What Kind of ’Big Government’ is the Big Society? A Reply to Bulley and Sokhi-Bulley

This article is a reply to Bulley and Sokhi-Bulley's recent article on the Big Society. We put forward two main criticisms of Bulley and Sokhi-Bulley's governmentality-focused approach in our alternative reading of the Big Society. Firstly, we argue that, given the ethopolitical strategies Bulley and Sokhi-Bulley focus their attention on are unlikely to produce the kind of transformation in the ethical outlook of citizens they suppose, the real historical significance of the Big Society must lie elsewhere. Secondly, we argue that Bulley and Sokhi-Bulley overlook the lines of continuity and discontinuity linking the Big Society to the forms of neo-liberal governmentality that have preceded it in British politics. In the final section of the article, we argue that the Cameron project amounts to both a partial continuation of the type of neo-liberal governmental rationality characteristic of the New Labour project and a partial reversion to a more rudimentary Thatcherite form of neo-liberal governmentality.