Edited by Ralph Scott David Goodhart Demos Is Britain’S Leading Cross-Party Think-Tank
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Edited by Ralph Scott David Goodhart Demos is Britain’s leading cross-party think-tank. We produce original research, publish innovative thinkers and host thought-provoking events. We have spent 20 years at the centre of the policy debate, with an overarching mission to bring politics closer to people. Demos is now exploring some of the most persistent frictions within modern politics, especially in those areas where there is a significant gap between the intuitions of the ordinary voter and political leaders. Can a liberal politics also be a popular politics? How can policy address widespread anxieties over social issues such as welfare, diversity and family life? How can a dynamic and open economy also produce good jobs, empower consumers and connect companies to the communities in which they operate? Our worldview is reflected in the methods we employ: we recognise that the public often have insights that the experts do not. We pride ourselves in working together with the people who are the focus of our research. Alongside quantitative research, Demos pioneers new forms of deliberative work, from citizens’ juries and ethnography to social media analysis. Demos is an independent, educational charity. In keeping with our mission, all our work is available to download for free under an open access licence and all our funders are listed in our yearly accounts. Find out more at www.demos.co.uk. First published in 2013 © Demos. Some rights reserved Magdalen House, 136 Tooley Street London, SE1 2TU, UK ISBN 978-1-909037-37-3 Copy edited by the editors Series design by Modern Activity Typeset by Modern Activity Set in Gotham Rounded and Baskerville 10 TWENTY YEARS OF IDEAS Edited by Ralph Scott David Goodhart Open access. Some rights reserved. As the publisher of this work, Demos wants to encourage the circulation of our work as widely as possible while retaining the copyright. We therefore have an open access policy which enables anyone to access our content online without charge. Anyone can download, save, perform or distribute this work in any format, including translation, without written permission. This is subject to the terms of the Demos licence found at the back of this publication. Its main conditions are: · Demos and the author(s) are credited · This summary and the address www.demos.co.uk are displayed · The text is not altered and is used in full · The work is not resold · A copy of the work or link to its use online is sent to Demos You are welcome to ask for permission to use this work for purposes other than those covered by the licence. Demos gratefully acknowledges the work of Creative Commons in inspiring our approach to copyright. To find out more go to www.creativecommons.org Contents Acknowledgements 5 Contributors 7 Preface 11 David Goodhart 1 Demos – many successes but one big failure 17 Geoff Mulgan 2 From multiple intelligences to The Good Project 25 Howard Gardner 3 Sharper vision, in retrospect 31 Ian Hargreaves 4 Vote early, vote often 37 Andrew Adonis and Adam Tyndall 5 Auditing: the explosion goes on 47 Michael Power 6 Reflections on the post-modern state 53 Robert Cooper 7 Why post-liberalism is a dead end in British politics 61 John Gray 8 Britain ™ revisited 67 Mark Leonard 9 The social entrepreneur 75 Charles Leadbeater 10 The debate over animals 83 Roger Scruton Contents 11 Relational justice 89 Danny Kruger 12 The good life 95 Amitai Etzioni 13 Valuing culture 103 John Holden 14 A brief history of personalisation 113 Claudia Wood 15 A house of experiment 119 James Wilsdon 16 Character (revisited) 127 Richard Reeves 17 Building the service nation 133 Sonia Sodha 18 Do something different 141 Mariana Mazzucato 19 The map and the territory 151 Helen Burrows 20 Listening in 157 Jamie Bartlett 3 5 Acknowledgements First and foremost, many thanks to our contributors for this collection, who provide an illuminating and entertaining history of Demos within these pages and in so doing, also provide some insights into the politics of the past twenty years. Thanks to Demos staff and contributors past and present, for providing us with such a rich back catalogue to plunder in compiling this collection. We could have filled a volume this size many times over, which only serves to demonstrate the strength and depth of our previous output. Thanks are also due to our trustees, our associates and all of our funders over the years. In particular, at Demos we would like to thank Jamie Bartlett and Claudia Wood for their contributions, Duncan O’Leary for his irreplaceable institutional memory and Max Wind-Cowie and Jonathan Birdwell for their regular input and support. Thanks to Matt and Alex at ModernActivity for their patience in designing and producing the collection. And thanks too to Sophie Duder and Rob Macpherson for all their work in ensuring the twentieth birthday went with a bang. Ralph Scott David Goodhart July 2013 7 Contributors Lord Adonis Andrew Adonis is a Labour peer and former Secretary of State for Transport and Minister for Schools. He is the author of the recently published 5 Days In May: The Coalition and beyond and Education, Education, Education, and Back to Greece: the scope for direct democracy, published by Demos in 1994. and Adam Tyndall Researcher for Lord Adonis. Jamie Bartlett Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media (CASM) at Demos. Author of The Edge of Violence and The New Face of Digital Populism. Helen Burrows Director of Private Office and a former adviser to Culture Minister Ed Vaizey MP. Author of Risky Business, published by Demos in 2011. Sir Robert Cooper Sir Robert Francis Cooper, KCMG, MVO is a British diplomat and advisor currently serving as a Counsellor in the European External Action Service, and author of The Post-modern State and the World Order, published by Demos in 1996. Amitai Etzioni Founder and Director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies at the George Washington University and author of The Third Way to a Good Society, published by Demos in 2000. Howard Gardner Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and contributor to Opening Minds, a Demos Quarterly published in 1993. Contributors John Gray Political philosopher and author, whose works include False Dawn: the delusions of global capitalism, Black Mass: apocalyptic religion and the death of utopia, and After Social Democracy, published by Demos in 1996. Ian Hargreaves Professor of Digital Economy at Cardiff University and author of Digital Opportunity, a review of intellectual property and growth conducted for the Coalition Government in 2010/11. Author of Sharper Vision, published by Demos in 1993. John Holden Visiting Professor at City University. Previously Head of Culture at Demos, for whom he wrote Capturing Cultural Value and Democratic Culture. Danny Kruger Chief Executive of Only Connect, a crime prevention charity, and author of Access Denied? Preventing information exclusion for Demos in 1998. Charles Leadbeater Demos Associate and a leading authority on innovation and creativity, he is the author of a number of Demos pamphlets including The Rise of the Social Entrepreneur and Personalisation through Participation. Mark Leonard Co-Founder and Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations and author of Britain™, published in 1997. Mariana Mazzucato Economist and RM Phillips Chair in Science and Technology Policy at the University of Sussex (SPRU). She is the author of The Entrepreneurial State, published by Demos in 2011. Geoff Mulgan Chief Executive of Nesta and the founding Director of Demos. 9 Michael Power Professor of Accounting and Director of the Centre for the Analysis of Risk and Regulation (CARR) at the LSE, and author of The Audit Explosion published by Demos in 1994. Richard Reeves Non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institute in Washington, DC and a former Director of Demos and Director of Strategy for the Deputy Prime Minister. He is co-author of Building Character, published by Demos in 2009. Roger Scruton Writer and philosopher, and the author of Animal Rights and Wrongs published by Demos in 1998. Sonia Sodha Head of Strategy and Policy at the Social Research Unit at Dartington. She was Head of the Capabilities Programme at Demos and author of Service Nation, published in 2009. James Wilsdon Professor of Science and Democracy at the University of Sussex. James worked at Demos from 2001 to 2008, first as head of strategy, then as head of science of innovation. He is on Twitter @jameswilsdon. Claudia Wood Deputy Director of Demos and author of a series of reports on personalisation, including Tailor Made in 2011. 11 Preface David Goodhart Anniversaries are useful moments in the flow of time to take stock and find patterns of meaning in the life of an individual or an organisation. There can be a bias towards self-congratulation – ‘I/we must have made a difference for the better!’ I will try not to over-claim in the following preface. Political life in Britain would have played out much as it did if Geoff Mulgan and Martin Jacques had never had the idea of establishing a cross-party think-tank of the centre-left in 1993. And, as Mulgan points out inside, its founding idea must be adjudged a complete failure. Nevertheless, these 20 short essays bear witness to the fact that Demos has still left a significant mark. And like any good, generalist think-tank its imprint has been at two levels: at the level of granular policy and at the level of more grandiose ideas, including the language of politics (although the phrase with which Demos is perhaps most associated, Cool Britannia, was never actually used in Mark Leonard’s famous pamphlet, as he discusses in his contribution).