The Evaluation Society by Dahler-Larsen Peter;

Author:Dahler-Larsen, Peter;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2012-09-14T16:00:00+00:00

As an alternative to central governing, policy analysts discuss the contours of a polycentric governance model with iterative feedback loops and self-reflection operating on many levels. In other words, governance is possible without a centrally located brain doing social planning.

Rose (2003) mentions that attempts are made to manage governance complexity with various regimes of deregulation and self-regulation. Strict rule following is replaced by regimes of self-monitoring and self-regulation, or what Rose calls “governing at a distance.” The ideal is to install local self-discipline so that it is sufficient that the monitored persons or units need to remind themselves only sporadically that they are in fact being monitored.

Such governing at a distance (embodied in management by results, contract regulation, etc.) is one way in which modern organizations have responded to social critique since 1968—a critique saying that large organizations are stiff and bureaucratic and place too much emphasis on management from the top.

Reflexivity means that one is confronted by the products of a large number of uncoordinated actions (Beck 1994a, 3; 1994b, 176). Reflexivity also entails the possibility of forms of governance with less authoritarian exercise of power. Under conditions of reflexive modernity, however, there is no guarantee of a “tranquil” outcome of reflexivity. On the contrary, reflexivity itself can contribute to uncoordinated action. Therefore, the concept refers to a social order where disturbance, doubt, and multiple points of view are not put to rest. New forms of organization and governance lead to new dilemmas concerning self-discipline and new issues of monitoring and control (Boltanski and Chiapello 2007).

The ambiguity in new forms of governance is promoted by the fact that even though a certain self-control and reflexivity are welcome within an organizational regime, this very regime is itself contingent. More than once has a local organization discovered that while it practiced self-regulation, there occurred an intervention in the self-regulation. While it practiced budget responsibility, the budget was changed. While it practiced evaluating itself, the evaluation results could be used by others, and for other purposes.

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