The literature on governmentality portrays governance as composed of various technologies that have arisen as liberalism passed through welfarism into neoliberalism. Nineteenth century liberalism was less a rejection of state intervention than a positive political rationality by which to manage complex societies and economies. Liberalism tried to produce its preferred outcomes through interactions in society and the economy. Welfare states arose because of changes in this liberalism. Modern industrial society produced new social problems, and liberalism then tried to guarantee the security of the economy and state by responding to these social problems with new technologies that collectively formed the welfare state. In this view, public housing, unemployment insurance, and nationalized health care appear as technologies of power that normalize subjects. Finally neoliberalism arose as a response to problems in welfarism. The welfare state and Keynesianism seemed unproductive interferences with market relations, and new rationalities arose to correct them. Neoliberalism consists of governmental technologies that actively foster competitive market relations, simultaneously shifting responsibility to the individual and increasing social efficiency. Under neoliberalism ‘it was the responsibility of political government to actively create the conditions within which entrepreneurial and competitive conduct is possible’ (Barry, Osborne and Rose 1996: 10).