Neoliberal Power and Public Management Reforms: Social and Political Power

This book examines the links between major contemporary public sector reforms and neoliberal thinking. The key contribution is to enhance our understanding of contemporary neoliberalism as it plays out in public administration and to provide a critical analysis of generally overlooked aspects of administrative power. It examines the quest for accountability, credibility and evidence in the public sector and asks whether this quest may be understood in terms of neoliberal thinking and, if so, how?

Triantafillou argues that while current administrative reforms are informed by several distinct political rationalities, they evolve, above all, around a particular form of neoliberalism: constructivist neoliberalism. To better grasp contemporary administrative power, we need to distinguish between critical and constructivist neoliberalism. Whereas the former is inherently critical of state intervention because of its cognitive limitations, constructivist neoliberalism is concerned with how the state may engage in mobilizing the self-steering capacities of both society and the state administration itself. It is also argued that the bulk of critical scholarship on administrative power has focused too narrowly on critical neoliberalism and its celebration of the market. The sparse critical attention to constructivist neoliberalism is problematic as it has no inherent limitations on the exercise of administrative power. The study further examines the dangers of the kinds of administrative power seeking to invoke the self-steering capacities of society and administration itself.

This book is relevant for academics and post-graduates interested in critical understandings and analyses of the public administration and public governance.