A note on Emanuelle Averil’s “The (Unintended) Consequences of New Labour …”

A note on Emanuelle Averil’s “The (Unintended) Consequences of New Labour …”

I have been influenced by the white paper “The (Unintended) Consequences of New Labour: Party Leadership vs Party Management in the British Labour Party..., a white paper to the PSA” by Emanuelle Averil on New Labour, its managerialism and the destruction of its activist commitment and influence. It was published in 2015 before the General Election. I read it in 2017 and strangely ended up sitting next to her at Conference ’19. What she said in 2015 is increasingly relevant in 2021 as Starmer tries to reimpose the controls established by New Labour. Use the "Read More ..." button for a series of quotes from the paper, which I originally posted on diigo and remember that New Labour lost the 2010 election partly because it was unable to renew itself. ...

Pathbreakers?

My copy of the Economic Journal arrived last week, and an article, “Pathbreakers? Women’s Electoral Success and Future Political Participation” by Bhalotra, Clots-Figueras & Iyer caught my eye. Are successful women political role models and do they have coat-tails? The answer in India it would seem is no! They hang around and other women do not follow them, whether out of solidarity, or due to a seemingly unassailable queue it is unclear although it would seem that power does not like to be shared; the problems are institutional and not based in gender biases although where gender bias exists within the party and the general public, men it seems retaliate.

This is pretty interesting. If there are similar factors in the UK, then maybe we should consider term limits and in the case of the Labour Party, it would be an argument for abolishing trigger ballots and having open selections, for women MPs as well as male ones. It would also be best if Labour revoked the introduction of trigger ballots for councillors.

ooOOOoo

Also interesting is their presentation of academic evidence that having more women politicians is good for women and children, but also for men.

Several recent papers document that increasing women’s political representation results in policy choices that are more favorable to women (Chattopadhyay and Duflo 2004, Rehavi 2012, Iyer et al. 2012), and that improve investments in children and lower corruption (Brollo and Troiano 2014, Bhalotra and Clots-Figueras 2014, Clots-Figueras 2012, Dollar, Fisman and Gatti 2001, Miller 2008, Swamy et al 2001). This suggests that women’s under-representation in political office disadvantages one half of society, and may have additional social costs.

Let’s note that lower corruption is a benefit for all, and that some investment houses score companies highly if they have a high number of female directors/mangers. …

The innovators dilemma in political parties

On my way to writing the article “Servants, not Masters”, I needed to check my material and links about Emanuelle Avril’s unfinished white paper called, “The (Unintended) Consequences of New Labour: Party Leadership vs Party Management in the British Labour Party”. and was presented to the Political Studies Association 2015 conference, in March so before the 2015 election and consequent Labour leadership election. Eaton’s source identified a failure of the New Labour leadership to renew itself as a cause of it’s failure and Avril’s paper explains why they were always going to be incapable of it.

…. it is true to say that internal consensus and cohesion, as they manifested themselves in New Labour, constituted obstacles to innovation and therefore endangered the survival of the party …

and the ambitions of their successors. (This post continues overleaf/below.) … …

A European Software Strategy

The NESSI steering committee released it’s Position Paper on European Software Strategy. I share an authoring credit, with 14 others, it is the work of a committee. This document reviews the competitiveness of the European Software Industry and makes recommendations for R&D efficiency, SME growth, Open Source use, increased standardisation, investment in regional excellence and strengthening European academia’s software engineering capability. …