Neoliberal authority preconfigures competition and rules. Fairness is impossible under competitive epistemology.

[Davies, W. (2017). The promise and paradox of competition : markets, competitive agency and authority. In The Limits of Neoliberalism: Authority, Sovereignty and the Logic of Competition (pp. 37-72). SAGE Publications Ltd, https://doi.org/10.4135/9781529793734]

The rhetoric and performance of neoliberal authority involve appeals to ‘evidence’ and economic evaluation as the test of legitimate competitive activity. A great deal of expert and institutional work goes in to making these appeals publicly viable, as we shall see. However, empirical evidence always arises from institutional and pragmatic concerns, and on the basis of certain vocations and perspectives. Value neutrality and scientific objectivism have their own ethical and institutional preconditions. What counts as a valid empirical representation of a dynamic, competitive situation will depend heavily on one’s own position in relation to it. Consider the various perspectives surrounding a game of professional tennis, and the different matters of ‘fact’ that are at work as a result: each player strives to focus their minds on winning the next point; their coach needs to form an expert view on how their performance can be improved; the umpire needs to make sure that the rules are being enforced correctly and fairly; the audience keep looking at the scoreboard; and the gambler in the betting shop is only interested in the final score. In dynamic situations, with multiple perspectives at play, there is rarely an ‘ultimate’ empirical representation that is valid for all. On the other hand, the neoliberal promise of competitive forms of organization is that they will periodically produce clearly distinguishable ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ that all will agree on.

Before we can look at how empirical economic claims can act as a source of neoliberal political authority, we first need to consider the pragmatics of competitive activity in order to better understand the different forms of judgement and discourse that such activity facilitates and requires. Prior to any empirical question as to the qualities or quantities of a given competition (or competitive act) are certain presuppositions about what it even means to be involved in a competitive situation. If we can bring some of these presuppositions to light, we can also begin to understand the forms of authority that hover in and around competitive situations. To do this, I adopt a pragmatist approach to the performance of competitions, as found in the work of Goffman (Goffman, 1997). The conventions which underpin empirical evaluations and proofs derive in part from the practical circumstances that give rise to them. Commonalities in these circumstances need bringing to light, such that conventions of empirical representation can be identified and interpreted.

The starting point for this interpretation, and the reason why this leads us towards questions of authority, is the recognition that all competitions have rules. To favour competition is never to favour anarchy. There must be a very minimal sense of a priori equality, or some element of fairness, in a competition, if it is to be recognized as ‘real’ and not ‘rigged’. A principle of equivalence must be logically prior to the facticity of difference, if it is ‘competition’ that is going on, and not brute violence. However, as already discussed, the rules of competition are very unlike the rules of virtually any other type of institution, in that they must debar peaceful or cooperative activity. This produces the further curiosity, that (unlike, say, a play or ritual or other type of performance) the outcome of a competition cannot be known in advance: this was precisely its appeal to Hayek. If one competitor were too obviously superior to another, then the outcome would cease to be unexpected. Competition would thereby lose its exploratory epistemological quality. The initial sense of fairness and the uncertainty of outcome are therefore co-dependent. The need for contestants to begin as formal equals (in some however weak sense of the term), and conclude as empirical unequals, points towards certain minimal constraints on what it means to conduct competitive activity.

This tension between ‘equality’ and ‘inequality’ sits at the heart of any competitive event or activity. Wittgenstein observed that any game ‘has not only rules but also a point’ (Wittgenstein, 2001: 564) but in fact a competitive game has two ‘points’: one is to ensure that competitors remain constrained by some norms of equality, playing by the same rules, the other is to ensure that they resist these norms at all costs, in search of inequality. If either of these ‘points’ were lacking, it would be impossible to describe what was going on as ‘competition’. It would tip either into a form of completely peaceful, normative fairness or into violent, existential combat. The appeal of a competition lies in the tension that is maintained between these two outer-lying political teleologies or ideal types. One way of defining competition, and the forms of authority that it creates, is that it is never quite as fair as ‘justice’, and nor is it ever quite as brutal as ‘violence’. The ideal types of ‘justice’ and ‘violence’ must somehow be at work within a competition if it is to be attractive to contestants and audience, but they must also remain in an irresolvable tension with one another.

The enigma of any game, as Wittgenstein saw it, is that its rules cannot fully express its point. There is a gap separating what is written down as rules and the actions of a person who is obeying them. What one understands by rules always exceeds their linguistic expression: interpretation bridges the gap between statements and actions. The ‘authority’ of a rule-giver or commander lies in a shared and largely unspoken understanding that certain statements, institutions, decisions or individuals should be obeyed. It is also necessary that there is a shared and unspoken understanding about what obedience might practically involve. This consists of a particular relationship between what is made explicit and what remains tacit. The same is true of state sovereignty: in order for a sovereign to demonstrate their immeasurable power, it is necessary that viewers can interpret this demonstration as such, rather than require the state’s full physical capacity to be put on display (which, in exhausting itself, would be to contradict what it sought to demonstrate).

Different modes or ideal types of authority rest on different ways of understanding the relationship between the manifest statements of rules or orders, and the unseen or unspoken ethos or potentiality which accompanies them. What we are grasping towards here is not particular empirical policies, regulations or decisions, but the types of immanent political philosophy that accompany them. For example, Weber’s famous three forms of authority – the bureaucratic, the traditional and the charismatic – refer not to actions or visible demonstrations of power, but to shared presuppositions on the part of those who willingly obey power. Authority consists in not having to physically compel obedience, but to rely on a common sense of what is legitimate and who deserves to be obeyed. The justice (or empirical value) of a given course of action can only be proved in any ultimate sense, if there is already a shared sense that the judge is viewing the situation from the right position, in the right way. The silent pragmatics of authority necessarily precede their spoken statements and empirical proofs. Following the hermeneutic approach of Boltanski and Thévenot, the task here is to unearth the latent forms of political philosophy that render power legitimate, but in the particular circumstances of competitive situations (Boltanski & Thévenot, 2006).