After 1989, Western elites congratulated themselves on entering a “post-ideological” age. With the great twentieth century battles between fascism, communism, and liberal-democratic capitalism over and the latter ascendant, politics would be confined to debating pragmatic solutions to technical problems. We are hearing rather less of this kind of commentary today. Over the past decade, the rise of populism on the right and radical identity politics on the left has signalled the return of a more openly ideological political style.
What this narrative leaves out is that the embattled consensus of the Western establishment is also underpinned by a powerful ideology—albeit one that denies its ideological character, hiding behind claims to be merely implementing the rules. Despite the restless political contortions of the past decade, it remains the default mode of state institutions and other large organizations.
This ideology is technocratic managerialism. Despite the populist revolt that has swept across the West, it remains deeply embedded in organizations governed by bureaucratic-managerial principles, whether corporations, government agencies, or international bodies. Because these organizations are still the primary units around which contemporary society is structured, their governing ideology remains deeply entrenched. Moreover, digital technologies and, increasingly, artificial intelligence, further reinforce its power. As social interaction and economic activity become dependent on digital platforms and applications, adherence to the rules of these platforms becomes the sine qua non of social participation. Those who design them are therefore in a position to engineer our shared reality, and they are doing so along managerial lines.
Managerialism is not just a set of techniques. It is underpinned by a set of beliefs about what human beings are and how social life should be arranged. Its baseline assumption is that all social phenomena are the outcome of measurable material processes. Social life is treated as analyzable and quantifiable, capable of being taken apart and put together again so that it works better. If something hasn’t been figured out yet, it will be in the future: We just need more data, more computing power, and more sophisticated modelling. The optimization of any social situation or process is simply a matter of finding and applying the correct technique.
“Managerialism is not just a set of tech
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