I imagine that many readers of this Research Hub are deeply troubled by recent political developments, specifically in the United States but with repercussions in Australia and around the world. I have been asking myself if these developments somehow reduce the relevance of WPR and its associated theoretical perspectives. It appears that I am not alone in expressing these qualms. A recent special edition of Global Society raises critical questions about the usefulness of governmentality as an analytic concept. It broaches the need for deploying the concept of “authoritarian governmentality” to help make sense of the times we are living in. 

In this entry I reflect on aspects of the contributions to the special edition by Julia Simon (2025a, 2025b) and by Mitchell Dean (2025). I recommend reading their articles in full (several times!). Both authors are concerned to highlight the need to include authoritarian developments in a governmentality perspective. Indeed, they suggest that the absence of attention to authoritarian aspects of governing practices leaves us ill-equipped to deal with the current “rise” of authoritarian regimes, including those that appear where they are least expected – i.e. in previously described “liberal democracies” (the United States).

Whither neoliberalism? 

Simon and Dean raise concerns about the way in which neoliberalism is theorised in many governmentality accounts – how treating neoliberalism (a neoliberal rationality) as a “master category” can make it difficult to observe and understand authoritarian aspects of governing practices. In the most recent Research Hub entry (27 August 2025) we reviewed the uses of the concept of “rationalities” in WPR analyses. I emphasised that the concept of “rationality” in governmentality accounts is meant to keep a focus on fluidity in modes of political analysis and change and that “problematisation” as an analytic strategy has the same goal (see Bacchi 2023). The object of the exercise in each case is to consider how power relations are “rooted deep in the social nexus”. This fluidity, however, can be lost through treating neoliberalism as a singular phenomenon. 

For good reason many WPR applications take as their primary focus neoliberalism as governmentality (rationality). This focus is apparent in the many references to “responsibilisation” as a mode of governing. That is, asking “What’s the problem represented to be?” has frequently identified the tendency to hold individuals responsible for improving their health, their job readiness, their use of drugs and gambling, etc., described as a neoliberal logic.  

However, more attention needs to be paid to how “neoliberalism” is conceptualised. In the previous entry I draw on Larner’s (2000) work, which cautions against the tendency to characterise neoliberalism as ideology. Simon (2025a, p. 5) echoes this caution. She challenges the tendency to use neoliberalism as “a more or less constant master category”, reifying neoliberalism (see Rose, O’Malley and Valverde 2006, pp. 97-98). She makes the case that such an approach weakens the “unique analytical potential” of a governmentality approach that is strongest 

“when it does not take globalising concepts or macro phenomena as starting points and explanatory principles but rather zooms in on how these very phenomena are continuously reproduced, homogenised, altered, annexed, and reformed as effects of historically and site-specific practices (cf. Lemke 2000, 43; Bröckling, Krasmann, and Lemke 2011b, 12). (Simon 2025a, p. 5; emphasis in original)”

Treating neoliberalism as some sort of “master category”, she argues, leads to “blindspots” “by failing to fully explore, visibilise, and critically investigate the multivocal and inconsistent character, the patchwork, or frankly, the ‘messiness’ of governmentalities”. 

These blindspots or omissions, as she describes, are consequential for the present moment because they tend to include a rather characteristic “neglect of non-liberalforms of power” (Triantafillou 2017, 385, emphasis added by Simon 2025a, p. 5). The implication here is the need to be wary of adopting classifications that categorically separate (neo)liberal democracies from authoritarian or non-liberal logics/rationalities. Rather, we need to critique the implicit assumption of a fundamental conceptual dichotomy or even incompatibility between neoliberalism and authoritarianism (Simon 2025a, p 5).

“Refraining from precategorising countries as (neo)liberal or authoritarian or democratic allows us to cast light on and trace a broad range of actually existing (re)combinations and shifts” (Simon 2025a, p. 8). 

In a related argument, according to Dean, we struggle to understand current political developments due to some blockages in early governmentality theory. Echoing Simon, Dean (2025) defends the need to move beyond liberal rationalities (and neoliberalism) in the study of governmentality. He suggests that the term “authoritarian” be added to the governmentality lexicon. While, he argues, “Foucault and his followers do not intend to reduce ‘governmentality’ to its liberal and neoliberal manifestations”, “such a teleological narrative makes it difficult to avoid this elision” (Dean 2025, p. 21). 

“Authoritarian governmentality” operates as a subset of the “conduct of conduct”, a subset in which conduct involves binding obligations: “while liberal governing is grounded in orders that work through providentially beneficial outcomes accruing through individual free conduct, authoritarian governing works though orders that leaves no alternative for individuals and collectives other than to be bound by them”. (Dean 2025, p. 30)

Dean (2025, p. 27) adds that Foucault’s focus on conduct of conduct “needs to be supplemented by a developed, and not simply residual, concept of sovereignty”. We need an “analytics of sovereignty” in his view because Foucault’s “government” excludes violence. The goal here is to understand how governing in the Foucauldian sense becomes intertwined with types of rule that discharge or delegate authority not simply through direction or persuasion but through coercivemeans. 

In earlier work Dean (2002) uses unemployment policy to illustrate the confluence of liberal and authoritarian practices. He offers the example of unemployment benefits, with benefits conditional on certain behaviours, to illustrate the illiberality of liberal government.

“When the governmental practice becomes binding for whatever reason, in this case because the economic costs of not following the welfare officer’s advice are too high for those with limited means of subsistence, then we have crossed into an authoritarian government” (Dean 2025, p. 24)

Dean (2025, p.31) points out that such authoritarian practices tend to target specific sectors of the population, with his example being “the differential treatment of subjects within liberal democracies using coercive and disciplinary instruments on those incapable, or not yet capable, of acting with the attributes of responsible freedom”.

Dean (2025, p. 29) looks to developments in immigration policy in Denmark to illustrate this argument. He notes that “While in general, one would clearly want to argue that Denmark relies on a more liberal set of practices of government than, say, Putin’s Russia with its propensity for the repression of political opponents”, this does not preclude the discovery of practices of authoritarian governmentality in the Scandinavian country. As an example, Dean highlights the passing of legislation, and its implementation, “that forcibly removes the homes and relocates segments of the Danish population to better integrate ethnic groups within the Danish community and prevent the formation of what were initially called ‘ghettos’ and more recently, ‘parallel societies’ (Bubola 2023)”. 

The COVID-19 pandemic also illustrates the confluence of (neo)liberal and authoritarian interventions. Sjölander-Lindqvist et al. (2020) point out that the full range of approaches to controlling COVID-19 in Sweden (e.g. social distancing, hygiene) included an aspect of ‘responsibilisation’, with the implication that citizen subjects are responsible for the outcomes of the pandemic. At the same time questions about how to deal with the pandemic involved debates over forms of authoritarian intervention (restrictions on movement, tracking devices, curfews, prison, etc.). As Dean (2025, p. 31) maintains, “The difference here between liberal and authoritarian government is relative”. 

Many WPR studies point to the operation of similar dynamics. In relation to the law and justice, Yassine (2019) offers a detailed WPR analysis of a specific practice in Australian juvenile justice: the risk assessment tool. She describes how this particular tool regulates and actively shapes who is defined, marked and classified as “risky”. Being Indigenous “is reduced to a potential risk factor for involvement with the criminal justice system, akin to alcohol and drug abuse, offending history, and so on” (Cunneen 2016, p. 36 in Yassine 2019, p. 154–155). This targeting of Indigenous subjects illustrates the intertwining of liberal and authoritarian logics. 

Colonial relations of other forms operate in a similar fashion. Odida (2022) produces a decolonial analysis of the United Nations policy of Constitutional Assistance (UNCA). The UNCA represents an initiative by which Western forms of government can be sustained in the wake of decolonisation. As a specific example of how colonial practices are embedded in UNCA, Odida identifies “discourses of infantilization” as particular practices “which represented Eritreans and Libyans as vulnerable, weak and incapable of self-governance” (2022, p. 27).

In the WPR studies by Yassine and Odida it becomes possible and appropriate to identify racialisng and colonising practices as authoritarian. The suggestion in this entry is that it is important to call out authoritarian tendencies where they appear as part of the analysis. Attending to “authoritarian governmentality” prepares us to recognise the “authoritarian potential of the (neo)liberal modalities of rule” (Simon 2025a, p. 7). This recognition positions us to better understand current authoritarian developments.

Resistance and counter-conduct

A particular challenge in WPR and in governmentality studies involves theorizing resistance. One of the chief criticisms of governmentality is that assumptions about subjectification produce determined, in the sense of controlled, subjects (Brady 2014, p. 11). We return here to the topic of “responsibilisation” (see above) and the suggestion in many WPR accounts that subjects take on self-regulation due to neoliberal policies that produce them as “governable”. 

Simon (2025b) notes how in studies of neoliberalism there is an all too enthusiastic acceptance of the production of neoliberal subjects. “Neoliberal governmental techniques always seemed to dovetail seamlessly with self-fashioning practices and to secure the desired individualising, autonomising, and responsibilising”. She makes the case that incorporation of authoritarian modes of rule in governmentality analyses provides an opening for investigating practices of resistance and contestation, as opposed to simply becoming “governable”. 

Simon offers an interesting adaptation of Foucault’s notion of counter-conduct to develop this argument. Her analytic target is the organisation self-described as Moms for Liberty (M4L), which emerged in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic:

“The group took shape during the SarsCov2-pandemic amidst a protest movement that problematised mitigation policies like temporary (school) closures or mask mandates in a language of ‘government tyranny’ (Westermeyer 2021).” (Simon 2015b, p. 9) 

Simon usefully highlights the engagement of M4L in efforts to “change people’s sense of what is politically desirable and right …”, which she characterises as the “epistemic dimension of politics” (Simon 2025b, p. 4). She shows, for example, their strong critique of expertise and “tactics of scientific distrust” (Simon 2025b, p.5), indicating an unexpected alignment with left-wing criticisms of expert knowledges. 

Her study thus provides a corrective to the tendency to pre-categorise actors in “an overly general manner as ‘populist’” (Simon 2025b, p.17). She produces an analysis of “reflected, relational, and productive contestational practices” (2025b, p.17). “It visibilises distinct far-right/populist patterns of shaping ‘resisting’ subjectivities, techniques of counter-practice, underlying truth-claims as well as particular fields of intervention” (Simon 2025b, p. 1). 

I was surprised to see this alignment of the Foucauldian concept of counter-conduct with right-wing politics. Simon acknowledges that “counter-conduct has initially been equated with inclusive, emancipatory efforts”. She argues that, in point of fact, the governmentality/counter-conduct perspective as such has no fixed normative foundation (Simon 2025b, p. 7 fn 6). 

I am not quite convinced by this argument. Simon (2025b, p. 19) goes on to note that the Moms for Liberty organisation seeks to “invisibilise past and present discrimination and (epistemic) violence against non-binary or trans individuals and African-Americans”. Clearly, in this description, Simon indicates that, in her view, discrimination and epistemic violence against the identified groups exist, a position that I suspect would be challenged by M4L. In other words, I’d suggest that acknowledging or denying the existence of discrimination and epistemic violence has normative implications. 

Is it possible therefore to rework “counter conducts” to describe the M4L organisation? Simon marshals “counter conducts” to make two important points. First, her work shows the usefulness of focussing critical attention on “agents” “beyond the state”, avoiding the tendency to reduce populism to political parties (Simon 2025b, p. 2). Her targeting of a group such as M4L signals a need to go beyond broad diagnoses of an “era of ‘authoritarian populism’” (Rose 2017, 305). Further, she illustrates “how particular epistemic repertories are drawn on and thus become productive in the formation of alternative or resisting, instead of governable, subjects” (2025b p.18):

“This desubjugation, the discarding of the docile, governable subjectivity of the conservative parent, facilitates the fashioning of an alternative – alert, assertive, knowledgeable, and insubordinate – awakened maternal subjectivity. (Simon 2025b, p.12)”

However, I query the reliance on interview transcripts to produce this analysis and suggest that asking what is “sayable” in the contexts Simon describes could produce a quite different interpretation of developments. I’m referring here to PIA (Poststructural Interview Analysis), developed with Jennifer Bonham (see Bacchi and Bonham 2025, Chapter 8). In PIA, a major purpose is to consider the particular kinds of “subjects” produced within interview settings, while also reflecting on how subject status can be questioned and disrupted. It therefore challenges the tendency to accept interview subjects as having privileged (“first person”) access to a kind of “truth” about their “experience/s” (which I believe underpins Simon’s characterising of M4L), while paying heed to how subjects come to occupy specific subject position and how they open spaces to disrupt those positions. 

Conclusions

To better understand and critically engage with the temper of the times there are clear benefits to drawing attention in WPR research to authoritarian practices. Such an approach would mean being wary regarding how we conceptualise neoliberalism, encouraging researchers to trace authoritarian tendencies in neoliberal practices and to name them as such. Incorporating attention to authoritarian governmentality could also raise useful questions about subjectification, cautioning against any tendency to produce subjects as “governable” in some determined sense. The implications for research practices are pursued in the next entry. 

References

Bacchi, C 2023, ‘Governmentalizing “policy studies”’, in W Walters & M Tazzioli (eds), Handbook on governmentality, Edward Elgar, Northampton, MA, pp. 54–71, DOI:10.4337/9781839108662.00010.

Bacchi, C. and Bonham, J. 2025, ‘Poststructural Interview Analysis: Politicizing “Personhood”’, in C. Bacchi and S. Goodwin, Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice, Second Edition, NY, Palgrave Macmillan, Chapter 8. 

Brady, M 2014, ‘Ethnographies of neoliberal governmentalities: from the neoliberal apparatus to neoliberalism and governmental assemblages’, Foucault Studies, no. 18, pp. 11–33, DOI:10.22439/fs.v0i18.4649.

Bröckling, Ulrich, Susanne Krasmann, and Thomas Lemke. 2011b. “From Foucault’s Lectures at the Collège de France to Studies of Governmentality.” In Governmentality. Current Issues and Future Challenges, edited by Ulrich Brückling, Susanne Krasmann, and Thomas Lemke, 

1–33. New York: Routledge.

Bubola, E. 2023. “Denmark Aims a Wrecking Ball at ‘Non-Western’ Neighborhoods.” New York Times, October 26. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/26/world/europe/denmark-housing. html?smid=url-share. 

Dean, M. 2002. “Liberal Government and Authoritarianism.” Economy and Society 31 (1): 37–61. 

https://doi.org/10.1080/03085140120109240.

Dean, M. 2025. The Concept of Authoritarian Governmentality Today, Global Society, 39:1, 16-35, DOI: 10.1080/13600826.2024.2362739

Larner, W. 2000. Neo-liberalism: Policy, ideology, governmentality. Studies in Political Economy, 64, 5-25. 

Lemke, Thomas. 2000. “Neoliberalismus, Staat und Selbsttechnologien. Ein kritischer Überblick über die governmentality studies.” Politische Vierteljahresschrift 41 (1): 31–47. https://doi.org/ 10.1007/s11615-000-0003-8. 

Odida, A 2022, ‘Making policy, problems, and constitutions: decolonising the UN policy of constitutional assistance’, PhD thesis, University College London, London.

Rose, Nikolas. 2017. “Still ‘Like Birds on the Wire’? Freedom After Neoliberalism.” Economy and Society 46 (3–4): 303–323. https://doi.org/10.1080/03085147.2017.1377947. 

Rose, Nikolas, Pat O’Malley, and Mariana Valverde. 2006. “Governmentality.” Annual Review of Law and Social Science 2 (1): 83–104. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.lawsocsci.2.081805. 105900. 

Simon, J. 2025a. ‘After Neoliberalism’ and on the ‘Dark Side’? Governmentality and Counter-Conduct in Times of Growing Autocratisation, Global Society, 39:1, 1-15, DOI: 10.1080/13600826.2024.2401552 

Simon, J. 2025b. An Analytics of Far-Right Populist Contestation and the Case of ‘Awakened Mothers’ in US Public Education and Beyond, Global Society, DOI: 10.1080/13600826.2025.2468946 

Sjölander-Lindqvist, A, Larsson, S, Fava, N, Gillberg, N, Marcianò, C & Cinque, S 2020, ‘Communicating about COVID-19 in four European countries: similarities and differences in national discourses in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden’, Frontiers in Communication, vol. 5, article 593325, DOI:10.3389/fcomm.2020.593325.

Triantafillou, Peter. 2017. “Governmentality.” In Handbook on Theories of Governance, edited by Christopher K. Ansell and Jacob Torfing, 378–388. Cheltenham: Edward Elga Yassine, L 2019, ‘Governing through “neutrality”: a poststructural analysis of risk assessment in the NSW juvenile justice system’, PhD thesis, University of Sydney, Sydney, https://hdl.handle.net/2123/21228.