Policy publics in the era of good governance

The advent of network society – or control society (Deleuze 1995) – poses a challenge to critical theory and practice insofar as it suggests an appropriation of democratic vocabulary and the critical imaginary by a new managerial paradigm of ‘good governance’, hailing empowerment, individual freedom, creativity and self-governance framed by the democratic vocabulary of participation, transparency and accountability (Rose 1999, Cruickshank, 1999, Hardt & Negri 2000, 2003, Dean 2007). Good governance relies instruments of governance that nurtures and strategically utilizes the self-governing potential of civil society under the strategic supervision of public authorities, seen in such diverse areas as employment policy, police power and crime prevention, health policy and biopolitics, employment policy, educational policy, accounting practices and performance management etc. (Bang and Esmark, 2009). Critical theory and radical democrats have tried to meet the challenge of the good governance paradigm by reinforcing participatory and deliberative standards of democracy (Mouffe 2005, Bevir 2006, Fung 2007, Norval 2008). Although largely sympathetic to this endeavour and its underlying theory of the public sphere, the paper argues that reinforcing participatory and deliberative standards of democracy in the way suggested by radical democrats is at best only half a strategy and at worst a retreat into the old logics of conflict vs. consensus and resistance vs. power both of which fail to deal adequately with the logic of acceptance and recognition of difference that the new managerial paradigm cherishes. There is a need for developing a new critical paradigm which does not ‘retreat’ to democratic standards entirely premised on idea about the primacy of politics that is potentially inconsequential to the paradigm of good governance, which has, if anything, made the primacy of policy its constitutive rationale. Rather, the challenge is to meet the new paradigm with new approaches to political community and public deliberation oriented towards social policy issues of ‘what has to be done’, more than to the pursuit of self-interest and collective identity. Consequently, the paper seeks 1) to develop a more comprehensive democratic understanding of the link between the primacy of politics and the primacy of policy different modes of operation within the political system, drawing mainly on the work of Habermas and Foucault, and 2) to provide examples and a more adequate understanding of the critical role played by expert citizens and policy publics in finding democratic potentials and resources within the paradigm of good governance, without subjecting to a ‘managerialist takeover’ of the democratic imaginary or a retreat to conventional resistance strategies on the realm of politics.