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'.
- 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.
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