Bureaucratic ethics, the market, and administration ideology: Contradictions in the conservative response to the state's "crisis of character"

In the 1980s, a conservative movement for public sector reforms attempted to adjust civil servants' (alleged) egotistical, amoral behavior to the efficient achievement of collective goals, in accordance with the principles of Adam Smith's invisible hand. Based on Karl Polanyi's and Max Weber's classic works on the establishment of the market and of modern bureaucracy, respectively, the article endeavors to show how the conservative approach errs by ignoring the specificities of bureaucratic organization as well as the socially constructed character of the market mentality. The conclusion is that public sector reforms based on the assumption of self-interest end up breeding suspicion and fostering precisely the corrupt behavior that they are meant to forestall, thereby reinforcing the State's incapacity to properly manage its actions in the social sphere.