From Big Government to Big Society: Changing the State-Society Balance

Much of the 2010 election was fought around the issue of the recession and the public borrowing deficit. However, whilst economic policy was highly salient, there was little fundamental difference between the parties over what needed to be done. All three of the major parties accepted the need to cut the deficit through reducing public expenditure. What the response to the crisis did reveal was fundamental differences between the parties over the role of the state and the relationship between the state and the market. Labour's answer to the crisis was increasingly a traditional Keynesian and social democratic response whilst the Conservatives raised the prospect of the ‘big society’ as a mechanism for reducing the size of the state.