The Ideology of New Public Management, Associational Representation and the Global Financial Crisis

Abstract

This paper argues that the 2008 financial crisis accelerated a set of long-term dynamics which in turn have undermined two dominant models of state-society relations. On the one hand, the paper examines how the concept of social citizenship is based on a vision of state-society relations, which in recent years has been oriented by a philosophy of marketization of the state and of the relation between citizens and the state. On the other hand, it discusses an emerging emphasis on the role of organised civil society as a different and competing approach to state-society relations. Discussion will centre on how the interactions between these two ideologies and the related practices have impacted on conceptions of the modern state. Among the factors that affect this interaction are the impact of migration, the erosion of welfare states, and the redefined character of social vulnerability which now affect new groups of individuals. The paper considers all these changes as background phenomena which impact on relations between state and society in several ways, but particularly in terms of the meaning of social citizenship