Building a Citizen Society: the emerging politics of republican democracy.
| Author | Tam, Henry |
| Position | Book review |
Between December 1968 and April 1992, parties on the right of the political spectrum won control of the British Parliament and the American Presidency in virtually every election held (the only exceptions being Wilson (UK, 1974) and Carter (US, 1976)). During this period of intense soul-searching amongst progressives, two trends took shape.
The first revolved around the need to adapt progressive aims to suit the new global power structures over which large corporations increasingly held sway. Instead of challenging the growing inequalities resulting from plutocratic hegemony, progressives were told to focus on building a better relationship with the market, easing regulations, and lowering taxes. So long as the economy could be supported to yield more revenue to fund public services overall, it did not matter if the rich were getting even richer faster than ever before. Championed by influential 'Third Way' figures like Tony Giddens and Al From, it became a mainstream political outlook.
The second trend took a different direction. The provision of equal opportunities would not be enough. If the outcomes under prevailing conditions were such that the wealth, health and knowledge gaps between citizens were so wide as to undermine the democratic ethos of equal dignity for all citizens, then those conditions must be reformed. Unlike the advocates for the first trend, however, the thinkers and activists who were attracted to the second trend did not establish a common rallying point. Benjamin Barber's notion of 'strong democracy', David Marquand's exposition of civic republican ideas, the writings of progressive communitarians, David Donnison's anti-poverty agenda, and collections like Bernard Crick's Citizens: Towards a Citizenship Culture or my own Progressive Politics in the Global Age, all fuelled the trend without quite igniting a beacon for its wider recognition.
It is against this historical backdrop that the significance of White and Leighton's Building a Citizen Society has to be seen. Their book hoists a banner for the second progressive trend and invites active engagement from all who care to advance citizen-centred politics.
Its publication is timely as the facade of accommodation with corporate power has finally been exposed as illegitimate in theory and disastrous in practice. For well over a decade, progressives have been told that if they did not follow the corporate-friendly path away from both old socialist and neo-conservative...
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