The Political Production of Indifference in the New Public Management
Being indifferent to the others is one of the risks inherent to the democratic system where no one can be forced to participate in public debates nor to care for one’s fellow citizens. Being aware of that risk makes it urgent to analyse the rhetorics of the New Public Management, a new political and administrative ideology aiming at transforming the relations between the state and the citizens into a mega-relation of « service ». Indeed, in making citizens into clients, this discourse may favour the choice of indifference over the choice of solidarity and fraternity. This paper tries to understand how this semantic and political move is produced and why it is so attractive to the political elite of the rich democracies of the OECD.