Michael Merlingen

Governmentality: Towards a Foucauldian Framework for the Study of IGOs

In this article I draw on the later work of Michel Foucault to elaborate a governmentality framework for the study of international governmental organizations (IGOs). The main ‘value added’ of the proposed framework is that it brings into focus the micro-domain of power relations, thereby highlighting what mainline IGO studies fail to thematize. IGOs exercise a molecular form of power that evades and undermines the material, juridical and diplomatic limitations on their influence. They are important sites in the non-sovereign, microphysical workings of power that shape territorialized populations in unspectacular ways. In short, I argue that our understanding of IGOs remains incomplete if we do not pay attention to the effects of domination generated by their everyday governance tasks and good works. I develop this argument through a brief engagement with an innovative strand of IGO studies: research on international socialization, which is empirically illustrated through a brief exploration of the induction by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe of post-socialist countries into its embryonic security community.In this article I draw on the later work of Michel Foucault to elaborate a governmentality framework for the study of international governmental organizations (IGOs). The main ‘value added’ of the ...

Foucault and World Politics: Promises and Challenges of Extending Governmentality Theory to the European and Beyond

Do you remember Jim George’s acerbic observation back in the 1990s that academic international relations (IR) constitutes a backward discipline characterised by analytical limitation and theoretical closure?1 You do, but you also think that much has changed in the meantime? I agree. The border of boredom enclosing IR, and for that matter European Union (EU), studies in the 1980s and before has been significantly pushed outward in recent years, notably in Europe and against stern resistance by those in the USA and elsewhere who argue for the thorough rationalisation of the study of politics. And yet, I want to suggest, George’s bon mot remains, at least partly, applicable to both IR and EU scholarship. The recent pluralisation of these research fields notwithstanding, one of the more productive theoretical approaches to emerge in the 1990s and to leave its imprint on a variety of disciplines, including criminology, political geography, postcolonial studies, psychology and sociology, has for the most part been ignored by students of IR and the EU. Of course, many readers will have stumbled across the awkward neologism ‘governmentality’. Research drawing on Foucauldian governmentality theory is scattered among a number of international studies sites, both expected ones (e.g. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political) and unexpected ones (e.g. Security Dialogue). However, so ____________

The Right and the Righteous? European Norms, Domestic Politics and the Sanctions Against Austria

In February 2000, 14 EU Member States collectively took the unprecedented step of imposing bilateral sanctions on their Austrian EU partner. How can this be explained? Was it, as the 14 governments argued, because the inclusion in the Austrian government of Jorg Haiders extreme right FPo opposes many of the ideas making up the common identity of the EU? Or, were the sanctions motivated, as the Austrian government argued, by narrow-minded party political interests that lurked beneath the rhetoric of shared European norms and values? Our analysis suggests that, without the particular concerns about domestic politics of certain politicians, it is unlikely that the sanctions against Austria would have been adopted in this form. On the other hand, without the recent establishment of concerns about human rights and democratic principles as an EU norm, it is unlikely that these particular sanctions would have been adopted collectively by all member governments. Thus, while norms might have been used instrumentally, such instrumental use only works, in the sense of inducing compliant behaviour, if the norms have acquired a certain degree of taken-for-grantedness within the relevant group of actors or institution.

From Governance to Governmentality in CSDP: Towards a Foucauldian Research Agenda

Governmentality theory is a tool to study networked governance beyond the state. Its research profile is characterized by a focus on power and micro-practices from a critical perspective. This article identifies the theorys comparative strengths and its distinct analytical style. It lays out the conceptual tools of governmentality theory before applying them to internal CSDP governance and the external governance by the CSDP of post-conflict societies. These short case studies serve the didactic purpose of demonstrating the kinds of research questions, analytical concerns, arguments, empirical evidence and methods that governmentality research calls for and the sorts of findings that it can generate. The article concludes by pinpointing shortcomings of the theory that will be of concern to some CSDP researchers.

Power/knowledge in International Peacebuilding: The Case of the EU Police Mission in Bosnia

This article develops the argument that peacebuilding brings into play microphysical and nonsovereign forms of power that circulate through opaque capillaries that link foreign peacebuilders and indigenous populations. It examines the governmentality of liberal peacebuilding and the practices of “unfreedom” it licenses; brings into focus the constellation of social control that is effected by the EUs efforts, in the context of its security and defense policy, to promote democratic policing in Bosnia; and shows how a normatively committed form of governmentality theory can be employed to limit the inevitable political pastorate in the international construction of liberal peace in posthostility societies.

Identity, Politics and Germany's Post-TEU Policy on EMU

In this article, I seek a theoretically informed answer to the question of why in the period after 1993 the German government clamoured for a clarification of and a tightening of the rules governing the transition to, and the operation of, EMU. To this end, I evaluate the explanatory power of two approaches that make strongly contrasting assumptions about European integration: liberal intergovernmentalism and constructivism. The empirical evidence shows that a constructivist approach does a better job of explaining Germanys post‐TEU policy on EMU than liberal intergovernmentalism. It has the tools to deal with what turns out to be crucial for understanding the policy in question: social identities. They shaped how central governmental decision‐makers and the mass public lined up and acted on the issue of EMU. This finding is indicative of more general, theoretical weaknesses of liberal intergovernmentalism. The theory is overly rationalist and materialist. The EU is a unique institutional arrangement in which more than consequence‐oriented action and material considerations matter. Therefore, constructivism, which is analytically strong precisely where liberal intergovernmentalism is weak, should be part of the standard toolbox of every scholar of the EU. However, the empirical findings of the article also suggest that constructivist research would benefit from paying attention to what it has ignored so far: mass identities.

Applying Foucault’s Toolkit to CSDP

Michel Foucault was not a student of the international and Foucauldian approaches to international relations (IR) and European Union (EU) studies do not constitute a school. The toolkit of concepts for social analysis he and those inspired by him have developed do not aim at building a substantive theory of anything, and Foucault did not pretend otherwise when he declared: ‘I would like my books to be a kind of tool-box which others can rummage through to find a tool which they can use however they wish in their own area’ (Foucault 1994: 523). The strength of Foucault’s tools is their critical edge. They have the power to cut deep into conventional wisdom (academic and popular). This chapter introduces readers who have little or no knowledge of Foucault to his toolkit. It argues that the toolkit can be used productively, albeit within limits, to investigate the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP).

Book review: The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx, by Alex Callinicos:

independence. More importantly, however, Chocolate Nations at best offers a partial explanation of the reasons behind farmer poverty. While Ryan is certainly right to criticise at length ‘decades of political mismanagement, theft and waste’ (p. 62) by Ghanaian and Ivorian authorities, the absence of any sustained discussion on decades of economic mismanagement, theft and waste by structural adjustment policies (SAPs) is a painful omission that not only seriously undermines the explanatory capacity of the book, but also creates important historical, analytical and logical difficulties. The net effect is a subtle narrative that reproduces the sanitised developmental discourse of the IMF and the World Bank, as Ryan remains largely silent on the widespread poverty and misery created in both countries by these institutions. Ryan’s critique of Fairtrade is interesting but weak. She undermines her own argument that international markets can also be ‘fair’ by noting ‘that, in real terms, prices in 2000-2005 were a quarter of what they were in the 1970s’ (p. 128). And while the journalistic tone of the book makes it accessible, the content of the book’s two-page bibliography is a strong reminder of its analytical limits and shortcomings, which make it a useful, yet one-sided introduction to cocoa production in Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire. With these caveats in mind, Ryan’s book is to be praised for presenting this important issue to a wider audience.

Public Diplomacy and the OSCE in the Age of Post-International Politics: The Case of the Field Mission in Croatia

The article argues against the widespread view that OSCE long-term missions should be constrained in their use of public diplomacy. The case rests on arguments that link the emergence of post-international politics to the need for a transformation of diplomatic practices. Missions need to engage in more and better public diplomacy because, in their host countries, subnational actors have the capacity to derail (or advance) the implementation of OSCE standards, even if national governments support (or oppose) mission goals. Diplomats who operate in such an environment cannot confine themselves to mission-to-government communication in their attempts to promote international security through domestic reforms. To illustrate the argument that missions have to reach out to local audiences in order to be effective agents of domestic change, a case study of the mission to Croatia is presented. Shortcomings in the missions approach are pointed out, and it is argued that recent improvements in the implementation of OSCE standards are related to changes in the missions diplomatic practices. In the conclusion, the article identifies steps the OSCE can take to enable and encourage missions to pursue more and better public diplomacy.