Towards the global social: sociological reflections on governance and risk in the context of the current financial crisis

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between contemporary forms of governance and risk. International Relations scholarship tends to locate governance within a theoretical framework derived from sovereignty. I suggest that a Foucauldian notion of ‘governmentality’ entails a better understanding of modes of governance, especially in so-called advanced liberal societies. In these societies, a particular form of rationality and a series of invasive techniques render individuals as objectified, classified and calculable things, in turn, making them more amenable to risk-based technologies of control. Via a survey of credit-rating, auditing, insuring and other calculative practices, I examine that ways in which governance operates as a biopolitical technology. This clears the way for thinking about governance in terms of the ‘global social’.

Notes

¹ Historical exceptions include Margot C Finn's treatment of credit and debt in England in the period 1740–1914. See Finn (2003) and Rowena Olegario's (2006) historical account of credit in the US. For more contemporary accounts on the social sources of financial power see Seabrooke (2006a), and for the interaction of global financial with the everyday lives of individuals see Hobson and Seabrooke (2007).

² I have dealt with the question of ‘risk’ in modernity and Becks' Risk Society thesis in some detail elsewhere; see Deuchars (2004); also Beck (1992; 1995; 1999); Hacking (1975); Seabrooke (2007).

³ See also Hall and Biersteker (2002), Roseanau and Czempiel (1992).

⁴ Exceptions include Sinclair (2005), Dillon (2008), Perry and Nölke (2006).

⁵ See Commission on Global Governance (1995).

⁶ For a very good example of the discourse of ‘security’ as human security taking the form of power/knowledge see Grayson (2008). For a more comprehensive treatment see Foucault (1972) and Larner and Waters (2004).

⁷ For a more comprehensive discussion on the social ontology of assemblages see DeLanda (2006).

⁸ For detailed information on the rules of these ‘games’ see Financial Stability Forum (2009) and on changes to credit rating agencies oversight within the Basel II agreements, see Bank of International Settlements (2006). See also Financial Services Authority (2009).

⁹ ‘Abs’ is shorthand for asset-backed securities and ‘cdos’ is shorthand for collateralized debt obligations.

¹⁰ For a detailed treatment of the ‘examination’ in global governance see Löwenheim (2008).