Enterprising States

"This book explores two fundamental shifts in the paradigms of governance in Western bureaucracies. They are the widespread use of privatisation, private firms and market methods to run core public services, and the conscious attempt to transform the role of citizenship from ideals of entitlement and security to new notions of mutual obligation, selectivity and risk. In this work Mark Considine undertakes an examination of the most important universal service of the modern welfare state - unemployment assistance - to explain and theorise the nature of these radical changes. He has undertaken extensive interview and survey research in the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Australia and New Zealand. In each case Considine finds there has been a significant break from the standards of legal-rational bureaucracy. He identifies a new corporate-market regime at the core of new governance arrangements in the four different systems."--Jacket.