Public policies increasingly emphasize active consumerism, entrepreneurship on the part of service providers and professionals, privatisation and an expanded role for markets. Choice and Public Policy draws on research by economists, psychologists, sociologists and public policy experts. The research demonstrates that the traditional rational choice model of economic behaviour is unsatisfactory in providing accounts of the way people choose in relation to work, saving, spending, investment and social welfare. It also shows that the public policies of active consumerism, public sector entrepreneurship and privatisation based on this approach are seriously flawed.

Peter Taylor-Gooby is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Kent, UK. He chairs the British Academy New Paradigms in Public Policy Programme and the HEFCE Social Work and Social Policy Panel. His recent publications include New Paradigms in Public Policy, Reframing Social Citizenship, Risk in Social Science (with Jens Zinn), Ideas and the Welfare State, and New Risks, New Welfare.