In Britain, polls show large majorities in favour of mansion taxes and higher taxes on the finance sector.
— Geoff Mulgan
Governments should want and even crave the best possible scientific advice. With reliable knowledge come better decisions, fewer mistakes and more results achieved for each pound spent.
States which used to communicate directly to their citizens now do so through the media, where their messages are reshaped by the logics of news values and commentary.
I can think of nothing worse than a think-tank where everybody agreed.
A lot of people in government don't really read books at all.
I have a lot of admiration for people willing to face the public, but I'd prefer not to.
Europe has shown how government can be organised in a network. Its institutions both compete and co-operate and include a directly elected parliament that does not appoint the executive, independent judiciaries and a complex set of relationships between the Commission, the Council of Ministers and the Parliament.
The idea of entrepreneurship applies as much in politics, religion, society and the arts as it does in business.
The really interesting moment will be when you have a critical mass of people engaging through the networks, more than through the press and TV. When that happens, the culture of politics has to change, moving away from controlled one-way messages towards a political culture that is more questioning.
A tablet replacing an exercise book is not innovation, it's just a different way to make notes.
The City of London has never been known for understanding technology and has never matched Silicon Valley's tradition of knowledgeable investment in technology start-ups, just as the U.K. government has never matched the vast investment made by the U.S. government.
Advisers who think that they are very clever while all around them are a bit thick, and that all the problems of the world would be solved if the thick listened to the clever, are liable to be disappointed.
The responsibility for good government lies not just with governments themselves but also with every other part of the system they operate in, including media, non-governmental organisations and the public.
Over 5,000 years, states have made surprisingly consistent claims about their duties. They have promised to protect people from threats; promote their welfare; deliver justice and also, perhaps less obviously, uphold truth - originally truths about the cosmos, and more recently truths drawn from reason and knowledge.
Recycling is an area where jobs could be created at low cost. Green collar workers. That's not very sexy.
Democracy isn't solely about polite conversations in parliaments. It needs to be continually refreshed with raw passions, anger and ideals.
Most governments do have inbuilt biases in favour of the rich and powerful, and most do contain plenty of manipulators who love intrigue, who have lost whatever moral compass they may once have had and who protect themselves with steely cynicism.
Democratic nation states remain far more capable of managing the circuit of coercion, taxation and legitimation than any transnational bodies.
All real capitalisms are impure hybrids, mongrels mixed with other strains.
As with products on supermarket shelves, the public has a right to know where their financial products and services come from.
There is a yearning for people to return to elementary moral virtues, such as integrity and commitment. We distrust people who have no centering of values. We greatly respect businessmen, for example, if they display those virtues, even if we don't necessarily agree with the people.
Many of the greatest composers and musicians do their best work in extreme confinement but we are seeing it in other fields - uses of technology to link people together in networks to solve problems and almost certainly we'll get better ideas than we would from them just doing it on their own.
As a civil servant in charge of the government's Strategy Unit, I brought in many people from outside government, including academia and science, to work in the unit, dissecting and solving complex problems from GM crops to alcohol, nuclear proliferation to schools reform.
Vigorous independent and critical media are indispensable in a democracy.
I didn't much like being in Parliament physically. I found it a bit depressing. It's very dark and heavy. I like being out and about.
The classic think-tank is supposed to be sitting in an attic thinking up grand ideas.
On the environment and climate change, I suspect that future generations will think there was too much timidity, too much fear of upsetting business. Basically, New Labour was very nervous about regulating business, or requiring it to do anything, even when there was a very clear social or environmental case for doing so.
It matters more how governments behave than how big they are.
The market turns out to be just one special case of collective decision-making.
Capitalism is not so much an aberration as a step on an evolutionary path, and one that contains within it some of the answers to its own contradictions.
There is incredible potential for digital technology in and beyond the classroom, but it is vital to rethink how learning is organised if we are to reap the rewards.
People don't want charities to usurp the state as the core provider of social services.
Lots of creativity is and should be solitary.
