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Understanding the Forms of Government in Today’s Liberal and Democratic Societies: An Introduction

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Abstract

What I consider in this paper are various forms of government, various technologies and discursive regimes of government that are in common use today. What interests me are the categories and tools, practical dispositifs and languages that developed over the last decades ‘to constitute, define, organize, and instrumentalize the strategies that individuals, acting freely, may use to deal with one another’ (Foucault). The paper considers first the neo-liberal wish to reassert the individual as alone in responsibility for his/her own life after the unfortunate digression into Welfare Statism and Keynesian economics, source of all ills. It then focuses on some material and social technologies that encourage people to accept full and complete ‘self-sovereignty’. This section leads to a discussion on the new demands (and resistance) society imposed on this liberal normative ideal. It notably considers the growing demands to ‘participate’ in decision processes and to be environmentally friendly. In section “Les Mots et Les Choses: A New Discursive Regime”, it considers the discursive regime that progressively took shape and which currently permeates international governance bodies of all stripes—from the World Bank to the Conference of Parties for Climate Change. In the final section, it comes back to the initial question and considers what these changes actually mean for the democratic order as constituted over the past 250 years.

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Notes

  1. While I would have been in no position to develop the ideas that follow without having read extensively, the final result is my sole responsibility. I would like to thank Peter Weingart for the many discussions we have had in preparation for the workshop that culminated in this edition of Minerva; and Frédéric Pierru for his stimulating comments on this paper.

  2. ‘Cités de justice’ are the common worlds people inhabit, the shared worlds of reference that tell them what is good and what is not. The expression was developed by Boltanski and Thévénot (1991).

  3. I will not consider in detail the forms of government of global questions like climate change. On this, see Dahan et al. (2009).

  4. I would like to thank the anonymous referee who gave me that last reference.

  5. Concerning the case of prisons or migrants, for example, see Brown (2005), Garland (1997) and Fassin and Memmi (2004).

  6. Such an attitude is not totally new and could be found in historical liberalism. Concerning the emblematic figure of Hayek, see Rosanvallon 2008, p. 242 who claims that the 'neologism of demarchy [used by Hayek] merely serves to mask the fact that the idea of democracy has ultimately been abandoned'.

  7. See Manin (1995) for an analysis of the beginnings of representative government in late eighteenth century America.

  8. The notions of 'exit' and 'voice' are of course taken from Hirschman (1970). See also Rosanvallon (2006).

  9. This representation can be found in Latour (2005) and Latour and Gagliardi (2006). For more remarks on the role played by social sciences in that sea change, see Pestre (2004, 2006).

  10. For a study of this discourse on science, see Pestre (2006).

  11. Barthes (1957) had already claimed in 'Grammaire Africaine' (pp. 137–144) that in the political language of ‘the right’, the division of the social body—which is undesirable—is attributed to the action of criticism, i.e., in this case to leftist politics. In his words: 'La politique se voit assigner [dans le vocabulaire officiel des affaires africaines] un domaine restreint. Il y a d'une part la France et d'autre part la politique. Les affaires d'Afrique du Nord, lorsqu'elles concernent la France, ne sont pas du domaine de la politique. […] Pour les gens de droite, la Politique, c'est la Gauche : eux, c'est la France'. On this point, see also Latour (2005).

  12. As Salais (2007) has put it, the point is that benchmarking based on these indicators serves to monitor the reform of the social state politically, and does not intend to evaluate its impact economically or socially.

  13. Pierru (2007) insists on the fact that hospitals' benchmarking is most efficient when translated in management constraints—when the budget they are given is indexed on their performance as measured by the benchmark, for example.

  14. Pitseys (2005) refers also to Foucault (1994), 195 who writes: 'Je dirais que Bentham est le complémentaire de Rousseau. Quel est, en effet, le rêve rousseauiste qui a animé bien des révolutionnaires? Celui d'une société transparente, à la fois visible et lisible en chacune de ses parties […] Bentham, c'est à la fois cela et tout le contraire […] Il fait fonctionner le projet d'une universelle visibilité, qui jouerait au profit d'un pouvoir rigoureux et méticuleux […]; les deux s'ajoutent et le tout fonctionne : le lyrisme de Rousseau et l'obsession de Bentham'.

  15. The quotes concerning Harrison’s communication tips are taken from Rowell (2002).

  16. For an archeology of the notion of 'consensus', see Agamben (2008), particularly page 380.

  17. A perfect case in point is provided by Fressoz (2009) who analyses early nineteenth century cases.

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    Dominique Pestre

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Pestre, D. Understanding the Forms of Government in Today’s Liberal and Democratic Societies: An Introduction. Minerva 47, 243–260 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-009-9126-2

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