What Can Governmentality Do for IR?

Two interesting things have happened recently that are relevant for this Forum. One has been the release of Michel Foucault's lectures at the Collège de France. The other is the increasing interest in governmentality among IR scholars. We could talk more generally about the use of Foucault in IR theory, but that is not particularly interesting. Instead this intervention will not only look at the potential that Foucault's work on governmentality offers to IR scholars, but also sound a warning based on how this has so far been done. There is certainly no possibility of being able to make any substantial claims here. Instead, this space allows the opportunity to raise some important questions for those looking to import the idea of governmentality into IR. The release of Foucault's lectures not only adds a lot to our understanding of what is meant by governmentality, but also increases our problems in trying to interpret this work. For one thing, Foucault has specific things to say about neoliberalism. It also becomes clear that the wide scope of Foucault's discussion, combined with the lack of any clear guidelines on how to apply the concept means that we have to decide for ourselves how best to use the idea of governmentality. When reading through Foucault's lectures, there are some crucial points for IR theorists to consider. Most significant is the difference between a general sense of governmentalty and the specific liberal and neoliberal associations that the concept has. A general understanding of governmentality as the rise to prominence of a set of apparatuses that have population as their main target allows Foucault to trace developments from the sixteenth century (Foucault 2007). However, Foucault then talks of the emergence of new forms of governmentality and sets out its specifically modern features like the principle of limitation (Foucault 2008:10), frugality of government (2008:29), government as the management of freedom (2008:63), the market economy as a general index for judging government (2008:121), and subjecting society to the dynamic of competition (2008:147), which all give governmentality a more liberal or neoliberal character. This is particularly important for IR because it is by no means clear what can be gained from employing a general concept of governmentality that can be applied to a wide range of situations, especially if this means interpreting the global as one single society rather than as a series of different societies with different social conditions. IR theorists should be interested in looking at the relationship between the dominant dynamics in the international system and the specific conditions in different places.