Global Governmentality: Governing International Spaces Review

Global Governmentality: Governing International Spaces, edited by Wendy Larner and William Walters, was published in 2004 by Routledge and runs to 262 pages. The book engages with a series of novel concepts in global politics and is interesting in numerous ways — not least for the innovative positions it takes on a range of issues and for a writing style that makes it a valuable addition to the library of any politics specialist, as well as an accessible read for a non-specialist seeking to deepen their understanding of the contemporary world.

The book opens with an introductory section by Larner and Walters and is then organized into two parts and twelve chapters. Part One: Rethinking Key Concepts contains four chapters: (1) "Liberalism — What's in a Name?" by Barry Hindess; (2) "Nomos and the Politics of World Order" by Mitchell Dean; (3) "Global Networks, International Networks, Actor Networks" by Gavin Kendall; and (4) "The Security of Governance" by Michael Dillon.

Part Two: Problems, Practices, Assemblages, Regimes begins with chapter (5) "Governing through the Social: Representations of Poverty and Global Governmentality" by Cristina Rojas, and continues with: (6) "The International Government of Refugees" by Robyn Lui; (7) "The Clash of Governmentalities: Displacement and Return in Bosnia-Herzegovina" by Gearroid O. Tuathail and Carl Dahlman; (8) "The Political Responsibility of European Integration" by William Walters; (9) "Forms of Governance, Governmentality and the EU's Open Method of Coordination" by Roger Dale; (10) "Ethical Capitalism" by Andrew Barry; (11) "Global Benchmarking: Participating 'at a Distance' in the Globalization Economy" by Wendy Larner and Richard Le Heron; and finally (12) "Insecurity and the Dream of Targeted Governance" by Mariana Valverde and Michael Mopas.

A single look at the contents of Global Governmentality: Governing International Spaces reveals that the book is not as integrated as one might initially expect; it is, in practice, a collection of perspectives drawn from various global situations and standpoints. While this structure may reduce narrative flow and make it harder for readers to connect the arguments of one chapter to those of the next — particularly when successive chapters are written by different authors — it carries the distinct advantage of presenting the issues from multiple angles. This allows readers to form an informed and objective opinion based on the contributions of a range of researchers.

Before the main body of the book, the editors acknowledge all those who contributed to the volume. Each contributor is an established researcher, and the opening pages provide useful details on their academic backgrounds, current positions, and previous publications. Wendy Larner is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology, with specializations in globalization, gender, and governance. At the time of publication she was working on a book entitled After Neoliberalism?, and her previous work consisted primarily of articles in specialized academic journals. William Walters is an Associate Professor whose most notable earlier publication is Unemployment and Government: Genealogies of the Social. His primary areas of expertise include European Union integration, citizenship, and questions of borders, mobility, and immobility within the EU.

The introductory section previews the themes addressed in the subsequent chapters and situates the volume's novelty in its shared theoretical commitment: every contributor engages with the concept of governmentality, first introduced by Michel Foucault in 1978 and developed through lectures published in the early 1990s. As Larner and Walters put it, "Each chapter seeks to demonstrate how concepts and themes drawn from what has now become a wide-ranging debate on governmentality, often in combination with theories from other intellectual trajectories, offer new perspectives on the governing of international spaces" (Larner and Walters, 2004).

The introduction also explains the concept in its dual sense. At a generic level, governmentality refers to the involvement of representations, knowledge, and expertise in the governing process. At a more specific level, it translates into a "new way of thinking about exercising power" (Larner and Walters). The editors then survey how the term has been employed across the specialized literature, finding that, despite certain common elements, its interpretation and application vary considerably from one source to another.

Before the first chapter formally begins, Larner and Walters introduce Part One by arguing for a fresh approach to global governance — one that can respond to changes in the international environment, most notably the emerging forces of globalization.

Chapter one opens with an analogy drawn from William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet to illuminate the relationship between a concept's name and its essence. Extrapolating from Juliet's famous question, Barry Hindess identifies a direct linkage between the label "liberalism" and its historical applications in international politics, economics, and relations — specifically its cosmopolitan dimensions. To make this argument, Hindess first maps the relationship between liberalism and governance, asking what governmental role liberalism plays. His analysis yields a tension: viewing liberalism as a supra-state, cosmopolitan force makes it difficult to simultaneously regard it as a principle of everyday domestic governance. The author finds the two understandings to be, in important respects, mutually exclusive.