Abstract
This chapter diagnoses the counter-communitarian stratagem developed in the early twenty-first century in support of market deregulation, religious dogmas, retention of traditional prejudices, and antipathy towards open-minded inclusivity. The author examines how this is connected with the problem of disempowered communities, and what ideas and practices emerged to tackle it. The first set of responses covers approaches devised to secure deliberative participation to connect members of diverse communities with decision-making at every level, and enable them to learn to resolve disagreement. The second set covers initiatives formulated to cultivate interpersonal trust, and break down barriers which might otherwise prevent people from coming together to find common cause. He details the case example of a major government-led communitarian programme that illustrated how community disempowerment could be systematically overcome.
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Notes
- 1.
The Labour Government lost power in 2010 and was succeeded by a Conservative -led coalition government.
- 2.
In all European countries (excepting Austria, Cyprus, and Finland), the average percentage of the electorate who belong to a political party is around 5%, with both France and UK under 2% (Van Biezen et al. 2011; Keen and Audickas 2016). In the US, more Americans consider themselves ‘independent’ (42%) than either Democrats (29%) or Republicans (26%) (Jones 2016). The decline in identification with these parties corresponds to a drop in support for them. In both the UK and the US, it is common for around a third of registered voters not to vote at all. In the UK, even the ‘exceptionally high’ turnout for the 2017 election only reached 68.7%. In the US, turnout for presidential elections is generally below 65%.
- 3.
Contrary to claims that there are civilisational differences that underpin the ideological clashes between the West and countries with contrasting cultural traditions , the counter-communitarian politics of the US and UK are echoed by the ruling regimes of Saudi Arabia, Russia and China, where religious fundamentalism or nationalist chauvinism would be readily co-opted to divert attention away from the elite accumulating their respective country’s wealth, and channel people’s frustrations towards reviled ‘enemies’ instead.
- 4.
‘Globalisation’ is also attacked by a transnational network of counter-communitarian groups in the US and Europe because they want to undermine international cooperation (in the form of the EU and the UN) and revive nationalistic conflicts , which are more likely to help engender the kind of conditions conducive to their own authoritarian dominance (Cf. the vitriolic defiance against the League of Nations in the run-up to Second World War).
- 5.
The trends had also spread in the 2010s to countries noted for their culture of tolerance such as the Netherlands and Sweden.
- 6.
Bush’s administration also declared that waterboarding was not a form of torture.
- 7.
- 8.
One reason why tax cuts for the poor can lead to no improvement for them is that their employers believe they can then cut their wages to leave them with the same take-home pay as before (Hartmann 2017).
- 9.
Trump’s Republican predecessor in the White House, G. W. Bush, was also cited for his administration’s role in weakening or suppressing public health findings (Holden 2019).
- 10.
One such group met in 2012 at a conference held at the University of Cambridge to discuss and agree a set of evidence-based principles on how to facilitate cooperative problem-solving (Tam 2012). Further work was carried out by leading experts who drew on case examples from around the world and produced critical guidance on how to advance deliberative engagement (Tam 2019).
- 11.
For details, see the evidence submitted by Crime Concern to UK House of Commons Select Committee on Home Affairs, 15 March 2005: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm200405/cmselect/cmhaff/80/80we33.htm.
- 12.
Members included the secretariat of UNFCCC (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change), the Danish Board of Technology, Missions Publiques, and the French National Commission for Public Debate.
- 13.
Satisfaction with street cleaning increased by 8%, while it fell by 2% in comparable neighbourhoods; and satisfaction with policing increased by 6%, while there was no change in comparable neighbourhoods.
- 14.
- 15.
The issue of how to improve learning for deliberative participation needs to be addressed with reference to what approaches have worked well, and what have not (Sloam 2019).
- 16.
Examples of this type of intergenerational familiarisation were drawn to my attention during my time as the UK government’s Home Office Director (East of England) and were subsequently included in the good practices promoted for resident groups and local authorities to adopt.
- 17.
One of the core themes of the Leave campaign was that there were too many immigrants from EU countries in the UK, and leaving the EU would end such freedom of movement of people not born in the UK.
- 18.
Satisfaction levels quickly rose to the same as that across the city.
- 19.
Some schools, where Restorative Justice has been successfully established, have trained volunteer pupils to become facilitators for others in lower age-group classes, and the practice has worked just as well.
- 20.
Restorative Justice has also been found to be highly valuable in conflict resolution in schools in New Zealand (Drewery 2013).
- 21.
Often different policy areas would be driven by different assumptions, preferences, and technical abilities. Even in the same policy areas, there could be compromises which might involve laws and practices being adopted, not because they reinforced each other, but that they kept politicians with contrasting ideas content.
- 22.
Their reflections on community empowerment and civil renewal can be found in Blears (2003, 2004), Blunkett (2001, 2003a, b), Blears and Blunkett (2019), Crick (2001), Crick and Lockyer (2010), Pearce (2004, 2019), Pearce et al. (2014), and Tam (2007, 2011a, 2019). Many others, amongst government Ministers, special advisors, and civil servants, also played a role in engaging the public in devising and implementing new policies and practices.
- 23.
- 24.
The Conservatives called an election in 2017 and lost their majority, but was able to continue as a minority government with the support of the Democratic Unionist Party (of Northern Ireland).
- 25.
It has been estimated that continuous cuts to government funding would by 2020 leave local authorities in England and Wales with just 40% of what they received to carry out their statutory duties a decade earlier in 2010 (Local Government Association 2018).
- 26.
People Can was formerly known as the Novas Scarman Group.
- 27.
- 28.
For example, the guidelines for citizenship education were too broad that it was relatively easy for a subsequent regime that did not share the same civic intent to steer schools away from taking the subject seriously (Weinberg and Flinders 2019).
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Tam, H. (2019). Tackling Community Disempowerment Post-2001. In: The Evolution of Communitarian Ideas. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-26558-8_7
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