One of twenty winning essays in the Deloitte Public Pocily Essay Competition 2001
Question: Can ‘Big Society’ replace ‘Big Government’? If not, what other options should be considered to deliver efficient services and help cut the size of the public deficit?
If there is currently one characteristic feature of the Big Society, then it is the lack of characteristic features. It is an idea everyone has vaguely heard of and no one knows what to make of. ‘Decentralisation’, ‘cutting red tape’, ‘people power’ and ‘volunteering’ are the catch phrases associated with it but that is about as far as it goes. Its inventors notoriously fail to communicate their ideas to the media and public which further fuels the belief that it is just a poor attempt to put some icing sugar on the spending cuts anyway. That is too bad. Because despite its vagueness and the resentment and mockery it has provoked so far, we should not dismiss the idea too readily. It does have potential that goes beyond the ideological justification of public spending cuts, but both its supporters and its opponents have yet to fully discover that potential.
