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Citizenship and ideology in David Cameron's 'Big Society'

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British Politics Aims and scope

Abstract

As the main idea of the governments of David Cameron after 2010, the Big Society intended to place civil society at the heart of the Conservative agenda while also serving as a rhetorical tool to distance the ‘modern’ Conservative party from the Thatcherite legacy. In comparing Margaret Thatcher’s view on citizenship to the one upheld by David Cameron, this article argues that despite many similarities, Cameron broke with Thatcher in the way he reinterpreted the nature of the state, as well as how he planned to remake civil society and to inspire ‘active citizenship’. Unlike Thatcher, who believed that a dynamic civil society would spontaneously flourish once the state was reduced, Cameron believed that society could be rebuilt only through the work of the state. From this perspective, it is possible to reassess the academic debate about the Big Society and to regard it not as a means of justifying a smaller state at a time of economic austerity, but rather as an initiative which failed at least in part because of austerity.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr Richard Hayton and Dr Timothy Heppell for their very constructive comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of this article. We are also thankful for both reviewers for their comments, which were essential in developing a better final version of the article.

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  1. University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

    Lenon Campos Maschette

  2. Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK

    Mark Garnett

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Correspondence to Lenon Campos Maschette.

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Maschette, L.C., Garnett, M. Citizenship and ideology in David Cameron's 'Big Society'. Br Polit 19, 175–193 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41293-023-00225-2

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