Governance or Interpellation? An Elaboration of Civil Servant Practice(s)

How can we understand and analytically grasp the practices that "run the state"? Departing from a contemporary focus on co-production in governance regimes, such as New Public Management and New Public Governance, this article argues that the Althusserian concept of interpellation contemplates a focus on a necessary connection between a superior Subject (often understood as the state) and dependent subjects - generally absent in governance studies. Drawing on Hegel's concept of the universal class (der allgemeine Stand) and deploying the ethnologically-based state and life-mode theory, it is concluded that a state-subject can constitute a coherent and resilient whole only by encompassing a viable civil servant life-mode, and that the concepts policy-developing, operationalizing, and policy-implementing, together specify three different but interdependent and necessary dimensions of civil servant practice. A presentation of an empirical case of contemporary co-productive governance applies the developed concepts

Civil servant · Corporate governance · Democracy · Democratic governance · Economics · Epistemology · Interdependence · Management · Operationalization · Political science · Politics · Servant · Social science · Sociology · Computer Science · Critical Theory and Philosophy · Law · Marxism and Critical Theory · Public Administration · Social Policy and Reform Studies

• From old public administration to new public management

  Patrick Dunleavy, Christopher Hood•Public Money & Management•1994

  Incluir item

• A Systematic Review of Co-Creation and Co-Production

  W H Voorberg, V J J M Bekkers et al.•Public Management Review•2015

  Incluir item

• Weber

  Open Access•Max Weber, Peter Lassman et al.•Weber•1994

  Incluir item

• Bureaucracy in Hegel's Political Theory

  Open Access•M Jackson, M W Jackson•Administration & Society•1986

  Incluir item

• Hegel's Theory of the Modern State

  Zoe Jordan, Z A Jordan et al.•Contemporary Sociology A Journal…•1974

  Incluir item

• Big Questions for a Significant Public Administration

  Open Access•John J Kirlin•Public Administration Review•2001

  Incluir item

• The Myth of the Bureaucratic Paradigm

  Open Access•Laurence E Lynn, Laurence E Lynn Jr•Public Administration Review•2001

  Incluir item

• Hegel's Theory of Modern Bureaucracy

  Open Access•Carl K Y Shaw•American Political Science Review•1992

  Incluir item