Popular discourse and the ethical deficiency of ‘Third Way’ conceptions of citizenship

Abstract

The article is in three parts. The first explores the connections and commonalities between different empirical investigations relating to popular discourses of citizenship and argues that these are constituted through the complex combination of overlapping discursive moral repertoires. The second part considers the discursive moral repertoires that constitute discourses of citizenship within the politics of the ‘Third Way’ project—as it is espoused in the British context—and argues that while such discourses accommodate notions of civic duty, moral obligation and enforced obedience, they seldom embrace a solidaristic ethic of responsibility. The third part discusses key findings from a more recent study of popular discourses of dependency, responsibility and rights. The findings suggest that what inhibits the translation of popular understandings of human interdependency into wider support for a form of citizenship based on collective responsibility and universal social rights is the hegemonic prevalence of a peculiarly individualistic conception of responsibility that seems to be consistent with Third Way thinking.

Notes

Hartley Dean, Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK; e‐mail: [email protected]

Levitas (1998), in her critique of New Labour in Britain, captures at least certain elements of this fourth tradition when she identifies a ‘moral underclass discourse’.

Such approaches may be adapted or extended to taxonomies of welfare regimes (Dean, 1999; Dean with Melrose, 1999, Chapter 7) or, for example, models of governance (for example, Newman, 2001).

The empirical investigation described in this article, entitled ‘Dependency, responsibility and rights’, was funded under Award Ref: R000239425 by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, whose support is most gratefully acknowledged. The author is also grateful to Kathryn Ellis, his Co‐Award Holder, and Ruth Rogers, who also worked on the project.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Hartley Dean

Hartley Dean, Department of Social Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK; e‐mail: [email protected]