Power, Governance, The Population: A Possible Archeology of Social Policy by Michel Foucault

Abstract

The article discusses the main ideas of Michel Foucault about the state governance: the concepts of disciplinary institutions, individualizing power, the population, police, «governmentality» as representations about and technologies of the governance. The transition to a new political rationality, which starts in the West since the late 16th century, requires new forms of organization of the State and new technologies of governance including the surveillance over the family as a reserve of population as well as control over so called social pathologies. A study of such main strategies of the State governance of the population can be considered as a possible archeology of social policy.