Through the Looking Glass and Down Rabbit Hole: Mapping (Il)logics of Contemporary Politics How Became Governance

How did politics become governance - and what was lost in the transition?Through the Looking Glass and Down the Rabbit Hole traces a fifty-year structural transformation in contemporary politics: from political choice toward administrative management, from citizens toward clients, from collective responsibility toward individual adaptation, and from democratic correction toward institutional drift.The book does not argue that politics disappeared, that governance is inherently illegitimate, or that a single ideology caused the transformation. Instead, it examines how successive reforms, institutional incentives, market logics, performance systems, and changing ideas of responsibility gradually altered the conditions under which political choice could operate.Moving across welfare reform, public administration, marketisation, education, healthcare, labour, democratic participation, and institutional legitimacy, the analysis asks a recurring question: what happens when systems remain formally functional while their capacity for recognition, correction, responsibility, and meaningful political choice becomes progressively constrained?Written as an accessible structural interpretation rather than a conventional political history, the book uses historically grounded examples to illuminate recurring patterns without treating them as evidence of conspiracy or inevitability.The journey follows four recurring transitions: - from politics to governance- from citizens to clients- from choice to management- from democracy to driftFor readers interested in politics, governance, public administration, institutional change, democracy, welfare states, and the changing relationship between citizens and the systems that govern them.