Book reviews

Abstract

The launch of the neo-liberal revolution with Margaret Thatcher's coming to power in 1979 has turned out to be a major political watershed. That sea change has affected not only Great Britain but many other countries as well. Thatcher's praise of market solutions instead of state intervention has manifested itself particularly with respect to local politics. Adhering to her overall belief in market allocation, she advocated a shift away from the provision of services by local government proper.Contracting-out local services should both promote efficiency by introducing competition and create a range of choices where there used to be none. Empowerment through competition, therefore, not only means an erosion of local government. It also embodies the explicit assertion of a very specific concept of citizenship.According to exponents of the new right, the issue of citizenship is first and foremost about individual rights and freedom from interference by other individuals and the government. Within the neo-liberal view of the world, which is essentially based on individualized market and commodity relations, involvement in public life is a matter of choice rather than an inherent quality of social life. In accordance with this ideology, urban policy in the 1980s sought to enlarge the role of markets and quasi-markets. Pursuit of that aim has also entailed a reshaping of the local arena into an atomistic marketplace in which individual citizens primarily act as consumers and producers. In this kind of local arena (according to Ms Hill "the logical setting for the solution to immediate problems and for the provision of services which people use on a daily basis," p.25), the emphasis should be on self-help and voluntary collective service (such as, for instance, neighbourhood watch schemes) instead of on government prograrnmes. No deliberate efforts by the local government to promote a sense of community are, in this view, needed. Collective actions should emanate from individual initiatives.In the 1990s, the neo-liberal view of urban policy has increasingly come underNeth.