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Article Excerpt
This article considers Michel Foucault's work on the rationality of government and the practices in which it has been implemented. Specifically, it develops a critique of Foucault's analysis of political reason in relation to the governmental significance of electoral politics, to liberal commitments to the promotion of individual liberty, and to the focus on government within states to the neglect of the international system and the problem of sovereignty. KEYWORDS: political, governmental, partisan politics, liberalism, states-system
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When, in the conclusion to his Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Michel Foucault tells us that political rationality "has grown and imposed itself all throughout the history of Western societies," (1) his use of the word political clearly invokes the classical understanding set out in, for example, Aristotle's The Politics, where political means, quite simply, pertaining to the government of the state--that is, of the polis. Aristotle tells us that "the state is by nature clearly prior to the family and to the individual, since the whole is of necessity prior to the part" and that it is "a body of citizens sufficing for the purposes of life." (2) Politics, the government of the state, seeks to promote the common interest, and political science, Foucault's political reason, considers how that end might best be pursued. In his writings on government, Foucault normally uses the term political in precisely this sense--that is, to refer to aspects of the government of a state. Thus far, it might seem, there is nothing particularly unusual, or even interesting, here: politics, political, and related terms are frequently used to refer to the work of governing the population and territory of a state, and Foucault's usage appears to be in line with this conventional practice.
Such an impression could hardly be more misleading. First, as the subtitle of his Tanner Lectures--"Towards a Criticism of 'Political Reason'"--suggests, Foucault's concern is neither to endorse this conventional usage nor to criticize it on the basis of an alternative view of how politics itself should be understood. Rather, it is to investigate and, at least in these lectures, to criticize a type of reason that, in his view, has been particularly influential in "the history of Western societies" and that, following the usage just noted, could well be described as "political." It is a type of reason that treats the state as "the highest of all" forms of community, (3) and consequently aims to recruit the government of all lesser communities and, most especially, the government of oneself to its particular purposes. Thus, while recognizing that this political reason has often been criticized for its totalizing effects, Foucault insists that its prioritizing of the state also leads to individualizing effects that are no less problematic: political reason can be criticized, in his view, on the grounds that it operates as an oppressive principle of subjectivation.
While Foucault directs his critique at political reason in general, his analyses are particularly concerned with its early modern and modern manifestations--that is, with the rationality of government of the modern state. Here he shows that "government" was once understood more broadly than is usually now the case, and he suggests, in effect, that this early modern understanding can serve as a particularly revealing device for analyzing more recent developments. As a result, his use of political to refer to the government of a state also carries a somewhat critical and unconventional weight. He insists, in particular, that the work of governing the population and territory of a state is not performed only by the state itself, that it may be dispersed throughout the population and performed by a variety of public and private agencies. This claim opens up for examination a sphere of practices that are clearly governmental, in Foucault's expanded sense, but that have been neglected by more conventional forms of political analysis.
Foucault's approach has been taken up by students of governmental rationalities who have thus explored the various ways in which, in the government of contemporary Western states, state and society, the national population, and the individuals, groups, and organizations within it have been understood both as posing problems that government has to address and as providing resources for dealing with those problems. The promise of this approach is nicely captured by the title of Nikolas Rose and Peter Miller's "Political Power Beyond the State: Problematics of Government." (4) The suggestion here--that the state is neither the only, nor always the most consequential, center of political power at work within the state's population and territory--offers a new perspective on the traditional liberal concern that the state may be governing too much, and it thereby opens the way for a powerful and innovative account of liberalism as a rationality of government.
In his writings on government, Foucault's interest is less in the question of how "politics" and related terms should be used--although, as noted above, he does offer some tactical suggestions--than it is in investigating the character of "political reason" and the practices in which it has been implicated. This article follows Foucault's lead in this respect, but, since it also offers a critique of Foucault's analysis of political reason, it does so at a certain remove. It begins by outlining the Foucaultian treatment of government and its implications for our understanding both of political reason in general and of liberalism as a specific rationality of government.
Such a powerful new perspective on political analysis can hardly avoid raising issues that have yet to be properly addressed, and this article focuses on three of them. One involves the governmental significance of electoral politics and other forms of what Weber calls "politically oriented action," which must surely be regarded as occupying a central place in the modern government of populations. We shall see that politically oriented action is a major concern of liberal political reason. Another concerns governmentality's treatment of liberalism, almost in its own terms, as committed to governing through the promotion of suitable forms of individual liberty. A third issue is raised by Foucault's description of political reason itself, and especially the sense in which modern political reason can be said to treat the state as "the highest of all." The difficulty here concerns governmentality's focus on government within the state and its relative neglect of the international system of states and the problem of sovereignty. (5) I conclude by suggesting that this issue, too, has important implications for our understanding of liberal political reason.
Government
In The Politics, Aristotle uses the term government primarily to denote "the supreme authority in states," (6) which suggests that government should be seen as emanating from a single center of control, and contemporary political analysis generally follows this usage. But he also writes of the government "of a wife and children and of a household" (7) and the government of a slave, two forms of rule that he is careful to distinguish from the government of a state. In yet another usage, government may refer to a rule that one exercises over oneself. Foucault notes that, for all the many differences between them, these distinct practices of government nevertheless share a concern with "the way in which the conduct of individuals or of groups might be directed.... To govern, in this sense, is to structure the possible field of action of others (8) or, indeed, of oneself. Thus, while it will often act directly to determine the behavior of individuals, government also aims to influence their actions indirectly, by acting on the manner in which they regulate their own behavior and the behavior of others. Government, in this sense, is a special case of power: it is a way of acting on the actions of others, and even of oneself. (9)
Nevertheless, while noting such differences and continuities, Foucault pays particular attention to one form of government that, from the early modern period onward, has been seen as "special and precise"; namely, "the particular form of governing which can be applied to the state as a whole." (10) His concern here is both to distinguish this modern art of government from the rule exercised by feudal magnates, independent cities, the church, and various others over the populations of late-medieval Europe and, most especially, to show that this modern understanding of government follows the classical view in treating the state "as the highest of all." He notes, for example, that while those who wrote of the art of government in the early modern period "constantly recall that one speaks also of 'governing' a household, souls, children, a province, a convent, a religious order, a family," they also treat these "other kinds of government as internal to the state or society," thereby always giving the government of the latter a superior status. (11)
Foucault's account of the emergence of the modern art of government thus refers back to the Aristotelian view that the government of the state has its own distinctive telos, a telos that requires that it should have "a regard to the common interest." (12) It also points forward to the peculiar secularism of the liberal state. He notes, on the one hand, that those who promoted the art of government were careful to distinguish it from "the problematic of the Prince," the view that the aim of government is to secure "the Prince's ability to keep his principality." (13) Rather, they argued, the state should be "governed according to rational principles which are intrinsic to it." (14)
On the other hand, he is careful to distinguish the political rationality of government, which treats the state as...
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