FOUCAULT explicitly denies that he has constructed a theory of power, arguing that power cannot

be captured in a systematic set of related concepts conceived in advance of its application. He

prefers, therefore, to think in terms of an "analytics of power in which power is identified only in the
instances of its exercise. Power for Foucault is, above all, productive. This analysis is opposed to
what he calls the "juridico-discursive" model in which power is seen as possessed by the state.
According to Foucault, to think of power in this way is to miss how it works in institutions and
discourses across the social field. In Foucault's model, power is productive in the sense that it is
constitutive, working to produce particular types of bodies and minds in practices which remain
invisible from the point of view of the older model of power as sovereignty.

The most general sense in which power is productive for Foucault is through knowledge.
"Discourses" is the term Foucault uses for these systems of quasi-scientific knowledge. For Foucault,
"Truth is linked in a circular relation with systems of power which produce and sustain it, and to
effects of power which it induces and which extend it. "His analysis depends on examining the
precise details of historically specific knowledges and practices as they operate differently in
different institutions to produce constraining and subordinate identities. Critics are undoubtedly
right to point out that if power is everywhere, it becomes a metaphysical principle and loses all
normative and explanatory content.

Foucault's new work- In "The Subject and Power," he discusses the relationship between power
domination, and resistance in contemporary society. Slavery does not involve a relationship of
power where the slave is in chains, but rather a relation of violence. Apparently in opposition to his
previous assertions that power is everywhere and that subjects are discursively constructed,
Foucault is here committing himself to the view that the "free subject" necessarily exists prior to
discourse. Foucault also refines his analytics of power with the concepts of domination and
government in his later work.

GOVERNMENTALITY

In Foucault's later work, he nevertheless began to build up something like an "analytics of power
concerning state formation and reproduction in the West. These studies concern what he called
"governmentality." Foucault defines "government" as "the conduct of conduct," the attempt to
influence the actions of free subjects.

Foucault sees governmentality as a modern form of power, which first arose in opposition to its
competitor, the Machiavellian idea of sovereignity, in the sixteenth century. Machiavellianism was a
doctrine developed to guide the sovereign leaders of the early modern state, advising them how to
maintain peace and security. According to the advice set out in The Prince, the principalities of
government is the maintenance of the sovereign's rule over the territory and subjects of the state.
For its opponents, however, this type of rule is too external to the society and, therefore, too fragile
to be successful. The practices of government should rather be immanent to society, exercised over
men and things to promote health and well-being. It was from the eighteenth century onwards,
however, according to Foucault, that governmentality was increasingly established with the
development of capitalist agriculture and the redefinition of the "economy," which became
associated with "population" rather than the family, and with a range of knowledges and techniques
concerned with managing its expansion, health, and productivity.

The idea of governmentality clearly develops Foucault "analysis of power" beyond the earlier
critique of the "juridico-discursive" model of power as sovereignty. But Foucault does not seem to
be entirely clear on how we should understand state formation and development in modernity in
relation to disciplinary power. On some occasions he continued to write in his later work as if he
understood the state as largely irrelevant to disciplinary power. On other occasions, however,
Foucault seems to suggest that the state is not irrelevant to the exercise of disciplinary power:
government through state institutions is an important aspect of strategies of "governmentality."

One of the most influential developments of Foucauldian ideas of governmentality" has been the
analysis of neo-liberalism. For Foucauldian. liberalism is not a political theory, or an ideology, but
rather a practice: "a "way of doing things" oriented towards objectives and regulating itself by
means of a sustained reflection". Neo liberalism, by extension, is a practice, dominant in the West by
the end of the twentieth century and to a certain extent spread across the world that is informed by
the aim of "rolling back the frontiers of the state, which neo-liberals theories as having intruded too
far into the private sphere of the economy. For neo-liberals, the scope of state activities must be
reduced in order to stimulate and maintain markets to create more wealth, but also for the sake of
individual freedom, which is undermined by the extension of law and bureaucracy into private lives.

Neo-liberal practice has, for example, gone so far as to marketize the prison service, turning over
practices of punishment which, as Nikolas Rose points out, were previously considered essential to
state sovereignty. In practice, Foucauldian argue that neo-liberalism has resulted in the creation of a
certain kind of individual, who understands her/himself to be free to choose in the market, but who
must then exercise choice continuously and correctly if s/he is not to suffer the stigma and material
consequences of failing to make use of market forces, whether in education, personal development,
work, or any other lifestyle choice.

The direct influence Foucault's work has had on contemporary political sociology cannot be
overestimated. His ideas on discipline, the interrelation of knowledge and power, and more recently
on governmentality, have directed attention toward the exercise of power in practices and the
formation of identities across the social field.

However, a Foucauldian analytics of power is not all that is needed to understand the range of
engagements with hierarchy and exclusion that concern contemporary political sociologists. And the
way in which con temporary political sociology sees power and politics as significant across the social
field is not solely due to the influence of Foucault's work. Indeed Foucault's "analytics of power" is
limited with respect to what we might call "positive" political projects, those that make demands for
equality. Whilst, as we noted above, Foucault's critique of power may have become more nuanced
as he introduced the idea of the "free subject," reflexive in relation to concrete possibilities of action
it is very difficult to envisage any kind of worthwhile politics other than resistance from within a
Foucauldian framework.

In the Foucauldian framework, all "positive" demands that are realized through collective
enforcement involve the solidifying of power into domination to a greater or lesser extent; it is only
through resistance that power remains fluid. It is unsurprising in this respect that Foucault himself
became more interested in ethics than in politics.

PASTORAL POWER- This word designates a very special form of power. It is a form of power whose
ultimate aim is to assure individual salvation in the next world. Pastoral power is not merely a form
of power that commands; it must also be prepared to sacrifice itself for the life and salvation of the
flock. Finally, this form of power cannot be exercised without knowing the inside of people's minds,
without exploring their souls.

NEW PASTORAL POWER- Concurrently, the officials of pastoral power increased. It was also
exercised by complex structures such as medicine, which included private initiatives with the sale of
services on market economy principles but also included public institutions such as hospitals. Thus,
the analysis of power relations demands that a certain number of points be established:

1. The system of differentiations that permits one to act upon the actions of others.

2. The types of objectives pursued by those who act upon the actions of others: maintenance of
privileges, accumulation of profits.

3. Instrumental modes: whether power is exercised by the threat of arms, by the effects of speech,
by rules, explicit or not, fixed or modifiable, with or without the material means of enforcement.

4. Forms of institutionalization and the degrees of rationalization.

IN CONCLUSION- One sees why the analysis of power relations within a society cannot be reduced to
the study of a series of institutions or even to the study of all those institutions that would merit the
name "political." It is certain that, in contemporary societies, the state is not simply one of the forms
of specific situations of the exercise of power-even if it is the most important but that, in a certain
way, all other forms of power relation must refer to it.