Everywhere we see signs of this growing disaffection with liberalism, most clearly perhaps in the widespread complaint that liberalism allows special interests to dominate party politics. Indeed the revulsion against party politics in itself implies dissatisfaction with liberalism. Both Democrats and Republicans now deplore excessive partisanship, the erosion of "community" and "citizenship." In Britain, even Margaret Thatcher, champion of the free market, promises to make "community" the central theme of her campaign for a fourth term as prime minister, drawing criticism from some of her former supporters, who advise her to stick to entrepreneurial individualism. "The notions of citizenship and community are based on a sentimental view of what rural life was like," the Economist says reproachfully. "... Real Britain is mostly quite different. Its cities are a kaleidoscope of races.... One-third of all marriages end in divorce.... Young Scots leave their small towns to work on London's building sites, and sleep in barges and caravans. Even homeowners ... move on average once every seven years.... In that kind of Britain, 'community' has little meaning." But these are the very conditions that make so many people regard a revival of community as an urgent necessity. The social fabric seems to be unraveling; the welfare state has not been able to repair it; and the time has come, we are told, for a new set of solutions. Liberalism does not address the "anxieties of the age," according to Sandel—"the erosion of those communities intermediate between the individual and the nation, from families and neighborhoods to cities and towns to communities defined by religious or ethnic or cultural traditions."

The meaning of citizenship varies considerably from one end of the political spectrum to the other. On the right, it means the pledge of allegiance, respect for authority and religion, and the replacement of the welfare state by private agencies that would appeal to the spirit of voluntary cooperation instead of making everyone dependent on the state. For people on the left, a revival of citizenship seems to require not merely political but economic decentralization. After criticizing liberalism, Sandel goes on to criticize contemporary conservatism as well. "Conservative policies cannot answer the aspiration for community," because they ignore the "corrosive" effects of capitalism itself: "the unrestrained mobility of capital, with its disruptive effects on neighborhoods, cities, and towns; the concentration of power in large corporations unaccountable to the communities they serve: and an inflexible workplace that forces

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