University of Birmingham Volunteering and Policy Makers: The Political Uses of the UK Conservative Party’s International Development Volunteering Projects Hjort, Mattias; Beswick, Danielle DOI: 10.1007/s11266-020-00222-9 License: Creative Commons: Attribution (CC BY) Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Citation for published version (Harvard): Hjort, M & Beswick, D 2020, 'Volunteering and Policy Makers: The Political Uses of the UK Conservative Party’s International Development Volunteering Projects', Voluntas. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11266-020-00222-9 Link to publication on Research at Birmingham portal General rights Unless a licence is specified above, all rights (including copyright and moral rights) in this document are retained by the authors and/or the copyright holders. 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To address these questions, this paper port and visibility for candidates during elections and to analyses the UK Conservative Party’s international devel- mobilise communities around local campaigns (Lees- opment volunteering projects. Our data comprise 38 Marchment and Pettitt 2014). We are, however, interested interviews with former volunteers and participant obser- here in a different form of volunteering by party members, vation of one volunteering project in Rwanda in 2017 by particularly those occupying or seeking elected office. The one author. This predominantly self-reported data are UK Conservative Party has gone significantly beyond supplemented with publicly available sources. We draw on typical party engagement with volunteers, institutionalising employer-supported and state-supported volunteering lit- overseas development volunteering by its members within erature to develop a framework for analysing drivers and a party framework through its time in opposition and effects of party-supported volunteering. We argue that government. Specifically, since 2007, the Party has political parties are under-researched sending communities, organised hundreds of self-funded volunteering placements and that development volunteering constitutes a strategic in developing states for its members. The jewel in the resource that can be invoked to legitimise engagement crown of these efforts is Project Umubano, with over 300 with, and authority in, international development as part of Party members, including serving and former Members of the everyday political identity of Party members. As such, Parliament, Councillors, Party staff and activists, having how volunteering is used to signal authority in a policy area volunteered since 2007 on projects in Rwanda, Burundi warrants further research. and Sierra Leone. A second set of volunteering activities, Project Maja, has also been undertaken in Europe and Keywords Conservative party Á Volunteering Á South Asia, though data on the activities and participants International development Á Global citizenship for these are comparatively less accessible. Development volunteering is of course extensively researched; we know a great deal about what motivates volunteers for development and the personal and profes- & Mattias Hjort sional benefits they hope to gain from the experience. What [email protected] we know far less about, however, is political party-sup- Danielle Beswick ported volunteering of the kind represented by Project [email protected] Umubano. Moreover, Umubano was institutionalised dur- ing a period in which the Conservative Party increased its 1 Department of Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B170JH, engagement with development issues, and little is known of UK the volunteering projects’ role in building commitment to, 2 International Development Department, University of and projecting authority on, this policy area. This paper Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B170JH, UK begins to address these gaps in knowledge. It provides an 123 Voluntas appraisal of the Party’s international development volun- engagement, including how long volunteers will be based teering projects, with a particular focus on Umubano, with partner organisations and what kinds of activities they presenting new data on the motives of project founders, will undertake. They take much of the administration out of volunteers’ perceptions of how volunteering has affected volunteering and as such they facilitate, authorise and them and the Party, and how they use this experience in legitimise the activity, as well as providing a safety net and parliament debates to claim authority in policy areas rela- reassurance for those taking part. Another similarity, ted to development volunteering, particularly international shared primarily between employers and political parties, development. is that volunteering is encouraged within particular organ- Our dataset—discussed further in the ‘‘Methods’’ sec- isational and hierarchical structures, which may add a tion—includes participant observation, interviews with pressure to volunteer in addition to endogenous motiva- former volunteers and written material pertaining to the tions. These similarities have underpinned our decision to volunteering projects. It allows us to interrogate: (1) self- further explore the existing research on ESV and state- reported motivations behind Project Umubano by its sponsored volunteering when seeking to answer our founders; (2) self-reported impacts on volunteers and the research questions. Party; and (3) how the volunteering experience has been The paper proceeds in seven sections. We first explore articulated within parliament debates to support claims to what existing research can tell us about possible motives authority and expertise. The motivations are solely self- for, and impacts of, political party-supported volunteering. reported, while the impacts are corroborated with anecdotal We then provide a brief overview of the Conservative evidence of post-volunteering activities. Within parliament Party’s engagement with international development from debates, we have analysed how opposing parties respond 1997 to 2017. We establish how this sending community when the experience is brought up to ascertain whether it is has engaged with international development and, in this acknowledged as a source of legitimacy on relevant topics. context, how development volunteering was deployed by This approach does not provide robust evidence of impacts, the Party to support broader processes of Party moderni- but rather a preliminary understanding of the motives sation and policy change. This is particularly important as behind, and utility of, development volunteering for a the Party’s commitment to international development is political party, an area of research not previously addressed poorly explained by existing British Politics scholarship in volunteering literature. To gain such insights, we are (Beswick and Hjort 2019). In the ‘‘Methods’’ section we guided by the following research questions: discuss our data collection and analysis methods. The ‘‘Conservative Party Development Volunteering: Motives What motivated project founders to launch the vol- of the Sending Community’’ section presents the analysis unteering projects? of our data, focusing on self-reported party motives. The What impacts do volunteers claim that the volun- ‘‘Conservative Party Development Volunteering: Volun- teering experience has had on them individually and teer Perceptions of Impacts’’ section sets out the impacts on on the Party more widely? individual volunteers, drawing on self-reported outcomes How is the volunteering experience used by volun- and additional evidence sources. The ‘‘Conservative Party teers in a party-political setting, including in parlia- Development Volunteering: Impacts on the Party and ment debates? Policy’’ section reflects on the link between volunteering Answering