Who Intervenes? State Transformation and the Meta-Governance of State Building

Abstract

In the previous chapter I related the development of SBIs in their current form to, among other things, the transformation of Western states in the context of globalisation and the associated preoccupation with de-bounded risk. State transformation was conceptualised in terms of shifts in the purpose of state power, its location and the kinds of actors now exercising state power. In particular, I mentioned the emergence of a new logic of political rule by expertise, whereby public policy is justified in terms of good management based upon expert advice and not in terms of reaching a political accommodation between competing interests. This normative-ideological disposition, as we have seen, is also associated with the formation and further development of new modes of multilevel governance, which problematise traditional notions of what is inside or outside of the state. In this chapter, I proceed from these premises to more specifically examine the ways in which such developments have shaped the kinds of actors that participate in SBIs and their roles within intervention regimes, as well as explain why these actors are included and others excluded.