, meaning both parents can share the responsibilities of caring for a new baby’
‘we’ll extend the right to request flexible working to all parents with a child under eighteen’
The speech also put meat on the bones of the Tory approach to decentralisation. On the one hand, Mr Cameron argues, both for schools and for Sure Start, that there are some practices that clearly work better than others, that services must be held to account for their effectiveness and that there should be more use of payment by results. On the other hand, he argues for more diverse provision (particularly more use of the not for profit sector) in running schools and Sure Start services.
This underlines a model which decentralises governance and ownership (so local services are not part of national or local bureaucracies) but, arguably, increases central prescription over the content of the service provided. Assuming they win power, it will be interesting to see whether the Conservatives can pull off this balancing act.
I was less convinced by the section of the speech on the foundations of good character. Mr Cameron is clearly very excited by the idea that it is parenting not class that matters:
‘I believe that this research produced recently by Demos is truly ground-breaking. It shows that the differences in child outcomes between a child born in poverty and a child born in wealth are no longer statistically significant when both have been raised by “confident and able” parents.
For those who care about fairness and inequality, this is one of the most important findings in a generation. It would be over the top to say that it is to social science what E=MC2 was to physics, but I think it is a real ‘sit up and think’ moment. That discovery defined the laws of relativity; this one is the new law for social mobility:
What matters most to a child’s life chances is not the wealth of their upbringing but the warmth of their parenting’.
Wow – Richard Reeves as Einstein (not that I’m jealous, of course!). High praise indeed. The problem, I think, is that the evidence doesn’t quite make the point being argued by the Conservative leader. This is because his final rhetorical flourish conflates two arguments:
- If you have a good upbringing it can largely cancel out the effects of poverty
- You are much more likely to have a good upbringing if your family does not live in poverty.
The policy question is not whether Government should encourage good parenting (of course it should, and, to be fair, the current Labour Government has massively expanded parenting provision) it is, first, whether policy can significantly increase the proportion of poor families who parent successfully, and, second, whether this is a more effective strategy than simply trying to reduce the number of families in poverty.
Mr Cameron appears to acknowledge this when he says a few paragraphs later:
‘Successful parenting style in wealthier families occurs not because these people are intrinsically better, or that they love their children more. It is because with poverty can come a host of other problems that make parenting more difficult. Worse schools, higher crime, bad housing. Unemployment. Problems with alcohol and drugs. Mental health conditions. The wearying grind of worry about debt. Higher crime, bad housing. Unemployment. Problems with alcohol and drugs. Mental health conditions’
But this paragraph is hard to reconcile with the earlier statement (which is worth repeating):
‘What matters most to a child’s life chances is not the wealth of their upbringing but the warmth of their parenting’
This I suspect is the take-out line, the one that shows the core philosophy and reassures the Party activist, rather than the more nuanced elaboration a few paragraphs later.
This impression is underlined by two further points. First, I hear (perhaps someone can confirm) that in questioning Mr Cameron rejected the idea that Government should see reducing statistical inequality as an objective of policy (which directly contradicts something I heard David Willetts say at a Bow Group meeting we both addressed last year). And the fact that Mr Cameron repeatedly praises the Demos work while pointedly ignoring its most uncomfortable finding for the Conservatives, which is that marital status does not seem to be a significant variable in successful parenting.
So this is a powerful, interesting and at times incisive speech (how often can we say that about political offerings?). It also confirms the impression that as more policy clarity is demanded and as the public spending sums get harder, the Cameron blend of progressive and traditional Conservative ideas may be gradually tilting towards the latter.
Discuss …
David, meet Michael
I spent some time yesterday evening with David Willetts, Shadow Secretary of State for Universities and Skills. I am a fan of David’s, finding him thoughtful, open minded and progressive. Indeed he was the respondent I chose for my second annual lecture. But having heard David speak about his views of higher education I wonder whether I should introduce him to another impressive Tory politician, Michael Gove. It is far from clear to me that they share the same world view.
Last night, at the dinner we were both attending, several people criticised the Government’s target of 50% of your people going into higher education. But David was eloquent in his support for the expansion of HE, even while recognising that levels of participation had gone up faster than levels of attainment. As well as saying that university has many advantages for young people in addition to gaining qualifications, he pointed out that the expansion had largely been in vocational areas and that about two out of three people at university are studying for a degree necessary for them to enter their career of choice. He also explicitly rejected the notion that the new degrees being taught in new universities were in ‘Mickey Mouse’ subjects.
This was music to my ears. At almost exactly the same time David was making his point at the dinner, I was using a very similar argument on this week’s Radio 4 Moral Maze.
But how are we to square David’s view with the thrust of Michael Gove’s lecture here last June. In referring to universities in his speech, the Conservative education spokesman spoke exclusively about the view of the elite Russell Group. He argued strongly against what he clearly saw as Mickey Mouse subjects and qualifications (although to be fair he didn’t use this phrase). Moreover, I interpreted the thrust of Gove’s speech that he was determined to raise the bar of academic attainment, something which would surely lead in the short term to lower levels of participation in higher education.
So, while David Willetts espouses a laissez faire, expansionary view of post compulsory education, his shadow cabinet colleague urges a return to a more rigidly defined set of subjects and content with progression capped by rising attainment requirements.
Perhaps there is a way of explaining this apparent tension but I’m afraid I’m not clever enough to understand it. I blame my school, or should it be my university?
Social mobility, the brain and good news for the RSA
Filed under: Public policy, Social brain, The RSA
As I write I’m listening to the Today programme item about the social mobility white paper. The RSA will soon be hearing from someone whose work may be one of the most important contributions to this debate.
After yesterday’s discussion on this site it is interesting that the Government is leading with the idea of paying the best teachers to teach in the most deprived schools. This is a straightforward piece of public service redistribution, and no bad thing for that. As always, the success of such an initiative will depend on the way it is implemented; just because someone succeeds as a teacher in a middle class school in Richmond upon Thames doesn’t mean they would do as well in a school like Lilian Bayliss, which includes my younger son amongst its pupils. Indeed, arguably, in a school like Bayliss, which is overwhelmingly made up of working class children from minority ethnic families, it is important to inspire the pupils with successful teachers with a similar background to the pupils.
Liam Byrne has just disagreed with David Willetts that the Government is putting too much emphasis on early years in seeking to tackle entrenched inequality. Whether the Government’s interventions work is one question but the evidence that infant experience does have a major impact of future prospects does seem to be getting stronger. Yesterday we heard the fantastic news that our nominee for the Benjamin Franklin Medal (awarded to an international figure who has contributed to enlightenment thought) has accepted; she is Professor Elizabeth Gould from Princeton University.
Professor Gould is responsible for one of the recent decade’s most important breakthroughs in neuroscience. Taking on one of the most established and dogmatically adhered to nostrums of her discipline, Gould painstakingly demonstrated the existence of neurogenesis – the generation of new neurons – in mammals. And, even more significantly for social policy, she found in her work with monkeys that the scope for neurogenesis - in other words the ability of the brain to generate and repair brain cells – was significantly affected by the circumstances in which the monkey was reared. Mothers who had experienced high stress and suffered from being low in the dominance hierarchy produced offspring with a lower capacity for neurogenesis.
The good news, and why David Willetts may be right to question too great an emphasis on the early years, is that these effects can be corrected in later life. If monkeys brought up in deprived circumstances were then transferred to stimulating environments, their capacity for neurogenesis recovered, over time, to the average.
It is fantastic that Professor Gould will soon be sharing her latest research findings and their social implications with an RSA audience; we’ll be sure to invite Liam Byrne and David Willets.
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