Decoupling the state and the third sector: the Big Society as a spontaneous order

Dr. Rob MacmillanThird Sector Research Centre

University of Birmingham

TSRC Southampton seminar18th June 2012

Who first coined the term “third sector”?

(apparently)

Quick summary

Part 1 - The Big Society and the third sector- Background- Narrative and counter-narratives- Third sector responses

Part 2 - Theorising the third sector and the state - Interdependence and partnership- Hayek’s spontaneous order- Third Sector as a spontaneous order- Decoupling the third sector and the state- Research agendas and third sector futures

Coda: by ’eck its time for Hayek?- A surprising Hayekian connection…

1. Facing an overwhelmingly negative reaction, the Big Society struggles as a narrative. But it points to a much broader agenda

2. The Big Society owes something to a Hayekian worldview.

3. For the third sector it signals a recasting (‘decoupling’) of the relationship between the sector and the state – a ‘great unsettlement’.

Part 1 – The Big Society and the third sector

Big Society versus Big Government

Because we believe that a strong society will solve our problems more effectively than big government has or ever will, we want the state to act as an instrument for helping to create a strong society…Our alternative to big government is the big society.

David Cameron, 10th November 2009

Big Society as policy Building a Big Society (March 2010)

•Big Society Bank •Community Organising•Neighbourhood grants •National Citizens Service

Building a stronger civil society (October 2010)

•Empowering communities (localism)•Promoting social action•Opening up public services

•Vanguard areas•Transition Funding

Narrative and counter-narrative

Francis Maude: Big Society? It's nothing to do with us "The 'Big Society' is not a government programme: it's an idea of what you want society – what you want Britain – to be like“ (Independent, 2.10.11)

‘Room’ for Big Society as a narrative:“there has been a proliferation of different interpretations and definitions, and narratives not necessarily conducive to the success of the project have become dominant” (ACEVO 2011: 11)

Five compelling counter-narratives:•confusion •the challenge of everyday life •not so new •contradiction and a cover for cuts•makes sense in affluent areas, not so relevant elsewhere

Narrating the Big Society

“Without the cavalry, though, we have only our own resources.... In a world where we have to be more self-reliant, it’s more important than ever that we are not only self-reliant but find ways to help each other.

You could call it the big society. You could call it cooperation. I prefer the concept of solidarity, because it is about people coming together from shared experiences and hopes rather than out of a sense of duty or philanthropy. Whatever we call it, though, we need to get on with it.”

(Dobson 2011).

Big Society and the third sector

Reportedly overheard at the 2010 Conservative party conference in Birmingham:

Charity CEO: ‘What’s the big society all about then?’Minister: ‘You!’Charity CEO: ‘In that case can I have some money to fund my

project please?’Minister: ‘No, that’s the whole point.’

Third sector responses – evidence from ‘Real Times’

A double-sided response: their Big Society rhetoric….it’s very vague, you know, this whole localism and all this kind of twaddle, it’s nothing new, it’s been around for ages, it’s just been, the language is different. But there are opportunities within it. If we package ourselves properly.

Senior Manager (0089, 9.7.10)

Scepticism: There’s a kernel of an idea that’s worth exploiting here I’m sure, and I’m sure we’ll all learn to be very, very enthusiastic about it.

Chief Executive (0116, 30.7.10)

Mixed messages: [Government’s] saying it wants big society and voluntary organisations to do everything, it’s cutting them off at the knees. It doesn’t make sense at all when…it’s just rhetoric I think really

Chief Executive (0214, 18.1.11)

Opportunities ahead: there’s been a huge amount of negative reaction to it, but I actually view it more positively, in terms of its potential. [It may] help trigger more opportunity….I accept that people are worried…but I’m more of the view of, well, let’s find the opportunity and get on with it. Keep going…and be flexible, and look for opportunities

Grants officer (0207, 19.5.11)

Public and private: I don’t have an issue with using the term or even agreeing with the general thrust, but I’m also quite happy….sneering with the rest of my colleagues about the cynicism with which it’s being promoted….I don’t really have a problem with the principles, it’s been around for a long time, I’m a bit of a cynic about, you know, the hobbyhorses, but I don’t think anybody’s fooling anybody, to be honest

Chief Executive (0195, 7.3.11)

Third sector responses – evidence from ‘Real Times’

Part 2 – Theorising the third sector

and the state

Theory 1 - interdependence and partnership

• The sector and the state: conflict or co-operation?

• Salamon (1987) – interdependence theory and third party government

• “Voluntary failure”: insufficiency, particularism, paternalism, amateurism

• In a UK context - new labour’s ‘partnership’ with the sector (Deakin, Kendall, Lewis)

Theory 2 - introducing Hayek…

Hayek’s spontaneous order

• Dispersed knowledge and the socialist calculation debate

• Made orders (‘taxis’) and grown/spontaneous orders (‘cosmos’)

“A spontaneous order results from the unintended consequences of all agents using the local knowledge at their disposal to pursue their interests within a single framework of general rules which prescribe just conduct” (Gamble 1996: 38)

“The principle tenet of the theory is that society and its institutions are neither ‘natural’ formations nor the outcome of human design; instead they originate in the unintended and unforeseen spontaneous coordination of a multiplicity of actions by self-interested individuals” (Petsoulas 2001: 2)

The third sector as a spontaneous order?

Purpose - It has (or should have) no singular purpose and no central direction

Discovery - It utilises (or should utilise) dispersed local knowledge in a trial and error experimental process of approaches, projects and organisations

Independence - It works (or should work) through self-organising local adjustments to local conditions

Lord Wei blogging on the Big Society

“It can be hard to get your head around at first, largely because it is organic and evolutionary in its nature, and because it maps in my view more closely to real life – infinitely varied and often surprising….

the Big Society (or whatever you want to call it) builds on thinking from the internet – it is about a change in the way we operate, about releasing information, power, and people in their streets and institutions, and supporting people to take as much or as little control over their lives from whomsoever currently hoards it – mainly government, but also other large vested interests”.

(Wei 2010)

A kaleidoscope of social action…

“There are some 700,000 non-statutory, non-profit organisations in the UK….They include social enterprises, clubs, religious bodies, trade unions, pressure groups, friendly societies, care homes, and many more. The map of social action in Britain is a vibrant kaleidoscope of institutions and organisations, competing and combining, developing effective local responses to local needs….

To me those 700,000 organisations prove that there is such a thing as society. It's just not the same thing as the state….”

David Cameron, Speech to NCVO, 14.12.06

Hayek and the third sector

…The term "the third sector" was first coined by the liberal economist Friedrich von Hayek, the intellectual guru of Thatcherism. In Law, Legislation and Liberty Hayek wrote that ‘it is most important for a healthy society that we preserve between the commercial and the governmental sector a third, independent sector’. I mention this not because I want to claim the sector for the Conservative political tradition. That would be quite wrong. But because I want to show that the principles of the free market are not incompatible with the principles of voluntarism and social action which we associate with the third sector.”

David Cameron, 14.12.06

Decoupling the third sector and the state?

• Deficit reduction

• Strategic Partners programme

• Transforming Local Infrastructure

“The heart of the big society agenda is about trying to reduce people's sense of dependence on the state, and that goes for the sector as well”.

“….That's not compatible with our long-term vision of the sector, which is of a robustly independent and resilient pillar of a stronger society where there's a better balance between state, market and civil society," he says.

Interview with Nick Hurd in ‘Third Sector’, 17.8.10 emphasis added.

Research agendas and third sector futures

1. Understanding Big Society as politics and policy - a hegemonic project?

2. Developing a theory of the third sector as a spontaneous order

– Supply side theories of entrepreneurship and innovation

– A market for interaction ritual chains and flows of emotional energy

– Population ecology: survival, resilience, adaptation and evolution

– Links with theories of ‘FOCJ’ (Functional, overlapping, competing jurisdictions) and ‘associative democracy’

3. Research, policy and practice in dialogue - a strategic debate on the changing role and room for the third sector in the ‘great unsettlement’

Coda – by ’eck its time for Hayek?

Who said this in 1996?

“The theory developed here shares common ground with many of Hayek’s assumptions. These include the role of societal traditions in the preservation of knowledge, the critique of the state as a rational planner, the concept of decentralised diversity and the role of individual rights as rules of just association”

(1996: 26)

…and this in 2010?

“It is important that the Big Society is not dismissed as trivial…It is consciously political, in that it seeks to provoke a reactive statism among its progressive opponents…

The Big Society could provoke the left to greater engagement with economic democracy, civic renewal and active citizenship. This could help generate a more even balance between democratic self-government and the achievement of policy ends.

The Conservatives have done a great deal to rehabilitate socialist language to a central role in mainstream politics: it would be churlish of Labour not to engage in the conversation"

(2010: 62-63)

Coda: by ’eck its time for Hayek?

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