Foucault's Governmentality

Foucault tried

' to show how governmentality

'the conduct of conduct'- which is not a function of government. Punishment of misconduct, however, is a legal matter.  

was born out of, on the one hand, the archaic model of Christian pastoral,

There was Roman Governmentality long before Christ was born. Indeed, there was Egyptian Governmentality before Moses was born. The Babylonians conducted their first census in 3800 BC. As for the 'Christian pastoral' - it existed in Ethiopia as much as it did in France.

Perhaps Foucault means that pre-Revolutionary France, as a Catholic country, was divided into parishes with the Catholic clergy discharging some administrative functions- e.g. registering births and deaths, provided relief to the indigent, etc. In Japan, the Buddhist clergy played a similar state sanctioned role. But in both countries, a professional bureaucracy took over administrative functions. In poorer countries, governments did not have the resources to do so. But, such countries tended to get conquered or witnessed demographic replacement by those able to manage those resources more efficiently. 

and, on the other, a diplomatic-military technique, perfected on a European scale with the Treaty of Westphalia;

No such thing occurred. The Holy Roman Empire remained a very messy place. Sweden was a big player, gaining territory and a seat on the Imperial Diet. But Sweden, whose territory had experienced a bad famine, lost the Great Northern War and thus its gains were reversed. Spain, too, ceased to be a great power after a succession war and the Treaty of Utrecht. 

and that it could assume the dimensions it has only thanks to a series of specific instruments,

seventeenth century 'instruments' were shitty. Sweden & Spain declined.  Absolutism was a terrible idea if the King was stupid or mad or useless. But Poland's 'golden liberties' were equally ruinous. Holland too stagnated. It exported its one good King to England but that country did even better under Hanoverian nonentities.

 Cromwell's England had showed that aristocratic Cavaliers were no match for middle class Puritan 'Roundheads'. The Glorious Revolution presaged the American & French Revolutions of the next century. Since 'conduct' altered economic outcomes, the 'conduct of conduct' was best left to competitive forces. Tardean mimetic effects, not surveillance or bio-politics, spread a habitus favourable to thrift, hard-work and enterprise. Sadly, this did mean that Marquis de Sade was discouraged from reduplicating the feats of a Giles de Retz. This wasn't because of 'governmentality'. It was because people don't want their kids raped or tortured. 

whose formation is exactly contemporaneous with that of the art of government and which are known, in the old seventeenth- and eighteenth-century sense of the term, as police.

Politia. In English this is policy or politics, not police which meant 'public order'.  

Foucault believes that these three things made possible 'the production' of the 'governmentalization of the sate'. Yet, States have existed for thousands of years. They have solved 'collective action problems'- regarding defence, public order, health, indigence etc.- or else they have succumbed to invasion or insurrection or else suffered depopulation under despotic rule.

The problem with Governance is that it costs money. The trick is to use tax revenue to raise productivity. This involves getting smart people- not paranoid imbeciles teaching nonsense- to do 'Political Arithmetic'. Another great wheeze is 'taxation with representation'. If the guys paying the taxes get to decide how the tax money is spent, chances are they will do things which raise total factor productivity. 

Educated Europeans learnt Latin and a little Greek. They knew that governments had existed before Christ- indeed, there was a census in Palestine around the time Jesus was born- and that some such governments had been richer and more sophisticated than anything Europe could show even into the eighteenth century. Indeed, Paris's population only exceeded ancient Rome's around 1845. What changed over the course of the long nineteenth century was science and technology such that economies of scope and scale became available in the production of both goods and services. Advances in Statistics and Operations Research were incorporated into Accountancy, Actuarial Science and Management practices. The first world war marked a turning point when State capacity greatly increased. The question was whether the 'war against poverty' could be won by the same methods used for or against the Kaiser. The answer, by and large, was 'not yet'. There were too many people stuck in the primary sector. In France, even in 1950, 30 percent were farmers. Still, the example of America showed there were 'low hanging fruit' which France was able to harvest for les Trente Glorieuses- three glorious decades.

What of India under the British? It was the classic 'nightwatchman state' (the main grievance of the Bihari, Rajendra Prasad told Gandhi, was having to pay a 'chaukidar' tax). The country was simply too poor to afford very much governance. Yet it had a census by about 1881. There was some basic famine relief- if there was money in the kitty- but precious little 'bio-politics'. Nevertheless, Indian academics are happy to take over Foucault's paranoid theory of governmentality and surveillance and 'power-knowledge' (le savoir-pouvoir). 

I suppose Foucault was writing at a time when people assumed that greater and greater affluence would be supported by a larger and larger Public Sector. This was Wagner's law coupled with Director's law. Government expenditure would rise as proportion of GNP such that the middle classes received more and more benefits. Another name for the middle class is the bourgeoisie. They are very evil. We should 'épater '  them by doing weird, sexual, shit. That will totes undermine Ordoliberalism- right?