Is Cameron Conservatism just a set of attitudes, or is it a political theory? This is the unspoken question behind quite a lot of the more intellectual commentary over the past 18 months of Conservative revival.

The question therefore deserves an answer. And the answer is that Cameron Conservatism, so far from being merely a set of attitudes, has a specific theoretical agenda. It aims to achieve two significant paradigm-shifts.

First, a shift from an econocentric paradigm to a sociocentric paradigm. Secondly, a shift in the theory of the State from a provision-based paradigm to a framework-based paradigm.

It all goes back to Marx. Before Marx, politics was multidimensional – constitutional, social, environmental as well as economic. Marx changed all that. After Marx, socialists defended socialism and free marketeers defended capitalism. For both sides, the centrepiece of the debate was the system of economic management. Politics became econocentric.

But, as we begin the 21st century, things have changed. Since Margaret Thatcher, and despite recurrences of something like full-blooded socialism in Latin America, the capitalist/ socialist debate has in general ceased to dominate modern politics. From Beijing to Brussels, the free market has won the battle of economic ideas.

If the free market is a matter of consensus, the debate must change its nature. Instead of arguing about systems of economic management, we have to discuss how to make better lives out of the prosperity that the free market generates.

The first theoretical advance (the first paradigm shift) of Cameron Conservatism is to see that fact clearly – to refocus the debate, to change the terms of political trade, to ask a different set of questions. Politics – once econocentric – must now become sociocentric.

But Cameron Conservatism is also an attempt to shift the theory of the State from a provision-based paradigm to a framework-based paradigm. The provision-theory of the modern State is the successor to socialism in the postMarxist era. It is the essence of Gordon Brown’s version of new Labour.

The provision-theory accepts the free market as the engine of economic growth. But, just as Clause Four socialism once saw the State as the proper provider of goods and services through ownership of the means of production, so the provision-theorists of Brownian new Labour see the central State not only as the funder but also as the proper provider of public services. They also see the central State as the only possible guarantor of wellbeing through direction and control.

The tell-tale marks of provision-theory are to be seen in much of the record of the last ten years – the targets and directives, the reorganisations, schemes and initiatives. Direct government intervention has been brought – with the best of intentions, though often with notable lack of success – to bear on schools and hospitals, police officers and neighbourhoods, local authorities and universities. The State has been seen as the source of enlightened social action, just as it was once seen as the source of enlightened economic action.

The Cameron Conservative framework-theory of the State is fundamentally different. It takes the same place in the sociocentric debate of the 21st century that free market theory once took before it triumphed in, and outdated, the econocentric debate of the 20th century.

The framework theory of the modern State sees government as having two basic roles: to guarantee the stability and security upon which, by common consent, both the free market and wellbeing depend; and, much more controversially, to establish a framework of support and incentive that enables and induces individuals and organisations to act in ways that fulfil not merely their own self-interested ambitions but also their wider social responsibilities.

It is in emphasising this second duty of government that Cameron Conservatism distinguishes itself radically from Brownian new Labour.

Cameron Conservatism puts no faith in central direction and control. Instead, it seeks to identify social and environmental responsibilities that participants in the free market are likely to neglect, and then establish frameworks that will lead people and organisations to act of their own volition in ways that will improve society by increasing general wellbeing.

The intuitions about human nature that underpin this framework-theory of the modern State are unsurprisingly the same as the intuitions about human nature that underpinned free market theory in 20th-century econocentric politics.

The first intuition is that human enterprise, initiative, vocation and morale are the things that lead to progress and sustainable success in the socioenvironmental sphere, just as in the economic sphere.

The second, allied intuition is that command and control systems eventually fall under their own weight because they stifle enterprise, initiative, vocation and morale.

And the third intuition is that a framework that leads people to fulfil their social responsibilities of their own volition in their own ways is a much more powerful engine for sustained socioenvironmental success than direct government control.

Will the framework-theory based on these liberal conservative intuitions come in time to win the battle of ideas in sociocentric politics as comprehensively as its precursor, liberal conservative free market theory, did in the old econocentric political debates?

It is too early to tell. But one thing is clear. Cameron Conservatives have both an analysis of the nature of 21st-century politics and a theory of the role of the modern State. To win a battle of ideas is always a hard task. But having an idea is certainly a good starting point.

Oliver Letwin is chairman of the Policy Review and of the Conservative Research Department

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