The Responsibility to Responsibilize: Foreign Offices and the Issuing of Travel Warnings

What are the connections between personal risk-management and governmental responsibility toward citizens? This paper argues that governments in neoliberal societies increasingly acknowledge a responsibility to help citizens make “informed choices” in order to reduce or avoid risk. A key feature within this framework is the issuing of official governmental advice to the citizens. But such advice does not merely carry information that citizens are free to accept or decline. Rather, it also consists of a conscious effort on part of governments to construct individuals as calculating, prudent, and rational persons that know how to manage risk (to “responsibilize” them). Below I examine the practice of governmental advice as an effort of responsibilization in the case of travel warnings issued by foreign offices to international travelers.