Technology, Law and Regulation: The Creation of a Framework For a “Sustainable” State and Social Justice Track n. 19 - Technology for sustainability, social justice and well-being Marc Jacquinet CIEO, Universidade do Algarve; CEMRI, Universidade Aberta, Portugal; and CERIO, Université Catholique de Louvain, Belgium 1 Abstract The paper aims at defining a central issue of state reform and social and public policies through the use of legal techniques, management tools and technology. The central question is the definition of a new framework for public, collective and individual action, similar to the factory system or Fordism of the first and third industrial revolutions. What is at stake is a complex issue of defining the framework for action embedded in two technologies: (1) law and lawmaking and (2) reform of the state and regulation of activities through the implementation of new management techniques and technology and the definitions of criteria and benchmark to assess the action of workers, consumers (and even citizens, often reduced or idealized to the former), trade unions, associations, public servants, political parties and decision-makers, not to mention stakeholders (a keyword in discourse related to the process that I try to describe). The prominent legal aspect in the present study is threefold: (1) making new laws and modifying existing laws directly, it is the law making process; (2) the modification of the role played by courts and mediation; and (3) the creation of norms through other institutional instruments such as regulatory agency, rules making by entities that are not checked directly by parliament or the political body, generally outside the public sphere and the democratic debate, eschewing the critique. The starting point of the research had to do with the prominent role of legal and management experts in state reform in OECD countries from the early 1990s onwards, related to the subject of public service reform, new public management (NPM), de-regulation and regulation, privatization of public companies, private consultants, experts and counselors of decision-makers, policy assessment, specific constitutional reforms, and private-public partnership, among others. All these aspects can be related three “technologies”: regulation and law (the creation of a new legal order), management (emergence and implementation of norms and managerial practices in the public services), and the specific techniques of information and communication. All three contribute to a restructured economic and social order to deal with social problems, justice, inequality, solidarity, equality, health and other basic needs. The research identifies law, management and new technologies as ways to solve current and accumulated problems with the creation of a new ideology, the dominant ideology, centered on the 1 CIEO – Centro de Investigação sobre o Espaço e as Organizações, Universidade do Algarve. Contact: mjacquinet@uab.pt or mjacquinet@gmail.com . The financial support of the Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT) of the Portuguese Ministry of Higher Education and Research (MCES) is greatly acknowledge for the present communication .