The New Contractualism, the Privatization of the Welfare State, and the Barriers to Open Source Planning

This paper argues that the UK government's Open Source Planning reforms are founded on a caricatured vision of state–society relationships. Simple binaries are deployed that present political power as a zero-sum game with ‘communities’ on the one side and state ‘bureaucracies’ on the other. There has been little recognition of the complex public–private sector entanglements left by the previous Labour government and the power of the ‘new contractualism’ in shaping the provision and ownership of welfare services and assets. The paper assesses the legacies of privatization under Labour and the structural limits that contracts and private financing now put on the governance and management of the welfare state and the planning system. It contends that the principle sources of state power and accountability that underpinned the post-war settlement are being eroded. Paradoxically, this will not devolve power to local communities and citizens but create new forms of distancing and disempowerment.