New books by Janet Newman and John Clarke – individually or together – are always eagerly awaited within social policy circles. This text explores the shifting landscape of ‘publics’, publicness, the public sphere and public services, and uses three keywords as orientating principles: ambiguity, articulation and assemblages.

After the Introduction, there are nine chapters: contesting publicness, re-assembling the nation, displacing the public, making (up) markets, blurring boundaries, valuing publics?, engaging publics, remaking citizens and a conclusion. They focus on three discursive chains that have ‘fixed’ the meaning of the public in twentieth-century discourses in many nation-states:

• • Public = citizens = the people = Nation (Chapters 2–3)

• • Public = public sector = State (Chapters 4–5)

• • Public = legal and democratic values = Public Sphere (Chapters 6–8)

They note that ‘publicness’ is often seen as a chain of connections: public services served members of the public, were funded by public resources and organised in a public sector, were accountable to public bodies, and were staffed by public employees (who embodied an ethos of public service). However, they write that this was ‘always a piece of institutional myth-making’ and it has been dismantled in the last 30 years (pp. 2–3). Moreover, they are ‘wary of announcements of the death or decline of the public’ (p. 7), point to the ‘dark’ or bleaker sides of publicness (p. 7) and to a range of different strategies for remaking publics and publicness (Chapters 6–8). They argue that narratives of both decline and proliferation of publics and publicness tend to be based on a series of binary distinctions, such as citizens and consumers. Not only do they want to transcend these binaries, but they also want to avoid recent attempts to collapse them in rather unstable new formations, such as the citizen-consumer (pp. 25–6). Moreover, ‘we do not believe that questions about the future of publicness . . . can be satisfactorily posed, much less answered, by succumbing to either the fantasies of the marketising right nor the nightmares of the statist left’ (p. 3), which appears very reminiscent of New Labour's Third Way!

The book contains many positive features. The discussion is lively and up-to-date, and ranges widely over topic and place, well beyond the ‘usual suspects’, including Indian GONGOs, digital dynamics, public libraries, Danish chief executives, e-democracy, citizenship in Brazil and Big Brother and Pop Idol. There is a wide use of vignettes; for example, Chapter 2 discusses Danish government, Australian multiculturalism; British community cohesion and local policing. As usual, their references and discussion draw on disciplines and authors outside the social policy ‘box’. At a rough guess, this book probably draws on one of the highest percentages of authors not usually encountered in social policy texts. As usual, it is both wise and thoughtful. For example, they wish to avoid the politics of nostalgia and of purity (pp. 180–1). They point out that ‘even in the most generous interpretation’, institutional arrangements of schools and hospitals ‘do not look like markets . . . [but] are market-mimicking devices . . .’ (p. 81)

This must be one of the first books in social policy to refer to the current financial climate: writing in April 2008, some of the gloss has been removed from markets by the crises emanating from the US financial services sector (p. 177; and Postscript of October 2008).

However, I do have number of quibbles. The breadth and diversity of the book means that some points are not explored in sufficient detail. For example, ‘place shaping’ (p. 4) is mentioned, but not discussed in any detail, and does not appear in the index.

Although terms such as ‘public’ are clearly contestable and elusive (p. 11), I would have liked to see more progress towards a definition. They write that ‘we might wonder whether it is any longer sensible or possible to talk about public services’ (p. 110), but then what do we talk about? After all, if we cannot define what is, and should be, public, how can we argue for – or against – the NHS? Is the essence of ‘public’, and its institutional embodiments, to be found in terms of ends or means (cf Le Grand Reference Le Grand2007)? Similarly, they discuss briefly ‘new model citizens’: empowered, contracted, responsible, conditional, active citizens and the worker-citizen, but surely there is significant overlap between these terms? Moreover, many of these are similar to ‘old model citizens’ and would be familiar to the likes of William Beveridge and Ernie Bevin? More discussion of the public sector ethos, regulation and regulatory failure would have been useful.

I would have welcomed more discussion of context and contingency. Public services such as health care and education vary, and what works in some sectors may not work in others (cf. Greener, Reference Greener2008). It is claimed that consuming public services is not like shopping, but shopping is not like shopping in that there are different types of shoppers (shopper typologies) and that shopping for different goods and services (beans versus cars or houses) may vary. Although Newman and Clarke clearly lead debate with their own agenda, more engagement with other agendas would have been interesting. For instance, what is their direct response to Le Grand's (2002) advocacy of choice? In my (minority – perhaps of one?) view, ‘discourse’ (and ‘governmentality’) is a ‘revolver’ word: when I hear the word discourse, I reach for my revolver; and I would have liked to see more attention to mechanisms.

Despite these quibbles, this book is recognisably part of the Clarke and Newman ‘brand’: always lively, thoughtful, distinctive, original and above all thought provoking – even (or especially) if you disagree with parts of it.