ABSTRACT
The systematic engagement of the citizenry as co-producers, at least in the United States, arguably dates back to Jane Addams's work in founding the Hull House in the early twentieth century. The emergence of co-production as a framework for understanding and analyzing the role of citizen engagement stems directly, in the United States, from the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, the sit-in movement, and the implementation of “maximum feasible participation” as the major idea underpinning President Lyndon Baines Johnson's war on poverty. Both the funding and the impetus for many of the instances of co-production stem from efforts to address the entrenched racial divides in America. This was especially true of efforts mounted through public services to address and rectify the historically rooted inequality and the disenfranchisement on political and economic fronts of African Americans.
