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Poverty reduction and the new global governmentality.
Are international organizations using the issue of poverty reduction as a new way to approach global governmentality? This article recognizes that serious problems are involved in so approaching the idea of global governmentality, given the lack of success these strategies have. It is suggested here that such strategies operate not to improve the condition of populations but as a means for regulating states and their governments. Once states, not populations, are recognized as the main targets, it can be seen that features of governmentality are working from a distance to responsibilize state conduct through ownership, partnership, and continuous monitoring.
KEYWORDS: governmentality, Foucault, poverty, PRSP, World Bank ********** This article focuses on new strategies toward poverty reduction in order to address a bigger question: Is there a new approach to global governmentality? The poverty-reduction strategies have been developed among a number of international organizations, and they reflect a new way of thinking that differs from the structural-adjustment policies of the Washington Consensus period. Recent theoretical debates have tried to address the nature of this shift, raising the matter of the degree to which the old neoliberal policies have changed and whether the post-Washington Consensus represents a continuation of these policies or a break from the past. This article focuses on poverty-reduction strategies--with a particular focus on the World Bank's approach--in order to look at whether a new strategy has emerged, not just for poverty reduction, but also toward global governance more generally. As the title of the article implies, the implementation of poverty-reduction strategies is seen through the theoretical lens of a govern-mentality approach. I will make a case for a govern mentality approach, while criticizing some of the existing literature for not going beyond govern mentality. The governmentality approach is of course associated with the work of Michel Foucault. While it has been applied in a number of different contexts, the relevant question here is whether it can be applied to the international domain. We can clearly make a case for examining how governmentality is used by national governments and local institutions to reframe the issue of poverty through placing more responsibility on individual subjects. But can governmentality be used to explain the way that international organizations like the World Bank and IMF intervene at the global level? Normally understood, governmentality is about the "conduct of conduct," meaning the ways in which behavior is shaped from a distance. It is a discursive approach insofar as it shows how a social imaginary is constructed to shape the way that problems are seen and acted upon. More specifically, governmentality can be called a rationality of governance that is reflexive and self-critical about its own role and limits and that tries to shape people's behavior by getting them to take responsibility for their own act...See the full content of this document
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