The pivotal shift from a Keynesian policy regime that institutionalised social citizenship to one driven by neoliberal values is central to this book. Providing important background to Chapter Three's more specific discussion of how this shift played out in New Zealand, discussion here first highlights the importance of social citizenship as an intellectual concept. Importantly, however, this concept was widely institutionalised and – according to the limited evidence available – widely supported in the period following World War II. By the 1970s and 1980s, however, significant economic and political challenges threatened the institutions supporting social citizenship. The major focus here is on the process of neoliberalisation and how it transformed citizenship, making it more market-focused and oriented towards active labour market participation. The second part of this chapter outlines this process, which I understand to have been implemented across three phases but with differing levels of success in varied policy areas and countries. Drawing upon existing empirical evidence, a third section explores what the empirical literature tells us about neoliberalism's potential impact upon public opinion. It also highlights good reasons why these findings may not necessarily be applicable to the New Zealand case, illustrating why the kind of historical, multifaceted analysis that this book provides is required.

The rise and fall of social citizenship

Although the earliest discussion of social citizenship emerged in the late nineteenth century, British sociologist Marshall (2000) was the first to theorise social rights as part of a combined package alongside civil and political rights that formed modern citizenship. His historical account aimed to explain why the post-war welfare state emerged in the United Kingdom (UK) in the late 1940s, extending to citizens the universal right to an extensive set of state-guaranteed social and economic provisions; that is, social citizenship (Roche, 1992; Dwyer, 2004a). For Marshall (2000) it was necessary to meet an individual's basic economic and social needs not only to reduce poverty and inequality but also to activate civil and political rights that ensured full participation in society. As an ideal-type, social citizenship therefore ‘stands for a set of institutionalised ties between members of a (political) collectivity that are grounded in common rights and duties, with the former being a prerequisite to the fulfilment of the latter’ (Bode, 2008: 193).