Post-Cameralist Governance: Towards a Robust Political Economy of Bureaucracy

Abstract

I develop a robust political economy of bureaucracy by highlighting the conditions necessary for hierarchical administrative bodies to govern protectively and productively, but not predatorily. These conditions are residual claimancy and jurisdictional competition. I make this argument by exploring a post-cameralist interpretation of governance. Cameralism arose as a governance philosophy in the fractured principalities of 17th century Germany following the Thirty Year’s War. Post-cameralism focuses not on particular cameralist governance strategies, but on a paradigm which sees governance as an activity provided within a larger exchange order, rather than imposing itself on that order, as in more conventional treatments of public economics. While a post-cameralist conception of governance comes with its own challenges, such as tensions with normative visions that promote self-governance, it nonetheless presents an intriguing synthesis of monocentric and polycentric insights.