Conclusion: Coproducing Public Services

Abstract

The government-citizen relationship at a given point in time is constitutive of a particular kind of citizenship regime. Governments use narratives to develop a solution set containing assumptions about the roles that government and citizen should play in that regime. Content analysis offers one way to make sense of and compare these narratives. The approach taken here used keyword searching to assess the narratives of public services contained in Blair’s speeches, central government command papers and local corporate plans. Interview data from central and local government were also used to highlight how policymakers engage with aspects of the solution set. Quantitative and qualitative public opinion data were examined to explore how members of the public perceive and compare expectations and experiences of public and private services.