ABSTRACT
The 1990s have been a period of turmoil and re-orientation in West European politics. At least five major factors have made it necessary to rethink models of democracy and citizenship. First, the end of the Cold War and the collapse of socialist regimes in Eastern Europe have caused major changes in political and economic relationships throughout Europe. Second, the economic changes brought about by globalisation and the rise of new industrial countries have resulted in economic restructuring and rapid social change in Europe. De industrialisation has been closely linked to the erosion of Keynesian and socialdemocratic models for achieving ‘social citizenship’—not only in Thatcherite Britain but even in social democratic Sweden. This has led to a critique of the evolutionary and perhaps ethnocentric assumptions of Marshallian ideas of citizenship.1
