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contrast, took the same idea and instilled it with agency and parsimony by drawing on Weber’s ideal types. To put the point in a different way, the international is a political sphere increasingly de‹ned by a liberal governmental rationality. While this transformation is arguably fundamental, it does not transform politics as formally de‹ned by Morgenthau. Rather, new forms of politics are becoming more important, among them the “politics of categorizations.” The source of the centrality of categorizations—as a precondition for programs of governing—can be found in the ambiguity surrounding the “essence” of man within the episteme where liberal governmental reason operates. Helliwell and Hindess elucidate it this way. Considered as a subject that knows, man is constituted by the faculties of reason and perception and is therefore capable of autonomous action , at least in principle, while considered as an object of knowledge, man appears as the effect of external forces and stimuli. Thus the qualities of rationality and moral autonomy invoked by the rhetoric of liberal constitutionalism are seen on the one hand as representing the essence of man and on the other as the product of very particular conditions. (2002, 2; emphasis added) Inside liberalism, then, there is contingency and indeterminism with respect to how to categorize and thus also how to govern different types of populations and individuals in time and space. Political agency is thus involved in formulating and choosing who are regarded as capable of governing themselves and who are not. Helliwell and Hindess (2002, 2) argue, for example, that “modern political thought has normally taken the view that while there may be contexts in which suitable habits of self-government are able to take root, there are many more in which they are unable to do so.” In a more recent article, Barry Hindess explores how such categorization has changed over time, precisely by reference to the strengthening of liberal norms internationally. Where liberalism could once rely on the decentralized despotism of indirect rule over colonial subjects, it now has to treat most of those who it sees as being in need of considerable improvement as if they, too, like the citizens of Western states, were endowed with “the capacity to exercise rights with some moderation.” The old imperial divisions between citizens, colonial subjects, and non-citizen others has been displaced by a postimperial globalization of citizenship, and indirect rule within imperial possessions has been superseded by a less direct system in which Global Politics as Governmentality | 65 the inhabitants of the old imperial domains are governed through sovereign states of their own. . . . Indirect rule now operates, in effect, through national and international aid programs that assist, advise, and constrain the conduct of postcolonial states. (2005, 409) Today, there exists a dense network of liberal norms that shapes the identities and behavioral patterns of states. This may be seen as a global system of indirect forms of power that operates to guide, shape, and foster speci‹c types of not only states but also other polities, as well as individuals . It sets up standards of behavior for individuals and models of institutions to be implemented and followed by all good members of the international community. What appears problematic in Morgenthau’s framework is the grounding of politics, and of power, in a view of sovereignty as indivisible and foundational for the international. While such an analytical move may have been warranted at the time when Morgenthau wrote, it needs revision in light of subsequent changes in global politics. If we rede‹ne sovereignty from an unproblematic foundation for international politics to an institution whose content and signifance is historically contingent, Morgenthau ’s view of the international will have to be revised. But in doing so, we cannot draw uncritically on the writings of Foucault. We have to allow for con›ict, contestation, and agency with respect to how different societies and actors de‹ne themselves in relation to the different manifestations of a liberal governmental rationality. We have, in short, to deal with the relationship between sovereignty and liberalism. Liberalism is a decidedly universal political project. While sovereignty has been made to constitute the universal form for the institutionalization of political authority, this very universalism is what leads to a tension between universalism and sovereignty. Sovereignty is—at one and the same time—a principle that allows for particularism, for resistance to and exit from a universal liberal governmentality as well as being a main target of and vehicle for...

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