The political arithmetic of social policy: A reflection on the Power to Persuade symposium 2019
Featuring the topic “The use and abuse of evidence in social policy” the 2019 Power to Persuade symposium was held last Thursday. The symposium showcased a range of expert speakers and panellists from government, the community sector and the research community. Below Professor Paul Smyth, one of the symposium panellists and a Power to Persuade Social Policy Whisperer provides his insights into this years symposium.
I approached PtP’s symposium, the ‘the use and abuse of evidence’, with mixed feelings. The topic reminded me of research methods subjects at Uni – necessary but boring. Instead I found the question of ‘evidence’ took us straight into central questions of how governments are organised, how the wider society gets to be heard in policy development, the future of work and technology, the impacts of ‘big data’ and the ways in which these are embedded in the ‘big ideas’ of the day.
My takeaway fantasy for the tram ride home was a looming choice of big data futures: an intensified ‘big stick’ Poor Law Liberalism identifying and remediating the poor understood as immoral authors of their own predicament; versus a social democratic deployment of the new social analytics to inform an inclusive (poverty proof) and sustainable society.
My own contribution took up the idea of a ‘political arithmetic of social policy’; that is, the way in which certain numbers achieve political importance because they come to represent fundamental social goals. Two such numbers had characterised social policy in the period of the welfare state. The first was the 2% unemployment barrier beyond which any government was in peril. The second was the complementing, later developing ‘poverty line’ compelling income support for those outside the productivist Keynesian welfare regime.
Observing that by the 1990s unemployment had been left to find its ‘natural rate’ in a free market and growth had been proclaimed the best solution for those below the poverty line, this century could be seen as a quest for a new political arithmetic of social policy.
The trail was in fact blazed by the idea of a transition from the ‘welfare state’ to the ‘social investment state’ evolving into current framings in terms of inclusive and sustainable development. Here welfare has advanced from its earlier passive and targeted role involving those outside the full employment regime to the more universal function of ensuring access for all to the capability sets required for full social and economic participation.
Phase one of this movement was associated in Australia with the Rudd-Gillard governments’ social inclusion agenda which built on the National Reform agenda to create the new ‘Big Idea’ to frame data gathering across education, health and welfare as well as ‘joined up’ policy development to ensure that nobody was ‘socially excluded’ or, ‘left behind’. ‘Closing the Gap’ exemplified this thinking. (Deeming and Smyth 2015)
We also observed the unstable politics unsettling this new arithmetic of welfare. Demonstrating the power of a ‘Big Idea’ the Abbot government flirted briefly with the early New Zealand so called ‘actuarial’ model of social investment, hailing it momentarily as a ‘revolution’ for Australia (Zehave and Breznitz 2019; Boston and Gill 2017). In fact, in this model, the concept of social investment lost any connection with its original meaning of nation building through boosting the productive powers of the nation to become a mere justification for activation programs aimed at ‘getting people off welfare’.
So can the concept of social investment yet be the Big Idea that gets to shape the Big Data? One of the thrills of working in social policy was thought to be the recognition that nobody can predict the future. We have a battle of ideas on our hands. Thus on the one hand the symposium reported alarming examples of Australia’s current drift into a hi tech Poor Law future where welfare populations are blamed and shamed for their situations and the new data technologies facilitate ever tighter state surveillance and control.
On the other hand the New Zealand example is a reminder to watch the political cycle. We observed above their early actuarial or neoliberal model. But this has now evolved into a world-leading example of ‘wellbeing’ economic policy geared towards inclusive and sustainable development. This is indeed a big step beyond the earlier ALP approach to social investment emphasising the needs of those ‘left behind’. The goals of the wellbeing economy are framed in terms of:
Growing and sharing prosperity
Thriving and sustainable regions
Clean, green and carbon-neutral
Responsible governance with a broader measure of success.
A central and - for this Whisperer – very encouraging focus of the symposium was the focus on governance issues occasioned by the key note address on systems thinking by Julian Corner of Lankelly Chase Foundation UK. Captured in the mantra ‘nothing about me without me’ the debates signalled a sector more than ready and able to implement the kinds of community sector praxis required if Big Data is to include their evidence and their voice. While aspirations for significant change within the bureaucracy itself were less sanguine, we must have hope!
Overall the symposium on ‘Big Data’ turned out something of a surprise. Far from a boring treatise of a methodological nature, it had intimations of significant policy developments ahead. One hopes that the community sector generally is across the possibilities. The Government’s current commentary on social policy may be abysmal and the sector’s current campaign on raising Newstart very necessary but it is not the ‘Big Idea’ needed for the long-term renewal of the political arithmetic of social policy.
References
Boston J and Gill D (2017) Social Investment A New Zealand Policy Experiment, Bridget Williams, Wellington.
Deeming C and Smyth P (2015) ‘Social Investment after Neoliberalism: Policy Paradigms and Political Platforms’, Jnl of Social Policy, 44:2, pp. 297-318.
Zehave, A and Breznitz, D (2019) ‘The Neoliberal Targeted Social Investment State: The Case of Ethnic Minorities’, Jnl of Social Policy 48:2, pp. 207-225.
Moderator: Celia Green
@CeliaEGreen