4Power, Government, Politics

Barry Hindess

Foucault's nominalist understanding of power cautions against reification.It also suggests there is little to say of interest about power as such and ingeneral. Foucault studied specific, relatively stable configurations ofpower: domination and the government of a state. Domination is a hier-archical relationship in which the margin of liberty of the subordinated isextremely restricted. Government in this sense is understood more widelythan `̀ the supreme authority in states,'' as action aimed at influencing theway individuals regulate their own behavior. For Foucault the two sensesare linked in that the aim of modern government of the state is to conductthe affairs of the population in the interests of the whole. This is notrestricted to the government, but is performed also by agencies in civilsociety. The two senses of `̀ government'' are also linked by the use made ofindividual liberty in governmentality; seen in liberalism as setting limits togovernment action, scholars of governmentality analyze it as actuallyproviding a means for the extension and consolidation of the state. Despitethe contributions of this approach to our understanding of the uses offreedom, however, Hindess argues that two important aspects of liberalpolitics are neglected by analyses of governmentality. First, the politicallyoriented activity of partisan groups such as parties. Secondly, authoritarianaspects of liberal government. He argues that the approach needs to beextended to encompass these.

To ask the question `̀ how do things happen?,'' Michel Foucault insists, is also `̀ tosuggest that power as such does not exist'' (1982a: 217). The point of hiscomment is not to deny the reality of situations in which one individual orgroup exercises power over others but rather to caution against reification:that is, against the treatment of power as a capacity to impose one's will thatsome people (the powerful) possess in greater quantities than others. He goes onto claim that power over others should be seen as a matter of `̀ the total structureof actions brought to bear'' (1982a: 220) on their behavior. Thus, to adapt awell-known expression of the reified view of power, what happens when A gets`̀ B to do something that B would not otherwise do'' (Dahl 1957: 204) is that Abrings various actions to bear on B's conduct. To say, as Robert Dahl does, that`̀ A has power over B'' is simply to claim that there is some connection between

A's actions and B's response. The reference to A's power is not an explanation ofthe change in B's conduct; rather it serves as a convenient kind of short-hand, analternative to describing what interactions take place between them.

Since social interaction is always a matter of acting on the actions of others,this nominalistic view of power suggests that power relations will often berelatively unproblematic. It also suggests that power is an ubiquitous componentof social life and that there is therefore little of value to be said about the natureof power as such and in general. Nevertheless, in spite of this last point, there aresome relatively stable configurations of power that Foucault chooses to writeabout at length: domination and the government of a state. Domination is ahierarchical relationship in which the margin of liberty of the subordinatedparties is severely restricted. This is `̀ what we ordinarily call power'' (1988c:12) and, in Foucault's view, it should be resisted: the problem, he suggests, is toestablish conditions in which games of power can be played `̀ with a minimum ofdomination'' (1988c: 18). There are passages in his discussion of government inwhich he proposes a closely related politics of resistance, this time directedagainst the state. When he insists, in the closing section of his Tanner Lectureson Human Values, that liberation `̀ can only come from attacking . . . politicalrationality's very roots'' (1981: 254) his argument is clearly directed against thepolitical rationality that, in his view, underlies the modern government of thestate.

There are striking parallels, and equally striking contrasts, between Foucault'snormative critiques of domination and government and the arguments of criticaltheory. (The differences are discussed in Hindess 1996; Ashenden and Owen(eds.) 1999.) Critical theorists take a different view of these matters (see, forexample, Fraser 1989; McCarthy 1992). Of more interest to the substantiveanalysis of politics, however, are his accounts of the emergence of the politicalrationality of government in the early modern period and the subsequent devel-opment of liberalism as a specific form of governmental reason. These accountshave inspired a substantial body of academic work, sometimes called the gov-ernmentality school, devoted to the study of government in the modern West (seeBurchell et al. 1991; Barry et al. 1996; Dean and Hindess 1998 for usefulsamples. There are recent surveys of the field in Dean 1999; Rose 1999).

This chapter begins by outlining the Foucaultian treatment of government,and of liberalism as a specific rationality of government, and considers itsimplications for the study of politics. It then moves on to show how thistreatment must be adapted to take account, first, of the significance for govern-ment of what Max Weber calls `̀ politically oriented action,'' and, secondly, ofauthoritarian aspects of liberal political reason.

GGovernmentovernment

In contemporary political analysis the term `̀ government'' is commonly used todenote what Aristotle calls `̀ the supreme authority in states'' (1988c, III, 1279a27) a usage which suggests that government should be seen as emanating from asingle center of control ± albeit one which may sometimes be divided, for

Power, Government, Politics 41

example, between executive, legislature and judiciary, or between national andsub-national levels. However, it can also denote a kind of activity, in which casethe term is applied more broadly. Thus Aristotle discusses `̀ the government of awife and children and of a household'' (ibid., 1278b 37±8), a form of rule whichhe distinguishes both from the government of a state and from the rule of amaster over his slave. In yet another usage it refers to a rule that one exercisesover oneself. Foucault insists that, while they may work on different kinds ofmaterials, and accordingly face somewhat different problems, there is never-theless a certain continuity between these diverse usages: they share an under-lying concern to affect the conduct of the governed. Thus, rather than actdirectly on the actions of individuals, government aims to do so indirectly byinfluencing the manner in which individuals regulate their own behavior. Gov-ernment, in this sense, is clearly a special case of power: while it is a matter ofacting on the actions of others (or of oneself), the fact that it does so indirectly,through its influence on conduct, means that government involves an element ofcalculation that is not necessarily present in every exercise of power. Govern-ment differs from domination, another special case of power, in allowing thegoverned a certain margin of liberty in regulating their own behavior, aiming towork primarily by influencing the manner in which they do so.

However, while he emphasizes the continuity between these various forms ofgovernment, Foucault also insists on the distinctive character of the modern artof government ± `̀ the particular form of governing which can be applied to thestate as a whole'' (1991: 91). We can see what is involved here by turning toanother aspect of Aristotle's treatment of government: the claim that each formof government has its own proper purpose or telos. Thus, the government of aslave is `̀ exercised primarily with a view to the interest of the master'' whilethe government of a household is `̀ exercised in the first instance for the good ofthe governed'' (1988c: 34±7, 39). In the case of the state, Aristotle maintains, theonly true forms of government are those `̀ which have a regard to the commoninterest,'' the others being `̀ defective or perverted'' (ibid., 1279a, 17±21).

The art of government, as Foucault describes it, takes up a version of thisclassical perspective by claiming that the state should be `̀ governed according torational principles which are intrinsic to it'' (1991: 96±7). Foucault insists thatthe normative claims of this art of government should be distinguished from twoalternative perspectives: justification of rule in terms of a universal order laiddown by God (and therefore not intrinsic to the state) and `̀ the problematic ofthe Prince,'' which is primarily concerned with `̀ the prince's ability to keep hisprincipality'' (1991: 90). His point in making these distinctions is not to endorsethe classical view of the purpose or telos of government ± quite the contrary, aswe have seen ± but rather to present the modern government of the state as asystematic attempt to realize that purpose.

As he describes it, then, the art of government is not concerned primarily withthe business of taking over the state, keeping it in one's possession or subordinat-ing it to some external principle of legitimacy but rather with the work ofconducting the affairs of the population in the interests of the whole. Government,in this sense, is not restricted to the work of the government and the agencies itcontrols. Much of it will also be performed by agencies of other kinds, by elements

42 Barry Hindess

of what is now called civil society: churches, employers, financial institutions,legal and medical professionals, voluntary associations. The work of governingthe state as a whole, then, extends far beyond the institutions of the state itself.

Perhaps the most influential aspect of Foucault's work on government hasbeen his treatment of liberalism as a rationality of government. Liberalism iscommonly regarded as a normative political theory that regards the maintenanceof individual liberty as an end in itself and therefore as setting limits of principleto the objectives and means of action of government. Individual liberty is centralto Foucault's account of liberalism too, but it is seen in a very different light. Thecrucial issue here concerns the governmental significance of the belief thatmembers of the population to be governed are endowed with a capacity forautonomous, self-directing activity: what does that belief entail for the practicalwork of government? Foucault's account of liberalism focuses on the implicationthat government should aim to make use of this capacity, that the maintenanceand promotion of suitable forms of individual liberty may be advantageous tothe state itself.

A particularly significant illustration of this liberal perspective can be found inAdam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. Smith describes the aim of politicaleconomy as being `̀ to enrich both the people and the sovereign'' (1976: 428)and he argues that this aim is best served by promoting the free activities ofeconomic agents. This argument turns on a view of economic activity as a systemof interaction in which the conduct of participants is regulated by prices forgoods and labor that are themselves established by the free decisions of theparticipants themselves ± in effect, by numerous individual decisions to buy orto sell, or to seek a better deal elsewhere. Since these prices are established withinthe system itself, this view suggests that external interference in economic inter-action ± by the state setting prices or minimum wages, for example ± will reducethe efficiency of the system overall. Thus, when he examines the police regula-tion of economic activity or the workings of the mercantile system, Smith's aim isto show that they detract from the wealth of the nation overall.

Liberalism, as Foucault describes it, treats this image of the self-regulatingmarket as a model for other aspects of society. Accordingly, it regards thepopulations of modern states as encompassing a variety of domains ± the sphereof economic activity, the workings of civil society, the processes of populationgrowth and so on ± each one regulated, in large part, by the free decisions ofindividuals in the course of their interactions with others. This perceptionsuggests that, once they have been securely established, these domains of freeinteraction will function most effectively if external interference is reduced to aminimum. Thus, rather than subject activity within these domains to detailedregulation by the state, liberal government will aim to establish and to maintainconditions under which the domains themselves will operate with beneficialeffects for the well-being of the population and of the state itself. This liberalview, in turn, implies that effective government must be based on reliable know-ledge of the processes and conditions that sustain these patterns of free interac-tion. It suggests, in other words, that liberal government will depend on theabstract and theoretical knowledge of social life provided by economics and theother social sciences.

Power, Government, Politics 43

Governmentality scholars have adapted this account of liberalism to theanalysis of neo-liberal attempts to govern through the decisions of autonomousindividuals. They have focused, in particular, on the governmental uses ofindividual choice and empowerment and on the more general promotion ofmarket or quasi-market regimes as indirect means of government (for examples,see Cruikshank 1999; Valverde 1998). To say that individual choice, personalempowerment, and markets are widely employed as instruments of governmentis not to say that the freedom they offer is illusory ± although it may sometimesbe extremely limited ± but it is to insist that individual liberty cannot be seensimply as a limit to the reach of government. In fact, as the market modelsuggests, the use of individual liberty as a means of governing the populationmust rely not only on regulation by the state but also on the existence of suitablepatterns of individual conduct and on the regulation of that conduct by others.Neo-liberal government, on this view, will be particularly dependent on theexpertise of psychiatrists, counsellors, financial advisers and the like, all ofwhom assist their clients to develop appropriate ways of conducting their ownaffairs, and, at another level, on the efforts of economists and others to extendthe model of market interaction to the analysis of all areas of human activity.

PPolitics andolitics and GGovernmentovernment

To see what this account of the government of the state contributes to ourunderstanding of politics we have only to observe that `̀ politics,'' `̀ political,''and other such terms frequently refer precisely to the work of government.Foucault adopts this usage throughout his discussions of government and itsrationalities, and it is characteristic also of the governmentality literature. I havealready noted, for example, that the critique of political reason which Foucaultdevelops in his Tanner Lectures (Foucault 1981) is in fact directed against the artof government outlined above: against a political reason that concerns itself withthe government of the state and with recruiting other forms of government,especially the government of oneself, to its own purposes. (This last feature ofpolitical reason is the central focus of Foucault's normative critique.) He iscareful, as we have seen, to distinguish this rationality of the government of astate from understandings of government that are not political in this specificsense ± from those whose telos is derived, for example, from the interests ofspiritual or secular powers.

Thus, the Foucaultian analysis of government is itself a contribution to theunderstanding of an important kind of politics: one that aims to govern thepopulation of a state in the interests of the whole. Similarly, the Foucaultianaccounts of liberal and neo-liberal government contribute to the understanding ofinfluential contemporary versions of this politics: versions that aim to govern asfar as possible by promoting certain forms of freedom and arranging conditionsso that the resulting activity furthers the common good. Perhaps the most sig-nificant contribution of this literature has been its careful exploration of the waysin which this governmental politics extends beyond state agencies to make use ofpractices of individual self-government and of diverse elements of civil society.

44 Barry Hindess

Nevertheless, there are many aspects of politics which this powerful analysisof government simply fails to address. One is the politics of resistance thatFoucault invokes in his normative critiques of domination and political reason.For our purposes, however, the more important silences of the governmentalityliterature concern, first, the politically oriented activity that Max Weberdescribes in the first section of Economy and Society and, secondly, authoritar-ian aspects of liberal government.

GGovernment andovernment and PPartisanartisan PPoliticsolitics

Weber describes action as being politically oriented if:

it aims at exerting influence on the government of a political organization; espe-cially at the appropriation, redistribution or allocation of the powers of govern-ment. (Weber, 1978: 55)

Action may be `̀ politically oriented'' without participating in the work of gov-ernment itself. Where the focus of Foucault's `̀ political reason'' is on the overallpursuit of the interests and the welfare of the state and the population ruled bythe state, that of Weber's `̀ politically oriented action'' is on the partisan activitiesof parties, pressure groups and social movements and, of course, of individualsor factions within them. Politically oriented action could well be motivated byreligious doctrine or the problematic of the Prince, both of which Foucaultdistinguishes from the political concerns of the art of government.

In fact, while politically oriented activity may not be directly governmental,the problem of how to deal with it has always been one of the central concerns ofthe art of government. Its failure to consider the governmental implications ofsuch activity is one of the more serious limitations of the Foucaultian treatmentof government. We can begin our discussion of this point by observing that thescope for a certain kind of partisanship is already inscribed in the classical viewof the purpose or telos of government ± a view which the modern art ofgovernment also adopts. Far from preventing partisanship, the identification ofthis telos with the common interest (or some equivalent) serves rather to estab-lish the terms in which partisan dispute will be conducted. Thus, in a pattern thatwill be familiar to political activists of all persuasions, the common interest andmore particular sectional interests are thought to be quite distinct and yet arefrequently confused: invocation of the one becomes a standard means of pro-moting the other and an opponent's appeal to the common interest is readily seenas just another sectional maneuvre.

While the conduct of partisan dispute in such terms will be present under anyform of government, we should expect it to flourish where the freedom ofmembers of the subject population is promoted by the predominant rationalityof government. David Hume notes, for example, that partisan groups are:

plants which grow most plentifully in the richest soil; and though absolute govern-ments be not wholly free from them, it must be confessed, that they rise more easily,

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and propagate themselves faster in free governments, where they always infect thelegislature itself, which alone could be able, by the steady application of rewardsand punishments, to eradicate them. (Hume, 1987: 55±6)

The most notable feature of this passage is its view of partisan politics as adamaging infection. This fear of what partisanship might do to government hasbeen a long-standing feature of governmental reason but, as Hume's commentindicates, it is has a particular resonance for liberal and neo-liberal rationalitiesof government.

This point suggests that the characterization of liberal and related rationalitiesof government in terms of their emphasis on governing through the decisions ofautonomous individuals is seriously incomplete: they are also substantially con-cerned to defend the proper purposes of government from the impact of partisanpolitics. It is partly for this reason that secrecy and deliberate misdirection are socommonly employed by even the most liberal of governments. The neo-liberalpush of recent decades has taken this defense further by corporatizing andprivatizing various kinds of state activity, insulating central banks from politicalcontrol, and promoting the use of market or contractual relationships betweenand within government agencies and between those agencies and citizens.

At one level the aim of such devices is to minimize inducements for citizens toengage in politically oriented action by enabling them to pursue their concerns inother ways, notably through contract and the market: the promotion of certainkinds of individual autonomy also serves to inhibit political participation. Atanother, it is to limit the partisan influence of parties, pressure groups, andpublic officials by removing significant areas of public provision from therealm of political decision, and relying instead on suitably organized forms ofmarket interaction. This, of course, is less a reduction in the overall scope ofgovernment than a change in the means by which government is exercised: aform of government that works through the administrative apparatuses of thestate is displaced in favor of one that works on individuals and organizationsthrough the disciplines imposed by their interactions with others in market andquasi-market regimes. Since this limited dismantling of the administrative appar-atuses of the state is itself conducted by partisan politicians and their chosenadvisers, those who are not persuaded by the neo-liberal case ± and many ofthose who are ± will see in this procedure ample scope for the pursuit of newforms of partisan advantage.

LLiberaliberal AAuthoritarianismuthoritarianism

Authoritarian rule has always played a significant part in the governmentof states, even where liberal political reason has been influential. Nineteenth-century western states restricted the freedom of important sections of their ownpopulations and some forcibly imposed their rule on substantial populationsoutside their own national borders. Even now, coercive and oppressive practicescontinue to play an important part in the government of western societies: in thecriminal justice system, the policing of inner-city areas and the urban poor, the

46 Barry Hindess

provision of social services and, of course, the management of large public andprivate organizations. Elsewhere, in much of Latin America, parts of South-EastAsia, central and eastern Europe, authoritarian rule has been used as an instru-ment of economic liberalization (see Zolo, chapter 38, in this volume ).

What do these practices have to do with the liberal government of freedom?With few exceptions (notably Valverde 1996) contributors to the governmental-ity literature have seen the relationship between them as largely external. Thus,while Nikolas Rose (1999) observes that coercive and oppressive practices mustnow be justified on the liberal grounds of freedom, these practices play little partin his account of liberal government itself. Or again, Mitchell Dean (1999)insists that any attempt to govern through freedom will have to acknowledgethat some people may just have to be governed in other ways. These accountscapture important aspects of liberal political reason, but the government ofunfreedom is more central to its concerns than either would suggest.

We can see what is at issue here by returning to the significance for govern-ment of the belief that members of the population are naturally endowed with acapacity for autonomous, self-directing activity. One obvious implication seemsto be that government should make use of this capacity, and the Foucaultianaccount of liberal and neo-liberal government has therefore focused on itsdeployment of individual liberty. In fact, the implications are rather more com-plex: individuals may be naturally endowed with a capacity for autonomousaction but this does not mean that the capacity will always be fully realized.Modern political thought has generally taken the contrary view: that there areindeed contexts in which suitable habits of self-government have taken root, butmany more in which they have not. Liberals have usually seen the realization ofthis capacity for autonomous action in historical and developmental terms,suggesting that it will be well established amongst numerous adults only inrelatively civilized communities; that extended periods of education and trainingare required if individuals are to develop the necessary habits of self-regulation;and that, even under favorable conditions, there will be those who cannot berelied on to conduct their affairs in a reasonable manner. They have argued that,where this capacity is not well developed, government simply cannot afford towork through the free decisions of individuals: children must be constrained byparental authority and uncivilized adults subjected to authoritarian rule. JohnStuart Mill's comments on the people of India and other colonial dependenciesprovides a well-known example of this liberal perspective. Since they are not, inhis view, `̀ sufficiently advanced . . . to be fitted for representative government,''they must be governed by the dominant country or its agents:

This mode of government is as legitimate as any other, if it is the one which in theexisting state of civilization of the subject people, most facilitates their transition toa higher stage of improvement. (1977: 567)

Liberal political reason has been concerned with the subject peoples of imperialpossessions as much as with the free inhabitants of western states, withminors and adults judged to be incompetent as much as with autonomousindividuals. Western colonial rule has now been displaced but its developmental

Power, Government, Politics 47

perspective remains influential in the programs of economic and political devel-opment promoted by independent, post-colonial states and by internationalagencies.

Authoritarian government in these cases has a paternalistic rationale: its aim isto move towards its own eventual abolition. A rationale of a different kind restson the point, noted earlier, that liberalism is substantially concerned to defendthe work of government from the impact of partisan politics. The corporatiza-tion and privatization of state agencies might seem to reduce the threat of certainkinds of partisanship, but there will also be cases in which more direct measuresseem to be required. These range from limitations on parliamentary and intra-party debate to the direct suppression of political opposition. In societies wherepaternalistic attitudes toward the bulk of the population are already well-entrenched, the supposed imperatives of economic reform have often providedgovernments and their international supporters with powerful liberal groundsfor the restriction of political freedom.

MMovingoving OOnn

The Foucaultian studies of government, and of liberal and neo-liberal govern-ment in particular, have made substantial contributions to our understandingof the significance of freedom, choice, and empowerment in the government ofcontemporary western populations. There are, nevertheless, important areasof politics, and indeed of government, which these studies have not addressed.This chapter has commented, all too briefly, on two of these ± political partisan-ship and liberal authoritarianism ± and suggested that they are central to theanalysis of liberalism and of modern government more generally, both in theWest and elsewhere. To insist on the importance of these areas, however, is not toraise an objection to the governmentality perspective. The point, rather, is toshow that it has considerably more to offer our understanding of contemporarypolitics than it has yet been able to deliver.

Further Reading

Dean, M. 1999: Governmentality. London: Sage.Dean, M. and Hindess, B. 1998: `̀ Introduction: government, liberalism, society.'' In M. Dean

and B. Hindess (eds.), Governing Australia: Studies in Contemporary Rationalities ofGovernment. Cambridge and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press.

Rose, Nikolas 1999: Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cam-bridge University Press.

48 Barry Hindess