Aufhebunga Bunga
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/363/ Outsourcing the State
🕑 Added 2023-09-12 06:00:03 +0000 UTCOn the politics of consultancy
The past 40 years have seen a whole range of things the state used to do itself outsourced to third parties. Now there is a turn against these practices. But can the state actually get stuff done, or is it doomed for its prior reliance on consultants?
It's not just the left the criticises outsourcing - the right now does too. How do these positions differ? And how are these questions related to another critique – that of 'bullshit jobs'?
Readings & Links:
- In Clover, Laleh Khalili, LRB (attached)
- The Big Con — the case against consultancies (review of Mazzucatto & Collington), Diane Coyle, FT (attached)
- Letter: Groundless assertions about a trusted profession (response from a consultant), FT
- How PwC captured Australia, Shahar Hameiri, Unherd
- Consultancies Have Been the Handmaidens of Neoliberalism, Nathan Akehurst, Jacobin
- Radical Centrism: Uniting the Radical Left and the Radical Right, Ashwin Parameswaran, Macroresilience
- The limits of government outsourcing, Martin Bortz, Pursuit
- /267/ South Africa Mafia State ft. Benjamin Fogel
Comments
Lee Jones
There was a fundamental confusion at work in this episode between outsourcing and the use of consultancies. They are related but distinct. Consultancies may be used to outsource decision-making, or set up outsourced (privatised) services, but they can also be used for other things. The outsourcing of decision-making also goes well beyond consultancies to the rise of quasi-private/independent regulators, arms-length bodies, courts, intergovernmental institutions, etc. A clearer conceptual framing was needed.
Eli A
What a quizzical oversight in this episode to talk about the "outsourcing of the state" and levy your focus almost exclusively on consultants. In reality, the state has outsourced its bus drivers, train operators, prisons, waste management, infrastructure building, road maintenance, power generation, defense manufacturing, and even the military itself to private contractors! To focus on the consultants really gives short shrift to the extent to which state capacities have atrophied. There are more than twice as many US federal contractors than federal employees! They are so intertwined with the machinery of government that it couldn't function without them, despite gouging the public along the way. Focusing on the role of the consultant misses the privatization forest for the Ivy League trees. That being said, I enjoyed the discussion you did have, but thought key points were left out.
Richard R
Little bit of a "gotcha" or maybe petty complaint. But seems Phil ought to choose: is social reproduction theory a reactionary move because it distracts from the real class politics action, or is sex education a serious and important piece of deciding who gets power in society?
