Symposium
Reply to critics Mark Bevir Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1950, USA.
Abstract This article is a reply to critics of my book Democratic Governance. I argue that governance has arisen partly as a result of the impact of modernist social science on public policy. Neoclassical economics and rational choice theory inspired an attempt to spread markets and private sector managerial practices. Institutionalism and network theory inspired attempts to foster networks, partnerships, joining-up and whole of government agendas. These turns to markets and networks facilitate non-majoritarian institutions and blurred lines of accountability thereby threatening democracy. My arguments instantiate an interpretive social science that stands in contrast to the modernism that has inspired contemporary governance and that might reinvigorate democracy. In this article, I defend these arguments, examining, for example, the pitfalls of institutionalism, the geographical scope of my narrative of governance, and the dangers of using formal expertise to promote democratic agendas Comparative European Politics (2012) 10, 634–641. doi:10.1057/cep.2011.30; published online 23 January 2012 Keywords: Democracy; Governance; Institutionalism; Networks; Self-governance
Governance often refers to a shift in public action and public organization from hierarchic bureaucracy to markets and networks. The shift can be overstated; hierarchy probably remains the most common form of organization. Nonetheless, there clearly has been a shift. Since the late 1970s and early 1980s, governments at the local, national, transnational and global levels have experienced a vast array of reforms associated with marketization, contractingout, new styles of management, joining-up and partnerships. In Democratic Governance, I offer a genealogical critique of these reforms, stressing their consequences for democracy. My main arguments are: K
Governance spread because of new modernist theories (notably rational choice and the new institutionalism) and the public sector reforms they inspired. r 2012 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1472-4790 Comparative European Politics www.palgrave-journals.com/cep/
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Ironically, policymakers are responding to the challenges of governance by supplementing representative institutions with modernist expertise. The resulting reforms shrink the space for democratic action, handing decision making to unelected and unaccountable actors. Interpretive social science provides an alternative to modernist theories, one that may encourage a stress on dialogic policymaking and participatory democracy.
I illustrate these arguments with case studies of constitutional reform, judicial reform, administrative reform and police reform. It is a pleasure to find these arguments catching the attention of leading scholars of European politics. It is also a challenge. My training is in political philosophy; now I have to answer scholars wondering if my philosophical analysis applies to sociological theories. My empirical work has been on British politics; now I have to answer scholars questioning the way I extend my narrative to other states. My normative views focus on abstract theories; now I have to answer scholars interested in democratic institutions. In this reply, I will concentrate on these issues – social theory, comparison and democracy. As Democratic Governance is a genealogy, its arguments and case studies are located in a historical narrative. This narrative begins in the late nineteenth century when political science was dominated by a developmental historicism that situated actions and events in a larger order of evolving continuity. Examples include idealist philosophy, Comtean positivism, Whig history and evolutionary theorizing. The most significant feature of twentieth century social science was the rise of a modernism that rejected historical narratives for more formal modes of explanation. Modernist modes of knowledge appeal to systems, classifications, models and correlations that operate across time and space at the macro level or meso level. Typically, these modernist theories rest on either an economic concept of rationality (a logic of consequences) or a sociological concept of rationality (a logic of appropriateness). Vivien Schmidt rightly notes that I concentrate on the rise of dominant theories, not a philosophical critique of them, nor a fully fledged alternative. Much of the critical force of Democratic Governance comes from a historical genealogy. This genealogy denaturalizes the dominant theories. It shows that they are not the natural or neutral products of a universal reason. Rather, they are the contingent and contestable products of history. Any validity they have must depend on philosophical arguments about ontology and explanation, but their adherents typically ignore the need for these arguments and portray them as somehow uniquely ‘scientific’. If approaches to social science rest on different philosophical assumptions, how are we to compare them? Philosophers often appeal here to the ability of r 2012 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1472-4790
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a perspective to narrate itself and its rivals. From this perspective, my genealogy is an attempt to show how any interpretive approach can narrate itself, rational choice and institutionalism. Now I wait for a rational choice account of itself and its rivals as products of individuals maximizing their utility satisfaction. I wait for an institutionalist account of itself and its rivals as products of path dependency and critical junctures. The inability of rational choice and institutionalism to narrate themselves is an enormous problem, given that they purport to be able to explain social life and they themselves are parts of social life. My alternative to modernist theories such as rational choice and institutionalism is, therefore, an interpretive social science. An interpretive approach informs the mode of my argument. It then reappears in my proposed solution to the failings of contemporary public policy. What, though, is an interpretive approach? I plead guilty to defining an interpretive approach in terms of my own philosophical views. My interpretive approach overlaps with, but also differs from, both the harmony seeking and poststructuralist ones mentioned by Eva Sørensen. My key commitment is not to an account of democracy as involving pluralistic harmony or relentless competition. (For what it is worth, I think that debate is utterly facile; beliefs and narratives always have similarities and differences, thus they are always in both harmony and competition; the only question is whether we pick out the relevant similarities and differences for our purposes.) My key commitment is, instead, to radical historicism. Just as my diagnosis of contemporary ills highlights modernist social science, so my prescription begins with an alternative approach to social ontology and explanation. Radical historicism consists primarily of a rejection of the essentialist ontologies and formal explanations characterizing modernist social science. Radical historicists believe that social life consists in a constant flux of activity, and that activity is contingent. The contingent nature of actions and practices implies that social concepts – including classes, states and types of organization – do not have core properties by which social scientists can define them and explain their other properties and interactions. Thus, we cannot explain social life in terms that rely, even if only implicitly, on appeals to such essential properties. Classifications, correlations and models cannot pick out necessary causal relations that do explanatory work; they can only describe actual or hypothetical patterns among contingent activity. To explain contingent activity and the patterns to which it gives rise, social scientists have to tell historical narratives relating actions to meanings against contingent historical backgrounds. Almost all of the contributors of this symposium complain about my treatment of institutionalism. However, my account of institutionalism reflects my focus on a contrast between modernist social science, with its reified 636 r 2012 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1472-4790
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ontologies and formal explanations, and an interpretive approach, with its radical historicism. Schmidt and Sørensen argue that my criticisms of modernism do not apply to some institutionalists. As Patrick Le Gale`s notes, however, I argue that the main problem with institutionalism is its vagueness. The best way to respond to his and their worries that I rely on a straw man is, therefore, to say in what I think this vagueness consists. Some institutionalists are explicitly committed to reified ontologies and formal explanations. Others – perhaps including Schmidt and Sørensen – fudge the issue. They are vague about their commitments. Sometimes they pay lip service to a kind of radical historicism that focuses on meanings, equates meanings with the speech and other actions of particular individuals, and explains actions by locating them in particular historical contexts. At other times, however, they slip back into the use of reified ontology and formal explanation. For example, they treat ‘ideas’ as a variable alongside ‘interests’, thus moving toward formal explanations based on correlations between variables and outcomes. Alternatively, they treat discourses as reified entities defined by the relations among units or signs, not as products of the activity of individuals. More generally, institutionalists appeal to ‘mechanisms’, ‘structures’ and ‘institutions’ not only to describe patterns arising out of activity, but also to suggest that these patterns somehow explain the activity. They use these concepts in explanations and generalizations that allegedly operate irrespective of agency or, more usually, through the impact of the norms, institutions, mechanisms or a universal rationality on the relevant agents. These concepts thus entangle them with reification, determinism and sometimes foundationalism. For a start, they treat institutions and mechanisms as reifications that have core properties divorced from the specific influences of time and place. Only by doing so can they suggest that the pattern is anything more than a contingent result of concrete activity. In addition, they treat concrete activity as determined by the relevant reified category. Only by doing so can they suggest that the pattern itself explains why people act so as to produce the pattern. Finally, they sometimes imply that people are more or less bound to experience the world as it is. They suggest that people’s correct knowledge of an institution or social context makes it rational for them to act in a certain way. They evoke foundationalism to explain how institutions determine beliefs and actions. The issue is not whether institutions exist. Interpretivists recognize patterns in contingent activity, and there is nothing intrinsically wrong about people labeling these patterns ‘institutions’. The issue is whether or not these patterns explain anything. Even when institutionalists acknowledge the importance of ideas and agency, they are still tempted to ascribe explanatory power to institutions and processes. They drift toward reification, determinism and r 2012 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1472-4790
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perhaps foundationalism. Further, they reject historicist explanations for formal ones. Their explanations appeal to the alleged logic of some institution or mechanism. The institution or mechanism may be located in history. It may also be temporal in the sense of taking time to unfold. However, it is not historical in the sense of appealing to a particular context to explain what happened next. To avoid reifications and determinism, social scientists should adopt historicist explanations. Historical narratives explain social phenomena not by evoking reified institutions or mechanisms, but by locating contingent patterns of action in their specific contexts. These narratives are not only temporal in that they move through time, but also historical in that they locate the phenomena at a specific moment in time. Having spent some time on social theory, I can deal more quickly with the issues of comparison and democracy, for my views on these issues reflect my historicism. As my historical narrative is a genealogical critique of rational choice and institutionalism, so my case studies explore the impact of these theories on public policy. Policy actors have turned to these theories to resolve problems of governance. They increasingly rely on formal expertise, shrinking the space for democratic action. The contributors to this symposium raise questions about the empirical bases of my argument. Le Gale`s questions aspects of my case studies of Britain. He suggests that I am overly reliant on the Anglo-governance school with its account of a hollowing out of the state leading to a proliferation of networks and a differentiated polity. However, as Michael Marinetto rightly notes, my interpretive approach goes beyond and transforms the Anglo-governance school. For a start, my concept of governance is not really based on policy networks. It is based on modernist social science as having inspired two waves of reform – first markets and contracting-out, and then networks and joiningup – and it includes the role of modernist social science in other areas, such as constitutional and judicial reform. Further, when I evoke a fragmented state, I generally am appealing to the way historicism undermines reified concepts of the state, forcing us to explore the contingent and varied meanings and activities of which it consists. My argument is not really that bureaucracy has declined and networks grown, it is that the state is, and always has been, stateless. States have no essence, structural quality or power to determine the actions of which they consist. The state is merely an aggregate description for a vast array of meaningful actions that coalesce into contingent, shifting and contested practices. Finally, when I describe changes in the state, I am not really interested in the rather odd debate about whether the number of networks has grown and the number of hierarchies declined. (There is something facile, scholastic and probably impossible about the implied task of individuating and counting hierarchies, markets and networks, especially if, as I believe, they are just patterns of contingent activity.) Instead, I am primarily 638 r 2012 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1472-4790
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interested in how the spread of new ideas about markets and networks has led to changes of policy and activity. Schmidt joins Le Gale`s in then suggesting that my empirics are too rooted in Britain. My studies of cases from Australia, the European Union, Haiti, the United States and international governance have not convinced them that my argument carries beyond Britain or at least beyond the Anglophone world. I have both a general and specific response. At a general level, radical historicism alters the role of case studies. Once we reject reified concepts, we cannot look to case studies for systematic evidence of formal explanations. The role of cases is, instead, to illustrate a pattern, helping people to see new aspects of the world. Again, my aim in Democratic Governance was not to offer a general or mid-level theory that other scholars might test against other cases. It was, instead, to highlight a pattern that other scholars might use as an analogy to see new aspects of other cases. No doubt, when scholars draw such analogies, they often will be aware of ways their cases differ from those I describe. However, that is as it should be, for the patterns I highlight depend on similarities at various levels of detail, not the necessary presence of an essential property or set of properties. More specifically, I want to stress how abstract is the pattern to which I give the label ‘Third Way’. Recall here that my argument is about the impact of rational choice and institutionalism on reforms that have sought to promote, respectively, markets and networks. I use the term ‘neoliberalism’ to refer to the contingent linkage of rational choice to marketization and the new public management. I then use ‘Third Way’ to describe the contingent links of institutionalism to networks, partnerships and whole-of-government agendas. The problem is that we lack any existing term for this second wave of reforms. Too many critical theorists subsume them under neoliberalism. Too many institutionalists want to see them as natural and neutral, as based on good science, rather than as rooted in a specific intellectual perspective. Therefore, although the term ‘Third Way’ may be a bit Anglocentric, the pattern it describes is not. The pattern consists of a wave of reforms that begins by promoting networks, joining-up and social inclusion, but increasingly gives way to targets and yet more regulation. If other scholars find that pattern in other cases, I will not mind if they want to refer to it by a different term. What matters, in other words, is the role of institutionalism in fostering yet more public policies based on modernist expertise at the expense of democratic dialogue and participation. As interpretivism is my alternative to rational choice theory and institutionalism, dialogue and participation are my alternatives to marketization, new public management, networks and the enabling state. My genealogy and case studies are the pessimism of the intellect to which Marinetto refers. My belief in interpretive social science, dialogic policymaking r 2012 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1472-4790
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and participation then constitute what he calls my optimism of the will. I like the way Marinetto parses my views. The developmental historicists of the nineteenth century could postulate principles guiding history toward a benevolent end. As a radical historicist, I cannot. My narrative stops with a bleak vision of a misguided modernist expertise colonizing more and more of life. I have no philosophic grounds to appeal to agents or processes of change that will put a stop to modernism. I may have some hope that the constant failures of modernist expertise eventually may lead policymakers to try more democratic alternatives, but that hope lies in the will or, at most, its performance as an argument. To conclude, let me say a bit more about what I hope for. Sørensen complains that I make few references to the literature on bottom-up practices of self-governance. She is not quite right, for I clearly align myself with much of this literature both in my discussion of different visions of democratic governance and in my defense of dialogue and participation. Still, let me mention two reasons – arising out of what I have already said – why I do not discuss this literature in more depth. First, Democratic Governance is not a literature review. It is a genealogy of theories and their impact on policies. In addition, theories of bottom-up self-governance have just had far less impact on public policy than have rational choice and institutionalism. As other contributors to this symposium note, a full consideration of the former would have required an entirely separate book. Second, the literature on bottom-up self-governance has an ambiguous relation to my hopes. The existing literature concentrates on institutional arrangements and concrete practices. It is ambiguous in its relationship to radical historicism. Some of it may be compatible with my views. Other parts appear to want to ape modernism. They aspire to formal classifications and correlations between bottom-up self-governing institutions and certain outcomes. They claim that such institutions typically have such and such effects at least under such and such conditions. They themselves wear the mantle of modernist expertise. Clearly, while I hope for bottom-up self-governing institutions, I would not defend them in these modernist terms. On the contrary, I believe that any attempt to base bottom-up self-governing institutions on modernist expertise is more or less doomed to fail. Whenever people rely on modernist expertise, they implicitly reinforce a fallacious belief in expertise at the expense of a more dialogic and democratic ethos. Again, when policymakers adopt dialogue and participation because modernist experts assure them of certain outcomes, then they may reject them should they, as a contingent fact, not have those outcomes. My hopes thus reside less in institutional forms than in a change in the dominant social theories. From my perspective, the key issue is not discussion of the alleged potential of network institutions for democratic self-governance, it is the need for a new 640 r 2012 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1472-4790
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radical historicism. Out would go formalism. In would come interpretive social science. Out would go modernist expertise. In would come dialogue.
About the Author Mark Bevir is a Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author or co-author of The Logic of the History of Ideas (1999), Interpreting British Governance (2003), New Labour: A Critique (2005), Governance Stories (2006), Key Concepts in Governance (2009), The State as Cultural Practice (2010), Democratic Governance (2010) and The Making of British Socialism (2011).
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