Introduction

This collection addresses the present historical conjuncture, one where there is a practical and organisational convergence of several historical forces: the intellectual force of neoliberalism as this offers a blueprint for a global institutional order that secures the rights of corporate capital; a global, corporate and financialised capitalism that gleefully affords itself the licence to operate that this order grants it; a scientific technologism that is oriented within an ethos of adaptive and manipulative problem-solving conduct, unfettered by ‘mere’ opinion (culture, politics, history); and, managerialism, the ideology of let the managers manage. The triumph of managerialism, then, in the title of this collection, refers not to managerialism considered as a phenomenon on its own, but to managerialism considered as the mode of governance of the entire system of relationships that is constituted by the synthesis of neoliberalism, capitalism and technologism. The a-political value neutrality, the technical form of rationality, the ‘fixer’ mentality and the a-contextual elitism of managerialist discourse are the lingua franca that hold the system of governance together. There is something further to be said about the historical conjuncture of this collection. Until relatively recently, at least in constitutional democracies, the state and the wider public sector of organisations funded by the state operated in terms of the political rationality of public administration. The central values in this discourse are rule of law, political accountability and transparency, service to the public, public interest and – with reference to how the public is served – an idea of citizenship that is practically specified in terms of how state services make it possible for people to enjoy and share the status of citizen.