Turning the state inside out? Exploring 'left governmentality', participatory-democratic governance, and the transformation of deflated consciousness

政策改变了人们的生活，但也改变了人们。尽管保守党鼓吹“选择”和有限的国家干预，但他们的战略一直被这种洞察力所塑造。正如玛格丽特·撒切尔(Margaret Thatcher)所言：“经济学是一种方法：目的是改变人的心灵。”从购买权，到绩效工资，再到工作福利，政策被用来改变人们的物质环境和经历，从而影响他们的优先事项、行为和身份。米歇尔·福柯的“治理心态”概念有助于描述这一过程。虽然国家有强制公民的权力，但政府心态描述了一种更微妙的权力，涉及构建自愿同意。通过政策、实践和其他“治理技术”，国家鼓励主观性--了解自己和自己在世界上的机构的方式--以支持其预期的目标(2007)。现在有大量研究表明，新自由主义国家政策和其他治理技术是如何导致人口原子化的，意识形式“泄气”，集体认同感或机构意识有限(Hall，2017；Brown，2015)。正如杰里米·吉尔伯特(Jeremy Gilbert，2014)所说，这对我们解决社会面临的多重危机的能力产生了灾难性的后果。公民没有形成民主运作所需的各种集体代理人的技能或倾向，也没有合作利用集体智慧和创造力的能力。这是一种强烈的政治无能感，表现为对现状的听天由命的“不满的同意”，无论它可能是不受欢迎的。我的研究愿景是通过探索如何利用国家政策和程序来扭转新自由主义的原子化和丧失权力的影响，使新的主观性能够提供更大的个人和集体代理，为克服这个问题做出贡献。具体地说，我将探讨参与式民主作为转变公民意识的工具的局限性和潜力。这将对新出现的议程--“左翼政府心态”--做出关键贡献。受到希腊左翼激进联盟党政府问题的启发，学者们认为，我们需要探索非新自由主义的“左翼政府心态”会是什么样子(Gourgouris，2018年；Karitzis，2017)。在这些描述中，一个共同的想法是所谓的参与式民主的可取性。假设的是它对公民的变革性影响。事实上，参与式民主的支持者经常声称具有更广泛的效果，如社区凝聚力、同理心和提高信心(地方政府协会，2018年)。然而，我们实际上对参与治理如何与主体形成过程相互作用知之甚少：大多数研究探索了不同类型的问题(Norval，2007)。在这是焦点的地方，有证据表明存在不同的效应。有时，它似乎培养了个人和集体的代理，理想化的“公民-代理人”；其他时候，冷漠和丧失权力(MonTambeault，2016)。从长远来看，我将通过人种学观察、深度访谈和调查，对选定的政府举措进行研究，以探索参与如何影响公民主体性。ESRC奖学金将为实现这一目标提供重要的垫脚石。在研究期间，我将：i)将两篇论文转化为已发表的文章，建立我在相关和不发达领域(包括协商民主的物质、情感层面)的记录。(2)开展新的研究，以使我能够扩大案例研究范围，并就这一主题发表文章，确立其学术价值；3)开展量化培训；4)在网上发表文章并在会议上发言，为未来的合作建立网络，促进这一议程；5)开发应用程序，为这项研究提供资金。

Policies change people's lives, but they also change people. Despite their rhetoric of 'choice' and limited state intervention, Conservative party strategy has been shaped by this insight. As Margaret Thatcher put it: 'Economics are the method: the object is to change the heart and soul'. From Right-to-Buy, to performance-related-pay, to WorkFare, policies have been used to change peoples' material circumstances and experiences, and thereby influence their priorities, behaviours, and identities.Michel Foucault's concept of 'governmentality' is helpful to describe this process. Whilst states have the power to compel citizens, governmentality describes a subtler power, involving the construction of willing consent. Through policies, practices and other 'techniques of governance', the state encourages subjectivities - ways to understand oneself and one's agency in the world - which support its desired ends (2007). A significant body of research now shows how neoliberal state policies and other governance techniques have resulted in atomised populations, with a 'deflated' form of consciousness and limited sense of collective identity or agency (Hall, 2017; Brown, 2015). As Jeremy Gilbert (2014) has argued, this has had disastrous consequences for our ability to address the multiple crises facing society. Citizens are left without the skills or proclivities to form diverse collective agents necessary for a functioning democracy, nor the ability to collaborate to harness collective intelligence and creativity. This underlies a powerful sense of political impotence, which manifests as resigned 'disaffected consent' to the status quo, however undesirable it may be.My research vision is to contribute to overcoming this problem, through exploring how state policies and processes can be used to reverse the atomising and disempowering effects of neoliberalism, enabling new subjectivities which afford greater individual and collective agency. Specifically, I will explore thelimits and the potential of participatory-democracy as a tool to transform citizen consciousness. This will make a key contribution to the emerging agenda, 'left governmentality'. Inspired by the problems of the Syriza government in Greece, scholars have argued we need to explore what a non neoliberal, 'left governmentality' would look like (Gourgouris, 2018; Karitzis, 2017). A common idea in these accounts is the supposed desirability of participatory-democracy. Assumed are its transformative effects on citizens. Indeed, proponents of participatory-democracy often claim such wider effects as community cohesion, empathy, and raised confidence (Local Government Association, 2018). However, we actually know very little about how participation in governance interacts with processes of subject-formation: most research has explored different kinds of questions (Norval, 2007). Where this is thefocus, there is evidence of divergent effects. Sometimes, it appears to foster individual and collective agency, the idealised 'citizen-agent'; other times, apathy and disempowerment (Montambeault, 2016). In the longer term, I will research selected government initiatives, using ethnographic observation, depth interviews and surveys, to explore how participation influences citizen subjectivities. The ESRC fellowship will provide the vital stepping stone to this. During the fellowship I will:i) transform two papers into published articles, building my track-record in relevant and underdeveloped areas (including the physical, affective dimension to deliberative democracy (c.f. Machin, 2015) and the relationship between 'constituent power' and discourse);ii) conduct new research to enable me to scope out case studies and publish on this subject, establishing its scholarly merit;iii) undertake quantitative training;iv) publish online and present at conferences, to build networks for future collaboration and promote this agenda;v) develop applications to fund this research.