The state: complexity, accountability and depoliticization

Arm’s-length bodies and 3Ps have been increasingly utilized as a tool of governance within state projects because theoretically they offer a range of benefits over traditional governmental structures or procurement methods.

Advocates of 3Ps suggest that inviting private sector partners to design, build and in some cases even manage public facilities can deliver increased levels of efficiency while transferring risk onto the private sector partner. The decision to delegate tasks away from central state departments to para­statal bodies is based on assumptions regarding managerial flexibility, effi­ciency, esoteric expertise, legitimacy and the capacity to construct inclusive board structures that bring together a range of stakeholders (see Flinders 2006). Many of these positive characteristics are assumed rather than proven. This section focuses on three core issues that form major challenges or issues for those interested in understanding the contemporary state: complexity, accountability and depoliticization.

More on the topic The state: complexity, accountability and depoliticization:

1. Depoliticization
2. Accountability
3. Complexity
4. The so-called ‘new institutionalism’ is a relatively recent addition to the pantheon of theories of the state and, like some of the other perspectives considered in this volume, it is by no means only a theory of the state
5. Like Henry Higgins who, through his work changed the object of his studies into something other than what it was, the purpose of the Marxist theory of the state is not just to understand the capitalist state but to aid in its destruction. (Wolfe 1974: 131)
6. Shifting sands: the boundaries of the state
7. 4 Decentralization of State Hospital System Governance
8. What is the state?
9. The concept of the state
10. Beyond the state?
11. Marxism and the state
12. SANCTION AND THE STATE
13. The state as institutional contextualization
14. The genealogy of the concept of the state
15. The state and problems of legitimacy
16. Green critiques of the state
17. The Weberian definition of the modern state