Tracing policy change: Intercurrent (de)politicisation and the decline of nationalisation in the 1970s
| Author | Sam Warner,Darcy Luke |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13691481211069786 |
| Published date | 01 May 2023 |
| Date | 01 May 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Original Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/13691481211069786
The British Journal of Politics and
International Relations
2023, Vol. 25(2) 365 –381
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13691481211069786
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Tracing policy change:
Intercurrent (de)politicisation
and the decline of
nationalisation in the 1970s
Sam Warner1 and Darcy Luke2
Abstract
When faced with complex public policy challenges, policymakers grapple with a dilemma between
assuming direct political control (politicisation) or creating ‘distance’ through arm’s length, often
market-orientated governance arrangements (depoliticisation). We contend that both processes
co-exist and operate simultaneously though empirically speaking, little is known about how they
interact over time to inform policy change. We compare how the Heath and Wilson-Callaghan
governments responded to this ‘recurrent dilemma’ in the Nationalised Industries during the
1970s. Drawing on new archival material, our research reveals that a desire to retain political
control was repeatedly supplemented by attempts to embed depoliticising, quasi-market
disciplinary mechanisms. Our focus on the ‘intercurrence’ of politicisation and depoliticisation,
understood as the simultaneous operation of older and newer governance arrangements, reveals
the long, complex lineage of privatisation, adding nuance to accounts that present it simplistically
as part of a paradigm shift in the 1980s.
Keywords
British politics, depoliticisation, governance, intercurrence, nationalisation, politicisation
Introduction
The study of depoliticisation has produced a diverse and multidisciplinary field of schol-
arship. The concept has been used to improve understanding of the strategies deployed by
governments to displace the political consequences of managing problematic policy areas
(Burnham, 2001; Flinders and Buller, 2006), while a ‘second wave’ of contributions has
produced sophisticated conceptual re-evaluation of the relationship between politicisa-
tion and depoliticisation as a dynamic and multifaceted process (Buller et al., 2019; Wood
and Flinders, 2014). However, despite these important advances, how the politicisation–
depoliticisation dynamic informs the process of policy change has received scant
1School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK
2Political Science and International Studies, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
Corresponding author:
Sam Warner, School of Social Sciences, The University of Manchester, Manchester M13 9PL, UK.
Email: samuel.warner@manchester.ac.uk
1069786BPI0010.1177/13691481211069786The British Journal of Politics and International RelationsWarner and Luke
research-article2022
Original Article
366 The British Journal of Politics and International Relations 25(2)
academic attention. This, we contend, is linked to three areas where the literature is con-
ceptually and empirically underdeveloped.
First, whether implicit or otherwise, accounts of (de)politicisation are often presented
in binary terms (Buller, 2019), reflecting the difficulties associated with operationalising
complex typologies in empirical work. Conceptual sophistication, then, is often sacrificed
for more parsimonious presentations. Second, this reflects a tendency to overemphasise
(de)politicisation’s association with policy paradigms – for example, the ubiquity of
depoliticisation under neoliberalism (Flinders, 2012) – thereby potentially replicating
analytical inadequacies associated with the conventional political science understanding
of institutions. Recent calls for a greater appreciation of path dependency (Buller, 2019:
244) risk emphasising an understanding of change as an exogenous feature of the politi-
cisation–depoliticisation dynamic (Greener, 2005). Third, despite important attempts to
impose a broader periodisation on this literature (Burnham, 2006), temporally, empirical
work has short horizons, is often limited to studying individual governing strategies and
neglects longitudinal approaches. All three factors limit our understanding of the politici-
sation–depoliticisation dynamic and, resultantly, how it informs the incremental nature of
policy change over time.
We contribute a novel methodological approach to address these challenges. Drawing
on Jeffrey Haydu’s (1998, 2009) critique of path dependency, we focus on the problem-
solving solutions of political actors in response to ‘recurrent dilemmas’ that cut across
time periods. Accounts of path dependency risk producing deterministic narratives, lock-
ing in outcomes over time without adequately explaining the source of historical rever-
sals. Foregrounding the role of social actors in sequences of problem-solving, including
interactions across governmental and societal levels, is favoured because ‘multiple causal
trajectories [. . .] are brought together in episodes of social transformation’ (Haydu, 2009:
32). Rather than searching for critical junctures, this approach emphasises the range of
factors – structural and agential – that inform processes of reiterative problem-solving.
This can produce explanations about why particular responses are favoured over others,
despite recurrent dilemmas remaining consistent across time. We argue that continuity in
terms of governing dilemmas is mediated by switching between foregrounding politicis-
ing or depoliticising aspects of a strategy, a process that shapes policy change. We term
this process the intercurrence of politicisation and depoliticisation, characterised by the
simultaneous and continuous existence of older and newer governance arrangements
(Orren and Skowronek, 1996).
To unpack the politicisation–depoliticisation dynamic, we return to the 1970s because
the period tends to be presented as a critical juncture in advance of a paradigm shift in the
1980s (Hall, 1993). Specifically, we address the tensions surrounding political control
(politicisation) and arm’s length discipline through commercial principles (depoliticisa-
tion) in the management of the nationalised industries (NIs) across the Heath (1970–
1974) and Wilson/Callaghan (1974–1979) governments. Despite ostensibly enjoying
managerial autonomy, NIs became a central tool of macroeconomic policy in politicised
aspects of both governments’ responses to inflation. We argue that experimentation with
quasi-market mechanisms to discipline NIs during the 1970s led to privatisation being
seen as a plausible policy response to the recurrent dilemma of how to reconcile the com-
mercial viability of the NIs with political control over them. We draw out the tensions and
competing interests among social actors – an intrinsic feature of intercurrent (de)politici-
sation – to illustrate the incremental process of policy change not well-captured in the
dominant narratives of the period.
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