Page 12 - Professorial Lecture - Professor P van Rooyen

that the customers demand - and by continually transforming itself in a
dialogue with customers’ wants and needs.

But we cannot deny that one customer is significantly more important than
all the other customers for the competitive university, namely the state. It
is the state agenda that is constantly sought, transformed into an agenda for
the universities. This agenda is focused on the future good of the country
(development) and includes political and economic objectives. Often
political aims are satisfied by positive economic results.

In the last decades a new global order has emerged characterized by
intensified economic competition between nations. In this new global order
the old national welfare states have been forced to transform themselves
into national competitive states. This is done through building up and
connecting to transnational institutions, which sets the rules for
international trade - and a corresponding dismantling of national political
economic instruments, that were available to the old welfare states to
protect its populations from cyclical fluctuations in the international
economy. While the welfare state tried to shield its citizens from the
international economy, the competition state tries to mobilize its citizens
and businesses in this new situation of competition.

The recommended approach is to move away from detailed government
regulation to control at a distance, based on a high degree of confidence in
the university's ability to utilize the institutional autonomy in the expected
manner. Of course, universities should ‘earn’ that trust. They must show
that they are able to act as strategic actors. For this reason pro-active
incumbents are of prime importance in the UNAM leadership cadre.

Govern-mentality is exactly based on the notion that free agents are the
foundation of government, i.e. the governed needs to be free to act in order
for government to function (Foucault 1991). The govern-mentality
perspective thus entails that one must look at the freedom in a relation, and
how this freedom is formed and affected, and not simply look at elements
of restraint or power.

10 |