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Citizen-consumers By Catherine Needham A Catalyst Working Paper. Nothing is more fundamental to the New Labour project than a declared ambition to reconnect people and politics, reinvigorating democratic engagement and rebuilding popular support for public service provision. But the government-citizen relationship is increasingly being reforged along consumerist lines, a pattern evident in Labour's communications techniques, consultation methods, and approach to public sector reform. Catherine Needham argues that this is both a philosophical and strategic error that will ultimately benefit neither voters and service users, nor government itself. A privatised and depoliticised model of the "citizen-consumer" excludes the collective determination of a shared public good that must provide the basis for any new social democratic settlement. Catherine Needham is researching the government-citizen relationship under New Labour at Nuffield College, Oxford and is a Research Associate with Catalyst.
"Happy Days?" - Renewal, Summer 2003 "Consuming Passions" - The Economist, 10 May 2003 'The perils of consumerism' - Public Finance, 9 May 2003 "Reforms lead to great expectations, warns thinktank" - The Guardian, 6 May 2003 "Hospitals don't respond to orders like armies do" - The Times, 30 April 2003 "Buy us - we're Labour" - The Observer, 27 April 2003
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