Central Government Organisations in the Era of Global Capitalism: Bureaucratic Autonomisation or Political Recentralising?

Abstract

A growing body of research on the development of the regulatory state focuses on the autonomy of the agencies created to take care of the “rowing” side of governing. Much less is known, however, about the autonomy of organisations charged with various forms of central “steering” at the core of the state. This is paradoxical to the extent that public management reforms always involved a form of “centralised-decentralisation”: they delegate and decentralise certain functions and responsibilities, while centralising or (re)centralising others. If it is “necessary to centralise in order to decentralise” as Charles Perrow once noticed (1977), what does this mean for central government organisations and structures in the contemporary era? We specifically think about organisations in charge of activities such as budgeting, strategic planning, staffing, performance management, audit, and other associated types of “regulation inside government” (Hood). What about the autonomy of the organisations in charge of those functions? Have they become more removed from the realm of everyday politics by using the tools of the new public management and new instruments of calculation? Or have they become more politicised and the object of greater control by political principals? How are these ‘new’ or reinforced “guardians” at the centre of the state interacting with other players in the governance process? The panel welcomes papers combining theoretical and empirical insights into the dynamics of bureaucratic autonomy and capacity building in central government organisations and structures. The papers should advance our understanding of the relationship between process of institutional differentiation and autonomisation of central government organisations from various methodological and theoretical perspectives.

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