Postmodern Public Policy

Hugh T. Miller

Description

Postmodern Public Policy introduces new ways of investigating the urgent difficulties confronting the public sector. The second half of the twentieth century saw approaches to public administration, public policy, and public management dominated by technical-instrumental thought that aspired to neutrality, objectivity, and managerialism. This form of social science has contributed to a public sector where policy debates have been reduced to "bumper-sticker" slogans, a citizenry largely alienated and distant from government, and analysis that ignores history and context and eschews the lived experiences of actual people. Hugh T. Miller brings together the latest thinking from epistemology, evolutionary theory, and discourse theory in an accessible and useful manner to emphasize how a postmodern approach offers the possibility of well-considered, pragmatic solutions grounded in political pluralism and social interaction between public service professionals and community members.
Preface

Brief of the Argument

Plan of the Book

Acknowledgments

1. The System and its Nemesis

Encroachments
Hyperrationality

2. The Mutation of Meaning

Some Examples of the Disconnect
The Instability of Language

3. Idea Contagion

Memetics
Memetics and Postmodernism
The Prospects for Rational Sorting

4. Contextualism

Situation and Intentionality
Practical Discourse
A Perspective on Change

5. Policy Inquiry

Epistemology as Abstract Univeralism
Facts Are Word-Shaped Things
Self-Referential Systems
Perspectival Small t Truth

6. Democratic Discourse

The End of Universals?
Monologic Discourse: An Oxymoron
Vibrant Pluralism
An Ethos of Discourse

References

Index

Sujets

• Public administration
• Central
• National

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791488034
• Langue: English

Extrait

Postmodern Public Policy

SUNY series in Public Policy Anne Schneider and Helen Ingram, editors

P O S T M O D E R N PUB P L O I L ICY

H U G H T. M I L L E R

S TAT E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E W YO R K P R E S S

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany

© 2002 State University of New York

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Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Miller, Hugh T. (Hugh Theodore), 1953– Postmodern public policy / Hugh T. Miller. p. cm. — (SUNY series in public policy) Includes bibliographical references and index ISBN 0–7914–5489–4 (hc : alk. paper) — ISBN 0–7914–5490–8 (pb : alk. paper) 1. Political planning—United States. 2. Postmodernism—Political aspects. I. Title. II. Series.

JK468.P64 M55 2002 320´.6´0973—dc21

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2002024530

Contents

Preface Brief of the Argument Plan of the Book Acknowledgments Chapter 1 The System and its Nemesis

Encroachments Hyperrationality

Chapter 2 The Mutation of Meaning

Some Examples of the Disconnect The Instability of Language

Chapter 3 Idea Contagion

Memetics Memetics and Postmodernism The Prospects for Rational Sorting

Chapter 4 Contextualism

Situation and Intentionality Practical Discourse A Perspective on Change

Chapter 5 Policy Inquiry

Epistemology as Abstract Univeralism Facts Are Word-Shaped Things Self-Referential Systems Perspectival Small t Truth

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vii x xiv xv 1 4 11 21 23 30 33 33 39 46 51 51 54 61 65 67 73 79 83

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Postmodern Public Policy

Chapter 6 Democratic Discourse The End of Universals? Monologic Discourse: An Oxymoron Vibrant Pluralism An Ethos of Discourse References Index

87 87 91 92 101 105 113

Preface

Deliberative governance has given way to spectator democracy. That was my perception when I began writing this book. Docile bodies watch democracy on television. Bumper sticker slogans have dis- ® placed policy debate. “Leave no child behind ” competes with “work not welfare” for political caché; the experience of poor people is beside the point. The slogans have disconnected from reality; the sign has become detached from the signified. My aim, then and now, is to find a way to bring the public policy discussion back to the context, back to the everyday problems that people encounter in their experi- ence of everyday life. But the tendency in the opposite direction may be too strong. Meanwhile, policy implementation continues its tendency toward universal-rationalism, insinuating abstraction and distance into everyday governance. Lived experience seems not to matter much in contemporary public policy. It is too . . . subjective. And relativistic. So instead, public policy takes the form of rules that apply to everyone in the kingdom in equal measure. This is how we do things in Western civilization since the French Revolution. We act on the bases of principle, rules, and laws. We regard these to be far better than administrative and political corruption. Indeed, principled behavior is the antidote to corruption. We know that a personal viewpoint, even when it is not corrupt or self-interested, at best gives only a partial view of any situation. And we imagine that universal principle can transcend the eye of the beholder problem. However, in actuality the universal principle provides no per- spective on the situation at all. Its job is to rule the situation and insist on conformance. Universal principles such as equal treatment before

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the law have obvious attractions, especially in respect to societies that routinely deprive individuals of liberties, property, and life without so much as an official acknowledgement that any of this has been done. We prefer a legal system that treats everyone fairly. We want the bureaucracy to treat everyone equally in implementing public policy. Yet, something about formal, legal-rational democracy—and not just television democracy—distances the people from their own experiences. This phenomenon, this distancing from lived experience, is something that is taking place in those advanced capitalist democra- cies that have succeeded in rationalizing not only production and accumulation, but the public sphere itself. With that observation, I realize that I have started down a path from which there is no return. I cannot criticize formal democracy without questioning the electoral system. And then constitutional government and the entire legal- rational system become problematic. Modernity itself is at stake, too. Must I encumber all this just to make my one point? And I found that still more needed to be encumbered. Modernity is also rationality, sci- ence, and philosophy. All these—science, philosophy, and legal-ratio- nal constitutions—are accustomed to thinking in terms of rational universal truths. Lived experience seems puny in the face of all that. Perhaps lived experience should find some other hero. Fortunately for me, several intellectual heavyweights have been working on the problem. They would not frame it exactly the way I have, but books by thinkers such as Michel Foucault, Thomas Kuhn, Jean-François Lyotard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Richard Rorty have influenced my thinking. They have challenged universalisms in ways I never would have imagined. Philosophy itself is a universalizing pro- ject, says Rorty, and Plato got us off to a bad start with his preoccupa- tion with abstract forms. Science is a social formation of people who practice science in historically contingent ways, says Kuhn (1970). Its story is but a metanarrative about truth, says Lyotard, and science is not itself truth. Meanwhile, history is carrying us further away from freedom and equality and rule by law, says Foucault, because legal institutions transform these into abstract principles through a social engineering project that leaves docile bodies in its wake. I do not want to accept the idea that people have developed into docile bodies. I do not want to accept the idea that citizens are no

Preface

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longer capable of reasoned debate as self-determining agents. I do not want “reality TV” to be more real than my actual experience. I do not want words to be disconnected from the facts they claim to point at. The only thing worse would be to cherish my naïveté overmuch, allowing it to do the work of blinders. I would not want to gloss past the uncomfortable insights that postmodern thought has provided. Abstract principle, universalism, and rationalism have encountered the limits of their capabilities to universalize and rationalize. Although starkly put, this is a very subtle point and full if irony. It is not a call to arms against abstraction, principle, or rationality. These have already lost their ground, although many writers only vaguely realize what has happened. The challenge now is to reclaim for universalism and rationality just enough ground so that rational action and human agency can be marshaled together for the purpose of deliberative self- governance. The task of enabling political self-determination in everyday life is larger than many of us could have imagined. The trick is to return to the microlevel of lived experience and social practice. Idealists who moralize about equality-the-principle often neglect inequality-the-social-practice. They may lament the inequality between “the West and the rest,” and they may issue forth spiteful remarks about wealthy businessmen. I will not defend wealthy businessmen, nor would I say that the moralists’ position is wrong- headed. But unequal social relations permeate the culture. Many, such as the unequal relationship between master artisan and apprentice, would be difficult and perhaps foolhardy to abandon. We must be more particular about inequality and less abstract about it. Inequality is expressed and enacted in relationship. That is to say, inequality is a social practice, enacted and reenacted in a context. Foucault said the same thing about power; it is a relationship and not an abstract com- modity. And the same could be said in critique of deliberative democ- racy. Democratic self-governance, at this historical moment, seems more like an abstraction than a social practice. Can democratic self- governance exist as an everyday social practice? Can social practices be configured, or reconfigured, so that the history of self-governance is a history of actual people engaged every day in actual self-gover- nance activity? It is imaginable, but we can also imagine some of the problems we will encounter. At the microlevel, there is no such thing as citizen consensus or the collective citizen self that becomes acti-