Flattering Consumption: The Growth of Consumer Rights and Product Safety Concerns in Europe

This article argues that the unprecedented prominence of consumer groups in contemporary Europe is not the product of a ‘bottom up' process driven by newly demanding consumers. Drawing particularly upon the examples of the UK and the EU, it is argued that the politicization of ‘the consumer' in Europe has come from above. The creation of the ‘citizen consumer' was firstly an attempt to introduce the appearance of accountability as the market was deregulated in the 1980s. Aligning authority with the consumer (and against the corporation) subsequently evolved as an important means of (re)establishing legitimacy. Such a process is problematic because government is effectively institutionalizing the mistrust at the heart of the new consumer culture.