Depoliticisation: economic crisis and political management

Over the last decade or so there has been an explosion of interest in the idea of ‘depoliticisation’ in relation to state policy and restructuring. Often, as Wood and Flinders (2014) point out, characterisations of depoliticisation have been cross-cutting and imprecise. Even within political science usage has varied from simple notions of depoliticisation as the ‘absence of politics’ or ‘quangoism’ to more complex understandings of depoliticisation as a process whereby state managers may seek to place at one remove the politically contested character of governing and in so doing paradoxically enhance political control. This chapter focuses on exploring this latter interpretation and suggests that there are a number of productive ways in which depoliticisation as a governing strategy can be developed from a limited number of relatively straightforward assumptions. In this respect the chapter offers both a refinement and a further extension of the notion of depoliticisation illustrating the explanatory power of the concept when applied to governing and in particular to crisis management. While the chapter may therefore be located in terms of its contribution to the study of the ‘governmental face of depoliticisation’ (as identified by Wood and Flinders, 2014), it nevertheless offers a framework that problematises Weberian conceptions of governance highlighting the crisis-ridden character of capitalist development and thereby political management. It will be suggested that by linking depoliticisation to the crisis avoidance strategies of state managers, the concept scores highly in terms of meaning, clarity and precision over more expansive uses that often lack a cutting edge and result in the rather bland assertion that ‘depoliticisation is everywhere’.

The first part of the chapter emphasises the contribution of Marx, Habermas and the Conference of Socialist Economists (CSE) state theory tradition to contemporary understandings of depoliticisation. It then outlines three distinct ways in which the theory can be developed – as a simple account of off-loading or arm’s-length management, as a characterisation of an entire regime of governing, and third, as part of an account of the methods chosen by state managers to externalise the imposition of discipline/austerity on social relations. The final section of the chapter develops this latter interpretation looking in particular at how in the wake of financial crisis the British state has deepened its commitment to depoliticisation strategies.