Chapter 1 Introducing UK Politics and Policymaking

This post introduces chapter 1 of Politics and Policy Making in the UK by Paul Cairney and Sean Kippin.

It might seem like there is never a good time to read a book on contemporary policymaking in the UK. Politics moves too fast, and politicians come and go. Policymakers lurch from crisis to crisis without giving the impression that they understand policy problems or control the outcomes of their responses.

We anticipated this problem by focusing on case studies that are important to readers, because they (a) are contemporary, and (b) highlight themes that endure for years. For example, the cases include:

• Covid-19, which dominated life from 2020 while raising longer-term issues about state intervention to boost population health and reduce inequalities.
• Brexit, which dominated politics in the mid-2010s and raised longstanding issues about who should be responsible for UK policy.
• Climate change, which represents an existential crisis receiving sporadic policymaker attention.
• Austerity, the stated aim of the 2010 Coalition government and a reflection of long-term aims to reduce state intervention.
• Inequalities and protest, which are enduring features of UK politics which attract fleeting attention during major events such as the ‘London riots’.
• Foreign policy and war, including the Iraq War and its legacy on UK politics.

We identify three ever-present themes that help to understand these case studies.

Theme 1: Three complementary perspectives on the study of policymaking

Chapter 2 describes three ways to analyse the relationship between policy and policymaking in countries like the UK:

1. Policy analysis is a political act to identify important problems, generate feasible solutions, engage in trade-offs, estimate what will happen, and make recommendations or choices.
2. Policy studies describe and explain how policymaking actually works. If policy analysis is about what we require, policy theories identify the gap between requirement and reality. For example, we need policymakers to understand problems and be in control of delivering solutions. Yet, they must act despite uncertainty and contestation to define problems, and the link between their choices and outcomes is not clear.
3. Critical policy studies identify profound inequalities in social, economic, and political power and the outcomes that follow. Maybe policymaking systems defy control, but there are still patterns of inequalities that reflect the power of some and powerlessness of others.  

Theme 2: Two essential perspectives on UK politics and policymaking

Chapter 3 relates these general perspectives to the specific UK context, with reference to two essential stories:

1. The Westminster story of how policy should be made. Elect a powerful government to translate a manifesto into outcomes. Then, if you know who is in charge, you know who to re-elect or replace. This story is part of a fixation with political parties and UK general elections elections, as if that’s all there is to politics.
2. Complex Government stories of how things work. Elect governments with limited knowledge of problems, operating in a complex system containing many different influences on policy and outcomes. In other words, the stuff that happens in between elections.

The first story is simple for all and aspirational for some. The second story is complicated, with lots of variants and less clear aspirations. We separate them analytically but, in practice. they combine to produce a confusing story of ministers performing the idea of being in charge (to seek reelection) but adapting to their limits (to try to get things done).

Theme 3. Long-term changes inform current discussions (Chapters 4 and 5)

Chapter 4 explains that the UK state has transformed since the 1970s, from:

• Post-war consensus characterized by high state intervention, including Keynesian approaches to economic policy, an expansive welfare state, state ownership of public utilities, and government delivery of public services.
• Neoliberal reforms characterized by reduced state intervention, including non-Keynesian approaches to economic policy, reduced welfare state entitlement, the privatization of public utilities, and contracting out the delivery of public services. Broadly speaking, ‘neoliberal’ describes a preference to (1) encourage individual and market rather than state solutions, and (2) prioritise economic growth over other policy aims).

Chapter 5 asks how we can describe and explain the transformation:

• Was it secured via top-down imposition by a powerful central government?
• Did it happen in a series of incremental steps or bursts of radical change? Was it part of a clear long term plan, or a patchwork of reforms?
• Did it produce a leaner and more effective state, or exacerbate problems of low central government control?
• Was state transformation specific to the UK or part of a global neoliberal trend?

This focus on three enduring themes provides a structure for case study analysis (Chapters 6-11). In each chapter, we use (1) three perspectives on policymaking to describe what is going on, (2) UK stories (Westminster and complexity) to interpret these developments, and (3) a long-term perspective to relate current problems to longstanding approaches. This approach helps us to understand and interpret new developments with reference to well established ideas.