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Apologies for reposting: earlier version was incorrect. Call for special edition of Social Policy and Society: Choice or voice or something else? User participation in public services Guest editors Dr. Ian Greener and Professor Colin Talbot, Centre for Public Policy and Management, University of Manchester The problem of how best to get public participation in service organisation and delivery has been an issue as long as the welfare state has existed. Recent social policy scholarship (Deacon & Mann, 1999; Greener, 2002; Hoggett, 2000, 2001; Le Grand, 1997; Needham, 2003) has brought a focus that suggests that the assumptions that we hold about user agency in policy has significant implications for the way those services interact with the public. We can attempt to theorise the possibilities of interaction, following Hirschman (1970), as those of exit and voice, and explore the circumstances through which users become loyal to public organisations, express dissatisfaction through complaint or other means, or attempt to exit to another service (Dowding, 1992). Equally however, there is a long history of attempting to get service users to participate in the running of services in a role more usually identified with that of a citizen through participating in the public sphere (Lister, 1997) in the formal organisation of services, or in civil society (Deakin, 2001) by volunteering or other means of co-production. As such, participation appears to be characterised as either positioning users around individualistic positions such as consumers (Baldock, 2003; Shaw, 2003) or customers (Greener, 2005), or a more collective agency based around citizenship (Marshall, 1981). But are there mechanisms by which consumers can act as citizens, or citizens as customers? Are these notions irredeemably opposed or is there scope for reconciling them? This special edition aims to examine theoretical and empirical contributions that consider the relationships between individual and collective participation in public services. Contributions might examine how services position users according to typologies of consumer behaviour (for example Gabriel & Lang, 2006) and their implications for more collective participation, or consider how more collective participation has been attempted, how it corresponds to notions of citizenship (Janoski, 1998; Lister, 1997), and what its implications are for individual user engagement. Theoretical accounts might explore the links between individually grounded notions of consumption and collective ideas around citizenship, or examine notions that might bridge the two, such as complaint or voluntarism. Abstracts of 1,000 words are requested by the end of 31st July 2006, to the guest editor via email to [log in to unmask], who can also be contacted for any clarification. We would then require finished papers by the end of 2006, for a special edition to be published in 2007. All final papers will be subject to Social Policy and Society’s usual review process. References Baldock, J. 2003. On being a Welfare Consumer in a Consumer Society. Social Policy and Society, 2(1): 65-71. Deacon, A., & Mann, K. 1999. Agency, Modernity and Social Policy. Journal of Social Policy, 28(3): 413-435. Deakin, N. 2001. In search of civil society. London: Palgrave. Dowding, K. 1992. Choice: Its Increase and Its Value. British Journal of Political Science, 22(3): 301-314. Gabriel, Y., & Lang, T. 2006. The Unmanageable Consumer. London: Sage. Greener, I. 2002. Agency, social theory and social policy. Critical Social Policy, 22(73): 688-706. Greener, I. 2005. The Role of the Patient in Healthcare Reform: Customer, Consumer or Creator? In S. Dawson, & C. Sausmann (Eds.), Future health organisations and systems: 227-245. Basingstoke: Palgrave. Hirschman, A. 1970. Exit, Voice and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations and States. London: Harvard University Press. Hoggett, P. 2000. Emotional Life and the Politics of Welfare. London: Palgrave. Hoggett, P. 2001. Agency, Rationality and Social Policy. Journal of Social Policy, 30(1): 37-56. Janoski, T. 1998. Citizenship and Civil Society. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Le Grand, J. 1997. Knights, Knaves or Pawns? Human Behaviour and Social Policy. Journal of Social Policy, 26(2): 149-169. Lister, R. 1997. Citizenship: Feminist Perspectives. London: Palgrave. Marshall, T. 1981. The Right to Welfare and Other Essays. London: Heinemann. Needham, C. 2003. Citizen-consumers: New Labour's marketplace democracy. London: Catalyst Forum. Shaw, I. 2003. Introduction: Themed Section on Consumerism and Social Policy. Social Policy and Society, 2(1): 33-34.