Laboratoire d'Etudes sur les Nouvelles Technologies de l'Information, la Communication, l'Innovation et le Changement - LENTIC
Disciplines :
Sciences économiques & de gestion: Multidisciplinaire, généralités & autres Gestion de l’entreprise, entrepreneuriat & théorie des organisations Sciences politiques, administration publique & relations internationales
Auteur, co-auteur :
Esposito, Giovanni ; Université de Liège > HEC-Ecole de Gestion de l'ULg : UER > LENTIC
Langue du document :
Anglais
Titre :
The Giant Sleeping at the Boundaries of Management: a Panoptical perspective to the governance of the TEN-T program
Date de publication/diffusion :
17 juin 2015
Nombre de pages :
34
Nom de la manifestation :
L&B 4th Annual International Conference,
Organisateur de la manifestation :
Science Po Paris
Lieu de la manifestation :
Paris, France
Date de la manifestation :
17 au 18 juin 2015
Manifestation à portée :
International
Références de l'abstract :
This paper is based on an empirical research addressing the EU managerial techniques characterizing the governance of the TEN-T program. The latter is a trans-national investment program aiming to fund the establishment of a trans-European network of transport infrastructures across EU countries enabling the full achievement of a frictionless and smooth functioning internal market. In particular, it presents the Lyon-Turin high-speed rail project (funded by the TEN-T) through the lenses of 36 in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted by the author with several actors (managers and stakeholders) involved in the TEN-T network of governance. The paper provides: i) a description of the trans-national hierarchy of governance structuring the interplay between the different levels of government (supra-national, national and sub-national) involved in the program management; and, ii) a critical analysis of the construction and deployment of the managerial techniques (benchmarks, reports, evaluation, indicators, and agreements) that have been adopted to articulate and discipline the interactions between the actors operating at the different hierarchical levels of TEN-T.
Drawing on Bentham and Foucault, the TEN-T architecture of governance is described as a panoptical system functioning on the basis of three disciplinary principles (hierarchical observation, normalizing judgment and examination), enacted by means of managerial techniques following the three e’s logic (efficiency, effectiveness and economy), and operating out-and-out as foucaudian technologies of power whose ultimate purpose is getting things done.
Drawing on the experience of the Lion-Turin project, the paper concludes that this panoptical mode of managing public programs can lead to risky legitimacy crisis of funded projects resulting in dangerous – sometimes violent - oppositions between the governors and the people, as well as entailing implications going beyond the realm of management and affecting some fundamental constitutional freedoms.
