Seeing like a bank, thinking like a state
Financial ways of calculating are being incorporated into the policy process. A lecture on how states have begun to ‘think’ like a financial actor.
How do advanced capitalist states manage and govern social policy? Macquarie University Senior Lecturer Ben Spies-Butcher discusses how financial ways of calculating are being incorporated into the policy process via accounting techniques, with the result that states have begun to ‘think’ like a financial actor.
It’s a tendency consistent with dominant understandings of neoliberal governance and the demise of politics, but Ben will argue that within social policy, politics has not disappeared, but has rather been reconstructed. The presentation is the beginning of a larger project, and so he will end by raising questions to guide future research and open debate.
About the presenter
Ben Spies-Butcher is a Senior Lecturer in the Sociology Department at Macquarie University. He has a PhD in Economics from the University of Sydney and his work focuses on the political economy of social policy. His most recent co-authored book is Market Society published with Cambridge University Press.