The Evolution of Decision-Making in the British Labour Party: From Grassroots to Netroots?

‘Wilful Blindness’: Effects and Perceptions of New Labour’s Party Management

“…At a first level, and in line with other analyses of New Labour (Avril, 2013; Wring, 2005), The Blair Supremacy shows how misguided efforts to align party members with voters have been. Most of the organisational reforms of the party stemmed from the idea that the modernisers’ views were naturally aligned with those of the voters, with Blair priding himself that he had his fingers on the nation’s pulse (Minkin, 2014: 469) and that it was the party (a term encompassing activists and the unions) which was out of line and therefore needed to be brought under control.…”

“…The approach adopted in this review article – focused on getting an understanding of organisational change and culture – consists in combining analytical tools borrowed from the fields of political science and organisational studies (the benefits of this as yet little developed methodological outlook have been demonstrated in Lapalombara (2003) and Avril (2013, in press)). Several of the concepts deployed here (such as ‘toxicity’, ‘organisational learning’ and ‘management’ itself) have now been integrated into the study of political organisations.…”

The (Unintended) Consequences of New Labour: Party Leadership vs Party Management in the British Labour Party

“…However, despite initial hopes (for a positive evaluation of the reforms, see Russell, 2005) the democratic quality of the new processes of policy making is very doubtful as procedures were designed so as to ensure the right results would emerge and dissenting voices struggled to make themselves heard (Heffernan, 2007, p. 156). The move towards direct democracy led to the erosion of the elective power of activists and the idea of increased membership participation did not entail increased membership influence (Avril, 2013). Generally, the new democratic processes presented in the 1998 Partnership in Power review document translated into mere consultation exercises with no real impact on policy formulation.…”

“…A first unintended outcome was a result of the party leadership's belief that their views and those of the voters were the same (Avril, 2013;Minkin, 2014). The party (the trade unions and the Constituency Labour Parties) was seen as holding views which were harmful because they were thought to be at odds with how the voters felt.…”

Leadership and Uncertainty Management in Politics

“…The idea being that the 'disaggregated members' would be unlikely to seriously challenge the leadership (Mair, 1994: 16). 7 Therefore the tremendous widening of the franchise and the extension of new democratic rights to individual members under New Labour need to be understood in the context of the modernising reforms and set against the overall centralisation of power in the party (Avril, 2013).…”