Something rather heart-warming emanated from the Department of Environment, Food & Rural Affairs a couple of weeks ago: a domestic policy was announced and defended on the basis that it would be a nice thing to do. The policy in question was the "right to ring" proposal, that there should be a public footpath the whole way around the coast of Britain. Rather charmingly, David Milliband, then head of DEFRA, argued that "We are an island nation. The coast is our birthright and everyone should be able to enjoy it. I want families to have safe and secure access to walk, climb, rock-scramble, paddle and play all along our coastline".
This is exceptional for the following reason. I think it's Nikolas Rose who describes modern political reason as a constant quest for 'authority for one's authority'. Modern policy-making is inhibited by the constant anxiety of never being entirely sure what one should do next. Expert knowledge claims about the mechanics of society are then employed to alleviate this anxiety. In a post-ideological era, policies draw on a broader range of social-scientific frameworks (or authorities for authority), but these nevertheless become empty mantras that are used to try and clothe otherwise naked, vulnerable actions.
It feels peculiar that Milliband didn't suggest there is a 'market failure' in coastal perambulation supply; or that he didn't defend the footpath in terms of Britain's 'competitiveness' and that of its tourist industry; or that he didn't propose that this would reduce social exclusion in some way; or that he didn't argue that this was an investment in 'public value'. Granted, this policy is unlikely to prove very controversial, so perhaps Milliband didn't need to invoke any social-scientific authority for it. But a less self-confident Minister may well have done so anyway, just to demonstrate that they and their department were talking the talk.
As I argued in this Open Democracy article, evidence-based policy must be partly understood as a response to failings in our democracy. It is preferable to evidence-less policy or faith-based policy, but inferior to democracy itself. One certainly wouldn't want to move towards the sort of regime we have witnessed in recent foreign policy, in which politicians act purely on the basis of existential conviction. In some respects, I'm praising Milliband in quite Schmittian terms, which are risky. But this is also an example of how policy might be debated in a more representative type of political system, that is, in terms of intrinsic merits, not extrinsic ones.
A metaphor: New Labour has tended to operate as a dietician, producing food with the best of intentions, on the basis of calculated analysis that it will achieve certain goals. But every now and then, it's nice when it acts as a chef, offering us food on the basis that it tastes good.
Comments