Social policy is about citizens choosing the kind of society they want to live in. The mid-20th Century Keynesian welfare state can be seen as a citizenship package which included acceptance of intervention by the state to maintain economic growth and social stability, that meant the inclusion of many previously excluded groups in the social policy process and the institutionalization of a collective responsibility for individual welfare. But, with the ascendancy of neo-liberalism, the politics of citizenship is being replaced by a notion of citizens as consumers, whose medium of social interaction and source of economic and social security is the capitalist market.

This book is concerned with social welfare problems and the need for citizen participation in addressing those problems. While all of the authors are critical of the current neo-liberal orthodoxy, none advocates a return to the status quo ante of the post-World War II welfare state. The essays are grouped into three parts: conceptual critiques of neo-liberal social policy; specific empirical analyses of the neo-liberal counter-revolution; and conceptual and practical responses for moving beyond neo-liberalism.

Wayne Antony is a publisher at Fernwood Publishing. He is also a founding member of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives-Manitoba (CCPA-MB) and has been on the board of directors since its inception in 1997. Prior to becoming involved with the CCPA-MB, he worked with the Winnipeg political activist organizations, The Socialist Education Centre and Thin Ice. Wayne also taught sociology at the University of Winnipeg for eighteen years. He is co-author of three reports on the state of public services in Manitoba (for CCAP-MB) and is co-editor (with Les Samuelson) of five editions of Power and Resistance: Critical Thinking about Canadian Social Issues, co-editor (with Dave Broad) of Citizens or Consumers? Social Policy in a Market Society and Capitalism Rebooted? Work and Welfare in the New Economy (both with Dave Broad), and co-editor (with Julie Guard) Bankruptcies and Bailouts.

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Dave Broad is a Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Social Studies at the University of Regina, Saskatchewan. He studies work and the labour market, and problems of world development and underdevelopment, and has published and presented widely on these subjects. His research includes analysis of the links between global economic restructuring and the casualization of labour, and related issues of poverty and social welfare

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