Introduction

Renegotiating the roles of citizens and their relationships to public governance have been policy preoccupations of New Labour during its period in office. As Clarke (2005: 447) observes: ‘at different points, citizens have been activated, empowered, and made the subjects of responsibilities as well as rights’. This is not just a New Labour fixation; Cameron's Conservatives have also been interested in the limits of state action and the scope of personal responsibility. Changing local governance, changing citizens brings together recent empirical analyses of this renegotiation in a variety of contexts.

The recent efforts to remodel the citizen–governance relation are part of a long running and evolving agenda (John, this volume). Some of the trends that are contributing to change are long-term – an increasingly diverse and demanding public, the continuing globalisation of the economy and a fracturing of the institutional landscape. Yet, despite the continuities, we would argue that over the last decade policy efforts appear to have intensified and developed a particular character. Across the ideological spectrum, what citizens expect of governance and what governance can expect of citizens are up for grabs.

The chapters in this book all focus empirically on aspects of the attempted renegotiation between public governance and citizens. Inevitably, given the variety of contexts considered, a single consistent picture of changing citizenship fails to appear. Nonetheless, strong connections exist between the various areas discussed, similar questions can be posed and similar pressures are at play. The purposes of this introductory chapter are to briefly situate the subsequent contributions in relation to some key concepts and describe the gap that we believe the book fills.

Changing language, changing practice?

If the language used to talk about public services, governance and citizens is anything to go by there has already been a revolution in the way the state engages with citizens. Communities and citizens are to be empowered as co-producers of public value. Communities must be cohesive, while children and new migrants are understood as almost, but not quite, full citizens. However, the practice sometimes lags behind the language and sometimes our language and concepts do not keep up with changing practice.