Michel Foucault took up this subject in his own way and pointed out the importance of what he called the ‘technical procedures’ of power – that is, the ‘instrumentation’ – as a central activity in ‘the art of governing’ (Senellart, 1995).
For Foucault, the central issue was not the democratic or authoritarian nature of the state; nor did it relate to the essence of the state or to its ideology, factors which legiti- mize or fail to legitimize it. He looked through the opposite end of the telescope, taking the view that the central issue was that of the statization of society – that is, the development of a set of concrete devices, practices through which power is exercised materially. He proposed a study of the forms of rationality that organize powers. Analysing practices, he stressed that the exercise of discipline was at least as important as con- straint. Contrary to the traditional concept of an authoritarian power functioning through handing down injunction and sanction, he proposed a disciplinary concept that was based on concrete techniques for framing individuals, allowing their behaviours to be led from a distance.
In a 1984 text, he formulated his pro- gramme for the study of governmentality as follows. This approach:
Does not revolve around the general principle of the law or the myth of power, but concerns itself with the complex and multiple practices of a ‘gov- ernmentality’ that presupposes, on the one hand, rational forms, technical procedures, instrumenta- tions through which to operate, and, on the other, strategic games that subject the power relations they are supposed to guarantee to instability and reversal. (Foucault, 1984)