From the Myth of Self-Government to the Rise of Holoptism: Another Genealogy of Liberal Governmentality

Abstract

A long-standing critique of liberalism is that it is both amoral and anti-communitarian. Bound to the totemic figures of the Law and the Market, the “liberal art of governing” is unable to conceive of social regulations outside this twin rational framework. However, the 1990s saw the international dissemination of State managerial reform—embodied by the slogan “doing better with less”—where entrepreneurial practices coexist with participatory and decentralizing policies. In the context of State redeployment, an emerging strategy is evolving as economic neoliberalism merges with cooperative liberalism inspired by the American myth of self-government. By establishing a genealogy for this other side of liberal governmentality, this paper demonstrates how contemporary neo-progressivism emphasizes “holoptic” technologies. By encouraging a “proactive citizenship” through moral and community coercion, holoptic technologies can provide new resources to resurgent authoritarianism. Thus, the study of governmentality within the field of international political sociology should take into account a power architecture that is based on the local scale and implemented by States in a context of convergence of global political orders.