Abstract
How does the state imagine the people? In what ways does it come to know the targets of its policies? This paper examines the transformation of the state through a focus on the visions implied in tools and practices of results-based management in state bureaucracies. When scholars have discussed the state’s vision or imagination they have often critically examined how the state constructs aggregates of the population as a whole. But an emphasis on or critique of aggregation can only be the beginning of understanding the multiple and sometimes contradictory ways in which people are imagined in governance today. Results-based management has created a new way in which the state imagines people. In some policy arenas citizens have been turned into “beneficiaries” through the practices of state managers. Beneficiaries differ from citizen in a number of ways: Citizens are thought to benefit from policies with broad goals; beneficiaries are shown to benefit from specific interventions. Citizens are owed service; beneficiaries are selected for intervention if it suits specific funding priorities. Citizens are the origins of politics and the end of policies; beneficiaries are a means to an organization’s success.
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Notes
I thank a reviewer of this paper for this insight.
See for example Draft Presidential Memo on NATO Strategy and Force Structure, January 7, 1969, and Draft Presidential Memo on Asia Strategy and Force Structure, February 1, 1969, Papers of Alain Enthoven, Box 4, Draft Presidential Memos, 1968–1969, Tabs A-F, LBJ Library.
See for example Memorandum for the President, “Civil Defense” First Draft, October 28, 1963, Papers of Alain Enthoven, Box 1, Vol. 1, Strategic Offensive and Defensive Forces, Part 1, LBJ Library.
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Acknowledgements
Two anonymous reviewers have provided very thoughtful comments that have helped to improve the paper. I also thank Claudio Benzecry, Neil Brenner, Craig Calhoun, Will Davies, Michael Guggenheim, Eric Klinenberg, John Mollenkopf, Harvey Molotch and Richard Sennett for comments on this project. This research was supported by a Moody Grant from The Lyndon B. Johnson Library and I thank Regina Greenwell and other archivists there for their generous assistance.
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Krause, M. Accounting for State Intervention: The Social Histories of “Beneficiaries”. Qual Sociol 33, 533–547 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-010-9165-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-010-9165-x