Best practices absorb political concerns into markets, eliminating the need for state interference.

Evidence

On its face, this passage is gibberish—a gossamer net of high ethical values wafted over a bottom line of market success. However, it is gibberish bearing significance. These two definitions suggest that best practices aim to maximize competitive advantage without cheating — they represent a steroidally charged form of Weberian instrumental rationality wrapped in Aristotelian ethics and Kantian legal rectitude. So why the wrapping? In bundling together concerns with legality, transparency, accountability, ethics, and competitiveness and at least formally attending to each, best practices represent more than the suffusion of the public sphere with market metrics. They also represent the opposite, namely, the absorption of public or political concerns into markets and consequently the elimination of the need for legal, political, or ethical interference from the state or any other source. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 271

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to Brown’s broader argument that neoliberalism delegitimizes the state while quietly using it; relates to Law-and-Economics scholarship. — connects to: The market’s veridiction closes the political universe by erasing alternatives to economic rationality. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 123; Best practices constitute a form of antipolitics that images politics itself as backwardness. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 268; Best practices normalize existing market arrangements as the reality principle — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s…, 293

Broader Connections

• Best practices normalize existing market arrangements as the reality principle #exemplifies (0.92) — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 293