Democratic government, institutional autonomy and the dynamics of change
Against the backdrop of decades of public sector reforms in Europe, this essay aims to make sense of the processes through which institutions, democratic government included, achieve and lose autonomy or primacy and why it is difficult to find a state of equilibrium between democratic government and...
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| Formato: | Artículo científico |
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Universidad Autónoma Metropolitana Unidad Xochimilco
2010
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| Acceso en línea: | http://www.redalyc.org/articulo.oa?id=34014049006 http://biblioteca.clacso.edu.ar/gsdl/cgi-bin/library.cgi?a=d&c=mx/mx-024&d=34014049006oai |
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| Sumario: | Against the backdrop of decades of public sector reforms in Europe, this essay aims to make sense of the processes through which institutions, democratic government included, achieve and lose autonomy or primacy and why it is difficult to find a state of equilibrium between democratic government and institutional autonomy. The analytical value of autonomy as detachment-from-politics and the apolitical dynamics of change assumed by npm reformers are challenged. In contrast, the interplay between democratic government and institutional autonomy is interpreted as an artifact of partly de-coupled inter-institutional processes involving struggle for power and status among interdependent and co-evolving institutions that are carriers of competing yet legitimate values, interests and behavioral logics. The problem of finding a stable equilibrium between democratic government, autonomous agencies and non-majoritarian institutions, is illustrated by the cases of public administration and the public university. |
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