Governmentality and Rights and Responsibilities in Urban Policy

Abstract

We deploy aspects of Foucault's concept of governmentality to discuss the argument that the recent shift towards a ‘rights and responsibilities' agenda in urban policy is part of broader transformations in the rationalities and techniques of government. Following Rose, we characterise the emergent forms of urban policy as part of ‘advanced liberalism’ or strategies which seek to activate citizens, individually and collectively, to take greater responsibility for their own government. Such strategies are, as Rose notes, seeking to govern through the instrumentalisation of the self-governing properties of the subjects of government themselves in a whole variety of locales. We develop the argument in three parts. The first part justifies the use of a Foucauldian framework in seeking to understand the new political and policy agenda on ‘rights and responsibilities’. In a second part, we investigate the changing nature of governmental rationalities and techniques of governmentality primarily through the context of the Single Regeneration Budget. In so doing, we consider two interrelated dimensions of the rationalities and techniques of government which seek to shape and guide what Foucault refers to as ‘the conduct of others' or those that are the objects of government, that is, active citizens. These dimensions are government through community and the specification of subjects of government. We conclude by specifying the importance we attach to using a Foucauldian framework for the analysis of urban policy and policy processes more generally.