Economizing the political: Workfare reform in strategic management mode

Abstract

The focus of this article is a recent round of workfare reform in Finland. Departing from many existing analyses of workfare, it focuses on issues of governance. Drawing on policy documents and interviews with key policy actors, it shows how this reform and attempts at implementation took place along the lines of a specific form of managerial governance, namely strategic governance, involving the enrolment of strategic management into policy making. The article details how this mode of policy making enabled an intensification and depoliticization of workfare policies via the replacement of political concerns with economic imperatives and in so doing contributed to the broader process of economization of the state. While the latter is often located as central to the project of neoliberalism, the practices through which it is instantiated often remain hazy. This article therefore contributes knowledge on how the process of the economization of the political operates in practice.

Instagram sukupuolittuneen politiikan alustana

“…Paitsi Instagramin samanmielistä affektiivista ilmapiiriä, tämä kuvastaa nykyisen poliittisen päätöksenteon teknokraattista ja managerialistista ihannetta, jossa politikoinnin sijaan tulisi laittaa ideologiset erimielisyydet sivuun ja pyrkiä tehokkaasti kohti yhteistä tavoitetta (Esmark 2020). Tässä pragmaattisessa, ongelmanratkaisuun orientoituneessa ja epäpolitisoituneessa toiminnan tyylissä poliittiset erimielisyydet ja politiikan ideologisuus näyttäytyvät tehokkaan päätöksenteon esteinä (Ylöstalo 2020b;Ylöstalo ja Adkins 2020).…”

The Making of a Work-ready Individual: The Political Economy of Time in a Workfare Program in Israel

“…Under neoliberalism, moving people from welfare to work becomes essential for reducing production costs and enhancing the competitiveness of national economies in the international marketplace (Jessop, 2002b). Ylöstalo and Adkins (2020) consider workfare a powerful device of economization because it has created a market in which the activities of the unemployed are transformed into remunerated and tradable commodities. However, there is yet another unacknowledged dimension of workfare as a domain of economization.…”

The economisation of social policy and the rise of a crisis-prone culture

“…Economisation is associated with the evolution and hegemony of neoliberal reason which creates the framework and grammar for our shared understanding of issues, such as "unemployment" and "productivity". Associated with the evolution of neoliberal reason in general and neoclassical economics, in particular, is a de-politicisation of the state, whereby matters concerning values, virtue, purpose, and morality are turned into technocratic and quantifiable questions of governance with associated expert knowledge (see also : Ylöstalo & Adkins, 2020).…”