The Citizen Perspective

Abstract

At the heart of the consumerist citizenship regime is preference accom-modation: public services are remade around the subjective preferences of users, and other perspectives are downgraded or delegitimised. The previous chapters show dominant themes of preference accommodation in the way that policy actors in central and local government talk about public services. The authenticity of individual experiences of service use is given primacy, and public service reformers have focused on adapting services to better meet the subjective needs of their users. Although earlier reformers such as the Fabians were unashamed preference-shapers (Clarke et al, 1987), such approaches are now rejected as paternalistic, and reformers debate what the preferences of the public actually are, not what they should be. As Chapters 6 and 7 show, the New Labour approach to public service reform is premised on the assumption that the public demand personalised public services, of a standard they experience in the private sector, leaving a democratic government with no alternative but to provide this as far as possible. Opponents of consumerised public services have responded by marshalling data to show that the public do not want the kinds of personalised, choice-based forms of social production that New Labour is offering — or at least do not want them if something else is on offer. Thus public attitudes to the consumerisation of public services have become the central battleground for reformers.