TY - JOUR

T1 - Maybe It Is Time to Rediscover Technocracy?

T2 - An Old Framework for a New Analysis of Administrative Reforms in the Governance Era

AU - Esmark, Anders

PY - 2017/7/1

Y1 - 2017/7/1

N2 - The article argues that recent decades of administrative policy and reform have led to the emergence of a late modern technocracy, defined by the intersecting ideas and principles of connective governance, risk management, and performance management. Connectivity, risk, and performance have remained consistent concerns across the various market-based and/or network-based alternatives to bureaucracy found in New Public Management (NPM) and post-NPM reforms. In contrast to the image of a flexible compromise between bureaucracy, markets, and networks prevailing in current debate, the article suggests that the long-standing tension between technocracy and bureaucracy are of vital importance to the administrations of advanced liberal democracies. Indeed, the partial compromise between technocracy and bureaucracy reached in the earlier creation of a “techno-bureaucracy” designed for planning and social engineering has been largely supplanted by a more adversarial stance towards bureaucracy in late modern technocracy due to the requirements of connectivity, risk, and performance.

AB - The article argues that recent decades of administrative policy and reform have led to the emergence of a late modern technocracy, defined by the intersecting ideas and principles of connective governance, risk management, and performance management. Connectivity, risk, and performance have remained consistent concerns across the various market-based and/or network-based alternatives to bureaucracy found in New Public Management (NPM) and post-NPM reforms. In contrast to the image of a flexible compromise between bureaucracy, markets, and networks prevailing in current debate, the article suggests that the long-standing tension between technocracy and bureaucracy are of vital importance to the administrations of advanced liberal democracies. Indeed, the partial compromise between technocracy and bureaucracy reached in the earlier creation of a “techno-bureaucracy” designed for planning and social engineering has been largely supplanted by a more adversarial stance towards bureaucracy in late modern technocracy due to the requirements of connectivity, risk, and performance.

U2 - 10.1093/jopart/muw059

DO - 10.1093/jopart/muw059

M3 - Journal article

VL - 27

SP - 501

EP - 516

JO - Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory

JF - Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory

SN - 1053-1858

IS - 3

M1 - 8

ER -