Articles

The new empowerment agenda

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by Ian Kearns, deputy director
In View Spring 2006 - 31 March 2006

The concepts of power and empowerment are taking centre stage in British politics in 2006. This is evident in the policies and statements of both government and opposition. For Labour, talk of a double devolution from the centre to the local level and from local authorities to neighbourhoods leads the way. This is backed up with a wider presentation of some public service reform initiatives, such as the introduction of direct payments, cast in the language of empowerment. On the Conservative side, the message is less explicit but is implied in the statement that government should ‘get off the backs’ of local communities.

This ‘new empowerment agenda’ is the main political parties’ response to a growing sense of powerlessness among the general public and to the crisis of participation being faced by our political and governing institutions. It is also a response to a cultural climate in which citizens and consumers demand more control over decisions that affect their everyday lives.

This is all to be welcomed and there is much that is of merit in the emerging debate. If, however, empowerment is to become both a big idea, pulling together disparate policy initiatives in government, and an animating force in opposition policy reviews, then all this talk needs to be given much clearer focus.

First, we need more conceptual clarity and analytical rigour than has been on show to date. Empowerment is an idea, not a policy. Although the idea has most value when it informs policy, we need clarity on what we mean by the term itself lest it becomes devalued as a catch-all justification for every policy under the sun. Furthermore, since empowerment also implies the giving of power to those who do not currently have it, we need a thought-through position on the nature of power and clear views on where we believe it to be over-concentrated. Effective strategies to empower could then be built on these foundations, though it is important to be clear that they would not automatically emerge from them.

Important questions would remain: does empowerment principally involve the removal of economic barriers and the creation of a more equal society, as Roy Hattersley argued in a recent piece in the New Statesman? Or is a wider frame of reference, incorporating extra provision of opportunities to participate, improved capacity to participate, and stimulation of a culture of civic engagement, all part of the required mix?

Second, and against the backdrop of our answers to these questions, we need to be clear as to the breadth of the policy terrain to be covered by the new empowerment agenda. Is a focus on formal political power enough or do we need to go much wider to consider economic empowerment, empowerment through citizen use of new media, empowerment in the workplace and the notion of the empowered consumer?

Third, we need to come back to the sharp end of policy and apply our improved understanding of the underlying ideas to a number of specific policy questions.What would genuinely empowering public services look like and how do we guide reform to ensure it achieves that outcome? What would be the characteristics of the empowering state, the distribution of power within it, and the nature of relationships between it and the private and voluntary sectors? Finally, what would an empowering constitutional settlement look like?

ippr has several programmes of research that overlap with this agenda. This year, we have a flagship project on the cross-cutting issues of public service transformation and will soon launch a major project on constitutional reform. Many of our policy recommendations, from work on asset based welfare, to greater devolution of power to Britain’s cities, and political reform in the Middle East, are also characterised by an empowerment message.

In 2006, therefore, we will pull together some of the conceptual thinking called for here and combine it with these and many other areas of our programme of research to ensure that the institute is at the forefront of debates on the new empowerment agenda.To stay close to developments, keep an eye on our website or subscribe to our updates at www.ippr.org/keepintouch.

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view the spring 2006 edition of in view