The Development of New Labour’s Ideology
The policies of New Labour both build on those of Conservative governments since 1979 and add significant innovations. Conservative policies towards the welfare state comprised fairly straightforward attempts at ‘recommodification’. Neo-liberal ideology saw the welfare state as effectively sapping the lifeblood of the capitalist economy, both through its reliance on high levels of taxation and state expenditure and through its effect of producing ‘dependency’
upon it, particularly by those claiming benefits. Hence the value of benefit payments was to be held down, whilst ever more conditions were placed upon claimants to ‘actively seek work’. State-owned services were to be privatised. The problem was seen to be state intervention itself, which was to be reduced wherever possible. The reality was, however, that sometimes it could not be significantly reduced, either because the market economy fundamentally relied upon it, or because of political ‘no go areas’ such as the privatization of health services. Thus, during the Thatcher decade of the 1980s, real public expenditure as a proportion of GDP averaged a still historically high 45.1 percent (Jackson, 2001, p. 99). In health and social care ‘quasi-markets’
were introduced aimed at achieving the efficiency benefits of the market whilst preserving the equity benefits of state-funded services (Bartlett et al., 1994). As Pierson (1996, p. 146) has argued, public support for the welfare state makes its simple dismantling virtually impossible: ‘A simple “redistributive” transfer of resources from program beneficiaries to taxpayers, engineered through cuts in social programs, is generally a losing proposition … Retrenchment advocates
thus confront a clash between their policy preferences and their electoral ambitions.’ Successful reform is therefore likely to ‘take the form of restructuring and modernisation of the social contract’ (Pierson, 1998, p. 539). Thus simple ‘recommodification’ or privatisation of the neo-liberal type is unlikely to be successful in welfare services. Even in Thatcher’s Britain, ‘reform has been incremental rather than revolutionary, leaving the British welfare state largely
intact’ (Pierson, 1996, p. 173).
工党的新思想的发展
新工党的保守党政府都建立在从1979加重大创新的政策。保守的政策对福利国家由相当简单的recommodification的尝试。新自由主义意识形态看到福利国家为有效地削弱资本主义经济的命脉，通过其依赖于高税收和政府支出并通过其产生的依赖效应”
在它，特别是那些声称的好处。因此，给付的值被压低，而越来越多的条件放在“积极寻找工作的人。这个问题被认为是国家干预本身，这是要尽可能减少。事实是，然而，有时它也不会显著减少，因为市场经济从根本上依赖于它，或是因为政治的不去如医疗卫生服务的私有化区。因此，在20世纪80年代撒切尔的十年，占GDP的比重平均依然处于历史高位百分之45.1真正的公共支出（杰克逊，2001，p. 99）。健康和社会保健中的“准市场
介绍了旨在实现市场同时保持国家资助的服务公平效益效益（Bartlett等人。，1994）。作为皮尔逊（1996，p. 146）认为，公众对福利国家的支持，使其简单的拆解几乎是不可能的：“一个简单的“再分配”转移，从计划的受益者资源纳税人，工程通过社会削减计划，通常是一个失败的建议…紧缩的倡导者
因此，面对他们的政策偏好和选举改革成功的野心之间的冲突。因此可能需要进行重组和现代化的社会契约的形式”（皮尔逊，1998，p. 539）。因此，简单的recommodification或私有化的新自由主义的类型是不太可能在福利服务是成功的。即使在撒切尔时代的英国，“改革是渐进而非革命，让英国的福利国家在很大程度上
