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The overall purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of how public administration at a local authority level adapts to impending eGovernment by considering the discourses that are manifested and how they are used to understand and legitimise electronic administration.
The study uses critical discourse analysis to shed light on those discursive orders that are revealed in the course of deliberations on electronic administration at the local government level. In action, the critical discourse analysis offers a multi-layered analytical model amounts to a three-stage process. The first consists of an ethnomethodological analysis of discursive practices. In the second, a more detailed textual analysis indicated by linguistics, using two grammatical tools, transitivity and modality, are conducted. In the third, a macro-sociological analysis of the social practices thus identified is undertaken. The macro-sociological analysis draws on Foucault (1992) and his analysis of the modern welfare state in order to discuss the manner in which the texts on electronic administration are bound to a more dominant social practice, what Foucault (1992) calls a governing ‘marketisation’ of civil society.
The understanding of electronic administration demonstrated in the texts analysed here is at heart a matter of public service and instrumental operational development. Based on the texts studied here, electronic administration appears to be strengthening or refining neo-liberal governing practices rather than challenging them. The only noticeable resistance, discursive or otherwise, is found in the concern that technology will control political development, and not vice versa. The texts on electronic administration often lack agency, and with it someone who can be held to account.
Keywords:
e-government, state management, public sector, critical discourse analysis, public administration, governmentality
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