Global governmentality

Back cover text: Real Social Science presents a new, hands-on approach to social inquiry. The theoretical and methodological ideas behind the book, inspired by Aristotelian phronesis, represent an original perspective within the social sciences, and this volume gives readers for the first time a set of studies exemplifying what applied phronesis looks like in practice. The reflexive analysis of values and power gives new meaning to the impact of research on policy and practice. Real Social Science is a major step forward in a novel and thriving field of research. This book will benefit scholars, researchers, and students who want to make a difference in practice, not just in the academy. Its message will make it essential reading for students and academics across the social sciences.

ABSTRACT (does not appear in published version):

As others have noted, the concept of governmentality has by and large been used to study politics in the national context. Indeed, this is almost exclusively how Foucault himself used it. Yet the concept has lent itself quite naturally to the study of world order and international governance. Moreover, as Foucault’s remarkable lectures of 1977-8 (Sécurité, Territoire, Population: STP) reveal, the international realm plays an important, even constitutive, role in the development of governmentality, both as historical rationality/practice and as technical concept.

A careful examination of the historical record shows that the influence runs in the other direction, too. The rise of governmental rationalities and practices, particularly in Europe, had an enormous and lasting impact on the nature and history of international relations. Engaging with STP, and particularly with its early chapters on “apparatuses of security”, this chapter seeks to sketch important features of governmental practices and rationalities as these first emerged in the international sphere. It begins by emphasising aspects of Foucault’s treatment of governmentality which to this point have received little sustained attention. Together, these emphases point to important limitations of conventional understandings of governmentality in the secondary literature, in IR and beyond.

The chapter then goes on to examine certain recurrent features of the rationalities and practices of European international politics in the period 1815-48, in an effort to demonstrate that these aspects of governmentality are already in full evidence in the era of the so-called Concert of Europe. Indeed, from the time of their emergence, the practices and problems of government and security dominated European international politics as widely, as intensely, and as early as ever they did the national sphere.

This article examines five common misunderstandings about case-study research: (a) theoretical knowledge is more valuable than practical knowledge; (b) one cannot generalize from a single case, therefore, the single-case study cannot contribute to scientific development; (c) the case study is most useful for generating hypotheses, whereas other methods are more suitable for hypotheses testing and theory building; (d) the case study contains a bias toward verification; and (e) it is often difficult to summarize specific case studies. This article explains and corrects these misunderstandings one by one and concludes with the Kuhnian insight that a scientific discipline without a large number of thoroughly executed case studies is a discipline without systematic production of exemplars, and a discipline without exemplars is an ineffective one. Social science may be strengthened by the execution of a greater number of good case studies.

Phronetic organizational research is an approach to the study of management and organizations focusing on ethics and power. It is based on a contemporary interpretation of the Aristotelian concept phronesis, usually as ‘prudence’. Phronesis is the ability to think and act in relation to values, to deliberate about ‘things that are good or bad for humans’ in the words of Aristotle (1976:1140a24–b12). Phronetic organizational research effectively provides answers to the following four value-rational questions, for specific problematics in management and organization studies: 1. Where are we going with this specific management problematic? 2. Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? 3. Is this development desirable? 4. What, if anything, should we do about it?

The Aalborg Project may be interpreted as a metaphor of modern politics, modern administration and planning, and of modernity itself. The basic idea of the project was comprehensive, coherent, and innovative, and it was based on rational and democratic argument. During implementation, however, when idea met reality, the play of Machiavellian princes, Nietzschean will to power, and Foucauldian rationality-as-rationalization resulted in the fragmentation of the project.

At the same time that case studies are widely used and have produced canonical texts, it may be observed that the case study as a methodology is generally held in low regard, or is simply ignored, within the academy. For example, only 2 of the 30 top-ranked U.S. graduate programs in political science require a dedicated graduate course in case study or qualitative methods, and a full third of these programs do not even offer such a course. In contrast, all of the top 30 programs offer courses in quantitative methods and almost all of them require training in such methods, often several courses. In identifying this paradox of the case study’s wide use and low regard, Gerring rightly remarks that the case study survives in a “curious methodological limbo,” and that the reason is that the method is poorly understood. In what follows, we will try to resolve Gerring’s paradox and help case study research gain wider use and acceptance.

In this paper we argue that the use of the communicative theory of Jürgen Habermas in planning theory is problematic because it hampers an understanding of how power shapes planning. We posit an alternative approach based on the power analytics of Michel Foucault which focuses on ‘what is actually done’, as opposed to Habermas’s focus on ‘what should be done’. We discuss how the Foucauldian stance problematises planning, asking difficult questions about the treatment of legitimacy, rationality, knowledge and spatiality. We conclude that Foucault offers a type of analytic planning theory which offers better prospects than does Habermas for those interested in understanding and bringing about democratic social change through planning.

The pervasiveness of neoliberalism within the field of human geography is remarkable, especially when we consider its virtual absence from the literature less than a decade ago. While the growing attention afforded to neoliberalism among geographers is new, the phenomenon of neoliberalism is not. This paper traces the intellectual history of neoliberalism and its expansions across various institutional frameworks and geographical settings. I review the primary contributions geographers have made to the literature, and specifically their recognition for neoliberalism’s variegations within existing political economic matrixes and institutional frameworks. Contra the prevailing view of neoliberalism as a pure and static end-state, geographical inquiry illuminates neoliberalism as a dynamic and unfolding process. The concept of ‘neoliberalization’ is thus seen as more appropriate to geographical theorizations insofar as it recognizes neoliberalism’s hybridized and mutated forms as it travels around our world. I also consider some of the most salient ways that neoliberalism has been theorized among human geographers. In particular, I highlight understandings of neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology, as a policy-based approach to state reform, and as a particular logic of governmentality, arguing that while there are significant differences between these various formations, it may also be important to work beyond methodological, epistemological, and ontological divides in the larger interest of social justice.

If tangible heritage is territory in some sense, then by the same token it stands to reason that intangible heritage is community. The safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage represents a subtle innovation in governmental rationality, disciplining populations through a conversion of their customs, practices, and expressions into heritage (the threatened nature of which makes it morally imperative to intervene). Ultimately, this shift makes community itself subject to conservation in the face of its purportedly steady decline in the modern world. Community is thus the most fundamental intangible heritage that UNESCO’s new convention sets out to safeguard. In this sense, it is an important objective of the convention to build communities with which their members identify, even if many states are careful to circumscribe the terms of such empowerment.

The communalization of heritage and cultural policy helps to form and to reform population groups and thereby to orchestrate differences within the state. In other words, it is a strategy for coping with difference. From this perspective, intangible heritage emerges as an instrument in the production of a strong (but not exclusive) sense of belonging for community members. Population groups subjectify themselves as “communities” and objectify their practices and expressions as “intangible heritage”. Government can then act on the social field through communities and by means of, among other things, intangible heritage policies.

Contemporary theorizations of neoliberalism are framed by a false dichotomy between, on the one hand, studies influenced by Foucault in emphasizing neoliberalism as a form of governmentality, and on the other hand, inquiries influenced by Marx in foregrounding neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology. This article seeks to shine some light on this division in an effort to open up new debates and recast existing ones in such a way that might lead to more flexible understandings of neoliberalism as a discourse. A discourse approach moves theorizations forward by recognizing neoliberalism is neither a ‘top down’ nor ‘bottom up’ phenomena, but rather a circuitous process of socio-spatial transformation.

Contemporary theorizations of neoliberalism are framed by a false dichotomy between, on the one hand, studies influenced by Foucault in emphasizing neoliberalism as a form of governmentality, and on the other hand, inquiries influenced by Marx in foregrounding neoliberalism as a hegemonic ideology. This article seeks to shine some light on this division in an effort to open up new debates and recast existing ones in such a way that might lead to more flexible understandings of neoliberalism as a discourse. A discourse approach moves theorizations forward by recognizing neoliberalism is neither a ‘top down’ nor ‘bottom up’ phenomena, but rather a circuitous process of socio-spatial transformation.

This article presents the theoretical and methodological considerations behind a research method which the author calls ‘phronetic planning research’. Such research sets out to answer four questions of power and values for specific instances of planning: (1) Where are we going with planning? (2) Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? (3) Is this development desirable? (4) What, if anything, should we do about it? A central task of phronetic planning research is to provide concrete examples and detailed narratives of the ways in which power and values work in planning and with what consequences to whom, and to suggest how relations of power and values could be changed to work with other consequences. Insofar as planning situations become clear, they are clarified by detailed stories of who is doing what to whom. Clarifications of that kind are a principal concern for phronetic planning research and provide the main link to praxis.

Back cover text: If the new fin de siècle marks a recurrence of the real, Bent Flyvbjerg’s Rationality and Power epitomizes that development and sets new standards for social and political inquiry. The Danish town of Aalborg is to Flyvbjerg what Florence was to Machiavelli: a laboratory for understanding the real workings of power, and for grasping what they mean to our more general concerns of social and political organization. Politics, administration, and planning are examined in ways that allow  a rare, in-depth understanding. The reader witnesses, firsthand, the classic and endless drama which defines what modernity and democracy are and can be.

Contemporary geographical thought is constrained by a political economic imagination rooted in binarism, which is exemplified in debates surrounding neoliberalism. Neoliberal proponents call for decentralization and increased capital flows, while Marxists respond by pairing centralization with capitalism’s abrogation. The latter view considers hierarchy necessary, a position that promotes authority and regards horizontal politics as propitious to neoliberalism. Anarchism’s coupling of decentralization with anti-capitalism is dismissed because Marxism cannot accommodate the processuality of prefigurative politics. Marxism demands a revolution with a masterplan, considering horizontality a future objective. Such a temporality ignores the insurrectionary possibilities of the present and implies a politics of waiting. The spatial implications of centralized hierarchy are also questionable, employing a vertical ontology, wherein horizontal organization is deemed inappropriate when ‘jumping scales’. Yet scale represents both a theoretical dis-traction from grounded everyday particularities and a ‘master-signifier’ by providing a point de capiton, or anchoring point, that rests on the exclusion of unconsciousness–the knowledge that is not known¬. Thus the point de capiton is the (Archimedean) point at which an essentialist illusion of fixed meaning is created, as scale is unconscious of geography’s ‘hidden enfolded immensities’. The discourse of scale accordingly dismisses the openness of rhizomic politics by predetermining the political as an arborescent register. Yet the inevitable terra incognita that scalar hierarchies produce becomes a powerful resource for the oppressed, which is why anarchist direct action often proceeds outside of authority’s view. A flat ontology has significant resonance with anarchism, imparting that politics should operate horizontally rather than vertically. This ontological shift suggests that we need not wait for the emergence of a ‘greater’ class-consciousness, as one can immediately disengage capitalism by reorienting economic landscapes in alternative ways. Consequently, a human geography without hierarchy gains significant traction when we reject scale and embrace an anarchist flat ontology.

In Making Intangible Heritage, Valdimar Tr. Hafstein—folklorist and official delegate to UNESCO—tells the story of UNESCO’s Intangible Heritage Convention. In the ethnographic tradition, Hafstein peers underneath the official account, revealing the context important for understanding UNESCO as an organization, the concept of intangible heritage, and the global impact of both. Looking beyond official narratives of compromise and solidarity, this book invites readers to witness the diplomatic jostling behind the curtains, the making and breaking of alliances, and the confrontation and resistance, all of which marked the path towards agreement and shaped the convention and the concept.

Various stories circulate within UNESCO about the origins of intangible heritage. Bringing the sensibilities of a folklorist to these narratives, Hafstein explores how they help imagine coherence, conjure up contrast, and provide charters for action in the United Nations and on the ground. Examining the international organization of UNESCO through an ethnographic lens, Hafstein demonstrates how concepts that are central to the discipline of folklore gain force and traction outside of the academic field and go to work in the world, ultimately shaping people’s understanding of their own practices and the practices themselves. From the cultural space of the Jemaa el-Fna marketplace in Marrakech to the Ise Shrine in Japan, Making Intangible Heritage considers both the positive and the troubling outcomes of safeguarding intangible heritage, the lists it brings into being, the festivals it animates, the communities it summons into existence, and the way it orchestrates difference in modern societies.

EDITORIAL

Ondrej Kaščák, Branislav Pupala:
Governmentality – Neoliberalism – Education: the Risk Perspective

ARTICLES

Ludwig A. Pongratz:
Controlled Freedom – the Formation of the Control Society

P. Taylor Webb, Kalervo N. Gulson:
Education Policy as Proto-fascism: The Aesthetics of Racial Neo-liberalism

Fikile Nxumalo, Veronica Pacini-Ketchabaw, Mary Caroline Rowan: Lunch Time at the Child Care Centre: Neoliberal Assemblages in Early Childhood Education

Donald Gillies:
State Education as High-Yield Investment: Human Capital Theory
in European Policy Discourse

Martin Kopecký:
Foucault, Governmentality, Neoliberalism and Adult Education –
Perspective on the Normalization of Social Risks

Stanislav Štech:
The Bologna Process as a New Public Management Tool in Higher Education

DISCUSSION

Robert Kemp:
The Business School in the Corporation of Higher Learning in the USA

REPORTS

Neoliberalism in Discussion (Zuzana Petrová)

This paper presents detailed methods for constructing a flexible philosophical–analytical model through which to apply the analytic principles of CDA for the interpretation of metaphors across policy texts. Drawing on a theoretical framing from Foucault and the augmentation of Nietzsche’s views on valuation, we sketch a framework for examining ways in which evaluative semantic categories can be linked to sociological theories in order to bring out their relevance for the purpose of critical discourse analysis. This multi-level research framework draws upon a relationship between language analysis, the philosophical study of valuation, and political economy as a composite formulation of values through which neo-liberalism is discursively entwined and progressed through a system of principles of e/valuation.

This article provides an answer to what has been called the biggest problem in theorizing and understanding planning: the ambivalence about power found among planning researchers, theorists, and students. The author narrates how he came to work with issues of power and gives an example of how the methodology he developed for power studies—phronetic planning research—may be employed in practice. Phronetic planning research follows the tradition of power studies running from Machiavelli and Nietzsche to Michel Foucault and Pierre Bourdieu. It focuses on four value-rational questions: (1) Where are we going with planning? (2) Who gains and who loses, and by which mechanisms of power? (3) Is this development desirable? (4) What should be done? These questions are exemplified for a specific instance of Scandinavian urban planning. The author finds that the questions, and their answers, make a difference to planning in practice. They make planning research matter.

In this lecture, given in April 2015 at Duke University, I argue that, in order to adequately understand the contemporary situation of Roma in Europe, we need to move beyond the currently dominant methodological Eurocentrism. In the context of Roma-related scholarship, ‘methodological Eurocentrism’ refers to analyses of the Roma’s societal position that do not sufficiently take into account how representations of both Europe and the Roma have significantly and interdependently changed since the collapse of socialism. Since the fall of communism, we have been able to observe what I call the ‘Europeanization of the representation of the Roma’, that is, firstly, the post-1989 problematization of the Roma in terms of their Europeanness and European identity; secondly, the classification of heterogeneous groups scattered over Europe under the umbrella term Roma and, thirdly, the devising of Europe-wide developmental programs that are dedicated to their inclusion, integration, anti-discrimination, empowerment and participation.

I will clarify how we can understand the Europeanization of Roma representation as the latest stage of the various ways in which those who are currently called, or call themselves, Roma have historically interacted with Europe. I argue that, since 1989, a shift has taken place from considering the Roma as the Orientalized and externalized outsiders against which Europe has defined itself to considering them as the internalized outsiders to be incorporated in Europe as productive, participating and ‘true Europeans’. This shift has enabled the Roma to become actively involved in the political and policy debates about their representation, in attempts at improving their situation, and in the deepening and widening of the heterogeneous Romani movement. Yet, I will explain why this shift is fundamentally ambiguous. It has contributed to problematizing the Roma in ambiguous ways at the present-day nexus of security, citizenship and development. I will show how a threefold redirecting of Roma-related scholarship will help to critically reflect upon these problematizations beyond currently dominant Eurocentric and Roma-centric parameters.

Niccolò Machiavelli, the founder of modern political and administrative thought, made clear that an understanding of politics requires distinguishing between formal politics and what later, with Ludwig von Rochau, would become known as Realpolitik. No such distinction has been employed in the study of rationality. Yet I will argue that distinguishing between formal rationality and real rationality is as important for the understanding of rationality and planning as the distinction between formal politics and Realpolitik has been for understanding politics.

The purpose of the present chapter is to demonstrate how social scientists may engage with mass media to have their research impact public deliberation, policy and practice. Communicating research to practice is part and parcel of applied phronesis and not something external to it. Even in Aristotle's original definition of phronesis, laid down more than two millennia ago, the knowledge–action relationship is clear. A defining characteristic of phronesis is, in Aristotle's words, that it is ‘reason capable of action’ (The Nicomachean Ethics, 1976: Bk VI, 1140a24–1140b12). Phronetic research results (‘reason’) are therefore results only to the extent they have an impact on practice (‘action’). In public affairs, reason is made capable of action by effectively having reason enter the public sphere and public deliberation. It is reason times exposure in the public sphere that matters, not reason alone. Today, mass media dominate the public sphere in liberal democracies. The relationship of research with media therefore needs to be reflected. However, to my knowledge no study exists that describes in detail this aspect of phronetic research. Even in social science as a whole, studies of how scholars work with mass media to secure public impact of their research seem rare (Bagdikian 2004; McCombs 2004; Bryant and Oliver 2009). This, then, is the purpose of the present chapter: to begin to close this gap in our knowledge of social science and phronesis. Because the field is underexplored, it was found to be prudent to start with a phenomenological case study. The study shows how a group of phronetic social scientists, including the author, engaged with media, including world-leading titles such as The New York Times, in order to place their research results on the public agenda and initiate change in their chosen field of interest: megaproject policy and management.

Este livro celebra o encontro de reflexões sobre o papel do Estado e das Instituições diante dos desafios contemporâneos, visando apresentar perspectivas acerca do futuro do Multilateralismo. Nesta direção, de que maneira a atuação do Estado e das Instituições, bem como as diretrizes da Governança Global, poderiam contribuir para a articulação de políticas públicas em meio à crise contemporânea? Como conduzir, nesse cenário, mecanismos factíveis que sejam condizentes com a plataforma da gestão ambiental e da promoção da sustentabilidade? Estes são alguns dos pontos que especialistas sobre o tema procuram explorar na presente obra.

This article argues that US counterinsurgency doctrine forms a programme of both liberal rule and liberal war whose ultimate purpose is the pacification of recalcitrant populations and their eventual (re)integration into the networks of liberal governance. Designed to promote ‘safe’ forms of life while eradicating ‘dangerous’ ones, the doctrine constitutes a response to both the biopolitical problematization of human (in)security and the geostrategic problematization of US national security. Counterinsurgency aims to harness sociocultural knowledge in order to conduct a form of triage between elements of targeted populations. It also seeks to inscribe the divisions on which such a triage is based into space by means of practices that derive from earlier methods of imperial policing. Ultimately, counterinsurgency’s production and implementation of a biopolitical differentiation between ‘safe’ and ‘dangerous’ human lives is likely not only to reinforce existing societal divisions within targeted populations but also to create new global, regional and local divisions and to generate resistance to what many people will always view as imperial domination. The societal divisions and resistance engendered by counterinsurgency may reinforce Western problematizations of insecurity and hence lead to further counterinsurgency campaigns in the future. Counterinsurgency doctrine is thus not so much a programme of peace and stability as one of spatially and temporally indeterminate pacification.

Taken together, the works of Jurgen Habermas and Michel Foucault highlight an essential tension in modernity. This is the tension between the normative and the real, between what should be done and what is actually done. Understanding this tension is crucial to understanding modern democracy, what it is and what it could be. It has been argued that an effective way of making democracy stronger is to strengthen civil society. This article contains a comparative analysis of the central ideas of Habermas and Foucault as they pertain to the question of democracy and civil society. More specifically, the discourse ethics of Habermas is contrasted with the power analytics and ethics of Foucault evaluating their usefulness for those interested in understanding, and bringing about, democratic social change.

This paper examines the way the metaphor of diversity provides a moral basis for inequality in Singapore’s meritocratic education system. Based upon a collection of policy texts from 2002 to 2012, our analysis illustrates that the metaphor of diversity in policy texts provides ways for systemic discrimination within the education system and that this inequality is given legitimacy as necessary through various moral discourses. The paper employs a critical discourse analysis that draws upon the relationship between language analysis, the philosophical study of valuation, and political economy as a composite formulation of values to highlight the ways in which an argument for inequality permeates policy from within a frame of meritocracy, and to analyse how changes associated with new modes of value determination serve to legitimize inequality.

1. The article questions and challenges the official meritocratic principle of ‘equal opportunities’ (Wong, 2000) in Singapore's education system. Drawing on Foucault's and Nietzsche's philosophical perspectives, there is an explicit illustration through an in-depth analysis of how inequality is inbuilt in policy report/speech.

2. Discourse builds in/tangible structures in society and greatly determines the possibilities of the now. As such, I am also arguing that it would be more difficult to 'help' any 'community' if the structural discrimination which has been deeply embedded, is not made explicit through national policies, and by this I mean an explicit illustration through an in-depth policy analysis of how inequality is inbuilt in Singapore's education policies. It may be through this that discriminatory structures could be substantially challenged.

An initial analysis of the original 1979 policy on primary school streaming which I conducted illustrates how dichotomous (arbitrary) categorization of pupils, i.e. 'slow' and 'fast' learners legitimates and sustains increasing institutional/structural access (over the years terms like 'talents' have been employed in policy discourse), of who gets privileged knowledge access. Through this, I also ask then to what ends do forms of 'categorization' or conventional designation entail? By this, given that categorization legitimizes structural access, my question is, what is 'Malay/Muslim community' and how is this categorization necessary?

3. Even though the analysis in the article was based on Singapore's education system, it provides possible ways of understanding how inequality is continuously being inbuilt through policies on the basis of the ideology that economic growth is the (only) way forward. A way to critique this ideology is to expose its underlying assumptions. I believe the findings have much resonance with the widening inequality across many developed nations, as Singapore's policies have parallels with that of the U.K., U.S., and international organizations such as the World Bank.

4. Economically considered, the transliteration of meritocratic discourse into the metaphor of diversity pinpoints how the appeal of development for all necessarily also demands the advance of inequity for the sake of the whole, i.e. advancing the 'growth with inequity' principle.

5. The analysis highlights that value judgments are continually at work in the policy discourse and that despite the strong discourse of meritocracy that the Singapore education system promotes, it is argued that it is in the interests of the Singapore people that 'talents' should get privileged access to knowledge as it is through this that more 'opportunities' for the rest of the population are created. The findings demonstrate that although the underlying assumptions of this 'logic' that has been constructed in policies are unsubstantiated, the logic is continuously legitimated through forms of e/valuations.



This article has been featured in websites such as: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150428105815.htm
http://www.eurasiareview.com/28042015-what-is-value-of-inequality-within-singapores-education-system/

If we want to empower and re-enchant organization research, we need to do three things. First, we must drop all pretence, however indirect, at emulating the success of the natural sciences in producing cumulative and predictive theory, for their approach simply  does not work in organization research or any of  the social sciences (for the full argument, see Flyvbjerg 2001). Second, we must address problems that matter to groups in the local, national, and global communities in which we live, and we must do it in ways that matter; we must focus on issues of context, values, and power, as advocated by great social scientists from Aristotle and Machiavelli  to Max Weber and Pierre Bourdieu. Finally, we must effectively and dialogically communicate the results of our research to our fellow citizens and carefully listen to their feedback. If we do this – focus on specific values and interests in the context of particular power relations – we may successfully transform organization research into an activity performed in public for organizational publics, sometimes to clarify, sometimes to intervene, sometimes to generate new perspectives, and always to serve as eyes and ears in ongoing efforts to understand the present and to deliberate about the future. We may, in short, arrive at organization research that matters.

Foucault is more often used to theorize political logics of securitization than to understand the contestation of security policies. Yet Foucault’s work offers a wealth of conceptual tools and ideas pertinent to the study of the contentious politics of security. In his lectures on parrhēsia in Ancient Greece, Foucault explored the practice whereby individuals choose at great risk to confront rulers or publics with uncomfortable truths. This paper argues that a refashioned concept of parrhēsia can illuminate certain elements of the contentious politics of security today. The paper develops this claim through an examination of the photojournalism of Noor Behram, a man who has spent four years photographing and exposing US drone strikes in the region of Waziristan in Pakistan. The paper analyzes Behram’s activity in terms of parrhesiastic exposure, a concept that is intended to capture aspects of the changed circumstances under which fearless speech can be exercised in mass-mediated, globalized societies. The paper concludes by observing how further engagement with parrhēsia might contribute to our understanding of political action, the relationship between emotions and political struggle, and the politics of secrecy.

For over fifty years, successive waves of critique have underscored that the apolitical character of much of Political Science research betrays the founding mission of the discipline to have science serve democracy. The Caucus for a New Political Science was originally based on such a critique, and the Perestroika movement in the discipline included a call for more problem-driven as opposed to theory- or method-driven work that would better connect Political Science research to ongoing political struggles. In recent years, movements for a public Sociology and public Anthropology as well as dissonant movements in Economics and related fields have added to the insistence that social science research was too often disconnected from the real world. Phronetic Social Science has emerged out of the ferment for change in the social sciences, starting with the much-debated book by Bent Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter (Cambridge 2001). Flyvbjerg critiqued the social sciences for mimicking the natural sciences while proposing an alternative approach that focuses research on helping people address the problems they are facing in the context they are facing them. Today, Phronetic Social Science goes beyond the call for an alternative approach to social inquiry and its growing adherents are providing evidence that this alternative approach to doing research can enrich the social sciences by more effectively connecting research to efforts to address real world problems as people experience them. This essay provides a genealogy of efforts to connect Political Science to politics, a review of the major critiques of mainstream research, an explication of the rationale for more problem-driven, mixed methods research, a specification of the key principles of the phronetic approach, and examples of its application in the public realm. The essay concludes with implications for realizing a more political Political Science by way of taking a phronetic approach.

Vaclav Havel observed that a strong civil society is a crucial condition of strong democracy. Empowering civil society is a central concern for the project of democracy, just as the question of how best to think about such empowerment is important to social and political theory. But what is ‘civil society’? A search for clear definitions in the relevant literature is in vain. Not because the concept lacks definitions; rather the definitions are too multiple and varied to bring clarity. Most writers on civil society agree, however, that civil society has an institutional core constituted by voluntary associations outside the sphere of the state and the economy. Such associations range from, for example, churches, cultural associations, sport clubs and debating societies to independent media, academies, groups of concerned citizens, grass-roots initiatives and organizations of gender, race and sexuality, all the way to occupational associations, political parties and labour unions (Habermas 1992a: 453).

Global benchmarks have grown exponentially over the last two decades, having been both applied to and developed by states, international organisations, corporations, and non-governmental organisations. As a consequence, global benchmarking is now firmly established as a distinct mode of transnational governance. Benchmarking chiefly involves the development of comparative metrics of performance, which typically take the form of highly stylised comparisons which are generated by translating complex phenomena into numerical values via simplification and extrapolation, commensuration, reification, and symbolic judgements. This process of translation takes what might otherwise be highly contentious normative agendas and converts them into formats that gain credibility through rhetorical claims to neutral and technocratic assessment. This politics of numbers has far-reaching ramifications for transnational governance, including the dimensions and effects of indirect power, expertise and agenda-setting, coordination, regulation and certification, and norm contestation and activism. This Special Issue draws upon an emerging literature to explore how and why benchmarks both align with and expand upon established models of International Relations theory and scholarship. It does so by critically examining the role of global benchmarks in key areas such as state ‘failure’, global supply chains, disaster management, economic governance, corporate social responsibility, and human development.

By exploring the political strategies that seek to advance and implement a "culture of cybersecurity" in Austria, we argue that the regimes of digital safety and security (DS&S) that are emerging worldwide should not be merely understood as a political reaction to the risks brought about by digitalization. Rather, cybersecu-rity further constitutes an active site where the incipient digital society is collectively (re-)imagined, negotiated, and created. As such, cybersecurity policies present sites of political articulation and intervention where the very contours of an emerging digital society and the socio-technical relationships of power and control deemed necessary to govern its emergence are (re-)assembled. Our research prompts a rethinking of the relationships between cybersecurity and the digital society to the extent that cybersecurity represents a new globalizing form and rationality of security that encodes and enables new forms of control and intervention, but also new responsibilities at the interface between the state, society, and individuals.

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(GERMAN) Regieren durch Cybersicherheit: Nationale Strategien, globalisierte (Un-)Sicherheit und soziotechnische Visionen der digitalen Gesellschaft

Die konzentrierten nationalen Strategien der Schaffung und Implementierung einer "Kultur der Cybersicherheit" müssen als Ausdruck weltweit entstehender globalisierter Regime digitaler Sicherheit verstanden werden. Diese K 116 C. Haddad, C. Binder neuen Cybersicherheitsregime stellen jedoch nicht lediglich eine Reaktion auf zahl-reiche neue Risiken und Unsicherheiten im Kontext der Digitalisierung dar, sondern auch ein Artikulationsfeld entstehender digitaler Gesellschaften. Cybersicherheit ist demnach ein Artikulations-und Experimentierfeld, in dem sowohl die soziotechni-schen Visionen einer wünschenswerten digitalen Gesellschaft als auch das Ensemble von Macht-und Regierungstechniken (neu) entworfen werden, die diese Gesell-schaft hervorbringen und absichern sollen. Die vorliegende Untersuchung soll eine Rekonzeptualisierung des Verhältnisses zwischen Cybersicherheit und digitaler Ge-sellschaft dahingehend anstoßen, dass Cybersicherheit eine neue und globalisierte Form und Rationalität von Sicherheit darstellt, in der die Autoritätsverhältnisse und Verantwortlichkeiten zwischen Staat, Gesellschaft und Individuen neu geordnet wer-den. Schlüsselwörter Cybersicherheit · Digitalisierung · Globale Sicherheit · Gouvernementalität · Soziotechnische Visionen · Sicherheitspolitik

The term ‘phronetic social science’ was coined in Making Social Science Matter (Flyvbjerg 2001). However, as pointed out in that volume and by Schram (2006), phronetic social science existed well before this particular articulation of the concept, but it was just not organized, recognized or named as such. Rather, it occurred here and there as scholars had adopted phronesis-like methods for their own purposes. The present title is the first organized volume of empirical–practical work in phronetic social science. Before Making Social Science Matter, phronesis, as a critical term of Aristotelian philosophy, had been theorized and its continuing importance as a key concept in Western thought had been convincingly argued by distinguished philosophers like Hans Georg Gadamer, Hannah Arendt, Alasdair MacIntyre and Richard J. Bernstein, among others. But no one had developed the theory and philosophy of phronesis into a practical methodology that could be applied by researchers interested in actually practising a phronetic social science. Making Social Science Matter developed such a methodology. Its implications were discussed and developed further in Making Political Science Matter (Schram and Caterino 2006). After these two theoretical–methodological contributions, it was evident that an important next step in demonstrating the usefulness of phronetic social science would be to illustrate, with concrete examples, how applied phronesis works in practical, empirical social science research. The contributions on applied phronesis contained in the present volume make clear that this next step has now been taken.

There is ferment in the social sciences. After years of sustained effort to build a science of society modelled on the natural sciences, that project, long treated with suspicion by some, is now openly being rethought. A critical intervention in this period of reflection was Making Social Science Matter (MSSM) by Bent Flyvbjerg, published in 2001. In that book Flyvbjerg challenged the very idea of social science as a science modelled on the natural sciences. Flyvbjerg argued that, as the social sciences study human interactions that involve human consciousness, volition, power and reflexivity, attempts to build generalizable, predictive models such as those for the natural world are misplaced and even futile.

This article analyzes the ways in which Canadian and Australian immigration policies represent causes and consequences of neoliberal restructuring. Interrogating neoliberalism as a series of political-economic and moral changes derived from the marketization of societal and governmental arrangements, it illustrates how numerically-based ‘points systems’ have been employed as mechanisms for: gauging human capital; establishing indices of risk and undesirability; and promoting the ‘responsibilization’ of incoming migrants. In doing so the points systems' historical trajectory is traced through a variety of administrative reforms characteristic of neoliberal government and flexible accumulation. Ultimately, this article contends that as rational, technical and economically guided systems of enumeration and assessment, both governments' policies mirror, enhance and extend neoliberal arrangements and sensibilities. In providing ostensibly objective techniques of evaluation the points systems have assisted in injecting the ideal neoliberal citizens- who are, above all, flexible, cosmopolitan, entrepreneurial and autonomous- from abroad. Overall this paper contributes to studies of state restructuring by providing new insights into the links between the neglected domain of immigration control and emergent techniques of societal regulation and citizen-making.

When I first became interested in in-depth case-study research, I was trying to understand how power and rationality shape each other and form the urban environments in which we live (Flyvbjerg, 1998). It was clear to me that in order to understand a complex issue like this, in-depth case-study research was necessary. It was equally clear, however, that my teachers and colleagues kept dissuading me from employing this particular research methodology.

This article asks how planning scholarship may effectively gain impact in planning practice through media exposure. In liberal democracies, the public sphere is dominated by mass media. Therefore, working with such media is a prerequisite for effective public impact of planning research. Using the example of megaproject planning, it is illustrated how so-called “phronetic planning research,” which explicitly incorporates in its methodology active and strategic collaboration with media, may be helpful in generating change in planning practice via the public sphere. Main lessons learned are as follows: (1) working with mass media is an extremely cost-effective way to increase the impact of planning scholarship on practice; (2) recent developments in information technology and social media have made impact via mass media even more effective; (3) research on “tension points,” that is, points of potential conflict, are particularly interesting to media and the public, and are especially likely to generate change in practice; and (4) tension points bite back; planning researchers should be prepared for, but not afraid of, this.

The neoliberalisation of higher education in post-communist central and
eastern Europe, the new EU member states, is not seen as being distinct.
Implementation of the Bologna Process and Lisbon Strategy means it has become part of the competitive global sphere of higher education. The transformation of post-communist higher education has attracted little attention, but it is in fact an example of an unprecedented radical 25 yearlong transformation: from centralised non-research-orientated communist policy to the radical autonomous Humboldtian environment that emerged after the fall of communism to a strong European neoliberalisation. This article highlights not only the gradual and unique nature of these processes but also shows how they have merged to form the current neoliberalist hybrid. Focusing primarily on former Czecho-Slovakia and the subsequent Slovak and Czech Republics, it details the education policy strategies and initiatives that have contributed to this process. By examining the new educational policy framework at a Slovak university, it shows how Humboldtian culture encountered neoliberal culture: a distinct feature of post-communist neoliberalisation. It is suggested that the Slovak and Czech implementation of neoliberalism has not proved immune to forms of governance similar to those found under communism; rather the two have fused together.

While some Foucault-inspired studies construe local ownership in international interventions as a form of liberal governmentality that aims to govern through freedom, others lambast it as an illiberal governmentality that is likely to be resisted because it undermines local autonomy. However, we still do not know what is the rationality behind local ownership, how it is being operationalized, and why a principle that aims to govern through freedom ends up curtailing it. I argue that local ownership, echoing the colonial principle of indirect rule, is driven by the rationality of advanced democracies on how best to govern global insecurities at a distance. Consequently, ownership is operationalized as responsibilization for externally designed objectives. This often gives rise to local resistance which undermines international efforts to achieve ownership. I illustrate my arguments with evidence from the EU Mission on Regional Maritime Capacity Building in the Horn of Africa (EUCAP Nestor).

RESUMEN. Objetivo/contexto: El artículo es resultado de la convocatoria realizada por Colombia Internacional para pensar los estudios globales desde el sur. Se trata de un aporte teórico crítico que tiene como objetivo dejar de lado el binarismo que opone lo global a lo internacional y, en cambio, buscar modos de pensarlos como mutuamente constitutivos. Metodología: A través de una revisión bibliográfica que indaga en los textos de sus máximos referentes, argumenta que los estudios globales encuentran su razón de ser en concepciones estrechas tanto de las relaciones internacionales como de lo internacional. Al ser esto último concebido como equivalente a interestatal, el artículo sostiene que lo global emerge en oposición al Estado y vinculado a la sociedad civil global. La herramienta que el artículo propone para sortear este binarismo es el concepto de gubernamentalidad elaborado por Michel Foucault. Este es globalizado y presentado como marco analítico y como práctica de gobierno liberal, y permite pensar un poder descentrado del Estado que se ejerce en múltiples direcciones y no en oposición a la sociedad civil sino a través de ella. Conclusiones: Así, en conclusión, permite concebir tanto al Estado gubernamentalizado como a la sociedad civil como productos del liberalismo en tanto práctica gubernamental globalizada, eliminando el binarismo que está en la base de la emergencia de los estudios globales. Originalidad: El artículo es un aporte desde la perspectiva foucaultiana de gubernamentalidad al debate entre relaciones internacionales y estudios globales. ABSTRACT. Objective/context: This paper is the result of Colombia Internacional's call to reflect on Global Studies from the South. It is a critical theoretical contribution aiming at putting aside the binary opposing the global and the international. Instead,

With a point of departure in the concept "uncomfortable knowledge," this article presents a case study of how the American Planning Association (APA) deals with such knowledge. APA was found to actively suppress publicity of malpractice concerns and bad planning in order to sustain a boosterish image of planning. In the process, APA appeared to disregard and violate APA's own Code of Ethics. APA justified its actions with a need to protect APA members' interests, seen as preventing planning and planners from being presented in public in a bad light. The current article argues that it is in members' interest to have malpractice critiqued and reduced, and that this best happens by exposing malpractice, not by denying or diverting attention from it as APA did in this case. Professions, organizations, and societies that stifle critique tend to degenerate and become socially and politically irrelevant "zombie institutions." The article asks whether such degeneration has set in for APA and planning. Finally, it is concluded that more debate about APA's ethics and actions is needed for improving planning practice. Nine key questions are presented to constructively stimulate such debate.

This paper analyzes the profound changes in Romani minority governance in Europe after 1989. It argues that various European, international, national and non---governmental organizations as well as other social agents and agencies have gradually developed new modes to deal with the conduct of Romani minorities in Europe, Central and Eastern Europe in particular. These forms of Romani minority governance are no longer only or primarily based on controlling and disciplining the Roma-as under communism and in many Western European welfare states-but increasingly focus on empowering and integrating the Roma as 'active' and 'responsible citizens'. This is particularly relevant in the case of Romani community governance, which has started to dominate the European mentalities to govern Romani minorities in the region under scrutiny. This paper analyzes how socio---economic and political changes in post---socialist Europe, the strong calls of dissidents for a revival of civil society, and new forms to deal with the region's Roma have co--constituted each other. The paper reflects on European governmentalities toward the Roma in the 'New Europe' and on the consequences and ambivalences of scaling Romani minority governance at the level of Romani communities.

This essay examines China’s approach to non-interventionism in world affairs through the prism of ‘governability’ thought. It argues that Chinese attitudes toward (non-)intervention are not necessarily changing as a result of shifting understandings of sovereignty or the humanitarian imperative. Rather, the decision as to whether China sanctions intervention rests more with governability considerations, which place importance on maintaining – not imposing – order and enhancing the capacity for ‘self-governance’ of the state. Here, Chinese thinking on governability presents an alternative view of how governance at the interstate level ought to be exercised, going beyond prevailing practices and discourses of global governance as premised upon a liberal governmentality. The essay illustrates how the idea of governability has roots in China’s past, flowing from the cyclical historiography inherent in Chinese political thought on the interactions between zhi (order) and luan (chaos). Blurring the boundaries separating the domestic from the international realm, it advocates a vision of ‘global governance’ based not on the creation of universalizing norms and values via modes of governmentality, but on the acceptance of diversity and the legitimacy of difference.