The Great Managerial Turn of Public Bureaucracies. A Rationalization Perspective

Why have governments invested so much and so repeatedly in the last 50 years in administrative reforms? Why have they placed so much priority on the goals of effectiveness and efficiency, even though the impact of reforms was often uncertain? Over the long term, since the middle of the 20th century, it seems that bureaucracy, the tool that was to rationalise social and economic life, has itself become an object of rationalisation as an aspect of what I call the “state’s self-care” (the ‘souci de soi de l’Etat’) elaborating the notion through Foucault. While much has been written on this topic, the paper argues that there is a deficit in the exploration of the macro-trends (bureaucratic, political, economic, social) and long-term dynamics that have led to the development of this recurrent over-emphasis on the rationalisation of bureaucracies. In thjis perspective, it proposes to pay a renewed attention to Weber’s approach of rationalization processes and its two forces at work – formal and substantive – in order to examine and interpret the contemporary managerial turn of public bureaucraties. This approach is exemplified on performance management and agencification.