Search results

Over the last few decades performance management (PM) has invaded the public sector in most Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. More recently, we have seen increasing demands for evidence-based policymaking (EP). This article critically discusses the political implications of PM and EP by regarding them as particular forms of governing. Accordingly, PM may be viewed as a form of governing hinging on the regulated and accountable forms of freedom exercised by public administrators. In contrast, EP may be regarded as a technocratic and potentially authoritarian form of governing depending on quite narrow and exclusive forms of knowledge production. EP then seems to be directly at odds with PM and sits uneasily with neoliberal forms of rule.

Based on Foucault's notion of governmentality and problematisation, I analyse the problematisations, causal assumptions and policy recommendations found in the documents of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) concerning labour market issues. The article shows that, since the mid-1970s, the OECD's strategies on employment have consistently evolved around the problematisation of 'structural unemployment'. Demand management and other ways of tackling unemployment have been dismissed in favour of interventions seeking to stimulate the self-governing capacities of the unemployed, entrepreneurs, students and others. While the emphasis on the self-governing capacities of citizens may very broadly be characterised as a supply-side strategy, it has really nothing to do with a laissez-faire approach that assumes the existence of perfect, self-governing markets.

How can we critically address benchmarking? By conceptualizing benchmarking as a normalizing governing technology, a space is cleared for analysing some of the power relations brought into play in benchmarking activities. As a device of power, benchmarking depends upon the production of normalizing knowledge and the freedom or self‐governing capacities of those who are benchmarked. The fruitfulness of this conception is illustrated through an example from the Danish hospital system.