The analogy between anti-managerial and anti-corruption politics as both replicating the hollowing out of democracy is very good, & I might argue that there is also historical sequencing between the two, at least in Eastern Europe:
1. in the beginning (sic!) there was the "actually existing socialism" with its "intellectuals in class power" (in fact: managers and bureaucrats of various sorts) operating a complex (re-)distributive system with strong clientelistic elements. (Important to note here clientelism is always a reciprocal relationship, hierachical BUT reciprocal: political support in exchange for goods&services, as true in the New York and Chicago of Democratic Party bosses as in the industrial towns of Eastern Europe. Reciprocity meaning that there was agency on both sides). This relatively unified and coordinated system was called (somewhat mistakenly) the STATE, operated by STATE-MANAGERS based on an integrative ideology of POLITICAL REDISTRIBUTIONISM
2. then came the anti-corruption drive of the newly emergent Center Right forces (the "regime-changers") which used the anti-clientelistic, anti-corruption rhetoric to break this system: partly the new parties took over the clientelistic networks, partly opened up terrain to Western capitalist firms; all in all creating a fragmented patchwork of competing clientelistic networks and multinational corporations. This fragmented, competitive patchwork was called (somewhat mistekanly) the (economic and political) MARKET, operated by MARKET-MANAGERS based on an integrative ideology of technocratic-managerial TINA.
3. the contradicitions of this system gave rised to the anti-managerial revolution of populism and hyperpolitics, which, on the one hand, attacked the managerial technocracy of old and new, i.e. the remnants of the old socialist bureaucracy+ the operators of competing networks of clientelism + the managers of the new capitalism. On the other hand, it turned political contestation into a spectacle without stakes in material reality; that is to say, they did not fundamentally alter the patchwork described at Point no. 2, the most they did was re-unify the clientelistic networks, rebalance their bargain with multinational capita, and kill the remants of actual expertise among state bureaucracies.
So there is a nice dialectic to it: the redistributive modernist state-politics -> anti-corruption politics -> neoliberal managerialism -> anti-managerial populism all leading to less and less room for collective action, contestation and representation.
People like Adrian Vermeule and a small number of others want the right to take up the administrative state, not just burn it all down, as seems to be MAGA's agenda. And Lyons'.
But you say anti-managerialism from the right is just replacing one managerialism with another. But take for example all the lost USAID jobs which enmeshed American agendas into the developing world. What is replacing them?
I think it will at most be a changing of the guard, especially domestically. The USAID case is interesting because it theoretically removes the material support for a 'globalist' politics whose only recourse is to appeal to the US, the intl institutions it dominates, and markets. Politically it might clear away some chaff and stop these NGOs interfering in, and ventriloquising, oppositional politics. But that presumes reasonably healthy civil societies. So think the effects would have to be tracked along that lines. So I'm probably more optimistic about the effects in Serbia than I am in Sierra Leone, say.
This isn't my wheelhouse, but one historical observation is that organized crime often fills the voids of crumbled administrative states. Southern Europe post-WW2, MX post-PRI, and last 10+ yrs of Haiti are a few notable examples that comes to mind. (Indeed, modern Russia might be construed as an extended system of organized crime that coalesced into a state post-USSR).
An interesting question to ask, in my view, is when do criminal enterprises (ie, extra-legal corporations) supplant state power vs, eg, ideological/religious groups? When capital flows make it worth while? This strikes me as a reasonable framework to understand, eg, what will replace USAID in sub-Saharan Africa.
Yeah, indeed. In fact, even in relatively capacitous Latin American states like Brazil or Mexico, criminal enterprise already works its way into the intercises of the state – so it not need be as extreme as crumbling->supplanting.
Your query about USAID in sub-Saharan Africa is really interesting. The failure of capitalist development underlines all this and provides a rebuke to anti-managerialists (just cut their funding and good things will happen) and to the managerialists (just keep channeling aid to bureaucracies and good things will happen).
The analogy between anti-managerial and anti-corruption politics as both replicating the hollowing out of democracy is very good, & I might argue that there is also historical sequencing between the two, at least in Eastern Europe:
1. in the beginning (sic!) there was the "actually existing socialism" with its "intellectuals in class power" (in fact: managers and bureaucrats of various sorts) operating a complex (re-)distributive system with strong clientelistic elements. (Important to note here clientelism is always a reciprocal relationship, hierachical BUT reciprocal: political support in exchange for goods&services, as true in the New York and Chicago of Democratic Party bosses as in the industrial towns of Eastern Europe. Reciprocity meaning that there was agency on both sides). This relatively unified and coordinated system was called (somewhat mistakenly) the STATE, operated by STATE-MANAGERS based on an integrative ideology of POLITICAL REDISTRIBUTIONISM
2. then came the anti-corruption drive of the newly emergent Center Right forces (the "regime-changers") which used the anti-clientelistic, anti-corruption rhetoric to break this system: partly the new parties took over the clientelistic networks, partly opened up terrain to Western capitalist firms; all in all creating a fragmented patchwork of competing clientelistic networks and multinational corporations. This fragmented, competitive patchwork was called (somewhat mistekanly) the (economic and political) MARKET, operated by MARKET-MANAGERS based on an integrative ideology of technocratic-managerial TINA.
3. the contradicitions of this system gave rised to the anti-managerial revolution of populism and hyperpolitics, which, on the one hand, attacked the managerial technocracy of old and new, i.e. the remnants of the old socialist bureaucracy+ the operators of competing networks of clientelism + the managers of the new capitalism. On the other hand, it turned political contestation into a spectacle without stakes in material reality; that is to say, they did not fundamentally alter the patchwork described at Point no. 2, the most they did was re-unify the clientelistic networks, rebalance their bargain with multinational capita, and kill the remants of actual expertise among state bureaucracies.
So there is a nice dialectic to it: the redistributive modernist state-politics -> anti-corruption politics -> neoliberal managerialism -> anti-managerial populism all leading to less and less room for collective action, contestation and representation.
People like Adrian Vermeule and a small number of others want the right to take up the administrative state, not just burn it all down, as seems to be MAGA's agenda. And Lyons'.
But you say anti-managerialism from the right is just replacing one managerialism with another. But take for example all the lost USAID jobs which enmeshed American agendas into the developing world. What is replacing them?
I think it will at most be a changing of the guard, especially domestically. The USAID case is interesting because it theoretically removes the material support for a 'globalist' politics whose only recourse is to appeal to the US, the intl institutions it dominates, and markets. Politically it might clear away some chaff and stop these NGOs interfering in, and ventriloquising, oppositional politics. But that presumes reasonably healthy civil societies. So think the effects would have to be tracked along that lines. So I'm probably more optimistic about the effects in Serbia than I am in Sierra Leone, say.
This isn't my wheelhouse, but one historical observation is that organized crime often fills the voids of crumbled administrative states. Southern Europe post-WW2, MX post-PRI, and last 10+ yrs of Haiti are a few notable examples that comes to mind. (Indeed, modern Russia might be construed as an extended system of organized crime that coalesced into a state post-USSR).
An interesting question to ask, in my view, is when do criminal enterprises (ie, extra-legal corporations) supplant state power vs, eg, ideological/religious groups? When capital flows make it worth while? This strikes me as a reasonable framework to understand, eg, what will replace USAID in sub-Saharan Africa.
Yeah, indeed. In fact, even in relatively capacitous Latin American states like Brazil or Mexico, criminal enterprise already works its way into the intercises of the state – so it not need be as extreme as crumbling->supplanting.
Your query about USAID in sub-Saharan Africa is really interesting. The failure of capitalist development underlines all this and provides a rebuke to anti-managerialists (just cut their funding and good things will happen) and to the managerialists (just keep channeling aid to bureaucracies and good things will happen).