The Mediation of Poverty by Redden Joanna;

Author:Redden, Joanna;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic
Published: 2012-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

One infamous event illustrates the focus New Labour placed on media, noted in the above comment. After the 1997 election, Peter Mandelson and Alastair Campbell are reported to have brought together all of the heads of government information departments and to have told them that New Labour planned to put government communications at the heart of policy making (Oborne, 1999). Sir Christopher Foster, a former senior UK civil servant who worked under Major and Blair, argues that Campbell and Blair’s reliance on “new policy initiatives as the best source of good news” led to too many and an unmanageable number of initiatives (2005, p. 184-185). He argues that part of the unmanageability resulted from the fact that the initiatives were often not well thought through, and interest in them died once news coverage was achieved. As argued by Couldry, this type of media-driven policy development serves to reinforce greater centralization as policy initiatives emanate from the center of government, and it also works against potentials for political debate and deliberation (2010, p. 84). In terms of poverty, this type of policy development means that in the determination of what type of policy is developed, anticipated news response is just as important as anticipated policy outcomes.

The centralization of power is also happening in Canada. As argued by Russell, there has been a “tremendous centralization of power” and “control of government and policy” in the Prime Minister’s Office (2009). As in the UK, one of the major concerns is the number of policy initiatives, directives, and controls emanating from the Prime Minister’s Office which is staffed by political appointees whose main goal is the political success of the prime minister over and above any long-term policy outcomes (Russell, 2009; Martin, 2010). While the centralization of politics and policy limits policy debates, the speeding-up of the legislative process is also constraining the amount of debate possible on legislation. As one Canadian politician observed:

It used to be that holding extensive committee meetings on a government bill was not only expected but they were comprehensive, there was a legitimate and genuine interest in what people had to say, there was a belief that the committee process would and could improve legislation. And governments didn't see such amendments as an attack on their ability to govern. But now, certainly on parliament hill, if there's a government bill the object of the game is to get it in and out as fast as you possibly can. If it’s a majority government then no amendments will be entertained even when some of the errors in the legislations are really egregious (Politician B, Aug. 2013).

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