This book examines global governance through Foucaultian notions of governmentality and security, as well as the complex intersections between the two. The volume explores how Foucault's understanding of the general economy of power in modern society allows us to consider the connection of two broad possible dynamics: the global governmentalization of security and the securitization of global governance. If Foucault's work on governmentality and security has found resonance in IR scholarship in recent years it is in large part due to his understanding of how these forms of power must necessarily take into account the management of circulation that, in seeking to maximize ‘good’ versus ‘bad’ circulatory flows, brings into play and problematizes the 'inside'/'outside' upon which domestic and international spaces have been traditionally understood. Indeed, Foucault introduces a set of conceptual tools that can inform our analyses of globalization, global governance and security in ways that have been left largely unexplored in the discipline of IR. Miguel de Larrinaga is Assistant Professor at the University of Ottawa where he has been teaching since 2002. Marc G. Doucet is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Saint Mary’s University.

Global Governmentality extends Foucault's political thought towards international studies, exploring the governance of the global, the international, the regional and many other extra-domestic spaces.

First developed by Michel Foucault more than thirty years ago, "governmentality" has become an essential set of tools for many researchers in the social and political sciences today. What is "governmentality"? How does this perspective challenge the way we understand political power and its contestation? This new introduction offers advanced undergraduate and graduate students both a highly accessible guide and an original contribution to debates about power and governmentality. The book aims to serve four main functions: To situate governmentality as an intellectual development within Foucault’s thinking about the microphysics of power and his genealogical methods; To reveal how research in governmentality has changed as the idea encounters new academic fields, political contexts and regional settings; To examine one of the more recent encounters between governmentality and the social sciences - its interaction with international relations and global politics; To offer researchers some methodological suggestions for undertaking studies in governmentality, stressing that its critical edge becomes blunted if it is detached from historical/genealogical modes of inquiry. This book offers a set of conceptual and methodological observations intended to keep research in governmentality a living, critical thought project. Above all, it argues that the challenge of understanding the world calls for the addition of new thinking equipment to the governmentality toolbox. Governmentality: Critical Encounters will prove useful for students of social and political theory, international relations, political sociology, anthropology and geography.

The recent debate about biopolitics in International Relations (IR) theory may well prove to be one of the most provocative and rewarding engagements with the concept of power in the history of the discipline. Building on Foucault's arguments concerning the role played by the concept of security in 19th-century liberal government, numerous IR scholars are now arguing for the relevance of his theories of biopolitics and governmentality for understanding the Global War on Terror (GWOT) and broader issues of security and governance in the post 9/11 world. Conversely, others have criticized this idea. Marxist and Communitarian scholars have challenged the notion that the category of biopolitics can be 'scaled' up to the level of international relations with any analytical precision. This edited volume covers these debates in IR with a series of critical engagements with Foucault's own thought and its increasing relevance for understanding international relations in the post 9/11 world. This book was based on a special issue of Global Society.

The phenomenon of "travelling reforms" has become an object of great professional interest and intensive academic scrutiny. The fact that the same set of educational reforms is transferred from one country to another made scholars wonder whether policy transfer has increased as a result of globalization. But also the fact that policy makers increasingly import "best practices "and international standards and use them as a tool to accelerate reform has captured the imagination of many that deal with policy studies. An international comparative perspective is key for understanding why reforms travel from one corner of the world to another. Not surprisingly, the study of policy borrowing and lending constitutes one of the core research topics of comparative policy studies; a new area of research that links comparative education with policy studies. The World Yearbook of Education 2012 brings together a diverse range of perspectives on education policy through contributions from internationally renowned authors. It reflects on the way policy borrowing and lending is reconfiguring the world of education and offers a new collection of insights into the changes occurring across the world. It particularly focuses on: The political and economic reasons for policy borrowing, The agencies, international networks and regimes that instigate policy change, The process of borrowing and lending The impact of these systems, agendas and institutions on indigenous settings. This book will prove invaluable to researchers of globalization and to policy experts, especially those interested in comparative and international educational studies. It is also essential reading for undergraduate and postgraduate students and anyone involved in the sociology, economy or history of education. Gita Steiner-Khamsi is Professor of Comparative and International Education at Teachers College Columbia University, New York, US. Florian Waldow is Research Director at the University of Münster, Germany.

This volume explores how the idea of civil society has been translated in different cultural contexts and examines its impact on politics worldwide. Comparing and contrasting civil society in Latin America and Eastern Europe, Western Europe and the United States, Africa and South Asia, and the Middle East, the contributors show that there are multiple interpretations of the concept that depend more on the particular political configuration in different parts of the world than on cultural predilections. They also demonstrate that the power of civil society depends less on abstract definitions, and more on the extent to which it is grounded in the context of actual experiences from around the world. This book includes some of the biggest names in the area such as Mary Kaldor, Ronnie Lipschutz and Helmut Anheier.

In a multipolar world with growing demand for energy, not least by Emerging Powers such as Brazil, India, China or South Africa (BICS), questions of EU external energy governance would at first hand appear to be a high-priority. Yet, reality tells a different story: the EU’s geographical focus remains on adjacent countries in the European neighbourhood and on issues related to energy security. Despite being Strategic Partners and engaging in energy dialogues, it seems that the EU is lacking strategic vision and is not perceived as a major actor in energy cooperation with the BICS. Thus, political momentum for energy cooperation and joint governance of scarce resources is vanishing. Resulting from three years of international, interdisciplinary research cooperation among academics and practitioners in Europe and the BICS countries within a project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation, this volume addresses one of the greatest global challenges. Specific focus lies on the bilateral energy dialogues and Strategic Partnerships between the EU and Emerging Powers regarding bilateral, inter- and transnational energy cooperation. Furthermore, the analysis provides policy recommendations in order to tap the full potential of energy cooperation between the EU and Brazil, India, China and South Africa.

The existence and urgency of global climate change is a matter of scientific consensus. Yet the global politics of climate change have been anything but consensual. In this context, a wave of global climate activism has emerged in the last decade in response to the perceived failure of the political negotiations. This book provides a unique comparative study of environmental movements in USA, Japan, Denmark and Sweden, analyzing their interaction with the international climate institutions of the United Nations, with national governments, and with currents in the global climate movement. It documents how and why the movement evolved between the Copenhagen Summit of 2009 and the Paris Summit of 2015, altering its strategies and tactics while attracting new actors to the issue area. Further, it demonstrates how the development of global environmental networks has increased contact between environmental movements in the Global North and those from the Global South, resulting in the establishment of ‘climate justice’ as a political cause and unifying frame for global climate activism.

Serving as a touchstone for a much-needed research program on social scales, this volume challenges disciplinary boundaries and brings into focus a paradoxical state of affairs in contemporary thought: the domain of local-global interactions has not yet been identified as an object of analysis in its own right, despite engaging a large, multi-disciplinary research community with strong potential for cross-fertilization. Bringing together internationally renowned as well as emerging scholars, this book presents concrete case studies framed by theoretical concern with the issue of scale. It demonstrates that a diverse array of theoretical, methodological and empirical perspectives can productively converge on a common set of problems related to social, temporal and spatial scales and contemporary globalization. Local Politics, Global Impacts will stimulate empirical and theoretical research that focuses on understanding how political concepts, practices, and instruments translate across scales, and contribute to the emergence of a self-aware community of scholars and practitioners focusing explicitly on modelling the dynamics of local-regional-global interactions.

Negotiating Corruption demands that we think again about corruption in Africa. It problematises the framing of African corruption as a phenomenon that emerges from a clash between two sets of norms. Moreover, it highlights the colonial legacies of this frame, which situates African corruption within continually recurring debates about the political inclusion or banishment of 'others'. NGOs are characterised as intermediaries between the local and the international, and between the state and the population. In both of these roles they are understood to reform governance by bringing about changes in culture and instituting bureaucratic norms. They have, therefore, been seen as part of the apparatus of a global liberal governmentality. This book complicates this portrayal and highlights the ambiguous role of liberal governmentality through an exploration of the 'grey practices' of the NGOs studied. These practices are 'grey' as they do not fit the pattern of virtuous NGOs holding the state to account described in development policy, yet at the same time they ensure that the state produces the outcomes that a fully-functioning state ought to. This enacting of oppositional and antagonistic elements is further unpacked in conversation with Homi Bhabha's concepts of negotiation and hybridity. Negotiating Corruption draws attention to both the limitations of current explanations of corruption in Africa and the problematic way in which they are framed. The book's detailed engagement with understandings of corruption within policy and academic debates will make it a useful resource for undergraduate teaching. It will also be of keen interest to researchers, academics, and postgraduate students who engage with the issues of corruption, NGOs, civil society, African politics, governmentality, and hybridity.