The Futility of Ideology in an age of Atomism

The Obsession with Ideology

Almost every year, the Oxford University Finals exam in British Politics and Government since 1900 asks questions about the ideology of different British governments. This represents a fundamental misunderstanding of, at the very least, how modern politics has worked in the last 20-30 years, and perhaps even a misunderstanding of politics before that.

Political Scientists and journalists are obsessed with assigning governments ideological labels.

In his assessment of New Labour's time in office, Anthony Giddens argues that, though inconsistently applied, the party broadly stuck to the principles of 'third way' politics. Rubinstein argues that New Labour was in many ways similar to Old Labour, whilst Driver and Martell reaffirm the view that New Labour marked a break from Old Labour.

With Thatcherism, the approach is slightly different. In some ways, the debate is similar; focusing on whether the conservative party genuinely changed from 'old' or 'traditional' Conservatism into either a 'Thatcherite' or 'neoliberal' party. In this space Adonis, for example, argues that Thatcher did not fundamentally alter the principles of the Conservative party  and simply 'reaffirmed traditional Tory values'. The debate takes a slightly different turn when academics argue about the relevance of Thatcher's personal choices (i.e. is Thatcherism just whatever Thatcher thought was a good policy at any particular point in time - this is not a debate focused quite as much on ideology).

However, even in this approach, academics still speak about Thatcher's personal influence in the context, or against the backdrop, of 'doctrine' - something assumed to be consistent and holistic; the assumption of the relevance of ideology is still present. For example, Peter Clarke argues that the governments of 1979-1990 should best be understood in terms of a mixture of (predominantly) Thatcher's personal choices, but also some consistent neo-liberal doctrine that combined monetarism, privatisation, nationalism and Victorian values.

The Challenge of Atomism to Ideology

All of the above fundamentally misunderstands the way governments make policy in the UK. In order to 'ideology' to be a useful concept for understanding policy-making it has to meet the following condition or, as I shall call it, 'golden rule'.

1. The policies advanced by a government have to be internally consistent almost all of the time. A few instances of inconsistency can be allowed as a result of political opportunism, human error, and so on, but if too many of these arise then there's no point in using ideology as an explanatory tool.

I believe that the golden rule has not been met for at least the past 20 years, possibly more. Way in the past, British Political parties were far more homogenous than they are now. The early years of the Labour movement saw a party committed to the representation of the working man in Parliament. They were born out of a monolithic trade union movement. Similarly, the Tory party of the early 20th century and before represents the interested of landed elites - another monolithic social force.

These structures started to break down as early as the 1910s. The Liberal party was split between those who advocated New Libaralism and those who supported the old Liberal principles of laissez faire economic policy, limited government and the rule of law. The Labour party split in the 1950s between the Gaitskellite and Bevanite faction. A similar, though more radical, split occurred in the 1980s between Kinnock's moderates and Benn's radical socialists. In the 1990s, the policy preferences of Brown and Blair were often very different. The Conservatives have also been split at various points between the 'wets' and the 'Thatcherites', the 'Eurosceptics' and the 'Europhiles', the supporters of the ERM and its opponents...

The relevance of ideology is, however, still of some use in describing the policies of the parties right up to the mid 20th century. The left of the Labour party was committed to socialism, the right to social democracy; these two ideologies interacted and competed to produce policy. Likewise, the split in the Liberal Party (I am talking of the policy split post-1906 rather than the organisational split in 1916) was a conflict of different ideologies.

However, with respect to more recent internal differences, the partition of political parties into two, three or four competing groups, is an oversimplification of the complexity of the policy-making process. 

The 'atomisation' of society since the 1980s, famously described by Putnam, is vital for understanding why even an interpretation of party on the basis of two or three warring ideologies is woefully inadequate.

Unlike in the past, people do not identify with movements; Trade Union and Party membership has declined substantially even as the population has grown.

Putnam's 'atomisation' has led to increase in individual concerns for themselves i.e. for people to care more about satisfaction of their preferences than the advancement of the collective interests of a class or group. Politically, this has manifested itself in an increase in membership of single-issue groups. People can now choose, like in a shop, from a menu of causes they care about.

Parties have to compete for the votes of a highly disparate group of individuals with increasingly diversifying preferences. 

We also forget that politicians in parties are people too. They, like the electorate, also have a growing diversification of preferences. David Cameron is a relatively 'soft' Tory, George Osbourne wants to decrease the size of the state, David Davis is Libertarian, Nicola Blackwood is socially conservative. All are Tories. 

The proliferation of pressure groups, think tanks, industry associations, lobbying departments in corporates, and so on, has increased the centrifugal nature of policy-making. Having worked in policy research and public affairs, I have seen the extent to which politicians rely on these organisations for the particulars of policy (they don't get persuaded of big principles, but they do seek out advice on how to implement big principles that they agree with already).

There is a reason why Oppenheimer says that rational choice theory has, in the 21st century, 'become the paradigmatic way of analyzing behavior'. It is because emotional or psychological adherence to ideology is well and truly dead. 

Political Science has move on to analyse policy-making in a far more decentralised way. This is certainly the case with models of US political institutions, from the Supreme Court to Congress to the President. Academics across the pond analyse decisions on an individualistic basis, where political institutions are composed of individuals with preferences constrained by other individuals with different preferences, belonging to either the same or different institutions.

The age of ideology is dead. It is time for its place in Oxford University exams to die alongside it.

The negatives of 'Impartial' Reporting

Ok, so in a previous blog I mentioned in passing that the BBC's commitment to impartial reporting sometimes leads to a lower quality of reporting. I said this was because they have to take into account the views of all conflicting groups, regardless of the plausibility of their claims.

Well, I now have a concrete example of this.

The BBC reported that Ukrainian troops were retreating from Debaltseve. The use of the word 'retreat' in the title implied that they had somehow 'lost' the military conflict but the article, which you can read here, gave a very unclear account of the statements made by the Ukrainian politicians and President Putin.

In other words, it did not explicitly say whether it was a forced retreat, or a voluntary retreat aimed at creating goodwill to help the progress of the Minsk Agreement.

Contrast the BBC's style with this far more direct article from the Guardian. The subtitle of the article reads 'Retreat from contested railway hub connecting Donetsk and Luhansk marks strategic victory for rebels'. Given the evidence presented in the Guardian article and, interestingly, even in the BBC article, it is clear that the Ukrainians did indeed suffer a military defeat.

Now, it could be argued that the evidence presented in the BBC article allows people to reach their own conclusions given the evidence presented before them. However, the reality is that a lot of people do not have the time, inclination or knowledge necessary to undergo this type of analysis.

This isn't a case of the media giving its opinion on the quality of different parties' environmental policies, in which case the BBC should rightly remain impartial. This is a case of the media giving people correct information that they otherwise would not have.

The BBC needs to stop promoting impartiality at all costs and implement a policy of what I shall term 'informed impartiality'.

p.s. I promise my next post won't be about the BBC...

'Foreign' criminals and the BBC

Note: This article is not intended to make a normative point about the values of multiculturalism, immigration or anything similar. It merely points out what might be an interesting inconsistency in BBC reporting between TV and online

It is often alleged that the BBC has a left-wing, vegetarian, liberal agenda. To some extent this is true. In my opinion, their attempt to remain as impartial as possible sometimes leads to misleading reporting. This is often separate from a left-wing bias - I sometimes wonder how much effort they have to go to in order to find an opinion that deviates from the mainstream; all in the name of 'impartiality'. I believe the news would be better reported if minority views, such as that climate change (of the anthropogenic or non-anthropogenic sort) is not happening, were ignored. Providing them with a platform gives them a legitimacy that their lack of evidenciary credibility does not deserve.

The topic I will discuss today is not necessarily misleading. I actually haven't made my mind up about whether it is or isn't. It is, however, pretty interesting.

Today the BBC reported that a man was 'arrested as he made his way to behead a soldier'. It turned out that the man was Muslim. Now, the TV version of BBC news announced in its introductory sentence that the man was Muslim. The article (linked above) does no such thing. If one were to simply read the blurb on the BBC News homepage, which I consider to be the equivalent of the introductory sentence to a TV news story, the man's religion would not be apparent. Now, I am not saying that his religion is important, or that the BBC is being 'soft' on Islamic fundamentalism. I am just pointing out a difference.

This same difference in reporting occured when a gang of 4 Polish nationals assaulted and beat up a lecturer in late 2014. The TV news immediately called them Polish, whilst the first iteration of the article I read didn't discuss their nationality. A subsequent BBC article mentions just once that they were 'Polish nationals' but again, this is not in the story's blurb. Whilst it would have been clear to any British person that their names were Eastern European, their precise nationality would have been less obvious.

This also contrasts with the reporting of the story by other newspapers, as (perhaps unsurprisingly) the Telegraph, Evening Standard and Daily Mail all referred to the men as Polish in the title. 

So why this difference? Well, with a sample size of two I cannot really say with any confidence that there is a difference. However, a brief google shows that younger (and perhaps more impressionable) individuals use online news sources whilst older (and perhaps less impressionable) demographics tend to dominate TV news. An alternative explanation would say that younger people are less xenophobic and so have complained or would complain if the news they read was perceived to be racist. However, as they don't watch TV news, they don't complain about that.

Is any of this relevant? Are my explanations plausible? Who knows. Maybe. Perhaps you can comment if you have an opinion...