Are New Right Policies Sustainable? ‘Back to Basics’ and Public Choice

The British government's social policy reforms of the late 1980s have been quickly followed by political embarrassment over a series of social issues (crime, single parenthood, benefit fraud, truancy, drugs). Its response, ‘back to basics’, is a rather clumsy attempt to provide a readymix morality as the cement of society and increased reliance on enforcement. This article uses one of the new right's most effective weapons – public choice theory – to analyse the outcomes of strategic interactions within these new institutional structures, showing that they are collectively sub-optimal. New policies, announced in 1993, merely worsen the situation by driving up costs. Furthermore, the rising prices of the ‘positional goods’ enjoyed by better-off households suggest that the majority coalition in favour of the new systems may not be sustainable.