Gov 2.0: Towards a User Generated State?

New elements associated with Web 2.0 relating to interactivity and end‐user focus have combined with the availability of new levels of information to encourage the development of what may be termed a Gov 2.0 approach. This, in combination with recent initiatives in the modernising government programme, has emphasised new levels of public participation and engagement with government as well as a re‐engineering of public services to make them more responsive to their end users. Adopting a governmentality perspective, it is argued that this involves a wider process of governing through constructing and reconstructing ideas of the public, community and individual citizen‐consumers who take on a role in their own governance. It is argued that this fundamental re‐working of the nature of what is public represents a constitutional change that is perhaps more significant than the constitutional reform programme directed to formal government which attracts more attention.