Until devolution in 1999, the youth services policy and traditions of England and Wales were the most closely aligned of all the UK nations (Williamson, 2010). Various differences have since unfolded and expanded (King, 2016). In brief, England adopted a more competitive and target-driven approach, while the devolved government in Wales – although experiencing and furthering neoliberal ideas and practices too (Evans et al., 2021) – placed a greater emphasis upon the ideals of social-collectivist provision (Morgan, 2002).

With this as backdrop, this article will extend analysis of cross-national youth policy divergence in the post-devolution period. To do this it will delimit its focus to matters of governance, specifically legislative and board frameworks for key policy programmes during the 2007-2022 period. It will argue that the dominant rules and patterns of governance in Wales acted as an – incomplete and partial – barrier to the ‘roll out’ neoliberalisation that was being accelerated in England. After exploring these developments, this article will then discuss the commonalities across the two nations for the envisioning of governance.

Youth Policy Contexts and Background Research

This article emerges from a wider, and ongoing, research programme of cross-national youth policy developments, including from 2007 through to 2022. During this period, with rapid early growth – though with later contraction – the National Citizen Service (NCS) became England’s flagship national youth programme, and the funding of this expansion was typically experienced as occurring at the expense of the pre-established Youth Service of local authorities and the voluntary sector (e.g. see Local Government Association, 2020). While deep cuts occurred and an ‘austerian realist’ disposition was adopted across localities in both nations (Davies & Blanco, 2017), in Wales prioritisation was given to maintaining the pre-established Youth Service (Welsh Assembly Government, 2007) and the NCS was rejected (Jenkins, 2016).

This article is based upon a first wave of research conducted during the pandemic. It investigated the conditions and outcomes of variegated and contested neoliberalisation (Brenner et al., 2010; Geddes & Sullivan, 2011), alongside institutional and professional agency within the youth services sector. This focus on neoliberalisation concerns how ‘market-based logics and practices… are dialectically internalized and generated in particular social regimes’ (Phelan, 2014, p. 57), but also how this process is contested. As well as local variations, there are wider commonalities to neoliberalisation processes including the ‘destructive (or roll back)’ and ‘creative (or roll out) phases’ (Peck et al., 2018, p. 14). To operationalise this research, a case-based strategy was adopted, with the NCS in England and the Youth Service in Wales selected as (contrasting) national policy programmes that framed service partnerships at regional and local levels. An archive of case documents, a pool of 32 case-related images, and a set of semi-structured interview transcripts were developed. As part of this first wave of research, selected images on governance were shared and discussed with 8 of the interviewees from English and Welsh policy and practice settings, including practitioners, managers and policy advocates.

Analysis of case data was applied using a logics-based nodal framework (Glynos et al., 2015). This led to a focus on the ‘nodes’ of service provision, distribution, delivery and governance within each case. The nodes – such as governance – were then analysed for their social, political and fantasmatic logics:

1. Social logics are the dominant rules and patterns (whether neoliberal or other) within each case, and projected social logics denotes the envisioning – typically with a broad consensus – to further amend them.
2. Political counter-logics refers here to deeper contestations and dividing lines, notably with resistances and counter-visions to dominant (and neoliberalised) arrangements
3. Fantasmatic logics refers here to those ideas and practices that cloak dominant (and neoliberalised) arrangements as fixed and unchallengeable.

These logics are the units of critical explanation (Glynos & Howarth, 2007). It is through analysis of their respective logics of governance that this article will explore key points of divergence and convergence across the cases.

Dominant Rules and Patterns of Governance

Images A and B are selected and used here as visualisations of dominant governance arrangements within each case.

(Image A: NCS Board)

Firstly, Image A is a full-page profile of the NCS Board from a business plan. It provides portrait photographs with names and titles of board members, indicating their respective backgrounds and roles. The timing of this image – from 2021 – provides insight into the direction of travel of NCS governance arrangements in England. Once put on a ‘permanent statutory footing’ in 2017, its provision and private-voluntary partnerships were overseen by the NCS Trust (previously a Community Interest Company) now a Royal Charter body (NCS, 2020a, p. 8). A new Board of Directors was appointed by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) ‘on merit on the basis of fair and open competition’ (NCS, 2020a, p.13). Additionally, the rules from DCMS and NCS Trust (2023) were to recruit members with ‘a balance of skills and experience appropriate to directing NCST’s business’ (p. 15).

When Image A was shared with a staff member from the NCS network, they pointed out that extra steps had been taken to add ‘diversity of voice into that space, and to get more insight from the youth sector… and the inclusion of the two youth voice reps is a relatively recent development’. Meanwhile, after observing Image A, a youth charity manager noted that there were ‘a lot of people from the financial sector’ on the board. This person also commented upon how the board was ‘visually represented’. It appeared:

as some sort of hierarchy, and that’s problematic… all those guys then at the top – in the main, but not entirely white fellas – all taking up… potentially the higher part of the hierarchy. And then the women and the people of colour – by and large – are down, lower down the rankings there, and I don’t know if that’s just coincidental… subliminally it sort of speaks to perhaps people’s positions within the organisation and the value of those people, and where the power is.

Indeed, this image can be unpicked in various ways including in relation to age, gender, ethnicity, class or youth sector representation. However, it is also selected here as a visualisation of a dominant social logic of incorporating private sector actors into youth sector governance. A tally of all 14 profiles (including youth representatives, executive and non-executive members) indicates there are a majority of market-based profiles. The boards of other years (NCS 2019, 2020b, 2022), also indicate a wider pattern for entrenchment of market-based perspectives. Roots to this social logic can also be discerned in the Conservative Party’s (2007) early proposals to integrate – from the outset – figures from the private sector within NCS governance channels and its ‘working groups’ (p. 22). Additionally, Image A lends insight into an ideological position – and policy-making assumption – that trust and expertise within governance is best advanced through commercial leadership. This ideology could be characterised as a fantasmatic logic, one that cloaks the contingency and non-fixity of this form of neoliberalised governance while also obscuring the possibility of alternative arrangements.

(Image B: Board Recruitment in Wales, Welsh Government, 2022)

Secondly, Image B is from a cover to an information pack for applicants to the Youth Work Strategy Implementation Board. The timing of this image – from 2022 – provides insight into the direction of travel of the (contrasting) governance arrangements for the Youth Service in Wales. The legislative basis for such youth provision is through the Learning and Skills Act 2000, and there is a state-voluntary partnership that is the remit of the Welsh Education Minister. From 2007, governance structures developed through a national strategy unit within the Welsh Government, and with various ministerial advisory boards. Image B is thus about recruitment to the most recent iteration of these boards.

This board – as well as its remit to work towards implementing a set of earlier recommendations (Interim Youth Work Board [IYWB], 2021) – is set within a separate legislative and policy framework to that of the NCS. Also, in contrast to the composition of the NCS Board, the recruitment in Wales was being made with direct reference to ‘expertise in and understanding of statutory and voluntary youth work provision’ (i.e. an essential criterion in the applicant pack). Public trust was to be generated with board members required to have a sound knowledge and understanding of youth work (e.g. through lived and/or a professional experience), in conjunction with recruitment guided by principles and standards for public life, and commitments to diversity and the Welsh language (all listed in the applicant pack). Image B thus provides a visualisation of a dominant social logic of incorporating youth work expertise into governance bodies. Trust is premised less upon the corporate expertise and status of market-based actors, and more upon field expertise as well as public standards, diversity and cultural context.

Conditions Shaping the Differing Outcomes

Broadly, the conditions that have shaped the differing outcomes in governance for each case include:

1. Different legislative and institutional frameworks for the respective youth policy developments of these two nations;
2. Different political cultures and political ideals of the key political parties that have been influential in overseeing national youth policy developments in each nation; and
3. Different approaches towards collaboration of the state with professional youth work discourse and the wider youth work field in each nation.

The respective conditions in England (e.g. UK Cabinet Office and DCMS-led policy frameworks, Conservative-led ideals such as the Big Society, and a significant marginalisation by the state of youth work discourse and the youth work profession) have all contributed to the marketisation of NCS governance. Meanwhile the conditions in Wales (e.g. devolved youth policy frameworks, Welsh Labour-led ideals such as civic municipal socialism, and more active collaboration of the state with youth work actors) have contributed to the prioritisation of governance with the wider youth work field and through building upon professional youth work frameworks and expertise. Within such conditions, a ‘roll out’ phase of neoliberalisation has been more acute in England’s youth sector, and it has faced stronger barriers within the Welsh context.

Envisioning for the Future of Governance

Just as the varied conditions in each national context have contributed to differing outcomes for governance, they have also shaped differing spaces for agency – institutional and professional – that emerge in the resulting situations.

Firstly, the conditions in Wales contribute to envisioning and advocacy being channelled into the dominant national policy frameworks. For example, Jervis (2018) recommended that a ‘National Body for Youth Provision should be established’, as it was felt there had been an ‘unhelpful vacuum’ since the demise of the Wales Youth Agency in 2006 (p. 20). The IYWB (2021) made a similar recommendation for ‘a national body for youth work services’, as ‘no national organisation exists to lead, coordinate, champion and develop youth work services in Wales’ (p. 14). There have also been calls for extra legislation. The IYWB (2021) proposed, for example, a Youth Work Wales Act to address matters such as the definition, scope, entitlements, infrastructure, funding and governance of youth work services in Wales (pp. 10-12). An interviewee, from a voluntary sector organisation, commented on the need ‘to strengthen the legislative base for youth work in Wales’ and to ‘strengthen the understanding and access… to that provision’ as a ‘right’. Thus, the more widely accepted envisioning – the projected social logics – for governance in the Welsh context include a new legislative base and a new permanent body for youth work services. These are now ‘priorities’ of the Minister (Miles, 2023).

Secondly, the conditions in England result in differing spaces of agency, including counter-hegemonic strategies (e.g. Choose Youth, 2013; In Defence of Youth Work, 2018; YMCA, 2020). The collaboration between the state and the youth work field was not occurring, to the same extent, in England as it was in Wales. Nevertheless, there remain significant parallels to the envisioning across both nations. Choose Youth (2013) called for a strengthened national body (and funder) of youth work, and a proposal for such a body (to be within the Department of Education) was included within the Labour Party’s (2019) Only Young Once paper. This alternative visioning can be characterised as a more radical challenge to the current arrangements (i.e. a political counter-logic). According to an English youth work campaigner, members of a strengthened national body would be:

representative of the field, which will be representative of the trainers, of local authority and voluntary sector deliverers, of youth workers themselves, and of young people. And, if you want a good, effective educational delivery mechanism you choose the people who know most about the work and do it… you’ve got to have some synergy between what is delivered and who is managing it.

While statutory powers already existed for local authorities ‘to secure positive activities for young people’ and to consult with young people in England, Choose Youth (2013) have long campaigned for new powers that go beyond this. With parallels to the calls for stronger legislation in Wales, there have been imaginings for a new Youth Act for England (Youth [Services and Provisions] Bill 2017-19). When positioned as an alternative trajectory to the NCS legislative and policy framework that became dominant in England during the 2010s, such envisioning can also be characterised as a more radical – and oppositional – political counter-logic.

Conclusion: Looking Forward

Overall, this article has contributed to analysis of divergence, and commonalities, in cross-national youth policy. While the contextual conditions and governance outcomes have differed across the national policy frameworks under analysis, parallels have been identified in the substance of envisioning for future governance. Looking forward, while recalibrations occur to the NCS and the wider youth sector after the English youth review (DCMS, 2022), a challenge for the new Labour Government (2024-) is to learn, not only from their own Only Young Once paper and sector envisioning in England, but also from the collaborative approach to youth work policy-making in Wales. Meanwhile in Wales, as recognised by successive education ministers, there is the challenge of how the state – with the wider youth work field – moves towards the imaginary of a world-class youth work service. Thus far, while not guaranteed, the Welsh experience is suggesting an alternative and other-than neoliberal model of governance could be possible.