neoliberal governmentality

is a form of post-welfare state politics in which the state outsources the responsibility for ensuring the 'well-being' of the population.

Neoliberal governmentality is a particular form of post-welfare state politics in which the state essentially outsources the responsibility for ensuring the 'well-being' of the population.

is rooted in entrepreneurial values such as competitiveness, self-interest, and decentralization, and prizes individual empowerment, self-regulating free market, efforts to create 'surplus', rational choice models.

certain modes of governance based on particular premises, logics, and power relations. A neoliberal governmentality is rooted in entrepreneurial values such as competitiveness, self-interest, and decentralization. It celebrates individual empowerment and the devolution of central state power to smaller localized units. Such a neoliberal mode of governance adopts the self-regulating free market as the model for proper government. Rather than operating along more traditional lines of pursuing the public good (rather than profits) by enhancing civil society and social justice, neoliberals call for the employment of governmental technologies that are taken from the world of business and commerce: mandatory development of 'strategic plans' and 'risk-management' schemes oriented toward the creation of 'surpluses'... cost-benefit analyses and other efficiency calculations... the shrinking of political governance (so-called 'best-practice governance')... the setting of quantitative targets... the close monitoring of outcomes... the creation of highly individualized, performance-based work plans... and the introduction of 'rational choice' models that internalize and thus normalize market-oriented behaviour. Neoliberal modes of governance encourage the transformation of bureaucratic mentalities into entrepreneurial identities where government workers see themselves no longer as public servants and guardians of a qualitatively defined 'public good' but as self-interested actors responsible to the market and contributing to the monetary success of slimmed-down state 'enterprises'. (Steger 2010: 12-3)

neoliberal governmentality, n.Definitions

neoliberal governmentality