Peter Triantafillou

Policing empowerment: The making of capable subjects

This article analyses the attempts to promote economic and social development in the Third World through techniques of empowerment and participation. Based on Michel Foucault’s analytics of government - notably the notion of self-technologies - we analyse two empowerment projects for women. We argue, first, that empowerment projects seek to constitute beneficiaries as active and responsible individuals with the ability to take charge of their own lives. Thus, empowerment should be viewed not as a transfer of power to individuals who formerly possessed little or no power, but as a technology seeking to create self-governing and responsible individuals, i.e. modern citizens in the western liberal sense. Second, through the intertwinement of anthropological knowledges and radical action research, knowledge about the local has become an authoritative mode of veridiction (regime of truth) in development interventions. By seeking to instigate and activate ‘local knowledges’, participatory development interventions entail a crucial recasting of the governing of the target population who are now supposed - on the basis of rational decision-making, such as cost-benefit analysis - to freely join the power-loaded game of the active citizen. Third and finally, it is also maintained that the role of the developer (now labelled ‘facilitator’) is profoundly recast. By basing themselves on the subjective involvement of the individual developer, the participatory approaches recast development as an art form that puts at stake the ethical practices of ‘facilitators’ and beneficiaries alike.

WHAT'S IN A NAME? GRASPING NEW PUBLIC GOVERNANCE AS A POLITICAL- ADMINISTRATIVE SYSTEM

New participatory, interactive, and less direct forms of governing seem currently to be unfolding in many liberal democracies. Some scholars have tried to conceptualize these forms of governing by using the notion of new public governance (NPG). While promising, the notion remains conceptually underdeveloped. This article first aims to develop NPG from an empirical to an analytical concept that enables categorization and evaluation of new forms of governing. In order to gauge the full scope of the current transformations we draw on David Easton’s system theoretical model to identify the constitutive elements of NPG and show how they differ from those elements underpinning classical public administration and new public management. The second aim of the article is to delineate the main challenges that NPG poses for public management and policymaking in a complex and fragmented world. We conclude by reflecting on the need for metagovernance in order to handle the challenges and bring out the positive impact of NPG on normative performance goals such as efficiency, democracy, and innovation.

Addressing Network Governance Through the Concepts of Governmentality and Normalization

This paper explores how network governance may be addressed through the notions of governmentality and normalization. I suggest that it is fruitful to address network governance as a specific form of rule that governs at a distance through norms of agency, efficiency and accountability. Such an analysis could illuminate the ways in which network governance hinges upon and reshapes particular constellations of power-freedom relations. In particular, it could expose possible normalizing effects of network governance, i.e. how certain norms come to form the common ground for the scheming, exercise and often even the contestation of governmental practices.

Machinating the Responsive Bureaucrat: Excellent Work Culture in the Malaysian Public Sector

This article examines the bewildering array of reforms of the Malaysian public sector launched since the 1980s under the heading of Excellent Work Culture. Taking as the point of departure Michel Foucault’s analytics of government and ethics, it is argued that these reforms should be seen as a specific Malaysian neoliberal problematic of government seeking to recast norms of bureaucratic self-conduct so as to make way for an ethos of responsiveness informed by Malaysian values.

The Political Implications of Performance Management and Evidence-Based Policymaking

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.

From performance measurement to learning: a new source of government overload?:

Over the last few decades accountability has accommodated an increasing number of different political, legal and administrative goals. This article focuses on the administrative aspect of accountability and explores the potential perils of a shift from performance measurement to learning. While this is inherently positive in its intentions, we argue that it might constitute a new source of government overload. We propose four explanations for why this may be so. First, a learning approach is more likely to supplement than replace performance management. Second, more rather than less data will be needed to comply with accountability requirements, because of the first point. Third, the costs of compliance are likely to increase because learning requires more participation and dialogue. Fourth, accountability as learning may generate a ‘change for the sake of change’ mentality, creating further government overload. We conclude with some comments on limiting the undesirable consequences of such a move. Points for practitioners Public administrators need to identify and weigh the (human, political and economic) benefits and costs of accountability regimes. While output-focused performance measurement regimes increase transparency and improve value for money in many cases, there are also undesirable side-effects. Accountability regimes attuned to learning appear conducive to quality improvement, but may also become new sources of government overload. This article examines the potential problems of such a move, and considers how these possible perils might be limited by managers and practitioners. Public managers must ask themselves just how much accountability is actually necessary. More specifically, they may want to delimit the scope of the accountability regimes employed, undertake a cost–benefit evaluation of these, and consult those subjected to such regimes, in order to ensure a suitable design.

Governing the Formation and Mobilization of Governance Networks

This chapter is motivated by a specific concern over the capacity of contemporary (network) governance studies1 to critically address the governing of networks. This concern is nurtured by the proximity between the problem space informing contemporary political action, on the one hand, and the theoretical imagery informing governance studies, on the other. When politicians, civil servants, business managers, NGOs and concerned citizens’ attempt to explain the existence and justify the need for mobilizing governance networks, they often provide a set of explanations that, I think, are remarkably close to those provided by contemporary governance studies. Perhaps the reader will agree that in contemporary society, narratives of the following type are encountered quite commonly: • Because society has grown increasingly complex, public problems cannot be solved by the state alone. Without drawing on the knowledge and resources of diverse public-and private actors, state action is doomed to failure. • While the market may serve as an excellent mechanism for solving information-demanding problems, it is incapable on its own of providing satisfactory solutions to a wide range of collective problems, such as social and economic inequality and environmental problems. • It is therefore necessary to include and stimulate the participation and interaction of a wide range of state, market and civil society actors in order to provide legitimate and effective solutions to contemporary problems.

Strengthening learning processes in natural resource management in developing countries through interdisciplinary and problem‐oriented learning

In 1998 three Danish universities developed an interdisciplinary, problem‐oriented curriculum in order to strengthen capacity‐building capabilities in the area of environmental education, training and research at universities and research organisations in Malaysia and Thailand earmarked for environment and development assistance by the Danish government. The programme, which was partly implemented in developing countries as periods of fieldwork, represented important educational innovations. The purpose of this study was to evaluate these activities. The distinct principles forming the educational foundation of the programme were identified. These related to the curriculum organization, the learning tasks and the learning environment. The first step in a cogent evaluation process was to examine how the educational principles were oprerationalized into practical teaching/learning steps. In the next step, they formed the criteria for the evaluation. On the basis of quantitative and qualitative data it was shown that the programme fulfilled the stipulated accademic requirements.

Document Analysis of Network Topography and Network Programmes

The purpose of this chapter is to illuminate and discuss the potentials and limitations of the use of documents in the analysis of governance networks. Our discussions and arguments are based on documents pertaining to the European Employment Strategy (EES) and the National Action Plans (NAPs) in the period 1998–2004. In broad terms, our argument is that documents are highly useful in illuminating the historical formation, continuities and shifts in the norms and rationalities informing governance networks. In contrast, the documents are less useful, or at least less efficient, in illuminating the actual interactions within networks and network participants.

Against all odds? Understanding the emergence of accreditation of the Danish hospitals

Despite intense critique from various parts of the medical professions, Danish hospitals have been subjected to a mandatory accreditation system known as the Danish Quality Model (Den Danske Kvalitetsmodel, DDKM) since 2009. The notion of government assemblage is employed to understand how and why, in the face of these obstacles, DDKM was ultimately implemented. It is argued that DDKM is the result of the emergence of hospital quality management assemblage in 1980s and 1990s made up by new methods of categorizing disease treatments, computerization of such treatments, concerns over cost-effectiveness, complaint registration, the availability of international hospital quality assessment systems, the mobilization of organized medical interest groups, and a tradition of consultative policymaking procedures. This assemblage was crucial for identifying quality as a problem in need of administrative intervention and for shaping the political struggle over how best to assure the quality of hospital services.