Making of Autonomous Agents

The previous section has analysed attempts by the state to constitute autonomous and modern local authorities that would meet the needs of their communities. Their regimes were therefore problematised as causing confusion between policy and implementation, a conflict of roles between the political representatives and the administrators of the local authorities. Councillors were seen as being distracted by the day-to-day management of the council, ignoring what should be their principal role, listening to the electorate and designing policy. Their dappling in both policy and its implementation apparently made it difficult to assess their performance. Drawing on public choice theory, agency theory and transaction cost economics (Pallot, 2003; Wallis and Dollery, 2001; Boston, et al., 1991), prevailing institutional arrangements were problematised as encouraging self-seeking behaviour by not specifying clearly the objectives of managers and their departments. The carrying out of both policy functions and their implementation by the same department and person was no longer " truth".

The truth lay in a different arrangement where these functions were identified and separated with each assigned very specific objectives. The aim was to constitute autonomous agents each pursuing clearly specified objectives. The seeds for constituting such identities had been laid before the election of the fourth Labour Government by the Shailes Report which criticised the lack of a: clear delineation of objectives in the running of government (Office of the Controller and Auditor General, 1978; Pallot, 2003). Gair (1982) for example argued that: "But all the talent in the world would not achieve a great deal if it lacks specific objectives, and the big difference between the private and public sectors is that in the private sector the objectives are much more clearly set and

understood by everyone" (p., 166). These sentiments were to take greater force with the election of the Labour Government in 1984. Where objectives were not specified and clear lines of accountability established, individuals apparently pursued their own self interest thereby undermining performance of the public sector (Treasury, 1987). This distinction apparently explained why the private sector outperformed the public one. The truth of this claim was not contested.

The local authorities were therefore required to clearly separate their trading from their non-trading activities. Certain activities such as the provision of transport services, airports, seaports etc. were to be corporatised. One recommended form of corporatisation was the formation of LA TEs which were basically companies undertaking former local authority trading activities such as transport and airports, and owned by the local authority. This separation was supposed to ensure that trading activities are carried out with commercial objectives in mind by being required to respond to the dictates of the market. While political interference would be brooked under non-commercial objectives, it would not be under commercial objectives. Each of these two would be conferred autonomy to pursue assigned objectives and would be governed as such. These objectives would be pursued by managers with a commercial orientation who would seek to constitute employees to pursue commercial goals using methods from the private sector. Hoggett however warns that markets have been associated with the creation of bodies (such as LATEs) which cite privacy as a way of competing thereby militating against democratic accountability (see Pallot, 2003; Farrell and Morris, 2003). The creation of markets removes community as a possible point of gaze (Hucker, 1997).

The management of local authorities would be restructured to reflect a separation of policy (purview of politicians) from its implementation (purview of managers). Section 119C of the Local Government Act 1974 empowers local authorities to appoint a chief executive or a group of senior managers who

would be responsible to the authority for employing staff and negotiating their terms of service. These executive(s) would be responsible to the local authority for implementing its decisions, providing advice to the local authority and any community boards, ensuring that all functions, duties and powers delegated to him or her or any employee of the local authority are performed. In addition, they would be responsible for the effective and efficient economic management of the activities and planning of local authorities. These executives would be employed on five year contracts and be accountable for specific objectives.

The elected members would on the other hand be removed from the day to day activities of their local authority, but be responsible for designing its policy. This arrangement would enhance accountability by ensuring that elected representatives are accountable for policy while managers are accountable for its implementation (Reid, 1999). This separation does not however, appear to have been achieved with suggestions that managers have captured the policy­ making process in addition to their mandate of implementation (Hucker, 1997; Kearins, 1997). The private sector origins of some of these managers suggest a preference for a form of identity which privileges business logic over the traditional public sector ethic. These managers would act as agents in situ to constitute members as business oriented subjects.

The separation of departments within local authorities into autonomous units each pursuing their clearly spelt out objectives constituted managers with responsibility to manage their budgets and achieve the objectives assigned to them. This would lead to competition between producer and purchaser units, with the former focussing on ways of beating their competitors so as to win the right to supply the purchaser. The purchaser could be another local authority department or an external entity. This technology confers freedom on the producer units to produce so much of whatever product or service only regulated by the market. Purchasers are encouraged to search for producers who can provide goods and services at the least cost and of the desired quality.

Competition fosters a tendency towards the search for efficiency which includes intensifying labour as units seek to outpace the competition so as to win contracts (Hoggett, 1996).

The technologies of competition enable individuals to conduct themselves as producers and purchasers only fettered by the market. The incentives for managers of these units were to be restructured so that they could be held responsible for the efficient use of resources as compared with the market (McKinlay, 1994). Citizens were to conduct themselves on the basis of material incentives and not the traditional service to the public ethic. The subjugation (Foucault 1980d) of a discourse of public service privileges a private sector approach to the government of public affairs. Their conduct was however to be tied to distant centres through a corresponding intensification of rules and procedures (cf. Hoggett, 1996). The relationship between units is increasingly specified in the form of contracts. This specification would suggest that points of gaze increase with purchasers and producers being joined by other centres such as the central government and citizens. It is however bound to be a gaze based on outputs only, these being more easily measurable and therefore reported compared to outcomes. The promotion of a market ethic may become associated with a different sort of identity with managers who espouse market values creating fiefdoms away from other units (cf. Hoggett, 1996).

The specification of objectives would serve a governmental purpose: it would provide a point of focus, a gaze. It forms the basis for calculating individual effort and provides a standard or norm against which one's behaviour can be normalised. The setting of objectives and targets and the delineation of responsibilities incites individual autonomous conduct to achieve a threshold and to compare their performance with that of others (cf. Foucault, 1977). This specification also reflects a way in which the totality of governmentality becomes practical by bringing professionals within the web of calculation and into the gaze of citizens now constituted as communities (Rose, 1993). Each

space would be governed on the basis of the specific objectives assigned to it while seeming to enjoy autonomy:

. . . one of the paradoxes of contemporary management is that it both liberates and enslaves. Whilst operational managers may be given real control over the resources necessary to do the job right the centre (of the firm or the government) retains control over key strategic decisions such as the allocation of resources to operational units and the framework of financial and personnel rules and performance targets within which devolution over operational matters is allowed to occur (Hoggett, 1991) (Hoggett, 1996, p. 18).