Political Organizations and Commedia Dell'Arte

Abstract

This paper employs the dramatistic metaphor of commedia dell'arte to interpret developments in a set of interlocking public administrative organizations in Sweden. More specifically, the performances given by state and municipal politicians studied in several projects of ours are analyzed, with the help of what we know of this special kind of theatre. In so doing, we relate to a long tradition within the social sciences. The symbolic acting, the public perform ances, and the ambiguous connection between ideas and realities of various sorts that are evident all made the theatre metaphor appear relevant to an analysis of politics in society at large and in organizations within it. Of the different forms of theatre, commedia dell'arte is that which seems to render itself best to the exploration and interpretation of contemporary organizations within the public sector, imprinted as they are with the stamp of modern demo cratic politics, which bespeaks force but is highly contradictory.

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