British Conservative Party’s Big Society Agenda as a Democratic Innovation Improving Popular Control over Political Decision-Making – Theory and Practice

This paper will analyse Cameron’s and May’s concept of the Big Society. Firstly, it will outline the main assumptions of the concept as a new social policy that is to build a responsible, active and self-reliant British society. Secondly, it will analyse the Big Society as a policy that is to help modernise the Conservative Party, to show it as an entity going back to its own ideological roots, answering to people’s needs for having more say in political decisions. A substantial part of this paper will be based on speeches and documents of the Conservative Party. I will also examine the functioning of an important Big Society project – National Citizen Service and also some of community empowerment regulations in Localism Act 2011 to show how the idea works in practice. I want to show where and why some of the reforms did not reach their main aim of giving people more democratic control over the way their local services are run. I want to point attention to some inherent characteristics of the British political system that make Big Society’s plans difficult to realize. Although there is lots of criticism of Big Society from all possible sides I argue that Big Society should be considered as an innovative way of regarding social policy. It is a genuine attempt to modernise the Conservative Party within its tradition. And it is an impressive attempt to restore and build social capital in Britain.