PERFORMATIVE BREAKDOWN

Performative governance surely doesn’t work all the time, nor does it work on everyone. For “between action and consequence lies a chasm that no one can bridge, let alone control.”¹ While the motivation behind performative governance is to give the citizenry an impression of good governance, this doesn’t mean it’s always effective. If it were, there would be no need for repression or redistribution, or for petitions and protests. Thus it’s worth examining when performative governance ceases to occur or fails to work—performative breakdown.² In fact, the smoking gun of performative breakdown has already appeared in previous chapters. Explanations