Unconscious Aesthetics in Financial Public Management: Political Science on a Ubiquitous, Deceivingly Uninteresting Topic
Unconscious Aesthetics in Financial Public Management: Political Science on a Ubiquitous, Deceivingly Uninteresting Topic

Summary/Abstract: Financial public management (FPM) is ubiquitous in modern governance, but tends to maintain some degree of invisibility because of its technical appearance and the analogous nature of much of the associated research. This study seeks to encourage intellectual interest in this topic from a political science perspective that incorporates the research traditions of the aesthetics of the unconscious, which in turn builds upon selected psychoanalytic ideas. First, FPM is considered in terms of its spatial aspects, including ‘accounting entities’ and ‘quasi-markets’, both of which reflect the fashionable forcing of public sector organisations to conform to idealised forms of business despite the fact that this has been questioned even by accounting scholars. Second, there is a focus on the sight and visibility aspects of FPM, including ‘accountability’, which is characteristically modelled according to business and economic ideals.

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