Social & cultural anthropology
The absurdity of bureaucracy
How implementation works
Nina Holm Vohnsen. Series edited by Professor Rod Rhodes
Description
The absurdity of bureaucracy offers a humorous ethnographic account of policy implementation set in contemporary Danish bureaucracy. Taking the reader deep into the hallways of governmental administration and municipal caseworkers' offices, the book sets out to explore what characterizes policy implementation as a mode of human agency. Using the notions of absurdity and sense-making as lenses through which to explore the dynamic relationship between a policy and its effects, the book reclaims 'implementation studies' for the qualitative sciences and emphasizes the existential dilemma that any policymaker and implementer must confront. Following step-by-step the planning and implementation of the randomized controlled trial, Active - Back Sooner, the book sets out to show that 'going wrong' is not a question of implementation failure but is in fact the only way in which implementation may happen.
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Endorsements
The absurdity of bureaucracy offers an ethnographic portrayal of the Danish labour market system in 2009. It departs from the author's puzzlement that the civil servants she met during her research would maintain a double stance towards their work; they were convinced they were in the process of constantly improving the welfare system while at the same time they found the outcome of their decisions deeply absurd. The main protagonist of the book is the randomized controlled trial Active - Back Sooner which was a central component of the Danish Government's Action Plan on Sickness Benefit meant to reduce to the cost of sickness benefit and to secure the 'active labour force'. It is the continuous planning and disintegration of this effort and the myriad of decisions made in relation to it that is the primary object of empirical portraiture and theoretical discussion. Based on 12 months of participant observation and ethnographic interviewing in the Danish Ministry of Employment and one of the implementing municipalities the book documents how rejected reasons and alleyways of action return to haunt the decision-makers (be they caseworkers, the government administration, or politicians) creating an absurd world of contradictions and dilemmas. The book documents how 'going wrong' is built into the very nature of decision-making and suggests that the analysis of absurdity is central to any understanding of how policy develops and how implementation works.
Author Biography
Nina Holm Vohnsen is Lecturer in Anthropology at Aarhus University
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Manchester University Press
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View all titlesBibliographic Information
- Publisher Manchester University Press
- Publication Date May 2017
- Orginal LanguageEnglish
- ISBN/Identifier 9781526101341 / 1526101343
- Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
- FormatHardback
- Primary Price 70 GBP
- Pages232
- ReadershipCollege/Tertiary Education
- Publish StatusPublished
- Dimensions234 x 156 mm
- Biblio NotesReading guide Prologue: Labour days Introduction: The absurdity of bureaucracy Central people, documents, and organisations Chapter I: Anticipations Portrait 1: 'Making a difference' Portrait 2: The prefect plan Analysis: A container of discrete agendas Chapter II: Mutations Portrait 3: The trial mutates Portrait 4: Satisfying needs Analysis: Vectors of concern Chapter III: Multiplications Portrait 5: The purpose multiplies Portrait 6: The productivity of controversy Analysis: Absurdity is a perspective that appreciates the sum-total Chapter IV: The quest for meaning Portrait 7: 'Bending' the rules and agreements Portrait 8: The end of meaning Analysis: They rebel, they do not resist Chapter V: How implementation works Epilogue: Bureaucracy Acknowledgements Appendix: Data, position, method Bibliography
- SeriesPolitical and Administrative Ethnography
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