4

Foucaultian Analysis of Power,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 in general. Foucault

focused on specific, relatively stable configurations of power: domination and the

government of a state, seeing the first as a hierarchical relationship in which the margin

of liberty of the subordinated is extremely restricted and understanding the second more

widely than the conventional view. Where the latter treats government as ‘the supreme

authority in states’ and also, somewhat confusingly, as the legitimate actions of that

authority, Foucault sees it as action aimed at influencing the way individuals regulate

their own behaviour. This secondmeaning is themore general one and the other a special

case. For Foucault, the modern government of the state aims to conduct the affairs of the

population in the interests of thewhole. This government is not restricted to the actions of

the government, but is performed also by agencies in civil society. The two senses of

‘government’ can also be compared in relation to the notion of individual liberty. Where

liberals see liberty as setting limits to government action, Foucault presents it as an

instrument of liberal government. Despite the contributions of the Foucaultian approach

to our understanding of uses of freedom, however, Hindess argues that it should be

extended to encompass: first, the dilemmas posed to liberal government by the politically

oriented activity of organized interests; second, government in the international arena;

and third, authoritarian aspects of liberal government.

To ask the question ‘how do things happen?’, Michel Foucault insists, is also ‘to

suggest that power as such does not exist’ (1982: 217). The point of his comment is

not to deny the reality of situations in which one individual or group exercises powerover others but rather to caution against reification: that is, against the treatment of

power as an entity or substance (say, a capacity to impose one’s will) of a kind that

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Political Sociology, First Edition. Edited by Edwin Amenta,Kate Nash, and Alan Scott.� 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

some people (the powerful) may possess in greater quantities than others. He goes on

to claim that power over others should be seen as a matter of ‘the total structure of

actions brought to bear’ (220) on their behaviour. Thus, to adapt a well-knownexpression 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 A brings various actions to

bear on B’s conduct. To say, in Dahl’s terms, that ‘A has power over B’ is simply toclaim that there is a causal relation between A’s actions and B’s response. The

reference to A’s power is not so much an explanation of the change in B’s conduct as a

convenient kind of shorthand, an alternative to describing what interactions takeplace 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 be relativelyunproblematic. It also suggests that power is a ubiquitous component of social life

and that there is therefore little of value to be said about the nature of power as such

and in general. Nevertheless, in spite of this last point, there are some relatively stableconfigurations of power that Foucault writes about at length: domination and the

government of a state. Domination is a hierarchical relationship in which the margin

of liberty of the subordinated parties is severely restricted. This is ‘what we ordinarilycall power’ (1988a: 12) and, in Foucault’s view, it is something to be resisted: the

problem, he suggests, is to establish conditions in which games of power can be

played ‘with a minimum of domination’ (1988a: 18). There are passages in hisdiscussion of government in which he proposes a closely related politics of resistance,

this time directed against the state. When he insists, in the closing section of his

Tanner Lectures on Human Values, that liberation ‘can only come from attacking . . .political rationality’s very roots’ (1981: 254) his argument is clearly directed

against the political rationality that, in his view, underlies the modern government

of the state.There are striking parallels, and equally striking contrasts, between Foucault’s

normative critiques of domination and government and the arguments of critical

theory (Dalton 2008, Hindess 1996, and Ashenden and Owen (eds) 1999 considerthe differences from a Foucaultian perspective, while Fraser 1989a, Jay 1992 and

McCarthy 1992 consider them from the perspective of critical theory). Of more

interest to the substantive analysis of politics, however, are Foucault’s accounts ofthe emergence of the political rationality of government in the early modern

period and the subsequent development of liberalism as a specific form of

governmental reason. These accounts have inspired a substantial body of academicwork, sometimes called the governmentality school (Donzelot and Gordon 2008

query this label), devoted to the study of government in the modern West(Burchell, Gordon and Miller 1991, Barry, Osborne and Rose 1996, and Dean

and Hindess 1998 contain useful samples. Dean 1999 and Rose 1999 offer surveys

of the field).This chapter begins by outlining the Foucaultian treatment of government, and of

liberalismas a specific rationality of government, and considers its implications for the

study of politics. It thenmoves on to show how this treatmentmust be adapted to takeaccount of, first, the significance for government of whatMaxWeber calls ‘politically

oriented action’, second, government in the international sphere, and third, author-

itarian aspects of liberal political reason.

FOUCAULTIAN ANALYSIS OF POWER, GOVERNMENT, POLITICS 37

Government

In contemporary political analysis the term ‘government’ is commonly used, oftenwith a capital G, to denote what Aristotle calls ‘the supreme authority in states’ (1988

III, 1279a: 27) a usage which suggests that the government of a state should be seen as

emanating from a single centre of control – albeit one which may sometimes bedivided, for example, between executive, legislature and judiciary, or between

national and sub-national levels. However, the term can also be used more broadly,

andwithout the capital letter, to denote a kind of activity. ThusAristotle discusses ‘thegovernment of a wife and children and of a household’ (1988 III, 1278b: 37–38), a

form of rule which he distinguishes both from the government of a state and from the

rule of a master over his slave. In yet another usage it may refer to a rule that oneexercises over oneself. Foucault notes that in the early modern period, the term

referred to rule over ‘a household, souls, children, a province, a convent, a religious

order, a family’ (1991: 90).He insists that,while theymayworkondifferentmaterials,and accordingly face somewhat different problems, there is nevertheless a certain

continuity between these diverse usages: they share an underlying concern to affect the

conduct of the governed. Thus, rather than act directly on the actions of individuals,government aims to do so indirectly by influencing the manner in which individuals

regulate their own behaviour. In this sense, government is clearly a special case of

power:while it is amatter of acting on the actions of others (or of oneself), the fact thatit may do so indirectly, through its influence on conduct, means that government

involves an element of calculation that is not necessarily present in every exercise ofpower. Government differs from domination, another special case of power, in

allowing the governed a certain margin of liberty in regulating their own behaviour,

aiming to work primarily by influencing the manner in which they do so.However, while he emphasizes the continuity between these various forms of

government, Foucault also insists on the distinctive character of the modern art

of government – ‘the particular form of governing which can be applied to the state asa whole’ (1991: 91). We can see what is involved here by turning to another aspect of

Aristotle’s treatment of government: the claim that each form of government has its

own proper purpose or telos. Thus, the government of a slave is ‘exercised primarilywith a view to the interest of the master’ while the government of a household

is ‘exercised in the first instance for the good of the governed’ (Aristotle 1988, 39:

34–37). In the case of the state, Aristotlemaintains, the only true forms of governmentare those ‘which have a regard to the common interest’, the others being ‘defective or

perverted’ (Aristotle 1988 III, 1279a: 17–21).

The modern art of government, as Foucault describes it, takes up a version of thisclassical perspective by insisting that the state should be ‘governed according to

rational principles which are intrinsic to it’ (1991: 96–97). It is tempting to suggest at

this point that the existence and practical significance of such principles are likely to beopen to dispute. This raises the issue, to be considered later, of the implications for

government of partisan politics. Foucault insists that the normative claims of this art

of government should be distinguished from two alternative perspectives: justificationof rule in terms of a universal order laid down by God (and thus in no sense intrinsic

to the state) and ‘the problematic of the Prince’, which is primarily concerned with

‘the prince’s ability to keep his principality’ (1991: 90). His point in making these

38 BARRY HINDESS

distinctions is not to endorse the classical view of the purpose or telos of government –

quite the contrary, as we have seen – but rather to present the modern government of

the state as a systematic attempt to realize that purpose.As he describes it, then, the art of government is not concerned primarily with the

business of taking over the state, keeping it in one’s possession or subordinating it to

some external principle of legitimacy, but rather with the work of conducting theaffairs of the population in what are thought to be the interests of the whole.

Government, in this sense, is not restricted to the work of the government and the

agencies it controls. Much of it will also be performed by agencies of other kinds, forexample, by elements of what is now called civil society: churches, employers,

financial institutions, legal and medical professionals, political parties and other

voluntary associations. The work of governing the state as a whole, then, extendsfar beyond the institutions of the state itself.

Perhaps the most influential aspect of Foucault’s work on government has been his

discussionof liberalismas a rationality of government.His fullest treatment of this themewas in a course of lectures delivered at theCollege de France in 1979. Since these lectures

were not written in the expectation of publication, the published version (2008) is not

entirelyFoucault’s responsibility: itwaspreparedbyothers afterhisdeath, andweshouldbe careful not to read it as a book completed by Foucault himself. Most readers of this

chapterwill have attended, or evengiven, enough lectures to knowhowdifficult it can be

for a lecturer to achieve coherence in a single presentation, let alone over a course oflectures.Oncewe acknowledge this difficulty and that he did not have the opportunity to

revise the text forpublication, it is nogreat criticismofFoucault to say that the arguments

presented in the published course are less clear than one might wish (Hindess 2009).Thus, the first lecture in the course identifies liberalismwithBenthamite radicalism.This,

Foucault says, is ‘broadly what is called liberalism’ (2008: 20). In other lectures, while

not explicitly rejecting this first view, he offers a more complex account, insisting thatliberalismhas confused the viewof freedomasmatterof principlewith that of freedomas

pragmatic issue for governments (2008: 28), and even suggesting that the principled and

pragmatic perspectives finally came together to focus on a ‘newensemble’ (‘civil society’,which is seen as encompassing individuals as both subjects of right and economic actors)

‘that is characteristic of the liberal art of governing’ (2008: 295).

Since liberalism is commonly regardedas a normative political theory that treats themaintenance of individual liberty as an end in itself and therefore as setting limits of

principle to the objectives and means of action of government, the first of these views

can be seen as a challenge to conventional political theory, while the second presentsthis challenge in a less forceful version.Yet, although the lectureswere not published in

English until 2008, the first of these Foucaultian views has become familiar indirectlythrough the work of members of the governmentality school noted earlier.

If individual liberty is central to conventional accounts of liberalism, it is central

also to the governmentality account, but in a very different way.We can see what is atissue here by considering the governmental significance of the belief that members of

the population to be governed are endowed with a capacity for autonomous, self-

directing activity. What does that belief entail for the practical work of government?The governmentality account of liberalism focuses on the implication that government

should aim to make use of this capacity, that the maintenance and promotion of

suitable forms of individual liberty may be advantageous to the state itself.

FOUCAULTIAN ANALYSIS OF POWER, GOVERNMENT, POLITICS 39

A particularly significant illustration of this liberal perspective can be found in

Adam Smith’sTheWealth ofNations. Smith describes the aim of political economy as

being ‘to enrich both the people and the sovereign’ (1976: 428) and he argues that thisaim is best served by promoting the free activities of economic agents. This argument

turns on a view of economic activity as a system of interaction in which the conduct of

participants is regulated by prices for goods and labour that are themselves establishedby the free decisions of the participants themselves – in effect, by numerous individual

decisions to buy or to sell, or to seek a better deal elsewhere. Since these prices are

established within the system itself, this view suggests that external interference ineconomic interaction – by the state setting prices or minimum wages, for example –

runs the risk of reducing the efficiency of the system overall. Thus, when he examines

the police regulation of economic activity or the workings of the mercantile system,Smith’s aim is to 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 the populations ofmodern states as encompassing a variety of domains – the sphere of economic

activity, theworkings of civil society, the processes of population growth and so on –

each one regulated, in large part, by the free decisions of individuals in the course oftheir interactions with others. This perception suggests that, once they have been

securely established, these domains of free interaction will function most effectively

if external interference is reduced to a minimum. Thus, rather than subject activitywithin these domains to detailed regulation by the state, liberal government will aim

to establish and to maintain conditions under which the domains themselves will

operate with beneficial effects for the well-being of the population and of the stateitself. This liberal view, in turn, implies that effective government must be based on

reliable knowledge of the processes and conditions that sustain these patterns of

free interaction. It suggests, in other words, that liberal government will depend onthe abstract and theoretical knowledge of social life provided by economics and the

other social sciences.

Governmentality scholars have adapted and elaborated on this account of liber-alism in the analysis of neoliberal attempts to govern through the decisions of

autonomous individuals. They have focused, in particular, on the governmental uses

of individual choice and empowerment and on the more general promotion ofmarket or quasi-market regimes as indirect means of government (for examples, see

Cruikshank 1999; Rose 1999;Valverde 1998). To say that individual choice, personal

empowerment and markets are widely employed as instruments of government is notto say that the freedom they offer is illusory – although it may sometimes be extremely

limited – but it is to insist that individual liberty cannot be seen simply as a limit to thereachof government. In fact, as themarketmodel suggests, the use of individual liberty

as a means of governing the population must rely not only on regulation by the state

but also on the existence of suitable patterns of individual conduct and on theregulation of that conduct by others. Neoliberal government, on this view, will be

particularly dependent on the expertise of psychiatrists, counsellors, financial advisers

and the like, all ofwhomassist, or prompt, their clients to develop appropriateways ofconducting their own affairs, and, at another level, on the efforts of economists and

others to extend the model of market interaction to the analysis of all areas of

human activity.

40 BARRY HINDESS

Politics and Government

To see what this account of the government of the state contributes to our under-standing of politics we have only to observe that ‘politics’, ‘political’ and other such

terms frequently refer precisely to the government of the state. Foucault adopts this

usage throughout his discussions of government and its rationalities, and it ischaracteristic also of the governmentality literature. The critique of political reasondeveloped in Foucault’s Tanner Lectures (Foucault 1981) is in fact directed against the

art of 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. He is careful, as we have seen, to

distinguish this rationality of the government of a state from understandings ofgovernment that are not political in this specific sense.

Thus, the Foucaultian analysis of government is itself a contribution to the under-

standing of an important kind of politics: one that aims to govern the population of astate inwhat are thought to be the interests of thewhole. Foucaultian accounts of liberal

and neoliberal government contribute to the understanding of influential contemporary

versions of this politics that aim to govern by promoting certain forms of freedom, andso arranging conditions that the resulting activity furthers the common good. Perhaps

themost significant contribution of this literature has been its careful exploration of the

ways in which this governmental politics makes use of practices of individual self-government and of diverse elements of civil society (Rose and Miller 1992).

Nevertheless, there are many aspects of politics that this powerful analysis ofgovernment simply fails to address. For our purposes, the most important of these

concern, first, the politically oriented activity that Max Weber describes in the first

section of Economy and Society, second, government within the international systemof states, and third, authoritarian aspects of liberal government.

Government and Partisan Politics

Weber describes action as being politically oriented if:

it aims at exerting influence on the government of a political organization;especially at the appropriation, redistribution or allocation of the powers of

government.

Weber (1978: 55)

Where the focus of Foucault’s ‘political reason’ is on the overall pursuit of the interests

and the welfare of the state and the population ruled by the state, that of Weber’s

‘politically oriented action’ is on the partisan activities of parties, pressure groups andsocial movements, and, of course, of individuals or factions within them. Politically

oriented action couldwell bemotivated by religious doctrine or the problematic of the

Prince, both of which Foucault distinguishes from the political concerns of the art ofgovernment, or by conflicting views as to the practical implications of whatever

principles, if any, are intrinsic to the government of the state.

FOUCAULTIAN ANALYSIS OF POWER, GOVERNMENT, POLITICS 41

In fact, while politically oriented activity may not be directly governmental, the

problemof how to dealwith it has always been one of the central concerns of the art of

government. Its failure to consider the governmental implications of such activity isone of the more serious limitations of the Foucaultian treatment of government. We

can begin our discussion of this point by observing that the scope for a certain kind of

partisanship is already inscribed in the classical view of the purpose or telos ofgovernment – a view that the modern art of government also adopts. Far from

preventing partisanship, the identification of this telos with the common interest (or

some equivalent) serves rather to establish the terms in which partisan dispute will beconducted. Thus, in a pattern that will be familiar to political activists of all

persuasions, the common interest and more particular, sectional interests are com-

monly said to be utterly distinct and yet are frequently confused: invocation of the firstbecomes a standard means of promoting the second and an opponent’s appeal to the

common interest is readily seen as just another sectional manoeuvre.

While the conduct of partisan dispute in such terms will be present under any formof government, we should expect it to flourish where the freedom of members of the

subject population is promoted by the predominant rationality of government. David

Hume notes, for example, that partisan groups are

plants which grow most plentifully in the richest soil; and though absolutegovernments be not wholly free from them, it must be confessed, that they rise

more easily, and propagate themselves faster in free governments, where they

always infect the legislature itself, which alone could be able, by the steadyapplication of rewards and punishments, to eradicate them.

Hume (1987: 55–56)

Themost striking feature of this passage is its viewof partisan politics as an infection ofgovernment. This fear of what partisanship might do to government has been a long-

standing feature of political (i.e. governmental) reason but, as Hume’s comment

indicates, it is has a particular resonance for liberal and neoliberal rationalities ofgovernment.

This point suggests that the characterization of liberal and related rationalities of

government in terms of their emphasis on governing through the decisions ofautonomous individuals is seriously incomplete: they are also substantially concerned

to defend the proper purposes of government from the impact of partisan politics. It is

partly for this reason that secrecy and deliberate misdirection are so commonlyemployed by even the most liberal of governments. The neoliberal push of recent

decades has taken this defence against partisanship further by corporatizing and

privatizing various kinds of state activity, insulating central banks from overt politicalcontrol, and promoting the use of market or contractual relationships between and

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 partisan politics –Weber’s ‘politically oriented action’ – by enabling them to

pursue their concerns in other ways, notably through contract and the market. Thepromotion of certain kinds of individual autonomy also serves to inhibit political

participation. At another level, the aim is to limit the partisan influence of parties,

42 BARRY HINDESS

pressure groups and public officials by removing significant areas of public provision

from the realmof political decision, and relying instead on suitably organized forms of

market interaction. This, of course, is less a reduction in the overall scope ofgovernment than a change in the means by which government is exercised: a form

of government that works through the administrative apparatuses of the state is

displaced in favour of one that works on individuals and organizations through thedisciplines imposed by their interactions with others in market and quasi-market

regimes. Since this limited dismantling of the administrative apparatuses of the state is

itself conducted by partisan politicians and their chosen advisers, those who are notpersuaded by the neoliberal case – and many of those who are – will see in this

procedure ample scope for the pursuit of new forms of partisan advantage.

Government in the International Arena

If Foucault’s discussions of government depart from the conventional view that

government is the ‘supreme authority’ in a state, they nevertheless follow conventionin other respects, most obviously by treating government as something that operates

essentially within states. One consequence of this conventional view is that relations

between states are often seen as largely ungoverned, that is, as a kind of anarchywhichis regulated to some degree by treaties, a variety of less formal accommodations, and

the occasional war between them (Bull 1977). Yet, if government in its most general

sense is a matter of acting on the actions of others, aiming ‘to structure their “possiblefield of action”, then themodern systemof states containsmore than enough acting on

the actions of others for it to be seen, like civil society and the market, as a regime of

government with no controlling centre’ (Larner and Walters 2004). Thus, where theAristotelian view treats the state and the government of the state as ‘the highest of all’,

the modern system of states reflects the emergence of a more complex regime of

government. While the state retains its privileged position with regard to its ownpopulation, there are also important political contexts in which the ‘international

community’ is now regarded as ‘the highest of all’.

Two aspects of this international governmental regime areworth noting here. First,the modern art of government has been concerned with governing not simply the

populations of individual states but also the larger population encompassed by the

systemof states itself.We can see government as addressing this task at two levels: first,by promoting the rule of territorial states over populations, and secondly, by seeking

to regulate the conduct both of states themselves and of members of the populations

under their control. States are thus expected to pursue their own interests, but to do soin a field of action that has been structured by the overarching systemof states towhich

they belong.

There is an important analytical point behind my insistence that the first of thesetwo levels, the modern partitioning of humanity into citizens of states and a small

minority of others, should also be seen as an aspect of government, and thus of power.

At this level, government is a form of power with powerful (if I can be forgiven the useof this word) and often destructive effects. For example, it requires each state to

assume primary responsibility for looking after its own citizens, and thus to accept a

lesser responsibility for others. This in turn suggests to the rest of us that the

FOUCAULTIAN ANALYSIS OF POWER, GOVERNMENT, POLITICS 43

inhabitants of less fortunate states are ultimately responsible for their own condition

and, further, that if their states fail them in a manner which appears to threaten the

interests of other states, it may be necessary for the international community to step inand sort them out. There is a disturbing denial of history and, indeed, of responsibility

atwork in suchperceptions (Hindess 2004).Or again, the systemof states promotes an

exclusive sense of solidarity among the citizens of each individual state. Suchcommonplace sentiments can thus be seen as products, as much as they are causes,

of the institutional arrangements they appear to sustain – in this case of the govern-

mental division of humanity into the discrete populations of individual states. At theinternational level, just as at the domestic, government helps tomake uswhowe are. It

is intentional without being reducible to the pursuit of merely sectional interests.

Second, there are striking parallels between the contemporary international orderand the late colonial liberal order in which European states and the United States

dominated the rest of the world. Today, there is greater resistance to such domination

andmanymore independent states for it todealwith– a condition thatpresentsWesternstateswithaproblemnotunlike that facedby theUnited States in thenineteenth-century

Americas and by the East India Company in India in J.S. Mill’s time.

If the late colonial order of direct or indirect imperial domination was the form inwhich the European system of states first became global in scope, the achievement or

imposition of independence can be viewed as a later stage in the globalization of the

European states system. It was a process of imperial withdrawal, if only in the limitedsense that it left behind states with their own governing institutions, but also

substantial settler populations, many of whom were able to dominate the newly

independent states so that, in these cases, indigenous peoples remained subject to anobvious form of imperial rule (Keal 2003). Moreover, while it dismantled one part of

the imperial order, independence left another part firmly in place. It both expanded the

membership of the system of states and established a new way of bringing non-Western populations under its rule. As a result, these populations found themselves

governed both bymodern states of their own and by the regulatorymechanisms of the

overarching system of states. This is the latest version of the late imperial practice ofindirect rule in which people were governed through their own cultures and structures

of authority. The difference, in this case, is that they are governed throughmarkets and

by states of their own.

Liberal Authoritarianism

Authoritarian rule has always played a significant part of the government of states,even where liberal political reason has been influential. Nineteenth-century Western

states restricted the freedom of important sections of their own populations and some

forcibly imposed their rule on substantial populations outside their own nationalborders. Even now, coercive and oppressive practices continue to play an important

part in the government ofWestern societies: in the criminal justice system, the policing

of inner-city areas and the urban poor, the provision of social services, and, of course,the management of large public and private organizations. Elsewhere, in much of

Latin America, parts of South-East Asia, Central and Eastern Europe, authoritarian

rule has been used as an instrument of economic liberalization.

44 BARRY HINDESS

Whatdo these practices have todowith the liberal government of freedom?With few

exceptions (notablyValverde1996), contributors to the governmentality literaturehave

seen the relationshipbetween themas largely external. Thus,whileNikolasRose (1999)observes that coercive and oppressive practices must now be justified on the liberal

grounds of freedom, these practices play little part in his account of liberal government

itself.Oragain,MitchellDean(1999) insists thatanyattempt togovernthroughfreedomwill have to acknowledge that some peoplemay just have to be governed in otherways.

These accounts capture important aspectsof liberalpolitical reason,but the government

of unfreedom is more central to its concerns than either would suggest.We can see what is at issue here by returning to the significance for government of

the belief that members of the population are naturally endowed with a capacity for

autonomous, self-directing activity. One obvious implication seems to be that gov-ernment should make use of this capacity, and the Foucaultian account of liberal and

neoliberal government has therefore focused on its deployment of individual liberty.

In fact, the implications are rather more complex: individuals may be naturallyendowed with a capacity for autonomous action but this does not mean that the

capacity will always be fully realized. Modern political thought has generally taken

the contrary view: that there are indeed contexts in which suitable habits of self-government have taken root, but many more in which they have not. Liberals have

usually seen the realization of this capacity for autonomous action in historical and

developmental terms, suggesting that it will be well established amongst numerousadults only in relatively civilized communities; that extended periods of education and

training are required if individuals are to develop the necessary habits of self-

regulation; and that, even under favourable conditions, there will be those whocannot be relied on to conduct their affairs in a reasonable manner. They have argued

that, where this capacity is not well developed, government simply cannot afford to

work through the free decisions of individuals: children must be constrained byparental authority and uncivilized adults subjected to authoritarian rule. John Stuart

Mill’s comments on the people of India and other colonial dependencies provide a

well-known example of this liberal perspective. Since they are not, in his view,‘sufficiently advanced . . . to be fitted for representative government’, they must be

governed by the dominant country or its agents:

Thismode of government is as legitimate as any other, if it is the onewhich in the

existing state of civilization of the subject people,most facilitates their transitionto a higher stage of improvement.

(1977 [1865]: 567)

Liberal political reason has been concerned with the subject peoples of imperialpossessions as much as with the free inhabitants of Western states, with minors and

adults judged to be incompetent as much as with autonomous individuals. Western

colonial rule has now been displaced but its developmental perspective remainsinfluential in the programs of economic and political development promoted by

independent, post-colonial states and by international agencies.

Authoritarian government in these cases has a paternalistic rationale: its stated aimis to move towards its own eventual abolition. A rationale of a different kind rests on

FOUCAULTIAN ANALYSIS OF POWER, GOVERNMENT, POLITICS 45

the point, noted earlier, that liberalism is substantially concerned to defend the work

of government from the impact of partisan politics. The corporatization and privat-

ization of state agencies might seem to reduce the threat of certain kinds of parti-sanship, but therewill also be cases inwhichmore directmeasures seem to be required.

These range from limitations on parliamentary and intra-party debate to the direct

suppression of political opposition. In societies where paternalistic attitudes towardsthe bulk of the population are already well entrenched, the supposed imperatives of

economic reform have often provided governments and their international supporters

with powerful liberal grounds for the restriction of political freedom.

Moving on

The Foucaultian studies of government, and of liberal and neoliberal government inparticular, have made substantial contributions to our understanding of the signif-

icance of freedom, choice and empowerment in the government of contemporary

Western populations. There are, nevertheless, important areas of politics, and indeedof government, which these studies have not addressed. This chapter has commented,

all too briefly, on three of these – political partisanship, the contemporary system of

states and liberal authoritarianism – and suggested that they are central to the analysisof liberalism and of modern government more generally, both in the West and

elsewhere. To insist on the importance of these areas, however, is not to raise an

objection to the governmentality perspective. The point, rather, is to show that it hasconsiderably more to offer our understanding of contemporary politics than it has yet

been able to deliver.

Further Reading

Dean, M. 1999: Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society. London: Sage.

Neuman, I. and Sending, O.J. 2010: Governing the Global Polity: Practice, Mentality,

Rationality. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Rose, N. 1999: Powers of Freedom: Reframing Political Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press.

46 BARRY HINDESS