Rethinking Welfare: Of Little Platoons and the Big Society
In: http://hdl.handle.net/1885/14304
While there has been considerable economic reform in the past few decades, social reform in Australia has remained relatively stagnant. Discussion about policy direction focuses almost entirely around how much funding parties are willing to promise with success is judged in dollars spent, not problems solved. This discourse carries with it the assumption that the national government is the primary institution responsible for addressing social issues that face our communities. Rather than asking who should take responsibility for solving a problem, it is often assumed that the answer is the state, and instead focuses on how the problem should be addressed. Rarely are other institutions discussed, and society is viewed in terms of the individual and the state, and the desired relationship, or balance, between them. This research paper reconsiders the role of Edmund Burke's little platoons of civil society as a primary conceptual, and practical lens to analyse and resolve social problems. From the first conception of the modern nation state of revolutionary France, to the contemporary Australian welfare state, the theme explored throughout the paper is the 'vicious cycle of cause and effect' of democracy's tendency for a seemingly inexorable focus upon both a centralised state and consolidated individuals, at the expense of the natural intermediate associations that dwell between and the valuable social bonds, functions and authorities that reside within them. The first part of the paper traces a coherent intellectual tradition of philosophical and sociological thought over the past two decades to expound this theme, laying a robust theoretical framework of 'social pluralism' that is seen embodied in social policy reforms of state and civil society currently underway in Britain. The second part of the paper analyses this agenda, the 'Big Society', in light of this framework, and assesses the relevance and transferability to the Australian context. It concludes that the social problems plaguing 'Broken Britain' are also relevant to Australia, both exhibiting evidence of the 'vicious cycle'. Due to political, economic, and social factors however, it is unlikely that Australia will be following with such a reform agenda in the near future. This notwithstanding, findings supporting the value of seeking institutional balance of function and authority point to the limitation of the state and promotion of the intermediate associations of civil society as a broad policy recommendation