Personalisation in Public Services - Digital Promises and Democratic Limits

What happens when public services get personal? From healthcare to criminal justice, policy makers increasingly champion tailored and individualised approaches. Digital advances have helped forge these ambitions into reality, yet the promises of greater efficiency, better outcomes, and meaningful support for society's most vulnerable often go unfulfilled. Worse, responsibility for those outcomes quietly shifts from government to individuals, fundamentally rewriting the social contract. Drawing on diverse case studies across policy areas and national settings, this timely and accessible analysis is the first of its kind to interrogate personalisation so comprehensively – examining its value, ethics, equity implications, and digital dimensions. An urgent book, it challenges us to ask harder questions about redistribution, responsibility, and the proper role of government – and to demand public services that genuinely serve both individual needs and the common good.