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April 5, 2007
In Neo-liberalism: Policy, Ideology, Governmentality, published in Studies in Political Economy (2000), Wendy Larner states:
The most influential post-structuralist theorisation of neo-liberalism is that associated with the neo-Foucauldian literature on governmentality. This literature makes a useful distinction..... between government and governance, and argues that while neo-liberalism may mean less government, it does not follow that there is less governance. While on one hand neo-liberalism problematises the state and is concerned to specify its limits through the invocation of individual choice, on the other hand it involves forms of governance that encourage both institutions and individuals to conform to the norms of the market.
That makes a break with the big government thesis by classical liberals associated with the Centre of Independent Studies.
Larner says:
The governmentality literature has inspired innovative analyses of welfare state restructuring, which show that social policy reform is linked to a new specification of the object of governance. .....Neo-liberal strategies of rule, found in diverse realms including workplaces, educational institutions and health and welfare agencies, encourage people to see themselves as individualised and active subjects responsible for enhancing their own well being. This conception of the ‘active society’ can also be linked to a particular politics of self in which we are all encouraged to ‘work on ourselves’ in a range of domains, including the ‘counter cultural movements’ outside the purview of traditional conceptions of the political.
Once again this account breaks with the classical liberal and libertarian accounts that endlessly riff the individual freedom versus government.
One criticism of the governmentality approach to neo-liberalism made by Larner is that the governmentality literature:
....has not paid a great deal of attention to the politics surrounding specific programmes and policies.This is particularly the case vis-a-vis theorisations of neo-liberalism in that the emphasis has been on broad governmental themes rather than specific neo-liberal projects...Yet it is obvious that without analyses of the ‘messy actualities’ of particular neo-liberal projects, those working within this analytic run the risk of precisely the problem they wish to avoid-- that of producing generalised accounts of historical epochs.
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