Taking Foucault beyond Foucault: Inter-state Governmentality in Early Modern Europe

Abstract

The analysis of governmentality has had a profound impact on the study of liberal, domestic societies over the last two decades, and the conceptual framework has been applied successfully to current global affairs. In this article one possible way of expanding the timeframe and the scope of governmentality studies is explored. Through an immanent critique of Foucault's own comments on the co-constitutive development of states and a state system in early modern Europe, it is argued that a governmentality perspective can in fact add to our understanding of inter-state relations in early modern Europe, and thus also to our understanding of our own time. Carrying out such analyses implies taking the Foucauldian framework beyond Foucault, as his own brief comments on inter-state relations fail to adhere to his own methodological precept of historicising seemingly evidentiary practices.