This book examines global governance through Foucaultian notions of governmentality and security, as well as the complex intersections between the two. The volume explores how Foucault's understanding of the general economy of power in modern society allows us to consider the connection of two broad possible dynamics: the global governmentalization of security and the securitization of global governance. If Foucault's work on governmentality and security has found resonance in IR scholarship in recent years it is in large part due to his understanding of how these forms of power must necessarily take into account the management of circulation that, in seeking to maximize ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ circulatory flows, brings into play and problematizes the 'inside'/'outside' upon which domestic and international spaces have been traditionally understood. Indeed, Foucault introduces a set of conceptual tools that can inform our analyses of globalization, global governance and security in ways that have been left largely unexplored in the discipline of IR. Miguel de Larrinaga is Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa where he has been teaching since 2002. Marc G. Doucet is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Saint Mary’s University.

Global Governmentality extends Foucault's political thought towards international studies, exploring the governance of the global, the international, the regional and many other extra-domestic spaces.

Foucault's thoughts on governmentality have made a significant impact on the studies of power and governance in modern societies. However, most studies of governmentality confine themselves to the exploration of power within nation-states. Global Governmentality extends Foucault's political thought towards international studies, exploring the governance of the global, the international, the regional and many other extra-domestic spaces. Combining historical and contemporary outlooks, this book offers innovative interdisciplinary explorations of such issues as international peacekeeping, refugees, political rationalities of security and neoliberalism, the spatiality of globalization, the genealogy of development, and the ethical governance of corporate activity. At a time when many of the geopolitical and economic certainties which framed international affairs are in flux, Global Governmentality is suggestive of new territories and lines for international analysis. It will be of interest to students and researchers of both governmentality and international studies.

This book considers contemporary international interventions with a specific focus on analyzing the frameworks that have guided recent peacekeeping operations led by the United Nations. Drawing from the work of Michel Foucault and Foucauldian-inspired approaches in the field of International Relations, it highlights how interventions can be viewed through the lens of governmentality and its key attendant concepts. The book draws from these approaches in order to explore how international interventions are increasingly informed by governmental rationalities of security and policing. Two specific cases are examined: the UN's Security Sector Reform (SSR) approach and the UN's Protection of Civilians agenda. Focusing on the governmental rationalities that are at work in these two central frameworks that have come to guide contemporary UN-led peacekeeping efforts in recent years, the book considers: The use in IR of governmentality and its attendant notions of biopower and sovereign power The recent discussion regarding the concept and practice of international policing and police reform The rise of security as a rationality of government and the manner in which security and police rationalities interconnect and have increasingly come to inform peacekeeping efforts The Security Sector Reform (SSR) framework for peacebuilding and the rise of the UN's Protection of Civilians agenda. This book will be of interest to graduates and scholars of international relations, security studies, critical theory, and conflict and intervention.

Taking its inspiration from Michel Foucault, this volume of essays integrates the analysis of security into the study of modern political and cultural theory. Explaining how both politics and security are differently problematised by changing accounts of time, the work shows how, during the course of the 17th century, the problematisation of government and rule became newly enframed by a novel account of time and human finitude, which it calls ‘factical finitude’. The correlate of factical finitude is the infinite, and the book explains how the problematisation of politics and security became that of securing the infinite government of finite things. It then explains how concrete political form was given to factical finitude by a combination of geopolitics and biopolitics. Modern sovereignty required the services of biopolitics from the very beginning. The essays explain how these politics of security arose at the same time, changed together, and have remained closely allied ever since. In particular, the book explains how biopolitics of security changed in response to the molecularisation and digitalisation of Life, and demonstrates how this has given rise to the dangers and contradictions of 21st century security politics. This book will be of much interest to students of political and cultural theory, critical security studies and International Relations.

Originally published in 1999 this exceptionally clear and lucid book quickly became the standard overview of what are now called 'governmentality studies'. With its emphasis on the relationship between governmentality and other key concepts drawn from Michel Foucault, such as bio-politics and sovereignty, the first edition anticipated and defined the terms of contemporary debate and analysis. In this timely second edition Mitchell Dean engages with the full textual basis of Foucault's lectures and once again provides invaluable insights into the traditions, methods and theories of political power identifying the authoritarian as well as liberal sides of governmentality. Every chapter has been fully revised and updated to incorporate, and respond to, new theoretical, social and political developments in the field; a new introduction surveying the state of governmentality today has also been added as well as a completely new chapter on international governmentality.

The end of the Cold War created an opportunity for the United Nations to reconceptualize the rationale and extent of its peacebuilding efforts, and in the 1990s, democracy and good governance became legitimizing concepts for an expansion of UN activities. The United Nations sought not only to democratize disorderly states but also to take responsibility for protecting people around the world from a range of dangers, including poverty, disease, natural disasters, and gross violations of human rights. National sovereignty came to be considered less an entitlement enforced by international law than a privilege based on states’ satisfactory performance of their perceived obligations. In Governing Disorder, Laura Zanotti combines her firsthand experience of UN peacebuilding operations with the insights of Michel Foucault to examine the genealogy of post–Cold War discourses promoting international security. Zanotti also maps the changes in legitimizing principles for intervention, explores the specific techniques of governance deployed in UN operations, and identifies the forms of resistance these operations encounter from local populations and the (often unintended) political consequences they produce. Case studies of UN interventions in Haiti and Croatia allow her to highlight the dynamics at play in the interactions between local societies and international peacekeepers.