Michel Foucault: From Sovereignty to Governmentality

Michel Foucault famously refused to formulate a normative theory of the state, arguing instead that political analysis must "cut off the King's head." This chapter explores Foucault’s relevance to the question of state legitimacy by tracing his analytical shift from the dispersed micro-physics of disciplinary power to the macro-logic of governmentality. This Foucauldian view challenges hierarchical conceptions of state power in three key ways: it reveals governmentality as a decentralised network rather than a central command; it exposes power as productive of subjects rather than merely oppressive; and it locates counter-power in the interstices of the social order, suggesting that resistance takes diverse forms beyond the traditional revolutionary capture of the state; a kind of “infrapolitics” that operates in the shadows of official power (Scott, 2009). To illustrate these insights, the chapter outlines Foucault's "triangle of power"—Sovereignty, Discipline, and Government (especially in the form of Security/Biopolitics)—showing how the modern state justifies itself. The chapter concludes by examining Foucault’s Kantian-Nietzschean "critical attitude," arguing that his genealogical method offers a distinct mode of normative critique. By exposing the historical contingency of state rationality, Foucault provides a toolkit for counter-conduct: the critical and ethical practice of resisting the specific ways in which we are governed.