Two day PPP seminar on Political Technologies and Conceptions of Value
Although a lot of political hope is currently invested in public value policies in Denmark little scholarly assessment of such initiatives has been available. To discuss this issue the CBS Public- Private Platform will in June 2016 host a two day seminar with the title “New technologies of government and their implications for value”. The seminar will interrogate this policy development and the challenges it gives rise to across different policy areas such as national government, education, health care, the army, and municipal administration as well as from different theoretical and philosophical perspectives. A main purpose of the seminar is to build knowledge about how new technologies of government shift the meaning and valuation of concepts such as public, office, citizenship, quality, and accountability and we hope to bring together scholars from several countries - young faculty as well as experienced to network and learn from one another. The seminar invites scholars who have interrogated new technologies of government from with many different theoretical and philosophical resources.
Participants will include:
Ian Hunter
Jeff Malpas
Bogdan Costea
Mitchell Dean
Laurence Hemming
Seminar abstract
For many years, the governance and management of performance has been central to the reform of the welfare state, leading to market-based organization and market-like individual autonomy. More recently, new technologies designed to mobilize yet not utilized value and possibilities through new interpretations of notions such as democracy and citizenship have been added to the pressures on public organizations and public servants. Although a lot of political hope is currently invested in public value policies in Denmark (i.e. Danish Government 2015; Local Government, Denmark 2013), as well as in other welfare states critical scholarly examination of the many different effects of such policies is lacking. A key assumption in the literature is that the commitment to stretching, flexible and open-ended goals of the public value paradigm will improve service because it allows professionals to involve citizens better and be responsive to the needs, wishes and possibilities of participation of the individual citizen (Stoker 2006, 47; Aldridge & Stoker 2002; Alford & Hughes, 2008). However, as yet, the debate about possible adverse effects of such initiatives have been scarce. How do stretching, open-ended goals and the desire to govern future potentiality effect the public sector and its ability to deliver equality, citizen rights etc.? How do new technologies of government and novel experiments with the organization of welfare service put at stake the boundaries between public, private and civil society?
The event is initiated and organized by PPP member Justine Grønbæk Pors and long-standing collaborator of the Platform,
Australian researcher Anna Yeatman from the Whitlam Institute at Western Sydney University, which is one of the PP
Platform’s strategic partners
However, more information will follow on our website and in next newsletter, but save the date already now!