the art of the state

THE ART OF THE STATE: CULTURE, RHETORIC, AND PUBLIC MANAGEMENT

Public Management: Seven Propositions

Christopher Hood (Contributor Webpage)

DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0001

Discusses three conventional assumptions that are made about public

management: that it is in the throes of a millennial transformation to a new style;

that today's new public management ideas differ sharply from those of earlier

eras; and that the favoured doctrines of contemporary public management tend to

be dubbed as economic rationalism. Goes on to point out that the book looks at

public management from a different perspective, and reduces its arguments to

seven related propositions, discussed in the remainder of the chapter that:

grid/cultural theory captures most of the variety in both current and historical

debates about how to organize public services; application of a culturaltheory

framework can illuminate many of the central analytic questions of public

management; if we look across time and space, we can identify ideas about how to

organize government and public services that correspond to each of the four polar

categories contained in cultural theory; no one of those recipes for good

organization has a clear claim to be considered more modern than any of the

others and each has inbuilt weaknesses; variation in ideas about how to organize

in government is not likely to disappear; the dimensions identified by cultural

theory enable analysis of organizational variety to be pursued at a range of levels;

and the understanding of cultural and organizational variety, within a historical

perspective, merits a central place in the study of public management. These

seven propositions overlap, and some of them are given more space than others in

the book; this chapter concentrates mainly on the first proposition, and aims to

introduce grid/group cultural theory in the context of public management, but the

other six propositions are also discussed more briefly, as a way of setting the scene

for the remainder of the book.

Calamity, Conspiracy, and Chaos in Public Management


DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0002

In Chapters 23 of the Introduction, the culturaltheory framework is used to

explore two central problems of public managementthe analysis of the

characteristic ways in which different forms of organization can collapse and fail

(this chapter), and the analysis of the range of forms of control and regulation (in

the broadest sense) available in public management (the next chapter); in both

cases, an examination through the lens of cultural theory can add an extra

dimension or an alternative perspective to the analysis. Aims to show how a

culturaltheory perspective can assist the analysis of public management failure

and collapse in two ways. First, such a perspective can help bring out some of the

varying and contradictory attitudes towards scandal or catastrophe in public

management, in the sense of who to blame or how to put matters right. Second,

the four basic organizational ways of life that cultural theory identifies (as

introduced in the first chapter) can each be expected to have its own characteristic

pattern of inbuilt failure. The different sections are Responses to

PublicManagement Disasters; Four Types of Failure and Collapse; Private Gain

From Public Office; Fiascos Resulting from Excessive Trust in Authority and

Expertise; Unresolved Conflict and Internecine Strife; Apathy and Inertia: Lack of

Planning, Initiative, and Foresight; and Accounting for Failure in Public

Management.

Control and Regulation in Public Management


DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0003

In Chapters 23 of the Introduction, the culturaltheory framework is used to

explore two central problems of public managementthe analysis of the

characteristic ways in which different forms of organization can collapse and fail

(the last chapter), and the analysis of the range of forms of control and regulation

(in the broadest sense) available in public management (this chapter); in both

cases, an examination through the lens of cultural theory can add an extra

dimension or an alternative perspective. Aims to build on four important insights

by putting them together in a single framework that identifies a set of basic forms

of regulation or control linked to a view of what makes different groups cohere.

Four generic types of control and regulation in public management are discussed,

each of which is loosely linked to one of the polar ways of life identified by cultural

theory. The four approaches are bossism (control by oversight); choicism (control

by competition); groupism (control by mutuality); and chancism, (control by

contrived randomness). Each of these approaches to control and regulation can

operate at several different levels of organization: i.e. they can be applied to the

ways organizations control their clients, to the way control relationships operate

inside organizations, and to the way organizations are themselves controlled by

external forces; each is also capable of being linked to a broader view of good

government and accountability, these four types will be returned to in Parts II and

III of the book.

Doing Public Management the Hierarchist Way


DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0004

In the four chapters of Part II, public management ideas that loosely correspond to

each of the four polar world views identified by cultural theory are discussed.

Here, the culturaltheory framework is mixed with a historical perspective to

survey recurring approaches to public management that can be loosely

characterized as hierarchist (this chapter), individualist (Ch. 5), egalitarian (Ch. 6),

and fatalist (Ch. 7). Looks briefly and selectively at four classic hierarchist

approaches to public management. Two of them (Confucian public management in

classical China and the cameralist tradition of early modern Europe) rarely receive

a mention in conventional publicmanagement booksbut those older traditions

merit attention from presentday students of public management, and not just for

pietist or antiquarian reasons, for they show some of the different contexts in

which hierarchist ideas have flourished, and their fate can help assess the

strengths and weaknesses of doing public management the hierarchist way. The

other two hierarchist approaches discussed are Progressivism and Fabianism.

Doing Public Management the Individualist Way


DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0005


each of the four polar world views identified by cultural theory are discussed.

Here, the cultural theory framework is mixed with a historical perspective to

survey recurring approaches to public management that can be loosely

characterized as hierarchist (Ch. 4), individualist (this chapter), egalitarian (Ch. 6),

and fatalist (Ch. 7). What can loosely be called individualist approaches to public

management start from the assumption that the world is populated by rational

egoists who are bent on outsmarting one another to get something for nothing

rivalry and competition are central to the individualist view of what the world of

public management is and should be like. The individualist bias embodies at least

four basic propositions that contradict the underlying assumptions of hierarchism

and of the egalitarian bias: first, an individualist bias does not automatically begin

with a view of public management from the apex of the state, it rejects the

viewpoint of the chancellory or presidential palace and is not disposed to examine

public management in the context of power play among states, and instead is

more predisposed to start bottom up; second, instead of assuming that the

interests of the rulers and those of the ruled can go together in a positivesum

game, an individualist bias is more likely to start from the assumption that rulers

will tend to look after themselves at the expense of the ruled unless the

institutions and incentive structures are very carefully engineered; third, instead of

assuming that economic development and social order require hands on state

administration guided by an enlightened technocratic elite, individualists will tend

to assume that markets will ordinarily produce better results than bureaucratic

hierarchies; and fourth, instead of assuming people that are only corrupted by evil

institutions, individualists will tend to work on what Thomas Carlyle called the pig

principlethe assumption that human beings, from the highest to the lowest, are

inherently rational, calculative, opportunistic, and selfseeking. These four

assumptions taken together make a relatively coherent philosophy of institutional

design for government; it is the first two assumptions that mainly distinguish the

individualist bias in public management from the hierarchist approach considered

in the last chapter, and the second two that mainly distinguish it from the

egalitarian approach to be considered in the next.

Doing Public Management the Egalitarian Way


DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0006


each of the four polar world views identified by cultural theory are discussed; here

the culturaltheory framework is mixed with a historical perspective to survey

recurring approaches to public management that can be loosely characterized as

hierarchist (Ch. 4), individualist (Ch. 5), egalitarian (this chapter), and fatalist (Ch.

7). Like individualism and hierarchism, egalitarianism embodies a particular vision

of control of public management both within organizations and by the society at

large, and that approach to organization can be linked to a broader vision of good

government that takes groupism rather than bossism, choicism, or chancism as the

point of departure or central organizing principle for cooperative behaviour. The

egalitarian approach to organization involves at least three closely interrelated

elements: these are group selfmanagement, control by mutuality, and maximum

facetoface accountability. A fourth idea often associated with egalitarianism is

the view that the process by which decisions are reached in an organization or

group is just as important, if not more so, than the results or outcomes in a narrow

sensei.e. the achievement of the substantive policy goals of egalitarians is not

held to be more important than reaching the process goal of decisionmaking

through highparticipation weakleadership structures. The main sections are:

What Egalitarians Believe; The Managerial Critique of Egalitarianism; and Varieties

of Egalitarianism.

Doing Public Management the Fatalist Way?


DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0007


each of the four polar world views identified by cultural theory are discussed; here

the culturaltheory framework is mixed with a historical perspective to survey

recurring approaches to public management that can be loosely characterized as

hierarchist (Ch.. 4), individualist (Ch. 5), egalitarian (Ch. 6), and fatalist (this

chapter). Starts by asking whether there can be a fatalist approach to public

managementcultural theorists have identified fatalism as a viable way of life, but

it does not figure prominently in conventional accounts on the provision of public

services; Banfield has stated that in fatalist societies (such as Montegrano) public

management will be (only) narrowly bureaucratic and statist because only paid

officials will be concerned with public affairs, and the citizenry at large will be

cynical about the motives of public officials; in spite of this widespread belief,

however, there are likely to be few effective checks on public officials in a fatalist

society, and Banfield sees fatalism as a social pathology bound to produce social

backwardness and stagnation. Cultural theory is ambiguous on whether fatalism

can be a viable basis of organization in the sense that a Montegranotype society

could survive and reproduce itself over time, nor is it clear from the work of

cultural theorists exactly what fatalists focus on karma amounts to. The last

possibilitythat fatalism might link to howtodoit ideas about organizational

design, as distinct from a view of the world as ineluctably ruled by the fickle

goddess of fortunehas had little attention: from conventional culturaltheory

accounts, it would seem the most appropriate role, for fatalist social science in

public management would be like that of the chorus in classical Greek theatre

and the second section of the chapter examines such a perspective on public

management, looking particularly at one influential strain of new institutionalist

literature, which portrays the functioning of organizations as a highly

unpredictable process, involving eclectic decisionmaking unavoidably dependent

on chance connections. It then moves on to build on the recipe for contrived

randomness, and argues that a fatalist perspective can at least in some sense be

taken beyond commentary and criticism into a positive prescription for conducting

management and designing organizations to operate on the basis of chance.

Public Management, Rhetoric, and Culture


DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0008

Returns to the general question of what sort of science public management is or

can be and how cultural theory can contribute to that science. If public

management is (as suggested earlier) dominated by rhetorical forms of argument,

cultural theory can help take one step further than conventional analyses of

rhetoric by differentiating rhetorical familiesthis theme is explored in this

chapter, which looks at what a culturaltheory framework can add to the analysis

of public management as an arena for rhetoric, and aims to do three things. First,

it briefly expands on a now familiar argument (noted in the first chapter)that

shifts in what counts as received ideas in public management work through a

process of fashion and persuasion, not through proofs couched in strict deductive

logic, controlled experiments, or even systematic analysis of all available cases.

Second, and more ambitiously, it aims to bring together the analysis of rhetoric in

public management with the four ways of doing public management that were

explored in Part II, to show how each of those approaches can have its own

rhetoric, in the sense of foreshortened proofs, analogies, and parables; the aim is

to put a culturaltheory perspective to work in a different way, to identify multiple

rhetorics of public management. Third, it briefly develops the suggestion made in

Chapters 1 and 2 that shifts (change) in received ideas about how to organize

typically occur in a reactive way, through rejection of existing arrangements with

their known faults, rather than through a positive process of reasoning from a

blank slate.

Contemporary Public Management: A New Global Paradigm?


DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0009


can be and how cultural theory can contribute to that science. Critically discusses

the pervasive ideas of modernization and global convergence in a culturaltheory

framework, suggesting there are more forces for divergence and less common

ground on what modernity means in matters of organization than is commonly

recognized. It argues that modernization is a rhetorically successful idea because

when the powerful but implicit metaphor of technological development that

underlies it is carried over into human organization it is inherently ambiguousso

it lends itself to quite different and contradictory ideas about the wave of the

future that fit with each of the world views identified by cultural theory. Further, it

argues that a vision of global transformation of public management into a

convergent modern style is likely to be exaggerated because it ignores powerful

forces of pathdependency and selfdisequilibrationi.e. the capacity of

management reform initiatives to produce the opposite of their intended result.

The main sections of the chapter are: Modern, Global, Inevitable? The Claim of a

New Paradigm in Public Management; PublicManagement Modernization as Deep

Change; PublicManagement Modernization as Irreversible Change;

PublicManagement Modernization as Convergent Change; PublicManagement

Modernization as Beneficent Change; and Modernizationor Fatal Remedies?

Taking Stock: The State of the Art of the State


DOI:10.1093/0198297653.003.0010


can be and how cultural theory can contribute to that science. Concludes by taking

stock of the culturaltheory approach as a framework for analysing public

management, surveying its strengths and weaknesses. It does not claim there are

no problems with the approachon the contrary, there are major gaps and

ambiguities and some of the underlying logic needs attention, but in spite of such

weaknesses, the claim is that a culturaltheory framework has much to contribute

to a way of thinking about the art of the state that is neither sham science nor

mere craft. To assess the culturaltheory approach, this concluding chapter

discusses three sorts of objections to the culturaltheory framework as a way of

analysing public management. One possible line of criticism might be called the

nursery toys objectionthe claim that cultural theory is too simple for

sophisticated analysis and is therefore better suited for the elementary stages of

understanding than for advanced or professional analysis; a second possible line of

criticism might be called the soft science objectionthe claim that, whatever its

level of sophistication or applicability to management, the theory is, even on its

own terms, limited, ambiguous, and perhaps even unfalsifiable; a third line of

criticism might be called the wrong tool objectioni.e. the claim that cultural

theory, however sophisticated, cannot be an adequate basis for a theory of

management, because ultimately it has little to say about the central whattodo

questions of organization that management and managers need to be concerned

withand by this view, it is the wrong tool for the job.

the art of the state

Documents