The politics of public expenditure from Thatcher to Blair

Mullard, Maurice; Swaray, Raymond

doi:10.1332/030557306777695343

Cited by 6 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…In 1988 the Conservatives further de-municipalized social housing by starting large-scale voluntary transfers of council housing into non-profit housing associations (‘voluntary’ as subject to the agreement of a majority of a council’s tenants in a local referendum). These transfers and the right-to-buy involved major disinvestment in social housing, and housing expenditure as a proportion of GDP dropped over the Conservative years and was not reversed until 2000 (Mullard and Swaray, 2006: 498). Currently, the English tenure pattern is council sector (7 percent), housing associations (10 percent) (i.e.…”

Section: Post-war Social Housing Policy In England and Francementioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining reforms: post-New Public Management myths or political realities? Social housing delivery in England and France

Laffin

2018

International Review of Administrative Sciences

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This article examines the assumption that recent reforms in social and public services can be understood as a transition from New Public Management to post-New Public Management. English and French social housing delivery are selected as two cases in which to test out this assumption, for ostensibly these delivery structures share significant cross-national, post-NPM similarities – a movement towards a more ‘enabling’ or steering role for central government, the creation of coordinating agencies, ‘decentralization’ initiatives, the extensive use of public–private arrangements to finance social housing and the involvement of a wide range of extra- and semi-governmental organizations. However, further investigation reveals that these reforms of delivery structures have not been predominantly driven by an unfolding post-NPM managerial or governance logic as the thesis assumes. Rather the reforms have been driven by the partisan electoral and ideological goals of central government policymakers within the context of institutional legacies and entrenched social values. Points for practitioners New Public Management and post-New Public Management have become the conventional wisdom on administrative reforms particularly in a comparative context. This article argues that these ideas reflect an impoverished understanding of public administration given that they assume that change occurs predominantly through the unfolding of managerial and/or governance logics. These logics exclude the critical role of the political parties and other socio-political factors, such as urban unrest, in driving change. This Anglo-French analysis of social housing delivery demonstrates the significance of these political factors in how policymakers define social problems, re-design and implement social housing service delivery systems.

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Section: Post-war Social Housing Policy In England and Francementioning

confidence: 99%

Explaining reforms: post-New Public Management myths or political realities? Social housing delivery in England and France

Laffin

2018

International Review of Administrative Sciences

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“…Keeping health and education spending below the postwar trend rate (Mullard and Swaray 2006), linking long‐term social security benefits to inflation rather than earnings, abolishing earnings‐related unemployment benefit, passing responsibility for sickness benefit to employers and reducing housing subsidies to local authorities produced gradual savings. None the less, increases in unemployment, the transfer of many long‐term unemployed people to Incapacity Benefit and growth in the number of lone parents meant that, over the period 1979 to 1986, public expenditure as a proportion of GDP remained constant.…”

Section: Thatcher's Legacymentioning

confidence: 99%

Major, Blair and the Third Way in Social Policy

Lund¹

2007

Soc Policy Adm

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Tony Blair's adoption of the catchphrase 'the Third Way' to précis New Labour's policy orientation allowed him to distance 'New' Labour from 'Old' Labour and to appropriate many of John Major's modifications to Thatcherism, albeit framed within a new political language. This article sets out the basic similarities and differences between the social policies of the Major and Blair governments, arguing that, although the policies have been presented within different discourses, there has been a marked similarity in policy content, with Major espousing Third Way policies if not Third Way rhetoric. Indeed, towards the end of his second term of office, Blair started to go beyond the Third Way and towards Margaret Thatcher's favoured model of spirited competition between public and private suppliers.

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“…In a previous study, we have suggested that the study of public expenditure by programme reinforced the argument that politics did make a difference. 4 Labour and Conservative government records on public spending did reflect competing political ideologies and policy priorities, with Labour governments spending more on health, housing, education and social security, and Conservative governments spending more on defence and law and order.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

New Labour Legacy: Comparing the Labour Governments of Blair and Brown to Labour Governments since 1945

Mullard

Swaray

2010

Political Quarterly

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The election of the Conservative–Liberal coalition in May 2010 provides the opportunity to start to map out the record of the Labour governments between 1997 and 2010. This paper deals with the specific question how the Brown/Blair governments performed on public expenditures when compared to the records of UK Labour governments since 1945. Did the public expenditure record of the 1997 represent a departure from that of previous Labour governments? This is important to ascertain since there are strongly held beliefs that New Labour was not committed to Labour's historic commitments of income redistribution and universal benefits. The analysis that follows is constructed around five major public expenditure programmes that reflect Labour's priorities. These include total expenditure, expenditure on health, education, housing and social security.

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The politics of public expenditure from Thatcher to Blair

Cited by 6 publications

References 3 publications

Explaining reforms: post-New Public Management myths or political realities? Social housing delivery in England and France

Explaining reforms: post-New Public Management myths or political realities? Social housing delivery in England and France

Major, Blair and the Third Way in Social Policy

New Labour Legacy: Comparing the Labour Governments of Blair and Brown to Labour Governments since 1945

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