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GovernmentalityTowards a Foucauldian Framework for the Study of IGOsDepartment of International Relations and European Studies, Central European University, merling{at}ceu.hu In this article I draw on the later work of Michel Foucault to elaborate a governmentality framework for the study of international governmental organizations (IGOs). The main ‘value added’ of the proposed framework is that it brings into focus the micro-domain of power relations, thereby highlighting what mainline IGO studies fail to thematize. IGOs exercise a molecular form of power that evades and undermines the material, juridical and diplomatic limitations on their influence. They are important sites in the non-sovereign, microphysical workings of power that shape territorialized populations in unspectacular ways. In short, I argue that our understanding of IGOs remains incomplete if we do not pay attention to the effects of domination generated by their everyday governance tasks and good works. I develop this argument through a brief engagement with an innovative strand of IGO studies: research on international socialization, which is empirically illustrated through a brief exploration of the induction by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe of post-socialist countries into its embryonic security community.
Key Words: biopolitics • discipline • Foucault • governmentality • OSCE • political technologies • political rationalities • power • security community • socialization
Cooperation and Conflict, Vol. 38, No. 4,
361-384 (2003) This article has been cited by other articles:
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