In July 2009, David Cameron launched the Conservative party's new international aid agenda with a distinctly One Nation feel to it, under the title of One World Conservatism. The phrase has rarely reappeared despite it being one of the defining features of the modern Conservative party. David Cameron has adopted an internationalist stance in a globalised world.
The most prominent policy is international aid. The coalition government has pledged to spend 0.7 per cent of GNP on aid by 2013, meaning a £12.6 billion budget for Dfid by 2015, in order to achieve the UN Millennium Development Goals. The Conservative party is encouraging the spread of international aid organisations, NGOs and numerous pressure groups which now constitute what some are calling 'international civil society'. David Cameron's International Citizen Service seems to reinforce this idea. However, international aid is also being used to boost economic growth by investing in infrastructure, training, roads, railways, internet and microfinance projects.
Global free trade is another important policy. David Cameron has been promoting freer trade since becoming Prime Minister by going on ambitious trade missions to Turkey, India and China - the latter the biggest British trade delegation since before the Opium Wars - and also calling for the WTO's Doha trade round to be completed. And earlier this year, Mr Cameron addressed the Pan African University in Lagos, Nigeria, where he said that African nations need to establish an 'African Tree Trade Area' and to increase trade with the developed world.
Climate change is another issue that has been central to Mr Cameron's modernising agenda since the famous huskie photo shoot in Norway and the 'Vote Blue, Go Green' slogan for the 2006 local elections. A fair amount has been done at the national level but ultimately a unilateral decarbonisation by the UK will not avert the worst affects of climate change. The EU produces 14 per cent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions. So David Cameron has embraced the EU Emissions Trading Scheme and a UK carbon price floor. To paraphrase a former Prime Minister, a global problem like climate change needs global solutions.
There is also a slight neo-conservative streak at the moment at the head of the Conservative party. The main neocons in the current Cabinet are the Chancellor, George Osborne, the Defence Secretary, Dr Liam Fox, and the Education Secretary, Michael Gove. In 2007, Mr Gove wrote Celsius 7/7, a book warning about the West's appeasement of fundamentalist terror. These politicians believe that the UK has a vital role to play in the global spread of liberal democracy and peace, and that at times force can be necessary to secure it. David Cameron is not a neocon but he shares some sentiments, hence his decision to deploy our armed forces in Libya, the continued commitment to Afghanistan, calls for sanctions on Syria, and support for pro-democracy movements in Egypt, Tunisia and elsewhere.
Nonetheless, David Cameron's interventionist instincts are tempered by his belief in the power and legitimacy of multilateral institutions. The World Bank, the IMF, and the WTO are viewed as significant sources of international capital and expertise for developing countries and for trade liberalisation. Likewise, Mr Cameron wants to see the EU become more influential in advancing free trade, reducing poverty and tackling climate change. Hence the desire to reform the Common Agricultural Policy, which shuts out developing world producers from Europe's wealthiest markets. Moreover, after New Labour's foreign wars, David Cameron prefers to have greater UN involvement in intervention and peacekeeping, borne out by the action in Libya.
Yet so far, 'One World Conservatism' has failed to focus sufficiently on the crucial prerequisite for development: institutions.
In his book The Cash Nexus, the historian Niall Ferguson outlines what these necessary institutions are: a professional bureaucracy for tax collection; a representative government to enforce a transparent budgetary process, private property rights, and the rule of law; proper management of national debt; and stable management of a currency by a national bank.
Without these sorts of institutions forming in developing countries, 'One World Conservatism' cannot succeed.