Dilemmas of Engagement Vol. 10

In our public institutions it sometimes feels as though the tectonic plates of social and political contracts are shifting. The economic revolution embraced by neo-liberals and conservatives found its counterpart in a governance revolution in the very institutions that have always been designed to protect us from sharp historical and political lurches one way or another. Our public institutions mostly coinciding with what we can call our professional institutions which were once the...
More Description

In our public institutions it sometimes feels as though the tectonic plates of social and political contracts are shifting. The economic revolution embraced by neo-liberals and conservatives found its counterpart in a governance revolution in the very institutions that have always been designed to protect us from sharp historical and political lurches one way or another. Our public institutions mostly coinciding with what we can call our professional institutions which were once the filters of social and political change have become wrapped into economic and social reform and are now all-too-frequently the conduits of that political change. We live in a world dubbed the new public management (NPM). In this new landscape evaluators have to think afresh how to find our way in analyzing the administration of social justice, and how to position ourselves in a new institutional ethics. In this volume contributors give us a start in this thinking - some within the values frame of NPM, most as external observers."