Democratic governance: History, practice, reality and possibility
In: British politics, Volume 6, Issue 2, p. 273-283
ISSN: 1746-9198
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In: British politics, Volume 6, Issue 2, p. 273-283
ISSN: 1746-9198
In: Policy & politics, Volume 39, Issue 4, p. 457-471
ISSN: 1470-8442
This paper explores synergies between governance and governmentality, especially on neoliberalism. Governance and governmentality diffuse power and ruling. Scholars of governance offer a compelling account of changes in the state, but they might learn from governmentality to pay more attention to interpretation and discourses. Scholars of governmentality provide insights into modern power, but they might learn from governance to pay more attention to agency and heterogeneity. Scholars of governance might recognise the role of technologies of power in neoliberalism. Scholars of governmentality might grasp the way neoliberal marketisation has given way to networks and service integration.
In: Public administration: an international journal, Volume 89, Issue 1, p. 183-195
ISSN: 1467-9299
I'll tell you a storyAbout Jack a Nory,And now my story's begun;I'll tell you anotherOf Jack and his brother,And now my story is done.[Anon]
A great writer of fiction both creates a new, unique, individual world – through acts of imagination, through language that feels inevitable, through commanding forms – and responds to a world, the world the writer shares with other people but that is unknown or miss‐known by still more people, confined in their worlds. Call that history, society, what you will. The writers who matter most to us are those who enlarge our consciences and our sympathies and our knowledge.[Susan Sontag]
This paper elucidates the interpretive approach to public administration that Professor Rhodes and I have developed over the last ten years. It defends the importance of storytelling in governance. The early studies of governance often drew on modernist empiricism and policy network theory to argue that public sector reforms had created a differentiated polity. While this governance literature offered a compelling account of contemporary public administration, it rested on a modernist empiricism that proved vulnerable to questions such as those raised by rational choice theorists about its micro foundations. Professor Rhodes and I thus rejected modernist empiricism in favour of an emphasis on meanings and storytelling. Our interpretive approach rests on 'meaning holism'. It replaces naÏve empiricism with an anthropological epistemology based on comparing rival accounts. It rejects reified ontologies for recognition of the constructed nature of social reality. It moves away from formal explanations towards historicism. It provides a defence of public administration as storytelling.
In: Local government studies, Volume 37, Issue 1, p. 3-17
ISSN: 1743-9388
In: Administrative theory & praxis: ATP ; a quarterly journal of dialogue in public administration theory, Volume 33, Issue 3, p. 478-485
ISSN: 1949-0461
In: APSA 2011 Annual Meeting Paper
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Working paper
In: Administrative theory & praxis: ATP ; a quarterly journal of dialogue in public administration theory, Volume 33, Issue 3, p. 478-485
ISSN: 1084-1806
In: Policy & politics: advancing knowledge in public and social policy, Volume 39, Issue 4, p. 457-472
ISSN: 0305-5736
In: History of European ideas, Volume 37, Issue 3, p. 243-249
ISSN: 0191-6599
In: Public administration: an international quarterly, Volume 89, Issue 1, p. 183-196
ISSN: 0033-3298
In: Local government studies, Volume 37, Issue 1, p. 3-18
ISSN: 0300-3930
In: Iride: filosofia e discussione pubblica, Volume 24, Issue 62, p. 27-42
ISSN: 1122-7893
In: European journal of social theory, Volume 13, Issue 4, p. 423-441
ISSN: 1461-7137
Foucault introduced the concept 'governmentality' to refer to the conduct of conduct, and especially the technologies that govern individuals. He adopted the concept after his shift from structuralist archaeology to historicist genealogy. But some commentators suggest governmentality remains entangled with structuralist themes. This article offers a resolutely genealogical theory of govermentality that: echoes Foucault on genealogy, critique, and technologies of power; suggests resolutions to problems in Foucault's work; introduces concepts that are clearly historicist, not structuralist; and opens new areas of empirical research. The resulting genealogical theory of governmentality emphasizes nominalism, contingency, situated agency, and historicist explanations referring to traditions and dilemmas. It decenters governance by highlighting diverse elite narratives, technologies of power, and traditions of popular resistance.
Foucault introduced the concept "governmentality" to refer to the conduct of conduct, and the technologies that govern individuals. While he adopted the concept after his shift from archaeological to genealogical studies, commentators argue his work on governmentality and that of his followers appears to remain entangled with structuralist themes more redolent of his archaeologies. This paper thus offers a type of conceptual clarification. The paper provides a resolutely genealogical approach to govermentality that: echoes Foucault on genealogy, power/knowledge, and technologies of power; suggests ways of resolving problems in Foucault's work; introduces concepts that are clearly historicist, not structuralist; and opens new areas of empirical research.
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In: Government & opposition: an international journal of comparative politics, Volume 45, Issue 3, p. 436-456
ISSN: 1477-7053
AbstractThe article offers an interpretive approach to understanding Jim Bulpitt'sTerritory and Power in the United Kingdom. The first two parts interpret Bulpitt's text by locating it respectively in its historical and contemporaneous contexts. It argues thatTerritory and Powerbelongs in a broader movement to rethink the state in a way that accommodates the rise of new behavioural topics.Territory and Poweralso defends modernist empiricist approaches to institutions and other mid-level topics against the positivism and general theories of behaviouralism. The final part points to an interpretive approach to the state as an alternative to the behaviouralism and institutionalism that lurk behind Bulpitt's ideas. A thoroughly interpretive approach would decentre territory and power, revealing them to be contingent and shifting products of struggles over meanings.