Performative governance

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I define performative governance as the state’s theatrical deployment of visual, verbal, and gestural symbols to foster an impression of good governance before an audience of citizens

—Iza Ding[1]

Just as well this kind of thing could never happen in a corporate environment.

“Performative” is a voguish word, and if the learned author thinks she’s discovered something new — that administrators manage second-order derivatives and proxies of their political problems rather than engaging in the political problems themselves — she would do herself a favour by reading James C. Scott, Jane Jacobs and others who have been articulating these ideas for seventy or more years — but since its fashionable, and since it is bang-on the money, let’s go with it.

See also

References

  1. World Politics, Vol 72, Issue 4, October 2020, pp. 525 - 556. “Performative governance should be distinguished from other types of state behavior, such as inertia, paternalism, and the substantive satisfaction of citizens’ demands.”