Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
This chapter examines the reconfiguration of social security and employment policy and governance under the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition that took up office in June 2010 and the first year in office of its successor Conservative Government. A commitment to pursue expansive activation remained, but in a context of self-imposed austerity a hard-edged class politics of domination moved centre stage, with economic order concerns regarding social cohesion deprioritised. Increased job-search requirements, short-term employment schemes to test availability for work and increased sanctioning ramped up the threat of exclusion from state support for failing to comply with work related activity requirements (Grover, 2012).
Augmenting this was retrenchment in the value of social security benefits, leaving a threadbare system of residualised assistance, justified through deployment of a regressive two-nation governing strategy that depicted claimants as feckless (Morrison, 2019). Revision to managerialist targets and development of a new quasi-market, meanwhile, reworked the state apparatus, completing the moves initiated under the preceding Labour Government to strengthen direction of (para) state employees and mainstream activation of non-employed claimants (Wiggan, 2015a). Together this marked a pivot back to priortisation of an offensive class politics, with the shift to a regressive market-liberal orientation in labour market policy and governance positioned as the necessary precursor for restoring business profitabilitiy and economic growth.
This chapter summarises the co-constitution of the class and economic order politics of successive governments, their movement between defensive, consolidatory and offensive steps in class struggle, and changes in the orientation of labour market policy and governance. In addition, a brief reflection on social security and employment policy under the Conservative Government of Rishi Sunak is provided that points to policy continuity. Throughout 2022–23 the Conservative Government responded to the political recomposition of labour and resurgent labour autonomy by enacting further restrictions on trade union activity, deepening a regressive two nations mode of leadership and renewing the offensive against claimants by once again turning to the threat of exclusion as the means to activate non-employed claimants, and low- waged recipients of Universal Credit (and their partners where relevant) in order to expand the labour power being brought to market. The form of activation that began to be signalled during the late 1980s and whose development was understood by Aufheben (1998), to be focused on curtailing claimant autonomy, has persisted, and in 2023 remains dominant in what remains conceptualised here as a regressive market-liberal orientation in labour market policy and governance.
This chapter examines changes to employment and social security policy and goverance in the tumultuous politics that followed the vote to the leave the European Union, and persisted through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond. The period between the end of 2016 and 2019 being marked by a shift to a consolidationist step. Ministers pushed forward with the continued roll out of Universal Credit, tweaked the benefit conditionality regime and scaled back the size of the employment service quasi-market. A commitment to marketised delivery, benefit retrenchment and sanctioning remained central however to the state’s approach to activating claimants (Wright and Dwyer, 2022). The COVID-19 pandemic gave added impetus to consolidation with no fundamental changes made to working age social security benefits, as government sought to freeze the form and power relation of the pre-pandemic labour market and supporting state institutions. To mitigate the threat of mass unemployment and improve support for claimants during ‘lockdowns’ emergency measures were rolled out as temporary departures from normal practice. Acutely sensitive to the risk such measures posed to class power relations, the various measures that improved claimant autonomy were rolled back as the pandemic eased (Wiggan and Grover, 2022). The smooth restoration of a repressive market-liberal labour market policy orientation, however, was disrupted by post-pandemic labour makret disruption that co-consistuted with the political recomposition of labour.
This chapter examines how the offensive step launched by the Conservatives in the 1980s manifested in the area of social security and employment programmes. For the New Right the institutions and practices of corporatist social democratic capitalism had distorted the ‘natural’ working of the market, constrained employer autonomy (Joseph, 1978; Thatcher, 1995) and eroded the domination of labour, upon which exploitation and business profitability rests (Gallas, 2016).
Amid rapid rises in unemployment that accompanied the abandonment of full employment the pivot to an offensive step in the field of labour market policy was limited, as an economic order politics marked by concerns with social cohesion prevailed over reforms to advance domination. Conscious of public disquiet, ministers sought to depoliticise unemployment and shore up their electoral flank by expanding pacificatory Special Employment Measures and retaining corporatist delivery mechanisms (Moon and Richardson, 1985). Minor benefit retrenchment and a growing emphasis on training indicated the future direction of policy to recompose labour for the post-industrial labour market envisaged. The contingent configuration of class and economic politics are understood here then as creating a pacificatory but transitional orientation in labour market policy and governance.
This chapter elaborates how New Labour’s concern with repeat transitions between employment, unemployment benefits, and employment programmes, and difficulties in securing voluntary participation of non-employed claimants in active labour market programmes contributed to a further suite of welfare reforms to curtail claimant autonomy during its third term in office. Moves to narrow eligibility for out of work benefits paid on grounds of caring for a child, or incapacity for paid work were extolled as improving the opportunity for all to participate in paid work. In parallel, the governance of employment programmes was reconfigured to make greater use of financial incentives and contracted providers to shape the behaviour of frontline staff and drive a focus on securing sustained job outcomes for unemployed claimants. The 2008–09 recession disrupted the form and tempo of marketisation, and the feasibility of ramping up the intensity of activation applied to unemployed and non-employed claimants. Employment and social security policy and governance and societal expectations of claimants had, however, been transformed by the class and economic order politics of New Labour’s progressive-market liberalism.
This chapter details the pivot to an offensive step against labour in the reform of labour market policy. Having prioritised pacification and depoliticisation in the first half of the 1980s, the attention of the Conservative Government now shifted to re-establishing control over the unemployed population, as it moved to establish a clearer divide between claimants who could form part of the labour reserve, and claimants deemed largely surplus to the requirements of capital in the emergent post-industrial flexible labour market. That is, the emphasis in the cohering of class and economic order politics begins to move in favour of benefit and training reforms intended to prioritise labour’s subordination rather than societal cohesion.
With government intending the state to facilitate, rather than frustrate a recomposition of labour commensurate with supporting labour flexibility, attention turned to strengthened policing of benefits and bringing an end to the role of trade unions within labour market policy and governance. This saw the end of a labour market policy oriented to conciliation and pacification, and transition to a more conservative and market-liberal order was coming into view.
This chapter details the period beginning with the election of the Labour Government in 1997, which brought into office a fraction of the political elite willing to raise public spending and overhaul the state apparatus to stabilise and complete the development of a more competitive liberal market order (Gallas, 2016). In labour market policy and governance this was marked by a progressive version of the two-nation governing approach. Poverty and social exclusion were identified as problems requiring greater state support, and interventions to open up the labour market to all, irrespective of ascribed social characteristics. However, the promotion of inclusion remained located within a disciplinary framework geared towards curtailing claimant autonomy, and market-managerialism was deepened as ministers sought to better cohere the state apparatus to serve flexible labour market goals (Wiggan, 2007a). New Labour’s modernisation of the state to improve control over claimant behaviour and raise individual employability cohered neatly with a new extensive labour-utilisation approach to accumulation (Koch, 2006), rooted in maximising activation of unemployed people, and reaching into the non-employed claimant population. The orientation of labour market policy is understood here then as a form of progressive market liberalism.
This chapter begins with a brief discussion of full employment and the policies, institutions and class relations that accompanied this; subsequently noting the abandonment of this position and its replacement by an embrace of ‘full employability’ (Finn, 2000). Accompanying the latter has been a turn towards more active labour market policies, as governments remade the policies and governance of social security and employment services to foster labour market participation, and gradually expanded their focus from unemployed claimants to include the broader non-employed claimant population (Clasen and Clegg, 2012; Griggs et al, 2014).
Explanations advanced to account for these developments are then elaborated, including Aufheben’s argument that the social democratic state facilitated a ‘dole autonomy’ that hampered labour commodification and provided resources for contesting authority that the state sought to eliminate.
The final section briefly elaborates on how tracing and unpacking the class and economic order politics (Gallas, 2016) of British governments will be used to unpack and periodise labour market policy orientations. The intention is to identify how the shifting emphasis on domination and accumulation over time has been informed by, and informed the exercise of claimant and worker autonomy, and the changing composition of labour.
An unfolding economic crisis marked by rising unemployment, inflation and labour militancy presented a challenge for the Labour Government. Pressure on public spending limited scope for expansion of the public sector, and fearful of the negative impact on inflation, the Government remained unwilling to pursue demand-side reflationary economic measures. It was in this context that ministers turned to expansion and development of a suite of employment and training programmes (King, 1995).
This chapter makes the case for regarding the emergence of active labour market programmes as a defensive political step by state managers committed to a one-nation governing approach and corporatist state strategy. The Special Employment Measures were concessions to conciliate trade union leaders under pressure from their own members and stabilise an anti-inflation strategy which sought wage repression as the means to improve the conditions for accumulation. In this social democratic-pacificatory orientation, economic ‘functions’ of labour market policy – in terms of fostering skills and labour mobility to create space for higher economic growth in the medium term – was a secondary concern.
This chapter introduces core Marxist concepts concerning value creation, extraction and the accumulation of capital, and how these relate to the labour market. A discussion on the relationship between the reserve army of labour and relative surplus population (Marx, 2013) follows, along with discussion of the autonomism’s identification of the threat labour autonomy poses to capital (Burgmann, 2013) and how this links to notions of the technical and political class composition of labour.
Finally, the chapter outlines the concept of class politics and economic order politics developed by Gallas (2016) to interrogate the strategies and concerns of state managers, and the offensive, defensive and consolidationist steps in class struggle they accompany. These concepts are utilised in chapters 4 through 11 to analyse the form and tempo of class struggle and how the articulation of class and economic order politics informed the development of particular orientations in labour market policy.
