Reinventing Government as Postmodern Symbolic Politics

Abstract

The title of this article stands as a claim that something can be learned from viewing reinventing government movement as an example of postmodern symbolic politics. It is not, however, a claim to exclusive truth; it would be wrong to dismiss an entire movement and all of dedicated participants as cynically engaging in nothing symbolic politics. I admit, both affirmations and negations of reinvention can be telling without ever uttering postmodern. What can an interpretation add that is based on a historical shift that few acknowledge? To answer that question, and to redeem claim, I need first to explicate those aspects of postmodernism relevant to task. Second, I need to adduce elements of reinvention movement which may be plausibly subsumed under those aspects. Relevant Aspects of Postmodernism I have, with Hugh Miller (1995), argued that fruitful insights about contemporary public policy and administration follow from viewing these as aspects of postmodern condition.(1) Doing so requires, at least for sake of argument, that one accept that advanced industrial countries are undergoing a fundamental change. In other words, work and study of public policy formation and implementation now occur in a context so fundamentally different from past as to justify judgment that we have crossed over from one era (modernity) to another (postmodernity). As a word of warning (self defense), let me quickly add that epochal rupture did not occur all at once. Postmodernism can be traced as far back as Nietzsche while gathering momentum in years after World War II. A full-fledged explication of transformation and its implications is beyond scope of this article. Only production-symbol aspect of post-modernity can be sketched here. In its production aspect, transformation from modernity to postmodernity is associated with widely noted move from an industrial to a postindustrial society; from an economy based primarily on production of material goods to one based primarily on information technologies, services, marketing, credit, and consumption. To be sure, this transformation, like earlier move from agricultural production to industrial production, is one of dominant tendencies or ideal-typical profiles. Of course, we still produce agricultural and industrial commodities but as paradigm case of farm labor was replaced by paradigm case of assembly line, paradigm case of work today is an office where symbols are analyzed and manipulated. This development has also been heralded as advent of information age. Toffler (1980) and Gingrich make a similar point about first, second, and third waves. As an aside, postmodernism (as a theoretical orientation) adds that allied philosophical, epistemological, ethical, political, cultural, and societal developments are of sufficient magnitude to warrant epochal differentiation.(2) The main implication of production metamorphosis for purpose of this argument is theory of hyperreality or what I call self-referential epiphenomenalism. Again, only surface of argument can be expressed here. The postmodernist(3) analysis finds that words, symbols, and signs are increasingly divorced from direct real-world experience. Part of this results from switch from a society based primarily on production to one based primarily on consumption and information. Production requires group activity and communication based on manipulation and processing of physical objects. There is a rootedness based on direct interface between humans and material; symbolic meanings are similarly rooted. Contrariwise, in consumptive economic mode of postmodernity, symbols float away, as it were, and procreate with other symbols leading to what Jameson (1991) calls the free play of signifiers. As designs of products to which symbols are attached become too complex for consumers to master, symbols lose their mooring lines. …