The
West's cherished dream of social harmony by numbers is today disrupting
all our familiar legal frameworks - the state, democracy and law
itself. Its scientistic vision shaped both Taylorism and Soviet
Planning, and today, with 'globalisation', it is flourishing in the form
of governance by numbers. Shunning the goal of governing by just laws,
and empowered by the information and communication technologies,
governance champions a new normative ideal of attaining measurable
objectives. Programmes supplant legislation, and governance displaces
government.However, management by objectives revives forms of law
typical of economic vassalage. When a person is no longer protected by a
law applying equally to all, the only solution is to pledge allegiance
to someone stronger than oneself. Rule by law had already secured the
principle of impersonal power, but in taking this principle to extremes,
governance by numbers has paradoxically spawned a world ruled by ties
of allegiance.
