The Emergence of Community

Nikolas Rose states in his book 'The Powers of Freedom' that the ideal of community has emerged as an important policy through new political approaches from the likes of Ronald Regan and Margaret Thatcher. Such policies have been seen to be adopted throughout the western world. This ideology behind neo-liberal individualism is to create new "economic arrangements, social institutions and politcal mecahnisms" which are designed for the individual and work through individuals. Rose states that "this hegemony has not been uncontested" but such attacks have been "inaccurate in their analysis" and "deficient in their stratagies". Many of such policies are still popularily tainted in the thought that they are 'right wing' and because they believe that only the rich can sustain themselves. 

Rose highlights that these policies are in fact "Freed from the necessity to repeat battles between the left and right" and they "attempt to identify a 'third way' of governing. This is associated with the powers of a territory between the authority of the state, the free and amoral exchange of the market and the liberty of the autonomous, 'rights-bearing' individual subject. Whilst it begs many questions" and there are many "competing versions of this 'third space... let us call this space of semantic and programmatic concerns 'community'."