The Bureaucratization of the World in the Neoliberal Era: An International and Comparative Perspective (The Sciences Po Series in International Relations and Political Economy)

Contemporary bureaucracy is a set of norms, rules, procedures, and formalities which includes administration, business, and NGOs. Where Max Weber meets Michel Foucault, Béatrice Hibou analyzes the political dynamics underlying this process. Neoliberal bureaucracy is a vector of discipline and control, producing social and political indifference. "At the point where Max Weber meets Michel Foucault, Béatrice Hibou analyzes the political dynamics underlying a set of norms, rules, and procedures that form contemporary beurocracy. Neoliberal bureaucracy is a vector of discipline and control: even more, it produces social and political indifference. Under the pretext of depoliticization, this trend cannot hide the exercise of normalizing and excluding power. Bureaucratization is not something external to society: it unfolds through the very same actors who are its target and who, consciously or not, play an essential role in this process. Operating as it does through individuals, bureaucratization does not come 'from above': it is a much wider process of 'bureaucratic participation', a response to the need to voice material and vested interests and give answers to legitimate demands, as well as expressing the quest for efficiency, but it also reflects day-to-day conflicts and negotiations between actors. In this way, bureaucratic participation is constructed through power relations, and paradoxically relies on informalities that alone make the neoliberal art of government possible."--Publisher's website Front Matter....Pages i-xxiv Introduction....Pages 1-11 What Is Neoliberal Bureaucracy?....Pages 13-37 A Bureaucratized Society....Pages 39-59 Market and Enterprise Bureaucracy at the Heart of the Neoliberal Art of Governing....Pages 61-83 Neoliberal Bureaucratic Domination: Diffuse Control and the Production of Indifference....Pages 85-110 Struggles and Breaches: Bureaucratization as the Site of Enunciation of the Political....Pages 111-147 Back Matter....Pages 149-236