Transcript The State

The State: Past, Present, Future
Bob Jessop
Lancaster University
Outline
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Statehood and problems of definition
Approaches to state theory
Historical constitution: the origins of the state
The formal constitution of the modern state
The limits of form analysis
The strategic-relational approach
Governance and governmentality
Trends and counter-trends
Authoritarian statism
Conclusions
Statehood
Statehood = territorialized political power
The core of the state apparatus comprises a relatively
unified ensemble of socially embedded, socially regularized,
and strategically selective institutions and organizations
whose socially construed and accepted function is to define
and enforce collectively binding decisions on the members
of a society in a given territorial area in the name of the
general will or common interest of a more or less inclusive
imagined political community identified with that territory
All terms in italics are contested
So What is the State?
• Four aspects: (a) territory controlled by the state, (b) an
apparatus that makes collectively binding decisions, for
(c) a resident population subject to state authority, (d)
justified by a legitimating state idea or project.
• State capacities and state strength vary immensely
– there is no general form of state and, in particular, there
are important differences in policy regimes
• All states are equal: some are more equal than others
– some states have more power to shape world market
– state strength is linked in part to state’s overall power
resources, in part to choice of military vs welfare spending
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The State as a Social Relation
• State is not a thing or a rational subject but an ensemble
of institutions and organizations that exercises power,
insofar as it does, through an institutionally-mediated
condensation of a changing balance of forces that seek to
influence forms, functions, and exercise of state power
• As well as its articulation to an economic basis and its
contingent economic functions, state, as official résumé
of society, has key role in socio-political domination
• This occurs through selective impact of state form on
shaping political opportunities and alliances and through
specific state strategies, projects, and policies
Six Main Contemporary Approaches
• Historical constitution, i.e., genealogy of various elements
of state(s) and their articulation
• Formal constitution: state as ensemble of ‘forms’ and their
‘formal adequacy’ (‘fit’ with wider social formation)
• Institutional analysis and functional/material adequacy, i.e.,
institutional capacities and policy delivery
• Agential analysis of social forces, state projects, and their
bases in wider social order
• Foucauldian governmentality: oriented to techniques of
statecraft (strategic codification of power relations)
• Totalizing ‘figurational analysis’ of embedded states in all
their complex interdependence with wider orders
Plain Marxism and State Theory
• A ‘Plain Marxist’ is someone who understands Marx, and
many later marxists as well, to be firmly a part of the
classic tradition of sociological thinking.
• They treat Marx like any great nineteenth century figure,
in a scholarly way; they treat each later phase of marxism
as historically specific.
• They are generally agreed . . . that his general model and
his ways of thinking are central to their own intellectual
history and remain relevant to their attempts to grasp
present-day social worlds. (Mills 1962: 96.)
Marx’s Approaches
• Critiques of political theory (like those of the economic
categories in classical and vulgar political economy);
• Historical analyses of the development, changing form,
and class character of specific states;
• Historical analyses of specific periods and conjunctures;
• Analyses of the capitalist type of state - albeit mainly in
terms of its fit with the logic of capital accumulation;
• Historical analyses of the state (or its equivalents) in precapitalist times and/or outside Europe and USA;
• More strategic, political accounts to orient debates in the
labour movement
Historical Constitution
• Territorialization of political power and its genealogy (e.g.,
Westphalian state)
• State formation is not a once-and-for-all process; the state
does not originate at one place/time – multiple inventions
• There are many types of state: city-states, small states, client
states, empires, etc.
• There are also forms of political power that are non-statal
• No convincing general theory of origins (Marxian, military
conquest, priesthood , patriarchy, political imaginaries)
• Do not assume unity of state apparatus (institutions,
organizations, etc) and include state projects in analysis
Origins of the State
• Nomadic groups had recognized roaming territories (but
with ill-defined outer boundaries)
• Simple and complex chiefdoms:
– hard to control territory over 12 hours distant by foot
– low political division of labour, so delegating authority to
distant officials risks creating a potential rival chief
• Primary state formation:
– First cases of state formation in a given region, without
contact with other states (e.g., Mesopotamia)
– Involves centralized bureaucratic administration that can
overcome these spatio-temporal and administrative limits
• Subsequent state formation, including empires.
Polymorphic Crystallizations
• Study past and present state formations as distinctive
polymorphous (changeable) crystallizations of state power.
• There are competing axes of societal organization: states
(along with rest of a given social formation) vary with
dominance of one or another axis
• General higher-order crystallizations vs more specific
conjunctural crystallizations (e.g., during wars or in periods
of economic emergency)
• Same power networks can crystallize differently according
to dominant issues in given period; but shifting principles
can also transform state power and social orders
Historical Constitution and Polymorphy
• Different axes of societal organization:
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Capitalist state (‘wealth container’)
Military-political regime (‘power container’)
Nation-state (‘cultural container’)
Representative state (democratic or citizenship regimes)
Theocratic state (primacy of religion)
Security state (primacy of domestic national security)
‘Racialized’ state (primacy of ethnic divisions, e.g., apartheid)
….
• There can also be hybrid forms, based on combinations of
principles in shadow of one; and some principles may
conflict with others (e.g., apartheid vs capital accumulation)
Analyzing Formal Constitution
• Start with social forms and their impact on co-constitution of
capital logic(s), class formation, and class struggle (e.g.,
constitutional state, tax state, formal citizenship)
• Formal correspondence does not guarantee primacy of
capital logic or bourgeois domination – form problematizes
state’s functionality for accumulation and/or class rule. E.g.
– relative autonomy is ‘double-edged sword’ for capital
– plurality of territorial states vs integrating world market
• Distinguish formal from material adequacy
– formal adequacy when optimal for developing content
– material adequacy = functionality of given form and its content.
‘Pashukanis Question’ on Form
‘Why does the dominance of a class take the form of
official state domination? Or, which is the same thing,
why is not the mechanism of state constraint created as
the private mechanism of the dominant class? Why is it
dissociated from the dominant class -- taking the form
of an impersonal mechanism of public authority
isolated from society?' (E.B. Pashukanis, Law and
Marxism, 1951: 185).
Answer to Pashukanis Question
• ‘Where exploitation takes the form of exchange, dictatorship
may take the form of democracy’ (Moore 1957)
• Unique feature of capitalism is generalization of commodity
form to labour-power (wage relation)
• Hence surplus labour can be appropriated as surplus-value,
exploitation can take the form of exchange
• Form of political organization corresponds to the form of
economic organization (Marx)
• So dictatorship may take the form of democracy as long as
economic and political class struggles are separated – former
subject to logic of market, latter to logic of liberal democracy
• This formal possibility depends on balance of forces
Liberal Bourgeois Democracy
• Bourgeois democratic republic is the formally adequate
type of capitalist state but (i) not all capitalist states are
democratic; (ii) once democracy emerges, reversals can
occur; (iii) specific policies may not be substantively
adequate to capital accumulation, overall reproduction of
capitalist relations of production, or bourgeois rule.
• Marx notes contradiction in capitalist democracies between
majority political power of dominated classes and minority
economic power of dominant classes – it can be reconciled
only if both sides accept the “democratic rules of the game”
and thereby reproduce conditions of class domination
Economic and Political Struggles
• Economic struggle will normally occur within market logic
(i.e., over wages, hours, working conditions, prices)
• Political struggle will normally occur within logic of a
representative state based on rule of law (i.e., over the
‘national interest’, or reconciling particular interests of
citizens and property owners in ‘illusory’ general interest)
• Class is absent as explicit organizing principle of capitalist
type of state – without legal or de facto monopoly of
political power, dominant class must compete for political
power on formally equal terms with subaltern classes
The Limits of Form Analysis
• Form analysis is best for capitalist type of state; it is less
useful for social formations where some kinds of capitalist
relations exist but without a capitalist type of state
• Historical constitution may be more suitable than formal
constitution for some analytical purposes
• Form analysis identities tendencies linked to capitalist type
of state to the extent that the latter itself is reproduced
• For other types of state and political regimes, may be better
to use figurational or strategic relational analysis ...
• ... especially where another crystallization of state power
prevails together with another Vergesellschaftungsmodus
Capitalist Type of State
State in Capitalist Society
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Formal constitution
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Historical constitution
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Formal adequacy
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Material adequacy
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Historically specific type tied to •
primacy of capitalist production
Structure results from pathdependency and path-shaping
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Main principle of societal
organization is accumulation
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Other organizational principles
are possible (polymorphy)
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Class power is structural and
tends to be obscure or else is
seen as legitimate
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Class power is contingent:
openly instrumental or
mediated via other relations
Normal States
Exceptional Regimes
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Liberal democracy with
universal suffrage
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Suspend elections (except
for plebiscites, referenda)
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Power transferred in stable
way in line with rule of law
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No legal regulation of power
transfer (‘might is right’)
•
Pluralistic ISAS, relatively
independent of state
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ISAs integrated into state to
legitimate power
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Separation of powers
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Concentration of powers
•
Power circulates organically,
facilitating flexible
reorganization of power
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Congeals balances of forces
at time that exceptional
regime is introduced
Exceptional Regimes
Brittle Military Dictatorships
No specialized politico-ideological apparatuses to channel and
control mass support. Apportions power rigidly among political
‘clans’ tied to each apparatus. Lacks ideology to secure state’s
institutional unity and establish national cohesion. Muddles
through via mechanical compromises, tactical alliances, narrow
bargaining among interests. Intensifies contradictions inside
state apparatus and reduces its flexibility in face of crises.
Flexible Fascist Regime
Most flexible because it displays a limited pluralism, has
elaborate politico-ideological apparatuses, including party and
union organizations, corporate bodies, etc.. Also has strong
nationalist ideology and mechanisms to reorganize power.
Beyond Form Analysis
• ‘a relationship of forces, or more precisely the material
condensation of such a relationship among classes and
class fractions, such as this is expressed in the State in a
necessarily specific form' (Poulantzas, 1978)
• State apparatus and state capacities can be seen as
‘material causes’, changing class forces as ‘efficient
causes’, class strategies as ‘final cause’, and state power
as ‘formal cause’
• Therefore need to examine struggles over form of state
as institutional ensemble, over state policy, and
struggles at a distance from the state
Strategic Selectivity
"Particular forms of economic and political system
privilege some strategies over others, access by some
forces over others, some interests over others, some
spatial scales of action over others, some time
horizons over others, some coalition possibilities over
others … structural constraints always operate
selectively: they are not absolute and unconditional
but always operate temporally, spatially, agency, and
strategy specifically' (Jessop, 1997b: 63)
Four Selectivities
Structural
Structurally-inscribed strategic
selectivities plus structurally-oriented
strategic calculation
Form analysis and critical
institutionalism; focus on
uneven distribution of
constraints/opportunities
Agential
Attribution of interpretive and causal
powers to agents to make a difference
in specific conjuncture by virtue of
specific capacities unique to them
Conjunctural analysis
oriented to individual and
social agents in a changing
balance of forces
Discursive
Orders of discourse (sense- and
meaning-making) limit what can be
thought and said; strategic use of
language can also make a difference
Critical semiotic analysis of
text, intertext, and context to
see how semiosis construes,
guides action, and constructs
Technological
Technologies for appropriating and
transforming nature and/or for the
conduct of conduct (Foucault et al.)
Material, social, and spatiotemporal biases inscribed in
technological capacities for
action and their effects
Gramsci on State Power
• Gramsci focused on modalities of state power rather than
its specific institutional mediations – hence looks beyond
state in its juridico-political sense to power as relation
• Lo stato integrale = “political society + civil society” and
state power in West = “hegemony armoured by coercion”
– Force (use of a coercive apparatus to bring popular masses into
conformity with requirements of a specific mode of production)
– Hegemony (ruling class mobilizes ‘active consent’ of dominated
groups via intellectual, moral, and political leadership)
• Focus on relative weight in different societies of coercion,
fraud-corruption, passive revolution, and active consent
Foucault on the State
• “if the state is what it is today, it is precisely thanks to
this governmentality that is at the same time both
external and internal to the state
• it is the tactics of government that allow the continual
definition of what should or should not fall within the
state’s domain, what is public and what private, what is
and what is not within the state’s competence, etc.
• So, if you like, the survival and limits of the state should
be understood on the basis of the general tactics of
governmentality” (Foucault 2008: 109).
Governance and Governmentality
• Governmentality covers discourses and practices of state
formation, statecraft, state’s role in strategic codification
of micro-powers, and overall projection of state power
• Governmentality covers problem of macro-intelligibilities
as well as of micro-powers: so how do we understand
strategic codification of different disciplinary techniques
and other forms of governmentality?
• State power as key emergent field of strategic action that
Foucault links to capitalist political economy and interests
of rising bourgeoisie
A Governmental Reinterpretation
• State = government + governance in shadow of hierarchy
• Government is more than the state considered as
territory, apparatus, population – it exercises power in
ways that go well beyond imperative coordination
• Government as a social relation (hegemony armoured by
coercion or statecraft) involves practices of collibration,
i.e., rebalancing forms of governance in shadow of
hierarchy and, as such, is linked to issues of domination
• Collibration is more than technical, problem-solving fix:
tied to wider “unstable equilibrium of compromise” and
specific objects, techniques, and subjects of governance
Policy Fields, Spatiality, Temporality
• Go beyond generic analysis of state or class power to
consider specificities of substantive policy fields (noting
how they are socially and technically constituted) and
their associated forms of government and governance
• Go beyond naturalization of national territorial state to
include complex inter-state relations, scalar division of
political labour, political networks, and place
• Question the temporal sovereignty of states and political
regimes to consider how time affects state capacities
Three trends by way of response to challenges
of internationalization
• The hollowing out of the
national state – transfer of
powers upward, downward,
sideward
• From Government to
Governance – from hierarchical
command to networks &
partnerships
• From sovereign states to the
internationalization of policy
regimes as sources of domestic
policy
Three Countertrends
• Interscalar articulation –
national states seek to shape
what goes up, down, sideways
• From government to metagovernance – states seek to
organize (control) framework
conditions for self-organization
• Interstate struggles to shape
international regimes and
global governance and local
implementation
Multi-Level Government
• Levels of political organization in nested territorial
hierarchy
• Vertical interdependence, communication, joint decisionmaking
• Specific policy and issue areas rather than coordination
problems across different areas
• More concerned with government than with governance,
neglects meta-governance
Multi-Scalar Meta-Governance
• Marked plurality of levels, scales, areas and sites involved
in, affected by, mobilized in multi-scalar meta-governance
• Complex, tangled, interwoven political link-ages -horizontal, transversal, and vertical
• Meta-governance as art of ‘collibration’ to secure requisite
variety, flexibility, adaptability
• Plurality and heterogeneity of actors in and beyond a given
multi-scalar economic, political, … and social space
Authoritarian Statism - I
‘Intensified state control
over every sphere of socioeconomic life combined
with radical decline of
institutions of political
democracy and with
draconian and multiform
curtailment of so-called
‘formal’ liberties’ (Staatstheorie: 203-4).
Authoritarian Statism - II
• Transfer of power from legislature to
executive and concentration of power
within the latter
• Accelerated fusion between three branches
of state legislature, executive, judiciary –
decline in rule of law
• Functional decline of political parties as
leading channels for political dialogue with
administration and as major forces in
organizing hegemony
• Rise of parallel power networks crosscutting formal organization of state, with
major share in its activities
The Role of States Today
• Effects of neo-liberalism on world scale now evident in
different forms in different states
• Restructuring and shifts in strategy of national states and
regional and global governance regimes to manage crisis
on behalf of [monopoly] [financial] capital
• Concentration of state power, strengthening of ties to
financial capital, fast policy at cost of normal democratic
processes, even more authoritarian statism, etc.
• Short-term crisis management for capital will undermine
longer-term prospects for solving other – and more
fundamental – crises noted above.
Grounds for Critique I
• Statehood
Anarchist critique
• Type of State
Historical critique
• State form
Formal adequacy
• Normal/Exceptional
Differential critique
• Political Regime
Material adequacy
• Political Scene
Strategic critique
• Political struggle
Conjunctural critique
Grounds for Critique II
• Paradoxes
Form analysis
• Political imaginaries
Ideologiekritik
• Problems of failure: 1
Form analysis
• Problems of failure: 2
Coping capacities
• Rogue or Failed States
Ideologiekritik
• Consequential
Normative Critique
Some Conclusions
• Six main approaches – start with one well-suited to your
theoretical object, add others to produce more complexity
• Recognize limits of form analysis – there are 172 states in UN
and few are ‘capitalist types of state’
• There are many other types of government and governance in
addition to the territorial national state
• No one-to-one match among economic class interests, forms
of political representation, organization of political forces.
• Use conjunctural analysis oriented to horizons of action of
various political forces, their class relevance, if any, and their
impact over different time periods on economic, political, and
ideological class domination
THE END ….
ARTICULATION OF ECONOMY
AND STATE IN CAPITALISM
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE
ECONOMY AND CLASS
RELATIONS
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE STATE
AND POLITICS
Institutional separation of market
economy, sovereign state, and a
public sphere (civil society) that is
located beyond market and state
The economy is dominated by
capitalist law of value as mediated
via competition between capitals
and economic class struggle.
Raison d'État (a specialized political
rationality) distinct from profit-andloss market logic and from religious,
moral, or ethical principles.
Legitimate claim to monopoly of
organized force in state territory.
Coercion excluded from immediate
organization of labour process.
Specialized military-police organs
are subject to constitutional control.
Role of legality in legitimation of the
state and its activities.
The value form and market forces
shape differential accumulation.
Subject to law, state may counter
market failure in national interest.
Specialized administrative staff with
its own channels of recruitment,
training, and ésprit de corps.
State has specific place in division
between manual and mental labour.
Official discourse has key role in
state power.
Political class and officials specialize
in mental labour and their power is
linked to specialist knowledge
intellectuals formulate state and
hegemonic projects
This staff is subject to authority of
political executive. It forms a social
category internally divided by
market and status position.
‘Supervisionsstaat’
State legitimacy based on national
or 'national-popular' interest.
ARTICULATION OF ECONOMY
AND STATE IN CAPITALISM
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE
ECONOMY AND CLASS
RELATIONS
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE STATE
AND POLITICS
‘Tax State': its revenues derive
mainly from taxes on economic
actors and their activities PLUS
loans advanced by market actors
Taxes may be used to produce
public goods deemed essential to
market economy and/or for social
cohesion
Subjects in state territory have a
general duty to pay taxes to state,
whether or not they approve of
specific state activities
State does not own property with
which to produce goods and
services for its own use and/or for
sale to generate revenue to
reproduce state and finance its
activities
Bourgeois tax form linked to the
constitutionalization of the state:
State fiat money is means of
payment for state taxes and so
circulates more widely in state
space (and, perhaps, beyond)
Tax capacity depends on legal
authority and coercive power:
involves Steuermonopol and
Gewaltmonopol
Private agents must earn money:
state can tax or borrow
Taxes are
• a general contribution to state
revenue,
• levied on continuing basis
• state can apply them freely to
any legitimate tasks
They should not be extraordinary,
ad hoc, irregular, short-term,
levied for specific tasks , and/or
secured through negotiation
Taxation capacity acts as security
for sovereign debt.
Tax as early form of class struggle
ARTICULATION OF ECONOMY AND
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE
STATE IN CAPITALISM
ECONOMY AND CLASS RELATIONS
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE STATE
AND POLITICS
The state is based on the rule of law.
This involves division between private
law, administrative law, and public law.
Economic agents are formally free and
equal owners of ‘commodities’,
including labour-power.
No formal monopoly of political power
in hands of dominant economic
class(es) but 'equality before the law'.
Private law evolved on the basis of
property rights and contract law.
Formal subjects of state are individuals
with citizenship rights, not feudal
estates or collectively organized
producer groups or classes. Struggles
to extend these rights play a key role in
the expansion of state activities.
International law governs relations
between states.
State has key role in securing external
conditions for economic exchange and
the realization of private profit.
Public law is organized around
individual-state, public-private, and
national-international distinctions.
Formally sovereign state with a distinct
and exclusive territorial domain in
which it is formally free to act without
interference from other states.
Tension between economy as abstract
'space of flows' in world market and as
sum of localized activities, with
politically-overdetermined character.
Ideally, the state is recognized as
sovereign in this territory by other
states but it may need to defend its
territorial integrity by force.
Substantively, states are constrained in
exercise of sovereignty by balance of
international forces.
Particular capitals may seek support in
world competition from their
respective states
Political and military rivalry is
conditioned by strength of national
economy.
Can there be a Marxist theory?
• Marx’s “missing book” on the state
• State as “chaotic conception” or “rational abstraction”
• State as a “complex synthesis of many determinations
• Form analysis for given mode of production
• An autonomous science of politics in overall context of
capitalist mode of production?
• “The present state” or “actually existing states”
• The state as a social relation
• States and the world market
Materialist State Theory in 1970s
Renewed Marxist interest prompted by:
• State's role in averting post-war economic crisis –
Keynesian Welfare [National] States
• Critiques of pluralism, behavioralism, and elitism in
political science – develop radical alternative in terms
of laws of capital and/or how capitalists rule
• Discovery of Gramsci and the power of ideas – ruling
class rules via hegemonic common sense
• Search for 'true' Marxian theory of state based on the
‘correct’ starting point in critical political economy
• Analysis of specific forms of state and political crisis
Key Marxist Insights from the 1970s
• Turning from functionality to form, state theorists found
that form threatens function (form analysis)
• Abandoning views of state as simple thing or unitary class
subject, they began to analyse state power as a complex
social relation (relational analysis)
• Noting complexity of state as institutional ensemble, they
began to study problems of relatively unified state action
across various policy fields (critical policy analysis)
• Rejecting base-superstructure, they explored specificity
and effectivity of semiosis, discourse, language (and mass
media) (studies of hegemony and mediatization)
‘Logical-Historical’ Dilemmas
• Start from most abstract-simple concepts to unfold step-bystep concrete-complex concepts for conjunctural analysis
– Either, one-sided explanation based on aspects for which rich conceptual
vocabulary exists, enabling more sophisticated description-explanation
than can be provided through other, less elaborate sets of categories
– Or, rich account just shows mediations of the ‘ultimate’ mini-set of causes
• Start from events to identify actual social forces in specific
strategic contexts and retroduce their deeper significance
– Either, descriptivism based on mere chronicling of events rather than a
differential, periodization with spatio-temporal depth and breadth
– Or, empiricism that mistakes self-representation for real social forces and
mistakes surface forms for underlying tendencies and counter-tendencies
The Decline of Liberal Democracy
• Liberal democracy stronger in periods when national was
the primary scale of economic and political organization
• Keynesian welfare national state:
– National economy managed by national state on behalf of
national citizens to create conditions for growing welfare state
– Class compromise between industrial capital and working class
• Internationalization undermines conditions for KWNS
and its democratic shell
• Neo-liberalism undermines these conditions further
because it promotes financialization, political capitalisms
• Together these trends undermine temporal as well as
territorial sovereignty of national states
Foucault’s Guidelines
• study power where it is exercised over individuals rather than
where it is legitimated at the centre;
• study actual practice of subjugation - not intentions or
strategies that guide attempts at domination;
• recognize that power is relational and circulates through
networks in which individuals are relays - not just points of
application of power;
• start from multiplicity of power relations and explore how
they are colonized, articulated into ever more general
mechanisms and forms of global domination maintained by
the entire state system;
• explore connections between micro-power and means of
producing knowledge - for surveillance and constitution of
specific types of subject
Governmentality
• Early work rejected the importance of the state
(because it was seen in juridico-political terms or as a
subject),
• Foucault later began to see state as crucial site for
strategic codification of power relations
• He also emphasized various strategies (state projects,
governmentalizing projects) that identified nature
and purposes of government
• Especially clear in later lectures, which move beyond
disciplinary power to biopolitics and security
Governmentality as Statecraft
• Immanent multiplicity of relations and techniques of
power are ‘colonised, used, inflected, trans-formed,
displaced, extended, and so on by increasingly general
mechanisms and forms of overall domination … and,
above all, how they are invested or annexed by global
phenomena and how more general powers or
economic benefits can slip into the play of these
technologies of power’ (Foucault 2003: 30-1).
• Selection and, even more, retention are tied to
economic and political class powers
Variation, Selection, Retention
• Resolve some ambiguities and confusions in the
analytics of power by distinguishing three moments in
development of power relations.
– variation in objects, subjects, purposes, and
technologies of power;
– selection of some technologies and practices rather
than others;
– retention of some of these as they are integrated into
broader, more stable strategies of state &/or class (or
national or racial) power