Is the Lib Dem poll rating the fault of the members?

Who was more affected by going into Coalition with the Tories? The soft Lib Dem vote who seem to think we have sold out on our principles (see here)? Maybe the many on the political left in general? Or maybe it is actually the Lib Dem core vote? Those who are fully paid up members of the party and who are active members? Perhaps the core Lib Dem vote has been so rocked by this Coalition that it has had a significant contribution to our current poll ratings? Are we, the members of the Lib Dems to blame for our low poll rating?

When looking at recent polling we can see a very interesting development:

We can see that the Lib Dems are campaigning at a significantly different levels in different areas. Where Labour is second to the conservatives we can see we have a significantly lower intensity than that of the Tories or Labour, while where we are second to the Tories we are out performing the other parties. And what is the effect of this?

We see that we are scoring 12% in the polls where we are not campaigning as hard as the other parties, which is where most people quote our poll ratings at the moment. However, where we are campaigning much harder we are recording 31% of support, a significantly higher level of support in the same national context. While areas can’t be compared like for like and one poll doesn’t tell you a lot, this is something which Nick Clegg has been talking about – the fact that it has been the Lib Dem activists which have stopped going out on to the streets and speaking to people about the Coalition, about what we are doing and why.

There are no such things as Lib Dem safe seats and every vote needs to be won. We have a slogan of ‘where we work, we win’ because Lib Dem support is based on people going out there and getting support. We need activists more than other parties to maintain that support but if we withdraw our activism then the support drops away. So it may be that going into coalition with the Tories has affected the Lib Dem members more than it has other groups? I certainly know people who are worried about knocking on doors for fear of hostility. Some members are supportive of the Lib Dems in Coalition but not of some Coalition policies and they wonder how to deal with this on the door step.

This was something Nick Clegg was worried about when I spoke to him and his response was to get people out there again and to give them a script in his speech at conference so we knew what to say. He saw the success of the conference as motivating people to get back out there and maybe he is right? This was the summary of my conversation with him (see here for its explanation if it makes no sense):

But if we do start getting back out there who knows what will happen to our poll rating?

The Lib Dems should make a new coalition of shared beliefs and reach out to the 4th largest party in Westminster

The Lib Dems have caused a headache for Labour and the Tories. So first Tony Blair moved Labour to Lib Dem territory. Then Cameron moved the Tories to Lib Dem territory. Now Cameron and Miliband are closing in and the Lib Dems are being squeezed. Why should anyone vote for the Lib Dems if Labour say they stand up for social justice, fairness and have become more liberal while the Tories are now compassionate, liberal and care for the environment? The Lib Dems need to reach out to others to build support so perhaps they need to look at who believes in what we believe and begin working with them in a smarter way.

The current Lib Dem strategy is not working. People are skeptical of the Coalition being good for the country and the Lib Dem vote has significantly decreased. So lefts get back to basics. What works in politics in building a voter base? Parties are not built from the inside out they are built from the outside in. Labour was not a Labour Party until it had recuited many factions and interest groups who eventually became a united party. The Lib Dems were not the Lib Dems until the Alliance formally united. Each of these moves increases your voter base and electoral chances. What we know works is when a party works with others on shared beliefs.

So I was interested to read Nick Clegg’s recent email/letter to members about the first year of being in the Coalition. He wrote that the Lib Dems were:

a party which knows we can do more together than we can alone.

This maybe a statement of the obvious to many in the party but it is also a founding statement of the fourth largest party in Westminster, The Co-operative Party. They bill themselves as the Party of social justice who

believe that people will achieve more by working together than they can by working alone.

So the Lib Dems and the Co-operative Party have a shared belief. They are therefore natural allies. Their objective is to support the efforts of those who seek success through co-operatives. And there are many good examples of co-operatives around the country – not least the bank which faired the financial crisis rather well.

So this offers the Lib Dems a perfect opportunity to work in the Coalition for the good for the country while reaching out to others, except that the Co-operative Party has an agreement with the Labour Party, which makes reaching out to them difficult. However, there is a perfect way to do this which could benefit not only both Parties but also the Coalition.

David Cameron sought to move away from the state as the preferred provider of public services and this has attracted a lot of criticism from the Labour Party. The Lib Dems sensing voter backlash at the fear this creates in the public have sought to apply brakes to Tory proposals. This in itself is destabilising for the Coalition. But what if the Lib Dems worked with the Tories and the Co-operative Party to form a more agreeable policy.

As John Redwood points out the Lib Dem website states

Both the Conservative (p27) and Lib Dem  (p 42)Manifestos promised that new social enterprises would be created to deliver NHS services.  The Conservative (p45) and Lib Democrat (p42) manifestos promised that all types of providers – NHS, voluntary or independent sector- would be free to deliver NHS services.

So the Tories want to move away from a state monopoly, the Lib Dems acknowledge this could improve services but Labour are deeply distrustful of any such plans. So the Lib Dems should promote the belief that ‘we can do more together than we can alone’ and seek others who believe this i.e. the co-op party, to work towards making co-operatives which can run public services.

The Co-operative Party should relish the idea that the Government is realising their dream, the Tories should relish the idea that there would be no state monopoly of public service provision, and the Lib Dems should relish the idea that this could improve standards. A win-win-win situation. Except the Labour Party would not see it this way which would cause tension between the Co-operative Party and the Labour Party. This should be seen as a good thing. Beliefs drive politics and shared beliefs attract each other. Those shared beliefs belong together – the third largest and fourth largest party in Westminster joining forces.

The Lib Dems should be reaching out to those who believe what we believe. Here is a great opportunity to do just that.

What the Tories don’t want anyone to know: Why the deficit reduction strategy could benefit the Lib Dems

The positioning of the Labour Party and the Tories at the General Election on reducing the deficit looked like the usual left vs right argument. Labour accused the Tories of being like Thatcher and the Tories accused Labour of being incompetent. However, as events have now unfolded in the US it looks very much like the Coalition policy is similar to that of Barak Obama. And this is something the Tories do not want the public to know as it is more likely to benefit the Lib Dems than them.

The Lib Dems had a very reasonable policy on reducing the deficit at the General Election but this didn’t convince anyone. Being a party of the centre often means that policies don’t invoke as strong a reaction as those proposed by Labour or the Tories. Those on the political left attached themselves to Labour’s plan – see the Party and Union’s media releases on it suggesting there is no need for a reduction. While those on the political right attached themselves to ‘the cuts’. So what happens when this thinking is turned upside down by a man highly respected by many on the political left? The answer is that the Tories don’t want people to know this as shown in the New Statesman: Don’t tell anyone, but the coalition’s deficit reduction strategy resembles Barack Obama’s:

The current occupant of the White House is advocating a fiscal retrenchment for America similar in scale and composition to Britain’s, differing only in the important matter of timing. Both countries promise to reduce their deficits by about 8 percentage points by 2015 and both will use spending restraint to do 75 per cent of the work.

The Lib Dem vote = Liberal vote + political centre left (soft Labour voters) + political centre right (soft Tory voters) + undecided voters.

Each component is variable and the soft Labour vote has been turned off by the seemingly right wing deficit reduction strategy. By highlighting that this strategy is seen as right wing by Obama may make those who have been turned off by this association of the deficit reduction to right wing politics to think again. And those voters are more likely to vote Lib Dem than they are Tory.

Building the Lib Dem political party: how to gain local activists and increase support

Anyone following the party will be familiar with the history that the Liberals were the opposition party to the Conservatives and brought in reforms which we are all proud of now. The fall of the Liberal Party was as much due to its own mistakes as that of the rise of the Labour Party but there is much to learn from the Labour Party’s rise in the early 20^th Century which the Liberal Democrats can emulate. It is one of collaboration, loose associations and local activism.

This is a chart of the vote share of the political parties in the UK showing the demise of the Liberal Party and the rise of the Labour Party. The Labour Party’s origins lie in the late 19th century when it became apparent that there was a need for a new political party to represent the interests and needs of the urban proletariat, a demographic which had increased in number. Some members of the trade union movement became interested in moving into the political field and several small socialist groups formed wanting to link to political policies e.g. Independent Labour Party, Fabian Society, Social Democratic Federation and the Scottish Labour Party.

The Labour movement grew not through growing the political party from the inside, by gaining more members and co-opting movements into the political party, but from the outside, gaining people/organisations prepared to support the broad ideas but keeping their own identity. This loose association eventually turned into a formal political party.

The movement had its core supporters but it grew support through collaborating with movements with similar aims. The co-operative movement provided its own resources to the Co-operative Party which gave its support to the Labour Party. Today the Co-operative Party is the 4^th largest political party in parliament.

However, the real power in the growth of the Labour Party was the growth in Labour’s local activist base and organisation. With the support of many different movements, organisations, and groups it grew wide public support. Labour clubs became a social hub and almost an institution for many communities. The Labour movement, and therefore the party, were relevant to the public.

It was not just about ideas which inspired people. It was not just policies which people thought would benefit the country or themselves. It was the relationship people had with people in these different organisations/groups which made it relevant. The relationship grew into a relationship with the family and the area. This is what I call relationship based politics.

The importance of relationship based politics can be seen everywhere. Where there is a relationship with the public stronger the support (see here or here). And recently this was shown in the post ‘so what’s it really like on the doorsteps’

It’s quite touching to knock on a door and have someone tell you that the first stranger to knock on her door when she moved into the estate years ago was your fellow councillor and she’s never forgotten it. The fact that he took time to knock on doors, and take round a leaflet with useful phone numbers on it, means that she’s voted for him ever since.

So there are many lessons in building a successful political party but the most important one which the Lib Dems have known for a long time is that of local activism. But it does not necessarily mean it has to be in the party’s name. Collaboration and loose associations with other organisations can increase your local activist base and agreements with them can result in increased membership eventually. But essentially it is about forming relationships with voters and making the party relevant in today’s society. Small, simple steps go a long way to achieving this.

Lessons from successful politicians: How Clement Attlee used collaboration to succeed

Image via Wikipedia

Clement Attlee is considered to be one of the most successful UK politicians of all time yet was considered a potentially weak leader and a poor communicator at the time. Much has been written about his premiership from 1945-51. However, how Attlee was successful is often buried deep in analysis of his time in office. Yet it is how politicians are successful, not what they do, which we can learn from.

Attlee’s approach was a managerial one seeking consensus. He acted as a chairman rather than a president, and this quality has won him much praise from historians and politicians alike.

Every time you have a Prime Minister who wants to make all the decisions, it mainly leads to bad results. Attlee didn’t. That’s why he was so damn good

Despite Attlee’s overwhelming mandate for change and the pressure from his own party to introduce wholesale socialist change, he instead opted for cautious reformism which allowed him to bring the country and other politicians with  him in the changes he was making. He couldn’t have done this from a more extreme position that many people wanted him to take. Attlee therefore had to be an expert party manager, capable of controlling difficult and wilful colleagues.

It is said that his personal attributes allowed him the ability to let things happen and not allow worries to get on top of him. He believed that a leader needed to trust people to do their jobs and said that no one can lead who is afraid of losing his job.

If [a politician] doesn’t display courage, the chances are that he will never become the leader, or that if he does, he won’t last very long. Attlee

It was his approach to politics which produced perhaps his greatest achievement, that of a political and economic consensus about the governance of Britain that all parties, whether Labour, Conservative or Liberal subscribed to for three decades.

When Wall Street Journal/NBC pollsters asked voters recently what qualities they were looking for in a leader, their top three choices were: the ability to work well with leaders of other countries; having strong moral and family values; bringing unity to the country. Those are cooperative qualities that require good listening skills, openness and the ability to compromise – The qualities that Attlee such a good politician.

How to help the public from Labour councils: How the Lib Dems can take the initiative in saving jobs in local councils

Image via Wikipedia

The Lib Dems have tried to make headway about the fact that Labour councils are cutting more jobs than Lib Dem or Tory ones with Clegg and Cameron calling them politically motivated moves by Labour councils. Yet the reality is that these councils have a problem which the people living there will not see as a Labour issue but a government and a Lib Dem one. In a climate of cuts there is no political capital to be made out of a comparison of job losses or the perception of a decimation of front line services. What the Lib Dems need is a different way to produce results in these councils and there are some lessons to be learnt here from the Swedish speed camera experiment?

One solution to some Labour councils’ cutting more jobs or front line public service workers is to tell them what they should be doing. However, this would be disastrous as the new introduction of the presumption of competence of local authorities, means that this principle would be undermined before it has even got off the ground. So this has left the government and the Lib Dems briefing to the press how bad it is. But authority can be used in many ways and we should not give up looking for a solution because we can’t make them do it anymore.

Stockholm ran an experiment to see if they could get speed cameras to be more effective at reducing speed. The speed camera was set up and those who passed it under the speed limit were registered for the lottery to win about £3000. The result was that it reduced the average speed from 32 km/h to 25 km/h in a 30km/h zone.

This shows that a system can be made more effective by appealing to a different side of human motivation. So could this be used in the local authority job loss problem?

If the Lib Dems and the Tories genuinely believe that the Labour cuts are politically motivated then they are saying that they are not necessary. So they could offer an incentive to those who cut fewer jobs and fewer front line workers. What this means is that local authorities could decide to continue to cut jobs at the rate they decide or choose to change priorities. This keeps to the principle of competence while saying that the government has priorities on keeping jobs and protecting the public services. Locals would have a genuine reason to be angry at the local council rather than central government as the local council would have had a choice to change priorities and secure local jobs.

For all the reviews, reports and those who have worked in a local authority, people know that there is plenty of room for efficiencies, yet it seems too hard to achieve the savings. Maybe it is time to think of a different approach?

Increasing Party Membership: building on the issues of why people join

There is much talk at present about Party membership as Labour have claimed many have joined from the Lib Dems while the Lib Dems claim their membership has increased. The fact that Ed Miliband’s campaign to attract Lib Dem members has attracted so few new members is interesting for a number of reasons but it does raise the question of what we can do to recruit more to the party.

Political party activists frequently cite the chiming of their values with a particular political party as a reason for becoming a member of that party. The Lib Dems need to be more specific about what these are to attract more. Fairness and civil liberties were something which people got at the last election. We need more about our values and less about specific policies (2005 & 2010 campaigns focused on a small number of specific policies).

For some, a specific issue led them to join a certain party. This motivation is more pronounced amongst younger participants and the tuition fees issue is one which will hurt the party as a result, but it a lesson to ensure we choose our specific issues with careful consideration. We have a number of other issues which are still distinctive e.g. nuclear, constitutional reform.

For political party activists, family background and heritage are also considered to play a prominent role in motivating people to become involved. Labour and the Conservatives have a huge advantage here due to their history and the part they have played in shaping the country over the last 100 years.

Importantly, political party activists primarily join political parties because of ‘national’ reasons, rather than a desire to change the local community. This is largely because of their desire for greater power and influence in society, and the perceived ability to shape and determine national policy and debate. It is here that the Lib Dems offer a greater attraction than Labour or the Conservatives yet little is heard from Lib Dem spokespeople about this, which may attract some potential members. The Lib Dems have an opportunity now they are in government to show members do have a voice over policy (tuition fees aside).

Other reasons people join political parties are in order to give a specific group a wider ‘voice’. While BME activists also talk of how party membership is partly about being a fully integrated member of UK society. Many see party membership as a form of active citizenship.

When discussing membership whether to people on the street, our friends or in the media it would be a good idea to use these issues as encouragement to people who may then go on to join the party.

The secret to winning elections (lessons by Gisela Stuart???)

They say Tony Blair had it and because of it David Cameron considered him unbeatable. But the magical ingredient of electability disappeared eventually and he would have been beaten had be not been beaten by his own party. So we can only assume that electability can come and go. This is either because it is something intrinsic within him that at that particular time resonated with the electorate and then later didn’t, or it was something he was doing that later he was no longer doing.

If we believe it is an intrinsic value within him then we will always seek someone who possess’ that magic ingredient. If we believe it was something he was doing, then anyone can learn the skills of electability. To understand if we are able to learn the skills we can look at exceptions to the rule during an election and see what we can glean from this.

During the General Election there was generally a swing away from the Labour Party towards the Conservative Party. Yet Gisela Stuart managed to buck this trend in one of the top 12 seats the Tories were targeting. So why was this?

For a start she was a popular MP with a record of defying Labour whips. She began the campaign with a programme of questionnaires and ‘manifesto meetings’ for voters to tell Stuart’s team about their concerns. From this she drew up a ‘local manifesto’ that became the focus of her campaign and paid virtually no attention to the national Labour message. She recruited a volunteer team who were urged to bring in more friends to help and used whatever idea came from this team. You can view her leaflet here. This strategy has not gone unnoticed by Ed Miliband.

Lessons for the campaign team:

• Gisela essentially formed an alliance with the electorate by engaging the community which allowed the team to learn from the electorate about what they wanted and avoided a struggle over definitions of the problems
• Her team viewed themselves as ‘essentially able’ – able to influence the election despite the circumstances and so ideas and energy were used to good effect
• The team had clear, specific and attainable goals which with the help of volunteers were just about achievable in the time available

Lessons for MPs:

• She was seen as active and openly influential
• She was seen as competent, hopeful and confident
• She focused on the here and now

Where you stand affects your view. Gisela believed that the party she belonged to was unpopular because they did not have the same starting point as those she wanted to vote for her, so distanced herself from it. She created a new starting point by forming an alliance/coalition/relationship with voters (call it what you will). A quick look at what Tony Blair did with the Labour Party was similar, as was David Cameron’s.

And this is the most important lesson in learning electability:  People vote for those who accept the voters definition of the problem. This is why listening is seen as so important but why so many fail to actively listen to the electorate.

The Times had an interesting story recently called ‘If you don’t like the voters, they won’t like you’ which pretty much sums it up:

After 1997 Conservative politicians knew what they were supposed to say, the boxes they needed to tick. And they said it, they ticked the boxes. But this didn’t mean they really understood, or quite believed, what they were saying. They would use phrases such as “I know we seemed out of touch”, rather than “I agree we were out of touch”. Many of the words Mr Cameron later used about changing the party were being spoken from the moment of the 1997 defeat, but the sentiment wasn’t the same at all. The Labour leader’s speech yesterday reminded me very much of those early Tory speeches. The more this week that Mr Miliband has said that he gets it, the less I have believed that he does.

The Big Society is a Liberal Idea the Lib Dems should capitalise on

What is the Big Society exactly? In an age of austerity and a government dominated by deficit reduction, is this just another way to go further on cuts state reduction? Certainly, the Liberal Democrats have not gone along with the idea of the Big Society with Julia Goldsworthy saying is was ‘patronising nonsense’. Some Labour members have seemed almost offended by the idea such as here or here and the Tories have not exactly embraced the Big Society.

So if social democrats and liberals don’t see this as a good idea and the Conservatives are not exactly fully on board, why does polling suggest that people do indeed want this idea despite its poorly communicated ideals?

Over the years people have started to become disillusioned with the current relationship between them and the state. We have seen how the state has got more and more in the way of doing simple things when it should have been an enabler. In education, business,   or more generally how the state has tried to provide for its citizens has been what the citizens have seen as the problem.

The Liberal Democrats see the answer to this as reinventing the state not necessarily reducing it as

The liberal endorses an individual’s autonomy unless there is a greater public interest in interfering with that autonomy. And any such interference – whether by legal instrument, the coercion of state power, the intrusion of the press, or the imposition of a value system – should only go as far as is required and should always be open to question and challenge.

- Jack of Kent

There is a feeling that the state interfered too much, hence the Your Freedom project.  But there has been, and remains, too little in how we can question and challenge what the state is doing. The liberal answer would be to build a system that allows for greater individual and community autonomy which also allows for open questioning and challenge. So it is interesting to hear David Cameron’s own words:

You can call it liberalism. You can call it empowerment. You can call it freedom. You can call it responsibility. I call it the Big Society.

The Big Society is about a huge culture change… It’s about liberation –the biggest, most dramatic redistribution of power from elites in Whitehall to the man and woman on the street.

I would argue that this fits into the Liberal tradition and is what the Liberal Democrats have advocated for. Cameron’s problem is that he is in the Conservative party. The risk to his idea is that they will reduce the state too much which will mean it will not be able to enable the people to fulfil their ideas or provide the environment for them to grow. While it seems generally agreed that a smaller state is needed, it is not that we need a smaller state per se, it is that we need a change in the spirit of government which changes the relationship between citizen and government; and it just happens that for this to work the state would need to be smaller.

There are a number of arguments to come in this change, one being to keep the old relationship between citizen and state only become more responsive to citizens’ needs or to change it. Then there is the argument of how to create this change of relationship. The problem is that this is not linear and so we are seeing a confusing picture of the need to have a new settlement and of how to create it at the same time.

Adil Abrar has excellently sketched out his thoughts on this suggesting that we are in the valley of nobody knows at the moment where

The solutions aren’t clear. We’re devising them on the fly. We’re in a valley, everything looks pretty shitty, and we’re going to make huge mistakes, but the answers will come

And it is here that the Liberal tradition has much to offer being a great reforming tradition which can fill this valley of nobody knows.  The Liberal Democrats state in their ‘The Power to be Different’ Policy Paper

At the core of liberal democracy is a belief that individuals should have the greatest possible control over their own lives… We want people and communities to wield real political power on their own behalf, and this means putting people in a position where they can make decisions about services that affect them. We believe that it is the duty of the Government to give people this power.

So it is the Liberal Democrats who should pick up the idea and communicate it effectively, champion those with good initiatives, and offer solutions to the unknown. As the Guardian states

It’s happening already, with dedicated local people – trusted and respected in the community – achieving unbelievably positive social outcomes… If David Cameron can implement policies that will enable more people from all backgrounds to be beneficiaries and deliverers of the big society, Cameronism will truly be an innovative radical approach, not just old-fashioned paternalism.

Nick Clegg has already stated that the Big Society fits with the Liberal Democrats’ idea of society but it would be a great shame for the Lib Dems if the Conservatives to take credit for a liberal idea. Or if indeed the Labour Party take up this idea and run with it as has been suggested by the Guardian. Despite the negativity, hostility and ridicule the Big Society has received it has a great opportunity to be a reform people genuinely believe in and one the Lib Dems have been believed in for a long time. The increase in the vote of the Liberal Democrats over the years fits well with the increase in the number of people who want a change in the relationship between government and its agencies with the citizens. People have been urging a change to a more collaborative relationship for a long time and some states have been looking at how to create this change such as in New Zealand or the USA. As it has been put by some academics

The new generation of public administration will need a different spirit… one that fosters mutual effort. This movement from a ‘they’ spirit’ to a ‘we’ spirit is perhaps the most important mission of public administration in our era.

The Big Society is the Conservatives way of responding to this. However, while the Tories run with the idea there is a risk that the whole idea will be seen as a mask for a way to create an ideologically smaller state, which misses the big idea of the Big Society. If this idea, in whatever form, is not taken up by those who can genuinely reform the relationship between state and citizen then it will be dropped and we miss a great Liberal opportunity.

Blair tells why he felt bureaucracy was the answer to the UK’s problems

Image via Wikipedia

‘Bureaucracy’ has shaped the organisation of the public sector and organisational change has been seen as an important part of the solution to a whole range of problems, including poverty, unemployment, housing, health, and education etc. That is not to say that efforts had not been made previously to address some of these problems, but bureaucracy has been regarded as a far superior organisational model which offered greater efficiency and reliability.

It has not been the establishment of government bureaucracies that has defined much of public policy but the idea that professional and bureaucratic responses (rather than political, personal, or cooperative solutions) were necessary to deal with major societal problems.

As Tony Blair points out

We were saying, forget about complex, institutional structural reforms; what counts is what works, and by that we meant outputs. This was fine as a piece of rhetoric; and positively beneficial as a piece of politics. Unfortunately, as I began to realise when experience started to shape our thinking, it was a bunkum as a piece of policy. The whole point is that structures beget standards. How service is configured affects outcomes 

Which basically what he means is that once the legislative and administrative treatment began, the process of professionalisation and feedback set it, by which the professionals uncovered new problems which demanded further legislative and administrative solutions… and so on. This shows how his progressive idea meant progressively growing an ever expanding bureaucracy to form these structures which he hoped created better outcomes – which never happened.

It is sad that he doesn’t quite get the full picture of what he was doing, much like the time when he had no idea of the effect of his own policy when he was confronted by a voter on national TV during the 2005 election campaign  and then failed to fix it despite saying he would as the bureaucratic system wouldn’t allow it.

The world is changing, information is more available and ‘professional expertise’ itself does not carry the same sort of authority and legitimacy as it might have carried in the past. The bureaucratic arrangements therefore no longer fit the environment of public policy. New Labour and Tony Blair did not get this. David Cameron gets it and so called the Tory manifesto ‘An Invitation to Join the Government of Britain’, but failed to grasp the specific concepts to achieve it.  The Liberal Democrats get this but have not demonstrated a clear commitment to it or communicated what a post-bureaucratic government will look like. As a result, all are coming under increasing pressure to adapt to the new environmental conditions, integrate new holistic framings of societal problems and to respond to the loss of public confidence in government.