For some this will be profoundly problematic. After a decade of what one of Tony Blair's advisers once called "deliverology", this is entirely understandable. But the turn from an overwhelming centralisation must not be diluted by an inadvertent and uncritical re-adoption of the Blairite mantra of "what works". A consistent ethic rooted in "what matters" need not undermine extraordinary civic variety but would ground the development of stronger societies more enduringly. Indeed, it could unleash and affirm a spirit of social and civic innovation and a moral crusade to protect human rights abroad where they are at their most fragile. For this opportunity to work, the Big Society needs soon to cease being the vision of the government alone, to move beyond a primarily domestic social policy focus, and mutate at speed into the kernel of a new social and civic settlement for our times. 

Outside the public-sector trade unions, the exhaustion of the idea of the traditional Keynesian hierarchical welfare state should be assumed to be a self-evident truth. Talk with activists and councillors of all parties and charities, though, and that assumption is not entirely automatic. Charities complain that they "do not want to do the State's job" by lifting volunteering levels, as though State and market duties are these days entirely clear. The inherent difficulty of this view could be illustrated, were one to describe cooking a hamburger at home, as doing "McDonalds's job". Even among scholars of British voluntary action, the weight of the UK research tradition has been centred on defining "the sectors" of State, charity and market, their proper — and inalienable? — spheres of activity, rather than on developing habits that inspire and sustain true civic health in a vibrant civil society. Rather as Chinese leaders are reported sometimes to forget their communism and revert to seeing China through the lenses of great stories of former days told by their parents, so even modern civic leaders, and many of us citizens, are hardwired to lean back to bureaucracy. Keynesianism may be dead in theory but it lingers on powerfully and tenaciously in our cultural reflexes and conversation.

A first priority for accelerating a new social settlement, then, is to be entirely clear that the Big Society represents a considerable break with the recent past. If it is to gain depth and widespread societal "buy-in", it needs to affirm that at its core is an aspiration that citizens will reclaim from bureaucracies a raft of rights and duties stolen from them. Consequently, while currently planned initiatives are laudable, they will take on greater long-term significance if accompanied by an additional effort to transform the language with which we talk about civic change. There is a gauntlet to be thrown down here that challenges the UK voluntary sector and businesses to think beyond a dependency on the State and towards a robust independence. That challenge could equally be made to international non-governmental organisations whose regular claims to "ethical" status need to be tested further against both their own possible bureaucratisation by multinational funding streams and their ability consistently to enhance human rights. Just as small businesses have had to emerge from the ashes of industries no longer sustainable on British soil, so new social institutions must be founded to carve out a fresh charitable landscape. And a new "Venture State" could lend a hand. 

For starters, every government department should have "innovators in residence", their remit being to spin out functions, knowledge and insights of state into new businesses and social enterprise, rather as universities such as Cambridge and Southampton have excelled in commercialising their activities. The Treasury could accelerate this process by linking some resource allocations, even beyond the Comprehensive Review settlement, to the speed with which chunks of bureaucracies are returned to civic control. This would not be a "plan" to change but a competition.

While new technologies will assist in this process, an inspiring vision of a new welfare consensus that goes beyond bureaucracy would greatly increase the chance of providing a compelling and convincing civic settlement. Indeed, it is notable that the government's hopes for a national social action day, larger social enterprise banks and networks of community organisers to provoke new volunteering have sometimes, elsewhere in the world, been achieved without state funding but through intensely creative partnership between business and charities. How could a new language facilitate equivalent initiatives in every locality here? How might new civic energy be unlocked? In addition to building new institutions, we will almost certainly have to bring others in from the cold who in recent times have felt shunned, especially by the media.