Bringing together empirical research on the government of economic, social and personal life, the book clearly demonstrates the importance of analysing these as conjoint phenomena rather than separate domains, and questions some cherished boundaries between disciplines and topic areas.

A majestic narrative reckoning with the forces that have shaped the nature and destiny of the world’s governing institutions The story of global cooperation is a tale of dreamers goading us to find common cause in remedying humanity’s worst problems. But international institutions are also tools for the powers that be to advance their own interests. Mark Mazower’s Governing the World tells the epic, two-hundred-year story of that inevitable tension—the unstable and often surprising alchemy between ideas and power. From the rubble of the Napoleonic empire in the nineteenth century through the birth of the League of Nations and the United Nations in the twentieth century to the dominance of global finance at the turn of the millennium, Mazower masterfully explores the current era of international life as Western dominance wanes and a new global balance of powers emerges.

Debates about the role and nature of the state are at the heart of modern politics. However, the state itself remains notoriously difficult to define, and the term is subject to a range of different interpretations. In this book, distinguished state theorist Bob Jessop provides a critical introduction to the state as both a concept and a reality. He lucidly guides readers through all the major accounts of the state, and examines competing efforts to relate the state to other features of social organization. Essential themes in the analysis of the state are explored in full, including state formation, periodization, the re-scaling of the state and the state's future. Throughout, Jessop clearly defines key terms, from hegemony and coercion to government and governance. He also analyses what we mean when we speak about 'normal' and 'exceptional' states, and states that are 'failed' or 'rogue'. Combining an accessible style with expert sensitivity to the complexities of the state, this short introduction will be core reading for students and scholars of politics and sociology, as well as anyone interested in the changing role of the state in contemporary societies.

Based on Foucault's 1978 and 1979 lectures on rationalities of government, this work examines the art or activity of government and the different ways in which it has been made thinkable and practicable. There are also contributions of other scholars exploring modern manifestations of government.

Michel Foucault's death in 1984 coincided with the fading away of the hopes for social transformation that characterized the postwar period. In the decades following his death, neoliberalism has triumphed and attacks on social rights have become increasingly bold. If Foucault was not a direct witness of these years, his work on neoliberalism is nonetheless prescient: the question of liberalism occupies an important place in his last works. Since his death, Foucault's conceptual apparatus has acquired a central, even dominant position for a substantial segment of the world's intellectual left. However, as the contributions to this volume demonstrate, Foucault's attitude towards neoliberalism was at least equivocal. Far from leading an intellectual struggle against free market orthodoxy, Foucault seems in many ways to endorse it. How is one to understand his radical critique of the welfare state, understood as an instrument of biopower? Or his support for the pandering anti-Marxism of the so-called new philosophers? Is it possible that Foucault was seduced by neoliberalism? This question is not merely of biographical interest: it forces us to confront more generally the mutations of the left since May 1968, the disillusionment of the years that followed and the profound transformations in the French intellectual field over the past thirty years. To understand the 1980s and the neoliberal triumph is to explore the most ambiguous corners of the intellectual left through one of its most important figures.

Today, our personal and emotional lives have become the object and target of psychologists, therapists and other professionals. This book examines the birth of these engineers of the human soul' and their influence upon our society.

Tackles one of the most enduring and contentious issues of positive political economy: common pool resource management.