De betekenis van eigen verantwoordelijkheid : een inhoudsanalyse van Brits beleid

responsibility’ in Great Britain. Based on theoretical literature and research in The Netherlands, a theoretical framework is set up. Key concepts are the different types of individual responsibility (possibility, accountability, task and virtue), with possible ‘interfering mechanisms’, and views of citizenship (the bourgeois individual and the republican citizen). With the theoretical framework, different policy instruments referring to individual responsibility, on the fields of Safety, Youth and Healthcare, are assessed. Examples are Neighbourhood Watch, which amounts to citizens working together with the police in established ways to improve safety; or the Choose and Book system, which allows patients to choose their place of treatment and is strongly supported by a monitoring system. All in all, many different forms of individual responsibility can be recognized in British policy, most of them aimed at reaching policy goals with the help of citizens. This assignment provides a clear view on the different meanings of individual responsibility in British policy, and the expected link between different types of reasons, responsibility types, mechanisms and views of citizenship, is mainly supported by the findings.