Decline of the Public: The Hollowing Out of CitizenshipISBN: 978-0-7456-2910-0
Paperback
176 pages
March 2004, Polity
This is a Print-on-Demand title. It will be printed specifically to fill your order. Please allow an additional 10-15 days delivery time. The book is not returnable.
Other Available Formats: Hardcover
|
--Will Hutton, Columnist, Observer Newspaper
'A profound analysis of the decline of the public realm and the
growth of unaccountable government in Britain. The summation of a
life's work by one of Britain's leading political thinkers.'
--John Gray, The London School of Economics
The public domain of citizenship, equity and service is crucial
for individual fulfilment and social well-being. But it has been
under attack for thirty years – first from the market
fundamentalists of the New Right, and then from their New Labour
imitators. The results are everywhere – resource-starved
public services; the marketization of the public sector; the
soul-destroying targets and audits that go with it; the denigration
of professionalism and the professional ethic; and the erosion of
public trust. More damaging still are the hollowing out of
citizenship, the manipulative populism that now pervades British
government and a slide towards a new version of the 'Old
Corruption' that our Victorian ancestors thought they had
banished.
David Marquand traces the growth of the public domain from
Gladstone to Attlee, analyses the forces that began to undermine it
in its post-war heyday and exposes the campaign that the Thatcher
and Blair governments have waged against it. He ends with a call
for a counter-attack, based on a re-statement of the civic ideal in
a twenty-first century idiom.
This book will appeal to all those who take an interest in current political events as well as those studying politics and social policy.