Luciana Souza

This article addresses the question of how state officials promote reform and generate buy-in absent sanctioning power. We examine how, in such cases, reformers deploy culture as a “category of practice” to articulate political projects, direct resources and energies, and make certain reform efforts possible. Drawing on participant observation and 120 in-depth interviews, we examine culture-talk and culture-work within efforts aimed at implementing monitoring and evaluation policies in Mexico. We find culture-talk helps reformers account for failure and set their reform efforts apart from competing proposals, while culture-work seduces cooperation and ensures reformers access to different parts of the state. We argue that when mobilized against the challenges reformers face, culture narratives and practices have important political effects, contributing to the legitimation, expanding jurisdiction, and organizational survival of reform niches in Mexico. Our argument illuminates the cultural dimensions of political reform and the performative power of state reform actors.

This article addresses the question of how state officials promote reform and generate buy-in absent sanctioning power. We examine how, in such cases, reformers deploy culture as a “category of practice” to articulate political projects, direct resources and energies, and make certain reform efforts possible. Drawing on participant observation and 120 in-depth interviews, we examine culture-talk and culture-work within efforts aimed at implementing monitoring and evaluation policies in Mexico. We find culture-talk helps reformers account for failure and set their reform efforts apart from competing proposals, while culture-work seduces cooperation and ensures reformers access to different parts of the state. We argue that when mobilized against the challenges reformers face, culture narratives and practices have important political effects, contributing to the legitimation, expanding jurisdiction, and organizational survival of reform niches in Mexico. Our argument illuminates the cultural dimensions of political reform and the performative power of state reform actors.

O presente artigo tem como objetivo mostrar quais são os conceitos retóricos presentes em dois ensaios de Hannah Arendt, Filosofia e Política e Verdade e Política, a fim de explicitar a conturbada relação entre verdade filosófica e política, e como essa querela está relacionada ao modo de vida do filósofo. A retórica e a persuasão não eram em si um problema para o pensamento político de Hannah Arendt, porquanto uma vez que a retórica estivesse condicionada à amizade, ela se tornaria um instrumento político e pedagógico importantíssimo para a manutenção da vida política. Por outro lado, o uso da retórica sem esse condicionamento deixava em evidência a fragilidade de tipos diferentes de verdade diante da opinião, entre elas a verdade filosófica, que embora não seja tão frágil quanto a verdade de fato, depende da preservação do espaço público e do livre uso do discurso. Por fim, demonstrar-se-á a solução desse conflito por meio da possibilidade de uma nova Filosofia Política, que tem como fio condutor o pensamento e a linguagem.

This article brings a historical perspective to explain the recent dissemination of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) as the new “gold standard” method to assess international development projects. Although the buzz around RCT evaluations dates from the 2000s, we show that what we are witnessing now is a second wave of RCTs, while a first wave began in the 1960s and ended by the early 1980s. Drawing on content analysis of 123 RCTs, participant observation, and secondary sources, we compare the two waves in terms of the participants in the network of expertise required to carry out field experiments and the characteristics of the projects evaluated. The comparison demonstrates that researchers in the second wave were better positioned to navigate the political difficulties caused by randomization. We explain the differences in the expertise network and in the type of projects as the result of concurrent transformations in the fields of development aid and the economics profession. We draw on Andrew Abbott’s concept of “hinges,” as well as on Bourdieu’s concept of “homology” between fields, to argue that the similar positions and parallel struggles conducted by two groups of actors in the two fields served as the basis for a cross-field alliance, in which RCTs could function as a “hinge” linking together the two fields.