Ryan Walter

Governmentality accounts of the economy: a liberal bias?

Abstract The governmentality literature offers a host of insights into liberal modes of government. A key theme in this literature is that the economy came to be seen as an autonomous domain requiring its own form of governmental reason. Yet the emergence of the economy has never been specified, in terms of both what would constitute an economy and how it was constituted. Instead, the appearance of an economy has been conflated with the general rise of liberal understandings of agency. In this paper I seek to provide an alternative and more precise account. This involves showing how the importance of Smith lies not so much in his formulation of a liberal version of agency, but in the disjunction he introduces between reason of state and political oeconomy. Crucially, despite his significance, Smiths arguments do not usher in an economy. For that event we have to wait for Ricardos problematic of distribution. This alternative account is intended to weaken the association of the rise of liberal government with the emergence of the economy as an object of thought.

Foucault and radical deliberative democracy

Deliberative democracy is a flourishing variant of democratic theory. John Dryzek and Iris Young are two of its more radical exponents, and here I bring some Foucaultian complications to their work. The radicalness I highlight in both thinkers owes to their different but comparable commitments to equality between different voices in deliberation. Foucaults histories are all histories of expert knowledges and the objects they usher into the world. In this sense, expert knowledges present problems for deliberative democracy, not only because they carry greater status than other knowledges but also because they have ontological effects. As I illustrate with the example of economics, although the programs of Dryzek and Young can cope quite well with the first, the second is a more serious problem, although possibly a positive one.

Budget talk: rhetorical constraints and contests

This article examines the budget surplus debate that occurred during the Gillard minority government (2010–13) to broaden the range of linguistic phenomena that are typically scrutinised in relation to Australian political rhetoric. The budget debate reveals the persistent efforts of both major parties to compete for control of the normative force that derives from using what Skinner calls ‘evaluative–descriptive terms’. In this case, ‘responsible economic government’ was the legitimating principle, yet use of this term became entwined with the issue of trustworthiness. Delivering a budget surplus by 2012–13 was converted from a judgement regarding prudent macro-management into an election promise. Thus, Labor surrendered rhetorical control of a flexible legitimating principle for an immobile test of morality, to its political misfortune. 本文研究了杰拉德少数党执政（2010—13）期间发生的关于预算剩余的辩论，这个辩论扩展了一般会与澳大利亚政治修辞结合起来考察的语言现象。预算的辩论显示，两个主要政党总是争夺规范性力量，这力量即斯金纳所谓“评—述词汇”。“负责任的经济政府”是成为了价值的原则，但这个词的使用与是否值得信任的话题纠缠在了一起。兑现2012至13年的预算剩余，从一个关于审慎宏观管理的判断转化成为了选战承诺。工党放弃了一种灵活的合法化原则而取一种固定的道德检查，这在政治上是不幸的。

Reconciling Foucault and Skinner on the state: the primacy of politics?

Foucault and Skinner have each offered influential accounts of the emergence of the state as a defining element of modern political thought. Yet the two accounts have never been brought into dialogue; this non-encounter is made more interesting by the fact that Foucaults and Skinners accounts are at odds with one another. There is therefore much to be gained by examining this divergence. In this article I attempt this task by first setting out the two accounts of the state, and then some of the methodological strictures each thinker has suggested. I argue that the divergence between Foucaults and Skinners accounts of the state is indeed driven by differences in method, as we might expect; but I also argue that these differences in method can themselves be well explained by the differing political motivations each thinker has at times articulated. Thus it is possible to make politics, and not method, the privileged point of this reconciliation.

The Critical Theorist's Labour: Empirical or Philosophical Historiography for International Relations?

Abstract Robert Cox developed a potent approach to studying world orders that is premised on the capacities of a special intellectual, the critical theorist, to discern social structures and the possibilities for their radical change in the future. While acknowledging the ethical appeal of adopting this intellectual persona, in this paper we are concerned with the style of historiography that it requires. In particular, we argue that the imperative to discover and foster the beginnings of social change leads to a version of philosophical history that will likely produce systematic anachronism. This is not uncommon in the discipline of International Relations, but in the case of Cox it stands in tension with some of his avowed intellectual sources, especially the work of Giambattista Vico, and with the aim of providing critical historical perspective on the present. We argue that Vico stands as an example of an alternative historical-empirical line of research that would better serve Coxian ambitions.

Slingsby Bethel's Analysis of State Interests

Summary Seventeenth-century thinking on the relationship between trade and state power was routinely conducted using the concept of state interests, which enabled users to conceive a Europe of competing states that managed the balance of power through trade and war. Poor interest management could arise from ignorance, error, or the divergence between the private interests of rulers and a states true interests. The stakes of pursuing or neglecting true interest were high: the survival and prosperity of the state. The dominance of ‘mercantilism’ as a historiographical category has obscured the role of interest in early modern thought. This paper examines the work of one of Englands most prolific interest writers, Slingsby Bethel, to demonstrate the importance of reading interest writings without recourse to mercantilism. The two focuses are, first, how the rhetoric of counsel was used to defend an ordinary subjects presumption to comment on state affairs and, second, the capacity for interest writers to construe the rise and fall of state power in terms of good laws and statesmanship.

Rhetoric or Deliberation? The Case for Rhetorical Political Analysis:

This article joins together recent work in rhetorical political analysis with methodological advances made in intellectual history to prospect a historical and linguistic approach to public reason and deliberation. It is offered as an alternative to currently dominant approaches that emphasise philosophical and normative understanding, especially those associated with the ‘deliberative turn’ in democratic theory. This alternative approach is developed by identifying two points of methodological divergence between a rhetorical and philosophical orientation to deliberation. First, a rhetorical approach will study standards of deliberation that are endogenous to a society instead of imposing them on the basis of one form of philosophical reason or another. Second, rhetorical analysis does not conceive of deliberation as consensus reached through non-coerced reflection but as the strategic deployment of shared linguistic resources in a context of contingently unfolding non-linguistic events.

Adam Smith’s free trade casuistry

ABSTRACT Smith held a low opinion of casuistry as a moral system because of its false precision and potential to corrupt our sense of duty. Yet Smith endorsed the basic premise of casuistical reasoning in relation to state administration – that the application of principles would need to take into account the circumstances of a given case, especially when principles conflicted. This paper recovers the casuistical character of Smith’s exceptions to a policy of free trade, which he justified with reference to the statesman’s higher duties of providing security and justice. The exercise has two key effects. The first is to direct attention to the manner in which Smith first isolated wealth as an analytical category distinct from strength, a precondition for his reintegration of strength and wealth as superior and inferior goals of statesmanship. This was a major disruption to existing argumentative conventions, one that reveals the dangers of accepting Smith’s construction of a ‘mercantile system’ on his terms. The second effect is to highlight the implications of the disappearance of the statesman as an integrating site of reasoning with respect to multiple discourses of state administration. In short, the phrase ‘free trade’ is likely to mislead in relation to Smith.

The economy and Pocock's political economy

In his histories of political discourse, Pocock has construed political economy as a prime site for hostile responses to the dilapidating effects of commerce on the virtue of citizens. In this paper, I dispute two aspects of Pococks treatment of this terrain. The first is the criteria he uses to identify the constitution of political economy, which are vague and make no reference to the emergence of ‘the economy’ as a sphere distinct from the state. The second, and closely related complaint, is that by conscripting earlier writings on trade as anticipations of political economy their historical specificity is effaced, resulting in anachronism of the very kind Pocock has typically tried to correct. I conclude by drawing out some general implications for the historiography of political economy.

Book review: Craig Freedman, In Search of the Two-Handed Economist: Ideology, Methodology and Marketing in EconomicsFreedmanCraig, In Search of the Two-Handed Economist: Ideology, Methodology and Marketing in Economics, Palgrave Macmillan: London, 2016; xx +418 pp., ISBN 9781137589736. RRP Hardcover EUR135 (AUD 206.50; ebook EUR 107 (AUD 163).

lines between ‘free’ Indians and the ‘coolies’ working in the colonies and committed itself to the cause exclusively of ‘free’ Indians (pp. 207–208). In fact, in many ways, coolies who were ready to work under any circumstance were indirectly held responsible for the contemptuous attitude of the colonisers towards ‘free’ non-indentured Indians. Thus, a hierarchy of status was upheld in the initial phase. For early nationalists, it was not the condition of indentured workers that was the problem per se, but the fact that respectable and wealthy ‘free’ Indians were being treated in the same ways as those who were working as ‘coolies’. However, frustrated in their attempts to attain a ‘respectable’ position in the eyes of the colonisers, the nationalist leaders started invoking the harsh working conditions of coolies in their rhetoric to bargain with the colonial state. This, in turn, created a powerful anti-indenture campaign voiced by prominent leaders such as Gopal Krishna Gokhale, Mahatma Gandhi, CF Andrews and others in the second decade of the 20th century and eventually led to the system’s abolition. Here, Kumar rightly points out that the overall exploitative nature of the system was merely a secondary concern in the nationalist discourse that mobilised the question of indenture for wider political purposes (p. 205). Kumar’s study, which he presents as an endeavour to develop ‘an alternative view’ on the world of girmitiyas (p. 241), appears to be heavily influenced by the views and writings of Shahid Amin, who supervised Kumar’s doctoral work at the University of Delhi, and of Crispin Bates and Marina Carter, who guided his postdoctoral research on the ‘Becoming Coolies’ project at the University of Leeds. These influences appear to have led him to occasionally romanticise the journey of a coolie. In his interest in the details of the cultural world of girmitiyas, Kumar has overlooked the exploitative structure which was characteristic of the indentured system. His appraisal of the overseas migration of the Bhojpuri-speaking population as a mere extension of historic inland migratory patterns misses vital differences between the two. While the earlier inland migrations were short-term and unorganised, indentured migration was long-term and far more organised in nature with the state being actively involved in the recruitment process. Furthermore, the psychological trauma of separation faced by the girmitiyas was hardly there in the case of peasant soldiers of sultanate. For the latter, returning home was much easier, socially as well as economically, than for overseas coolie migrants. Similarly, in his attempt to celebrate the ‘agency’ of emigrating labourers, Kumar downplays the element of deception involved in their recruitment through indenture. Nevertheless, Kumar offers a lucid narrative of indenture migration from its beginning in 1834 till its abolition in 1917. It is useful for both the scholarly investigation of various aspects of overseas migration from India to sugar colonies and for a lay reader trying to understand, out of curiosity, the unique world of the girmitiyas of the Ganges valley.