Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- one Introduction
- two Citizenship
- three Information
- four Social democracy and information
- five The New Right and information
- six New Labour and information
- seven Case study A: In-work benefits for low wage earners
- eight Case study B: Means-tested benefits for older people
- nine Information for citizenship?
- References
- Appendix A Government expenditure on publicity for social security benefits (1973-98/99)
- Appendix B Sample leaflets and posters
- Index
- Also available from The Policy Press
Foreword
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 January 2022
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Foreword
- Preface
- List of abbreviations
- one Introduction
- two Citizenship
- three Information
- four Social democracy and information
- five The New Right and information
- six New Labour and information
- seven Case study A: In-work benefits for low wage earners
- eight Case study B: Means-tested benefits for older people
- nine Information for citizenship?
- References
- Appendix A Government expenditure on publicity for social security benefits (1973-98/99)
- Appendix B Sample leaflets and posters
- Index
- Also available from The Policy Press
Summary
This volume by Penny Leonard is a critical account of a research study into the relationship between information and citizenship. There are, it seems to me, three dimensions in which this book adds to the literature on citizenship and the welfare state and extends our understanding.
In the first place, Penny Leonard's study explores the contours of active citizenship – viewing citizenship not simply as a set of rights granted to the individual by the state but rather as an interactive concept. For her, citizenship is only fully achieved if citizens are empowered to participate in the definition of those rights and in their implementation.
Second, the study carefully considers, making use of primary material provided by policy makers at all levels, professionals and citizens, the extent to which the prospect of active citizenship is enhanced, or diminished, by the availability, nature and scope of information about rights.
Third, the study considers the ways in which traditional ‘Marshall-type’ literature on citizen rights are deficient in the aspiration to create a rightsbased welfare state. Traditionally, citizenship theorists had seen the achievement of citizenship as something dependent solely on government intervention in the economy and the social fabric of UK society.
Following the Second World War and the election of a Labour government in 1945, the Party set about creating a reasoned and moral case for social democracy, defined here as a set of political ideas that suggest that the goal of socialism is achievable through the means of parliamentary democracy. The chief architect of this case was the late Tony Crosland – initially an Oxford politics don and later a Labour politician. His arguments, made most cogently in The future of socialism (1956) and The conservative enemy (1952a), suggested that the creation, inter alia, of a post-war welfare state had civilised UK capitalism and had transformed it from a system that required social and economic inequality into one where the achievement of greater equality and social justice were both desirable and possible:
… while capitalism has not collapsed as a result of internal contradictions, it is possible to see a transformation of capitalism occurring. Since 1945, capitalism has been undergoing a metamorphosis into a different system. (Crosland, 1952b, p 34)
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Promoting Welfare?Government Information Policy and Social Citizenship, pp. vi - viiiPublisher: Bristol University PressPrint publication year: 2003