Managerial state

Managerial state is a concept used in critiquing modern social democracy in Western countries. The term takes a pejorative context as a manifestation of Western decline. Theorists Samuel T. Francis and Paul Gottfried say this is an ongoing regime that remains in power, regardless of what political party holds a majority. Variations include therapeutic managerial state,welfare-warfare state or polite totalitarianism.

Francis, following James Burnham, said that under this historical process, “law is replaced by administrative decree, federalism is replaced by executive , and a limited government replaced by an unlimited state.” It acts in the name of abstract goals, such as equality or positive rights, and uses its claim of moral superiority, power of taxation and wealth redistribution to keep itself in power.

Paul Gottfried, in After Liberalism, defines this worldview as a "series of social programs informed by a vague egalitarian spirit, and it maintains its power by pointing its finger accusingly at antiliberals." He calls it a new theocratic religion. In this view, when the managerial regime cannot get democratic support for its policies, it resorts to sanctimony and social engineering, via programs, court decisions and regulations.

This includes mass welfarism, positive rights, laws punishing racism, sexism and homophobia, and centralized control of public education. (While paleocons often criticize neoconservatism, they still see these opponents as just one of many power blocs that support this managerialism.) He elaborated that

A regime engaged in behavior modification... [will] begin by appealing to unproved premises, which the reader is nudged into accepting, move on to therapeutic criteria for right reasoning, and finally, as seen in recent hate speech and anti-Holocaust revisionist laws, end by reverting to the Argumentum ad baculum, which may mean arresting those considered criminally insensitive. At stake here is not the idle pastime of scribes. It is an attempt undertaken by prominent intellectuals to elevate pluralism into behavioral coercion.

...
Wikipedia