Citizen's charters: service quality chameleons

Citizen's charter initiatives (variously named) have been launched in many countries around the world. However, they take a wide variety of different forms the development of charters, though widespread, falls a long way short of being a 'new global paradigm'. Focusing on the experience of the Citizen's Charter in the United Kingdom, the essay shows how charters can comfortably be embraced both by New Right free market individualists and by New Left collectivists with communitarian leanings. In the UK, the Citizen's Charters has blended, 'chameleon-like', into the landscape of the public services, to a point where it is now far less visible than it once was. However, the essay also highlights some of the potential shortcomings of charters: the risk of emphasizing individual entitlements without at the same time encouraging collective civic obligations; the absence of legal underpinning; the exposure of under-trained front-line staff to the wrath of empowered consumers. Reprinted by permission of Routledge, Taylor and Francis Ltd.