An important part of this book’s context has been the introduction to the UK of the 1998 Human Rights Act (which incorporates into UK law the provisions of the European Convention on Human Rights) and, in the global context, the new relevance attached to the language of human rights. At the same time that human rights have been moving up the political agenda, policy makers of the so-called ‘third way’ have been insisting, on the one hand, that we can have no rights without responsibilities, while implying, on the other, that we cannot be properly responsible if we allow ourselves to be dependent – and dependent on the state, especially. This paradox represents an ethical conundrum with significant consequences for the future of welfare provision.

This book explores and discusses, therefore, the relationship between concepts of responsibility and discourses of rights on the one hand, and the ways in which rights are to be understood in relation to human dependency and interdependency on the other. It investigates how emergent discourses of human rights may change the ways in which the welfare state and its future are envisaged. It also aims, however, to kick-start a new kind of debate about the moral foundations of social policy and welfare reform. Although a significant amount of scholarship has been devoted to the discussion of citizenship and welfare, it has not been directly concerned with the contested ethical nexus that links dependency, responsibility and rights.

The book is in substantial part an outcome from a UK-based research project funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). That project centred upon an interview-based study that explored popular and welfare provider discourses as they impinge upon questions of dependency, responsibility and rights. Additionally, some chapters of this book draw upon analyses of policy and governmental documents or texts, analyses that were conducted or written up in direct conjunction with the interview study.

Additional material has been drawn from papers given at a conference of the European Social Policy Research Network entitled ‘Social values, social policies: Normative foundations of changing social policies in European countries’, held at the University of Tilburg (the Netherlands), 29-30 August 2002.