Trends in citizen participation in American and British social housing

Introduction The Twentieth Century has seen efforts to more directly involve individuals in governmental decision-making. A series of policies and methods to accomplish this generally goes under the name of citizen participation. Two threads of thought underlie the notion of citizen participation, individuals as consumers of government services and individuals as citizens with appropriate rights and responsibilities. This paper compares the structures, processes and politics of one form of citizen participation, tenant participation in American and British social housing. Whilst there is consideration of the historical context of social housing from its inception in the early part of the Twentieth Century, the discussion focuses on the last 25 years. During this time there have been similar national political scenarios in both countries: several years of conservatism, followed by more liberal governments. Driving these political scenarios have been similar political philosophies. New Right thinking, which emerged in the 1980s and influenced the Republican and Conservative governments, promoted the free market as a solution to social and economic problems. In the context of citizen participation, it brought to the fore ideas of the individual, self-reliance and consumerism. This translated into social housing policies which offered tenants the chance to become home owners as a means of moving out of poverty. The success and popularity of free market policies and the fall of communist states in the 1990s meant that opposing political forces needed to modernise their thinking and policies. Both the Democratic party in the US and the Labour party in the UK moved to new political positions which recognised the importance of both the state and the market. Public/private partnerships, introduced for social housing in both countries, were a clear example of this new stance. In the US, the regeneration of public housing areas with private developers has been a much wider phenomena. Underlying this policy has been the idea that mixed income neighbourhoods give low-income citizens 'role models' from which they can learn how to become productive citizens. The involvement of local people in local decision-making has also been influential recently in both America and Britain. It has been based on a communitarian philosophy calling for citizen responsibilities as well as rights (Etzioni, 1995). Despite these similarities in ideology and politics, though,