The ideology of markets and the practice of policy: objectivity, control and the objectionable

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to briefly explore some recent curious interlocking of the ideology of markets and the practice of policy.

Design/methodology/approach

This particular discursive combine has most visibly been apparent in the concatenated birth and death of the US Defense Department's so‐called “Policy Analysis Market” (PAM). Yet PAM is but the most notorious example of a more sustained and pervasive attempt to use the technologies and disciplines of markets to render policy both better informed and more amenable to control through robust and seemingly incontestable systems of accountability. Given its prominence, our way in is through a brief description of PAM's origins and demise.

Findings

It is found that PAM and its similar brethren of markets for use in policy formation and judgement are less concerned with the capture of reality and more with the disciplining power of a curious “objectivity”.

Originality/value

Projects such as PAM are thus not easily challengeable on grounds of their veracity. Rather research that seeks to interrogate the use of market technologies in policy must look to their context and effects.

Citation

Lightfoot, G. and Lilley, S. (2007), "The ideology of markets and the practice of policy: objectivity, control and the objectionable", International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, Vol. 27 No. 11/12, pp. 494-499. https://doi.org/10.1108/01443330710835846