Budgets and Biopolitics
Budgets and Biopolitics
On Substantive Provisioningand Formal Rationalization
This chapter focuses on budgetary reform. In debates about neoliberalism and neoliberal reform, the government budget is often viewed as a key locus in which it is possible to observe the absolute antinomy between substantive provisioning and formal rationalization. “Budgetary austerity”—understood as a key component of structural adjustment and, thus, of neoliberal reform—presents an image of social welfare goals sacrificed to demands of scarcity (or the demands of international capital markets). However, seen in a somewhat broader view, it becomes apparent that the government budget—far from being a site in which these two forms of rationalization are opposed—is among the most critical sites in which the tricky relationship between formal rationality and substantive provisioning is constituted as an explicit target of technocratic reflection and management in modern states.
Keywords: budgetary reform, neoliberalism, neoliberal reform, government budget, substantive provisioning, formal rationalization, budgetary austerity, structural adjustment
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