Decoding third sector electoral politics: the shaping of the agenda and getting heard in the 2010 general election’

Abstract

Following a period of unprecedented success in policy support from the Labour Government, the uncertain outcome of the 2010 General Election marked a potential watershed for the third sector and required a new kind of engagement if community and voluntary organisations were to maintain political leverage over the longer-term. Hence the sector took a long-term approach to the election, with third sector organisations engaging in political lobbying and manifesto production for a sustained period before the anticipated onset of purdah. This paper draws upon qualitative interviews with key policy players around the time of the election and documentary analysis to consider the relative success of the sector’s methods, measured in terms of policy representation in the political parties’ manifestos and inclusion in the public campaigning agenda once the election was declared. This mapping is complicated by the three main political parties using very different language to talk about the third sector, a difference which reflects ideological differences in how they see its role. It is argued that it is essential to unpick these discourses to understand the story of how an apparently high degree of consensus on sectoral politics actually represented very different attitudes to its future functions

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ORCID for Jane Parry: orcid.org/0000-0001-7101-2517

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