Big Society

Professor Fred Powell, Dean of Social Science, University College Cork. f.powell@ucc.ie

Word Count: 8214

Presentation to Social Policy Association Conference at Lincoln (UK) July 4th 6th, 2011

Abstract This paper advances four Big Society narratives. The first narrative focuses on Big Society with Chinese characteristics. The second narrative is the British Conservative premise that advocates a welfare reform strategy based upon civil society as the first sector of social provision, called The Big Society. The third narrative is the European social democratic premise of a Third Way, based upon redefining the social into a neo-insitutionalist form in a post-socialist Big Society. The fourth

narrative is the radical democratic or post-Marxist premise of a politically participative society, shaped by the agenda of a social left, as a Big Society model based upon strong democracy. It will be contended that all four narratives seek to develop a new political and social grammar of citizenship and welfare. Keywords: Civil society, civic republicanism, participatory democracy, Big Society.

Introduction In general, Liao Xun [theorist of Chinese Big Society, Small Government project]was in favour of a state construction that was reduced as much as possible, and quoted Tomas Jefferson as saying: The best state is the state that governs as little as possible (guanli zui shao de zhengfu, jiu shi zui hao de zhengfu). Lia Xun also maintained that he was attracted by the theory that the individual should be considered the basic cell of society. This means that the state should serve the

individual and should not interfere in everything. In fact, Liao Xun envisioned that in the future the state would serve three main functions: as a soccer referee (zuqui caipan), as a traffic police (jiaotong jingcha), and as a fire fighter (xiaofang duiyuan). In serving the first function, the state would issue a set of ground rules, and it would only interfere when citizens intentionally bumped into each other or committed offside. In the second function, the state would clear the streets and bridges and establish an orderly flow of transport and communication. Finally, in the third function as a fire fighter, the state would intervene if fire or disaster occurred or if relief was necessary. (Brodsqaard, 2009:88)

Zygmunt Bauman likens the contemporary idea of civil society to the ancient Greek concept of agora as a site of political assembly or town square, an interface between the public and private spheres of social life that created the idea of a political community or republic based upon active citizenship (Bauman, 1998: 86-87). He argues that in modern society the agora has come under sustained attack. While its enemy during the twentieth century was totalitarianism, as we enter the twenty-first century, some argue it has become neo-liberalism as a global capitalist hegemony (Davis, 2006; de Sousa Santos, 2006; Klein, 2006). Neo-liberalism has been defined by David Harvey (2005:2) as in

the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterised by strong private property rights, free markets and free trade, adding, the role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appropriate to such practices. The challenges for civil society as the embodiment of the civic republican tradition of participative democracy are both institutional and socio-political. A debate about the roles and responsibilities of the public sphere in the form of the twentieth century welfare state is at the centre of this discussion. The renaissance of civil society based upon civic republicanism has challenged not only despotic states but also democratic societies to rethink citizen participation, particularly in relation to welfare. The debate focuses on the relationship between civil society, citizen participation and the state. In doing so, it seeks to change the social and political grammar of our politics. In this paper I will argue that the socio-political meaning of civil society as a Big Society has become a central element in the debate about welfare reform, civic republicanism and political community. I advance four narratives of civil society and examine their socio-political and institutional implications for renegotiating state-society relations. Narrtive 1: examines Big Society with Chinese Characteristics. Narrative 2: conservatives advocate a welfare reform agenda that equates civil

society with the traditional value of charity in the modern form of voluntary associations, as an alternative to state welfare provision. Narrative 3: social democracy has offered a Third Way through a neo-institutionalist model of social partnership and generative politics between an enabling state, a resurgent market and civil society in the production of modernised social services, based upon active citizenship. Narrative 4: post-Marxist theorists of radical democracy and social activists advocate democratising democracy as a means to involving citizens in the delivery of social services in a new social contract between the state and civil society that envisages the co-production of welfare. The paper begins by setting out the policy and political context of this debate about the Big Society.

The Political Context of the Big Society Debate

Politicians and academics in many countries have embraced civil society as a prescriptive model for the future organisation of society. For example, the former British prime minister, Gordon Brown (2008: xi) has commented we have consistently regarded a strong civic (sic) society as fundamental to our sense of selves, defending the idea of a public realm in which duty combines with and balances the pursuit of self-interest. His successor David Cameron, has put the Big Society at the centre of his policy agenda observing: the Big Society is about a huge culture change where people, in their every day lives, in their homes, in their neighbourhoods, in their workplace dont always turn to officials, local authorities or central government for the answers to the problems they face but instead feel free to help themselves and their own communities (Independent, 20 July 2010). Edwards (2004) suggests that civil society may be the big idea of the 21 century. But what is civil society? That is a complex question with no agreed answer. Exponents of civil society present it as a mediating space between the private and public spheres in a pluralist democracy. But there are several versions of
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civil society. Mary Kaldor (2003: 10) suggest five: (i) societas civilis based on the rule of law and civility; (ii) burgerliche gessellschaft encompassing all organised social life between the state and the family; (iii) activist represented by social movements and civic activists; (iv) neo-liberal in which she includes third sector organisations such as charities and voluntary organisations; and (v) postmodern which she associates with nationalist and fundamentalist movements. These five

versions, whilst not exhaustive, cover the scope of civil society as is generally understood today.

There are fundamental differences between ancient and modern conceptions of civil society. Aristotle viewed civil society (koinonia politike) as the polis in which the state and civil society formed a unified political community in Ancient Greece. This is the civic republican tradition of democracy. Romans shared a similar view of civil society (societas civilis) as a political community governed by the rule of law in which civility became synonymous with the Republic (Keane, 1996: 117; Kaldor, 2003: 7-8). Modern civilisation fundamentally altered public understanding of the meaning of civil society. The emergence of mass industrial society, based upon Webers concept of a bureaucratically managed nation state, created a new polarity between civil society and the state that was temporarily bridged by the welfare state. Carl Schmitt (1996: 22) viewed this as a fusion that undermined the power of the Weimar Republic liberty was the nemesis of authority. In Schmitts view the modern democratic state was simply one association amongst a multitude, struggling for hegemony and failing. (Powell, 2007: 83-85). Political elites in the late twentieth century began to question the system of governance called the Welfare State, which put the rights and entitlements of the citizen at the centre of politics.

Narrative 1: Big Society with Chinese Characteristics Brodsgaard (2009:113) observes that during the 1980s and most of the 1990s the critique of big government was the dominant theme of public policy and debate. Conservative ideas in the form of neoliberalism re-emerged throughout most of the developed world and following the Thatcher and Regan regimes western economic thinking shifted towards the right advocating small government, big society. Remarkably, Brodsgaard in his study of the Chinese island provinces of Hainan also notes similar developments under an entirely different ideological regime, officially communist. The political theorist and reformer Liao Xun published a tract addressing Marx and Engles purported view of small government and also argued the case for economic liberalisation. Liao Xuns tract suggested that Marx and Engels (through their theory of the withering away of the state) favoured small government, unlike the big government of the Russian Soviet model. Liao Xun presented the case for down-sizing bureaucracy and government as a key element in socialist reform (Brodsgaard, 2009:86). However, his project in Hainan failed (partly because of a property bubble which collapsed in 1996) (Brodsgaard, 2009:9). Despite Liao Xuns local failure in Hainan due to total economic and political factors, his ideas were adopted at national level. Boychuk (2007:201) notes that the Big Society, Small Government project was mainstreamed by the Chinese government in 2004:

Under the slogan Big Society, Small Government, the 2004 National Congress for the Communist Party of China (CPC) endorsed efforts to construct a system of social protection, including social security, social assistance, and charitable undertakings, in which civilian

organizations have become bridges and belts linking the Party and government with the mass, an indispensable force to promote economic development and social progress, and play an important role in the harmonious development of a socialist civilization. In addition to

granting explicit official recognition for the first time to non-profit organizations (NPOs) in China, the CPC also committed itself to expanding the non-profit sector under the rubric of party leadership, government responsibility, and citizen participation. Put another way, citizens shall support the growth of the NPOs and these social organizations will assist the Chinese government, all under the broad direction of the CPC.

Both Brodsgaard (2009) and Boychuk (2007) locate their analysis within a neo-insitutionalist framework that addresses state-society relations. Boychuk (2007:202) asserts that while the

dominant debate in the West is framed by neo-Tocquevillian ideas predicated upon a liberal-pluralist perspective that views civil society as being independent of both the state and the market, for neoinstitutionalists civil society exists in degrees. Neo-Tocquevillianism promotes a highly idealised version of civil society as community, in contrast to neo-institutionalists. The latter neo-institutionalist perspective links civil society directly to systems of governance. The Big Society, Small Government project is closely linked to market liberalisation, regardless of official state ideology in the neoinstitutionalist approach. Neo-Tocquevillianism is the ideal: neo-institutionalism the reality.

In the case of China, under the reformist leadership of Deng Xiaoping, economic liberalisation emerged in what was called socialism with Chinese characteristics. This policy change has created major economic growth but also produced severe inequalities. China has the second largest number of billionaires (115) after the US (412). By the end of 2011, the number of millionaires is expected to have doubled in three years to 590,000, with the richest 10% of the population controlling 45% of the countries wealth. Changes in the official poverty level 0.34 per day to 0.43 is estimated to triple extreme poverty to 100,000 million people the UN puts the figure at 245,000 million people (The Irish Times, 25 May 2011). In an editorial comment, The Irish Times May 25 , 2011, was led to conclude that Socialism with Chinese characteristics in reality was Socialism with Capitalist characteristics balefully adding: Karl Marxs contradictions live on. The Big Society, Small Government project in China is reflected in the key narratives and counter-narratives that are shaping state-society relation in the West.
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China is a very old society seeking to re-establish its influence in the world. Its economic success gives it political authority. Socialism with Chinese Characteristics has moved China in the direction of prodigious economic growth. In two decades it is likely to overtake the United States as the strongest economy in the world. Its political and social models are therefore important in global terms. China is undergoing an intensive internal political debate about reform. Liao Xuns concept of the Big Society, Small State is therefore very important. His vision of the state as soccer referee, traffic police and fire fighter offers a vision of the future that we need to take seriously. It is a very different model to the European welfare state. But it resonates with British Conservatives who are part of a wider western restoration of conservative ideas and values.

Narrative 2: Conservatism, Big Society and Small Government

The conservatism of the twenty-first century has been tempered by a reassessment. There is a growing recognition among conservatives that their unqualified espousal of free market individualism has left them open to the charge of promoting selfishness and endorsing callous indifference to the plight of the poor (Blond 2010). Poverty is a global problem of catastrophic proportions (Davis, 2006). Moreover, the social fracture that has become the legacy of neo-liberal economics (exacerbated by the 2008 financial crisis) has caused a spiralling sense of public angst in Europe, requiring a new political and social narrative. Evoking the spirit of Bismarck, Shaftsbury and Disraeli, the distinguished conservative philosopher, Roger Scruton, has observed that no one doubts the value of economic freedom or the spirit of enterprise; but the exclusive emphasis on these things looks like so much self-serving rhetoric on the part of those whose only interest is profit and whose concern for the community goes no further than the search for customers (Observer, 9 February 1997). A decade later, British Conservatives were embracing civil society as a compassionate alternative to the state in social policy. In a Green Paper (2008: 4) called A Stronger Society - Voluntary Action in the 21
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Century, the Conservatives assert [t]he time has come for us to think of the voluntary as the first sector; not just in recognition of the historical origin of the public services and institutions we rely on today but as the first place we should look for answers that neither the state nor the market can provide (emphasis original). The Conservatives view the redefinition of voluntary organisations from third to first sector as reflecting a new social and political grammar. They argue [t]he post-

bureaucratic age demands that we change government so that it is more open to being driven by a vibrant civil society (Conservative Party, 2008: 6). The Conservatives believe that volunteers are the beating heart of Britains civil society (Conservative Party, 2008: 20). For Conservatives, civil society is the anti-dote for the broken society, because it builds social capital, which they view as the basis for a new political and social grammar. They call it compassionate conservatism, a term first associated with President George W. Bushs crusade to introduce faith-based charity in the United States as an alternative to the state. During 2004, the US federal government transferred 2 billion to faith-based charities (Goldberg, 2006: 108). Philip Blonds (2010) book Red Tory seeks to move the Conservative politics away from neo-liberalism towards the Big Society ideal which combines economic equity with social conservatism in a new conservative narrative.

Clearly, in this brand of conservatism, the voluntary sector is fundamental in defining a civil society that is agreeable to the tenets of neo-liberal philosophy, i.e. profoundly anti-statist. Blondist

conservatism argues that civil society has the potential to forge a new social and economic settlement by decentralising power, wealth and social and economic organisation (Blond, 2008). But the realities of charitable giving are not propitious, as the Conservatives frankly acknowledge:

Charitable giving by individuals is struggling to keep up with GDP growth and is falling as proportion of the voluntary sectors income. The level of giving is 2006/7 was down by 3% on the pervious year the proportion who gave also fell from 57% to 54%. Giving levels in the US are more than twice those in the UK 1.7% of GDP compared to 0.7%. In Britain 7% of the population accounts for around 49% of all giving There is a very generous minority, which is not one and the same as the wealthy minority three-fifths of high value donors have annual incomes of less than 26,000 and giving as a proportion of income is roughly equal across all income groups (Conservative Party, 2008: 10)

The fact that the most generous contributors to charity, as a proportion of their income are not the richest groups but those below average income, according to the Conservatives (2008:15), suggests that the tradition of mutual aid amongst the working class constitutes the most vibrant element in todays charity. It also suggests that the traditional ethical construction of charity, as the rich helping the poor, may be little more than a myth. Mutual aid is part of the utopian socialist tradition. In an era of demutualization its policy potential would seem to be problematic. Furthermore, mutual aid is a form of horizontal redistribution. The eradication of poverty is impossible without the vertical redistribution of wealth from rich to poor a reality that has been accepted in the UK since the Peoples Budget of 1909. It emerged in the same year as the publication of the Royal Commission on the Poor Law (1909). In a minority report, Fabian socialists convincingly demonstrated the failure of both charity and the Poor Law to eradicate poverty. One hundred years later, Conservatives plan to reverse that policy logic by embracing the Big Society project based upon harnessing the civil middle in British public life and changing the architecture of institutions (Blond 2010: 6:3) The scale and metrics of charity underlines the political limits of compassionate conservatism. There are over 190,000 voluntary organisations in England and Wales. Across the United Kingdom there are 400,000 community groups, reminding us of the embeddedness of civil society in democratic practice. Each year, 6,000 new charities are registered, underlining the health and vibrancy of the third sector the term used to describe the combined voluntary and community sectors. The total income for registered charities is now in excess of 27 billion, employing a workforce of 600,000. But it is the 6,000,000 volunteers that form the bedrock of the third sector. New UK charity legislation the Charities Act 2006 promises to provide the biggest change in its legal status since the 1601

Poor Law Act (The Guardian, 20 February 2006). Polly Toynbee (2006), however, has pointed out that the expenditure on charity when compared with public expenditure from taxation in the realms of 400 billion per annum is infinitesimal. Furthermore, 40% of voluntary sector funding comes from the state and accounts for 1% of GDP. These figures put the voluntary sector in perspective. The fiscal gap between public expenditure and charity is on a scale that underlines the flawed logic of the proposition put forward by the British Conservatives. Toynbee (2006) observes this oxymoron compassionate conservative turns out to be true-blue shrink the state Tory, largely re-branded. She concludes there is such a thing as society; its just not the same thing as the state (The Guardian, 13 June 2006). The Independent (20 July 2010) questioned whether the Big Society project was merely a cover for spending cuts. The scale of the public expenditure cuts imposed during 2010 by the Conservative-Liberal coalition in the UK suggests that the Independent may be correct in suggesting the Big Society project is merely political fiction. The fallacy in the Conservative narrative for welfare reform based upon the Big Society project is the fictional notion that it is possible to roll back the state without returning society to the Dickensian conditions of the poor law and reliance on charity for the deserving poor, shrinking the state means shrinking democracy. Blonds (2010:206) citation the 1890s Primrose League directly connects the Big Society project to its Victorian contecedents. Davis (2006) has compellingly demonstrated the abject quality of social life in states without state welfare. Civil society in the neo-liberal form of charity arguably provides little in the way of a solution to structural poverty and weakens the bonds that hold society together, because of its association with the welfare reform agenda that is driven by the political objective of ending social justice as the basis of political community. This suggests that the Big Society project may turn out to be a political fiction rather than a new political narrative. Social democrats have also been influenced by this Big Society thinking.

Narrative 3: The Third Way and Big Society Tony Judt (2010: 143) observes: Social democracy, in one form or another, is the prose of contemporary European Politics. Social democrats have sought to incorporate civil society into a project of political renewal, which has involved adapting to neo-liberalism in a post-socialist order. As the socialist imaginary that underpinned the Enlightenment republican ideal of human progress has dimmed, social democrats have sought to reinvent themselves. It has not proven to be an easy task. Chantal Mouffe (2005: 9) observes that social democracy has proved incapable of addressing the new demands of recent decades, and its central achievement, the welfare state, has held up badly under attack from the right, because it has not been able to mobilize those who should have interests in defending its achievements. The Third Way has emerged as the defining philosophy of a relaunched social democratic project. Paradoxically, the Third Way has proven to be most influential in the Anglophone world, where classical social democracy has been weakest. The Third Way has been social democrats alternative to the compassionate conservatism of the Big Society.

Anthony Giddens, in Beyond Left and Right (1994), seeks to tackle the challenging problems of social democracy in late modernity by addressing the changed solidarities that are reshaping the relationship between the individual and collectivity, through the concept of social reflexivity. In terms of forging a new political and social grammar, Giddens work is impressive. He advocates democratising democracy through generative politics. Evoking the Ancient Greek republican agora, Giddens (1994: 15) argues that generative politics is a defence of the politics of the public domainit works through providing material conditions, and organizational frameworks, for the life political decisions taken by individuals and groups in the wider social order. Building active trust, participation in the decision-making process and community development are all part of this Third Way strategy, in which links between state, business and community are integral to the process of building a partnership society. Giddens has produced the definitive text on the Third Way project, entitled The Third Way: The Renewal of Social Democracy (1998). In this book, Giddens advocates his project as not just a possibility, but a necessity, in a globalised world dominated by neo-liberalism. While Third Way politics or New Progressivism is particularly associated with Tony Blairs New Labour government in Britain and Bill Clintons 1990s Democratic administration in the U.S.A., Giddens presents it as a universal model. However, as Pierson (2001: 127) points out, the quest for something that is notquite capitalism and not-quite socialism is more than a hundred years old. Many would have

regarded the twentieth century welfare state as the embodiment of a third way between capitalism and communism. So what is new about Third Way politics, as a narrative of change? The novel element in the Third Way is its professed futurism based upon an enabling state. But critics question its policy substance. Selbourne describes this Third Way thesis as phoney blue-skies thinking (Guardian, January 4, 2008). The French sociologist, Alain Touraine (2001: 90), characterises the impact of Giddens Third Way in social policy terms: essentially, it means replacing welfare policy with enterprise policy which presupposes both flexibility at the level of the social organisation and the empowerment of actors. Giddens, with New Age resonance, defines the distinction between classical social democratic concepts of welfare and the Third Way narrative as a shift from an economic paradigm to a psychic one: not only is welfare generated by many contexts and influences other than the welfare state, but welfare institutions must be concerned with fostering psychological as well as economic benefits (Giddens, 1998: 117). This is the core of the enabling state that emphasises opportunity and well-being, avoiding the charge of creating a dependency culture by fundamentally restricting state-society relations. Behind the futuristic narrative there are clear strategic principles intended to change state-society relations. At a structural level, Giddens (1998: 118) argues we should recognise that the

reconstruction of welfare provision has to be integrated with programmes for the active development of civil society. Giddens sets out his goal for the renewal of civil society as follows:

Government and civil society in partnership Community renewal through harnessing local initiative Involvement of the third sector Protection of the local public sphere Community-based crime prevention The democratic family

(Giddens, 1998: 79) He asserts an open public sphere is as important at local as at national level, and this is one way that democratization connects with community development (Giddens, 1998: 85). These are the basic rules of Giddens political and social grammar designed to forge a Third Way in politics, based upon neo-institutionalist principles that are redefining the relationship between the state and civil society by incorporating civil society into the apparatus of governance. The import of Giddens model envisages a reinvention of local governance with social partnerships offering the basic ingredients of political community - a late modern agora. It is presented as a narrative of democratic renewal. The positive contribution offered by local partnership is that it theoretically reframes the relationship between the users of social services and the providers in a democratic and empowering manner called co-productions (Skidmore and Craig, 2005: 30-33). Shortly after it was elected to office, the New Labour Government announced a national compact between the voluntary and community sector and the state for England (Home Office, 1998).

The community sector emerged during the late twentieth century as a more democratically inclusive alternative to the voluntary sector. Driven by the imperative of development, it purportedly became a vehicle for people power. The American War on Poverty during the 1960s launched the community as a site of political engagement. It radicalised the practice of community development. The ideas of the Brazilian adult educationalist Paulo Friere (1996) became its guiding philosophy of people power (Naples, 1998). The first Irish anti-poverty programme European Union Pilot Schemes to Combat Poverty in Ireland 1974-1980 openly embraced Frierian Radicalism, which led to its closure and denunciation by future Taoiseach, Charles Haughey, as a tuppence, halfpenny committee (Powell and Geoghegan, 2004: 81-85). But in late modern society, community politics has been reshaped by neo-institutionalist principles based upon the social partnership model. Ireland provides the

quintessential example of the Big Society project in action through the European model of social partnership.

Albeit, in the post 2008 Irish crisis conditions, social partnership has come under strain in an era of budgetary cutbacks. Some Community Development Projects (CDPs) have been closed. The Irish State has re-focused its attentions from poverty relief to bailing-out the banks. Curtin and Varley (1995: 379) have observed in relation to the diverse nature of community politics in Ireland:

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Community action in Ireland has assumed a multiplicity of forms and any discussion of relations between community groups and the state must begin from the reality of this diversity.two broad tendencies of community action, based on the predominance of either integrationist or oppositional views and tacticscan be said to correspond broadly to consensus and conflict perspectives.

This definition tells us much about the nature and meaning of the community sector as a site of statesociety relations in the pursuit of the Big Society. Indeed, Giddens (1998: 85) has observed the state can swamp civil society. He might be right. Powell and Geoghegan (2004) carried out a survey of the then 559-strong membership of the Community Workers Cooperative in Ireland, an organisation which in 2005 had its government funding withdrawn. Based upon a sample of 177 completed questionnaires, a response rate of 31 per cent, we were able to identify and analyse some of the key issues in the relationship between deep governance and civil society in the context of the community sector. The findings suggested that a complex relationship exists between the state and the community sector in Ireland, one suffused with antipathy and strain, where the needs of marginalised people are secondary to political concerns. This runs contrary to the rhetoric of social partnership espoused by successive Irish governments. Only 28.8 per cent of respondents felt they could unproblematically say our group is happy to work with the state; with 29.5 per cent expressing a high level of discomfort with the relationship. Even groups that are heavily institutionally integrated with the state can see the state in a negative light, and this view is most likely to hold for groups who integrate most closely with the state (Powell and Geoghegan, 2004: 194). And why? The answer is perhaps to be found in community sector groups characterization of their experience of partnership governance, with only half (50.9 per cent) able to say that it had been a positive experience; only 42.4 per cent saying it had improved the lives of the socially excluded; and a disturbingly low 29.4 per cent able to say that they had had any real say in decision-making in partnership governance. This alienation from government is confirmed when only 9.2 per cent of respondents could say that they trusted politicians. Negative experiences of partnership governance from the perspective of Irish civil society actors have also included poor consultation (Keogan, 2004), institutionalised inequality (Forde, 2005) and a basic lack of respect (Harvey, 2002). As a new narrative, the Third Way

manifestly has its limitations in terms of a neo-institutionalist agenda based upon social partnership that has a limited democratic purchase. Judt (2010: 144) asserts: Social democracy needs a more convincing narrative, based upon a new political and social grammar, that replaces its exhausted language. This new language has begun to be forged on the social left in a project that seeks to democratize democracy.

Narrative 4: Strong Democracy, Big Society and Social Left

The evidence suggests that active citizenship through community engagement is predominantly a narrative that facilitates the deepening of governance. opposite by deepening democracy. Arguably, it has the potential to do the Radical

This has become the narrative of the social left.

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democratic theorists suggest the project of democracy remains contested and incomplete. Anne Marie Smith (1998: 7) observes: As mere ideas, liberty and equality do not change anything. Democratic discourse cannot exert this interruption effect upon relations of subordination until the democratic imaginary becomes embodied in norms and institutions. The extension of democratic principles into new spheres of the social did not take place until actual democratic struggles won some concrete strategic ground through political struggle. Political struggle does nevertheless

depend in part on the ability to imagine alternative worlds.

The social left evokes the poor peoples movement of the twentieth century, whose campaign in the US led to thegreat Society, which enlarged government in the interests of the poor (Piven and Cloward 1979) The idea that there is a social left composed of an active citizenry organised in grassroots democracy and committed to deepening democracy is radical. (Powell, 2007) Its

principles are embodied in the World Social Forum. Whether the social left is a communicative space (such as a town square or agora) or a movement of movements is open to question. It is probably both a space and a movement at the same time given its centrifugal nature. Alan Touraine has defined the meaning of the term social left, noting the ideological dominance of the political left and right, based upon top down power pyramids that operate in a centripetal way. He argues that the social left in contrast takes as its starting point the idea that all social movements begin with active defence of a social reality and rights (Touraine, 2001: 87). Furthermore, he asserts it is a matter of defending the cultural rights of all (and especially of minorities) against forced assimilation, irrespective of whether it is forced upon by market-dominated mass culture or by a communitarian power (ibid). The view espoused by Touraine detects a rupture with the past and new democratic imaginary in the future building on human rights achievements. Hardt and Negri (2004: 106) have argued that the Marxist subject the working class has been transformed into an open and expansive concept they call the multitude, linking all people who work in a project of emancipation. Diversity is a core principle of the social left, envisaging planetary citizenship as an alternative globalisation or post-globalisation vision of the future. Latin America has become the theatre of

radical democratic projects opposed to neo-liberalism. It offers a radically different model to China and the West.

Ulrich Beck (1997) regards the political rupture identified by Touraine as a development that is leading to the reinvention of politics. Beck (1997: 104) advocates subpolitics, meaning social arrangements from below in a subpoliticised society that could become (among other possibilities), the civil society that takes its concerns into its own hands in all areas and fields of action of society. He concludes that whilst mass political parties may have taken on the appearance of dinosaurs from a fading industrial age, they still retain power. Albeit, the referenda in France and Holland on the EU

Constitution in 2005 and on the Lisbon Treaty in Ireland during 2008, have questioned their legitimacy. The central challenge, according to Beck, is to reinvent politics by moving organised

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interests back into society and elevating unorganised interests, which nonetheless endanger or protect the public interest, to be central tasks and axes of the political system. But, he concludes, [i]ts realisation will be possible only to the extent that a variant which does not even appear to be improbable prevails: the third way to a society of citizens (Beck, 1997: 145). In Becks third way active citizenship and social citizenship are complementary. Becks Third Way, as has been argued above, bears no relationship towards Giddens Third Way, which seeks to adapt social democracy to neo-liberalism. For theorists of radical democracy,

socialism was a necessary historic moment in the evolution of democracy because it demanded an end to the conditions of social and economic oppression (Smith, 1998: 9). But socialism failed to achieve a coherent and sustainable narrative for human liberation. Nonetheless, its politics of

redistributive justice represents a vital element in the evolution of democracy. But the imperative of recognition based upon identity politics has introduced an alternative site for the narrative of human liberation. Social policy is challenged to embrace both the imperatives of redistribution and

recognition in an evolving civil society-welfare state consensus that expands government, while making it more accountable to citizens in a Big Society, Strong Democracy project.

If civil society is to become a project of transformation with all the suggested potential in a diverse world, it will need to harness its future to deepening democracy as a global project and reject its use by the state as a vehicle for the deepening of governance. The project of deepening democracy is often called strong democracy. Benjamin Barber (1984: xxii) in his justly celebrated book Strong Democracy declared: strong democracy tried to revitalise citizenship without neglecting the problems of efficient government by defining democracy as a form of government in which the people govern themselves in at least some public matters at least some of the time. He configured the pursuit of the s-called Big Society with the position of strong democracy Big Society, Strong Democracy.

Prugh et al., (2000:10) have asserted that strong democracy offers immediate advantages over the thin democracy of the representative variety, emphasising (i) the sociality of the conception of a social us inherent in notions of community; (ii) the dispersal and redistribution of power away from special interests; and (iii) engaging citizens in the challenges and problems of governance. They add: we need a politics of engagement, not a politics of consignment (p.220). De Sousa Santos (2007: xliii) asserts democracy is a new historic grammar. He adds: this grammar implied the introduction of experimentalism in the very sphere of the state transforming the state into an absolutely new social movement (De Souze Santos, 2006: xlv). This democratic experimentation envisages reconfiguring state-society relations in favour of civil society but not at the expense of an active state. The welfare state becomes more accountable but is not downsized. Central-local relations are also likely to be reconfigured in a constitutional process driven by the citizens within the state. The idea of radical democratisation in the forum of Big Society, Strong Democracy project, has become fundamental to a new social and political grammar that is at the heart of the reinvention of

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politics. In a post-modern world, the pursuit of a strong and reflexive democracy has become the compass for a social change process that seeks to radicalise late modernity. The emergence of new social movements concerned with womens rights, environmental protection, ethnic minority rights, peace and neutrality, etc., embody the spirit of reflexive democracy. Grassroots social movements have given the socially excluded a collective voice through which they can interrogate both capitalism and nation regarding their democratic and social intent. This, arguably, presents late modern society with transformative possibilities. Within this context the sub-politics of active citizenship has given impetus to the pursuit of a strong and radical democratic realignment with civil society at its heart a project of projects in which participatory democracy complements representative democracy. Radical democratic theorists view the struggle for democratization as open-ended (Laclau and Mouffe, 1985, Mouffe, 2000). As Smith (1998:7) puts it:

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, subjects with a long history of struggle such as workers, peasants, slaves and the colonized, took on new identities as trade union members, citizens, anti-colonial nationalists, anti-imperialist internationalists and so on as they demanded rights in innovative ways. New subjects also emerged women, racial/ethnic minorities within nation states, peace activists, environmentalists and gays and framed their rights based claims in language borrowed from previous struggles. According to this analysis, the multitude, as Hardt and Negri (2004) put it, is the new revolutionary subject that has replaced the working-class of classical Marxism in driving the locomotive of history. But there are sceptics who regard the idea of big society, strong democracy as utopian. Giddens (1998: 133) in a critique of the radical democratic perspective observes the aim of multiculturalist politics is entirely laudable to counter the exploitation of the oppressed but he adds this cannot be done without the support of the broad national community, or without a sense of social justice that must stretch beyond the claims of grievances of any specific group. He is raising the related issues of cultural essentialism (sectionalism) and the challenge of forging an intersectional approach to radical democratic politics one that takes class, race, gender, sexuality and ecology into account. Clearly unless radical civil society can address the challenge of intersectionality and form a democratic matrix, its internal contradictions are likely to undermine potential political coherence. Gray (2007: 38) asserts that multiculturalism is an illusion of the Enlightenment. But Chantal Mouffe (2005: 60) argues that the question of political identity is crucial and that the attempt to construct citizens identities is one of the most important in democratic politicssuch a project requires the creation of a chain of equivalence among democratic struggles, and therefore the creation of a common political identity among democratic subjects. However, unifying Hardt and Negris (2004) multitude as a common political subject analogous to Marx and Engels working-class, is fraught with centrifugal elements that are likely to undermine its coherence. These are clearly not easy issues to resolve. Fraser and Honneth (2003) have pointed out how challenging this task is both

epistemological and political because it involves reconciling recognition (diversity) and redistribution

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(equality).

Gray (2007: 41) concludes that the underlying rationale of radical democracy is an

epistemological impossibility. Radical democratic theorists are more hopeful. Chantal Mouffe (2005: 4) suggests that once we accept the necessity of the political and the impossibility of a world without antagonism, what needs to be envisaged is how it is possible under those conditions to create and maintain a pluralistic democratic order. She argues the case for a new social and political grammar based upon the principle of agonistic pluralism, that provides a framework for the articulation of the different democratic struggles (Mouffe, 2005: 7). Mouffe (2005: 8) concludes that radical democracy is based upon a paradox: such a democracy will therefore always be a democracy to come, as conflict and antagonism are at the same time its condition of possibility and the condition of impossibility of its full realisation. De Souza Santos (2007: lxiii) concludes from this substantive point of view, there is no true democracy, there is only democratization, a process without end. The social left is an attempt to forge a political alternative based upon the aspiration to design a map of action towards building a new world, in which old world hegemonies and tyrannies are overcome. Whether it is a space or a movement or both, it offers a profound institutional and philosophical critique of late modern society that is shaping our consciousness of the political and social in the twenty-first century. Its promised new world may be the outline contours of a post-globalised era. Only time will tell whether this radical social subjectivity proves to have any meaningful political purchase as a new narrative or simply is another political fiction?

Conclusion

In this paper, I set out four narratives exploring the relationship between civil society and the state. All four are problematic. First, I addressed the Big Society, Small Government concept in China. It involved a paradoxical inversion of the Marxist theory of the withering away of the State. Socialism with Chinese characteristics means a party state dedicated to economic rationalism. It conflicts with the goal of social harmony. Small Government project. Second, I examined conservatism and its endorsement of a modernization project, based upon neo-liberalism and the civic-conservatism of the Big Society, For those who are excluded from the consumer society, civic or compassionate conservatives advocate civil society in the form of a rediscovery of charity as the solution to poverty. There are real problems of scale and metrics, apart from the politics. Charity accounts for little more than a small fraction of public expenditure. Giving appears to be primarily in the form of horizontal redistribution from people on relatively low incomes to people on very low incomes. This has more the characteristics of mutual aid (a form of utopian socialism) than charity in its historically constructed form of the benevolence of the rich towards the poor. Third, I discussed the Third Way social democrats in the Anglophone world, seeking to adapt to the neo-liberal project, have sought to advocate social partnership between the state, civil society and the market. This neoinstitutionalist agenda denies the reality that the state in the late modern era has resituated itself towards the market. Critics view partnership as a mechanism that seeks to incorporate civil society

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into a project of deepening governance at the expense of democracy. Fourth, I turned to the idea of deeper democracy as the Big Society. Radical democrats seek to harness the civic republican tradition of democracy in the pursuit of a project aimed at democratizing democracy through active citizenship, which I have called a Big Society, Strong Democracy project. But there are major challenges in terms of transcending cultural essentialism (sectionalism), forging intersectionality and overcoming antagonistic relations with the state, which radical democrats contend is based upon an outmoded form of governance. All of these approaches share a common theme in endorsing the concept of active citizenship as the basis of political community. This represents a shift away from the social citizenship of the welfare state, where entitlement defined the citizens relationship with the state. We are left with the question is the future going to be a choice between an activist state or an activist society or both in a new synergy that will rewrite the exhausted social and political grammar of late modern politics? What is certain is that a new discursive language is required. If there is to be a Big Society, it requires a project of reimagining politics that moves beyond political fiction into a narrative form building upon and reshaping the political language of the twentieth century that rested upon social democratic prose. The crash of 2008 exposed the failure of neoliberalism as a project that is compatible with democracy. As we survey the ruins of our democratic architecture that task of forging a new narrative that is based upon a sustainable political narrative becomes more pressing. If we are to avoid a descent into populist authoritarianism that characterised Europe during the 1930s, we need to find a new civic narrative that gives expression to social justice and political equality.

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