“Dangerous Government”

• Author: Billie Sandberg,Thomas J. Catlaw
• DOI: 10.1177/0095399712461912
• Date: 01 April 2014
• Published date: 01 April 2014
• Subject Matter: Articles

Administration & Society

2014, Vol. 46(3) 223 –254

© 2012 SAGE Publications

DOI: 10.1177/0095399712461912

aas.sagepub.com

461912AAS46310.1177/0095399712461912A

dministration & SocietyCatlaw and Sandberg

© 2012 SAGE Publications

1Arizona State University, Phoenix, USA

2Portland State University, OR, USA

Corresponding Author:

Thomas J. Catlaw, School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University, 411 North Central Avenue,

Suite 400, Mail Code 3720, Phoenix, AZ 85004-0687, USA.

Email: thomas.catlaw@asu.edu

“Dangerous Government”:

Info-Liberalism, Active

Citizenship, and the Open

Government Directive

Thomas J. Catlaw1 and Billie Sandberg2

Abstract

There has been much debate about the change Barack Obama represents.

This article considers this question by using Michel Foucault’s concept of

governmentality to explore the underlying governmental rationality of his ad-

ministration’s policies and management practices. Obama’s governmentality

is examined via the Open Government Directive, arguably the central ini-

tiative of the administration. The article concludes that this governmental-

ity may be viewed as a mutation within neoliberalism, which the authors

call info-liberalism—one that deploys a novel, integrative conception of social

government. Info-liberalism is examined in conjunction with the contempo-

rary usage of the term governance to analyze more broadly the dynamics of

government and citizen participation today.

Keywords

open government, Obama, governmentality, neoliberalism, governance,

information, social government, entrepreneurialism, active citizenship

Introduction

No sooner had the last echoes of campaign declarations of “change we can

believe” faded than many political observers and citizens began to wonder

Article

224 Administration & Society 46(3)

about precisely what kind of change Barack Obama represented and, more

pointedly, whether any “real” change was on its way. Immediate criticisms

were made of many of Obama’s cabinet appointments, especially his eco-

nomic team, whose ranks included prominent members of the shadowy cast

(e.g., Lawrence Summers and Timothy Geitner) who had overseen and

endorsed now-discredited financial policies. Criticisms continue both from

the political Left and the Right, though they are driven by widely differing

assessments of what constitutes “change.” Regarding Obama’s broad eco-

nomic agenda, Robert Reich (2009), for example, notes, “If you look only

at the small print, Obamanomics looks conservative. If you look at the big

picture, it’s revolutionary.” Concerning antiterrorism policies, though

Obama had committed to closing the detention and torture facilities at

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba in his first days in office, in charting the course of

the development of Obama’s antiterrorism policies, the New York Times

(Baker, 2010) observed far more continuity with his predecessor than

change. Indeed, in an ad urging the administration not to abandon its com-

mitment to trying the 9/11 suspects in civilian courts, the American Civil

Liberties Union (ACLU, 2010) portrayed Obama’s face slowly morphing

into that of George W. Bush. To take a third example, many on the political

Left view health care reform—to which Obama remained committed and had

invested significant political capital—have been gutted of its original prom-

ise and as, in the words of former presidential candidate and chair of the

Democratic National Committee, a “bailout for the insurance industry”

(Khan & Karl, 2009). For Republicans (at least rhetorically), health care

reform was rhetorically cast as being tantamount to socialism or worse.

How can we take inventory of the “change” the Obama administration’s poli-

cies and government represent? On one hand, it is tempting to take Obama’s

own self-characterizations of pragmatic, centrist incrementalism at face value—

a view endorsed by conservative columnist David Brooks (2010)—and, in

doing so, partly legitimize progressives’ criticism of Obama’s conservatism and

the claim that he is, at least in part, a “prisoner of neoliberalism” (Lind, 2009).

On the other hand, perhaps as Robert Reich and many Obama supporters hope—

and conservative critics fear—there is something revolutionary and fundamen-

tally new about Obama’s policies and approach to governing.

Rather than examine Obama’s specific policy initiatives, this article

attempts to clarify this question by exploring whether the Obama administra-

tion’s conception of “who can govern1 . . . what governing is . . . what or who

is governed . . .” (Gordon, 1991, p. 3) is distinctive from the current way of

thinking about the nature of government. More specifically, we explore

whether the Obama administration is asserting a “governing rationality” or,

Catlaw and Sandberg 225

in the terms of philosopher and historian Michel Foucault, governmentality,

which diverges from the current dominant governmentality of neoliberalism

and its single-minded emphasis on governing according to the logic and

values of the market. To this end, we examine the administration’s Open

Government Directive (OGD) or Initiative, which declares a commitment to

a Government that is “transparent, participatory, and collaborative.”

The OGD is significant and central to the question of change for at least

two reasons. First, as among the first acts of the new president, it is of obvi-

ous import to the administration and is in many ways a signature element

both in Obama’s approach to governing and also in marking his distance from

the Bush presidency. Second, the Directive aspires to a far-reaching and pro-

found reconstitution of the relationships not only between Government, the

citizenry, and knowledge but also among Government agencies and programs

themselves. In this, it is more fundamental than specific policy initiatives

because it aspires to call into question a prior conception of government,

neoliberalism (not merely the prior administration—a distinction we will

clarify below), and to reopen and propose a new answer to the question of

how both the governed and the governing shall conduct themselves and con-

stitute their relationships with one another. That is, the OGD declares itself as

a distinct break from previous ways in which we have thought about govern-

ing ourselves and others and, in doing so, seeks to open a new space for the

invention and deployment of a new regime of government2 and concomitant

“techniques, languages, grids of analysis and evaluation, forms of knowledge

and expertise” (Dean, 2010, p. 38). The continuities and discontinuities from

a neoliberal governmentality are what we seek to explore in this article.

We first provide a broad overview of how Michel Foucault understands

government and governmentality and call particular attention to what Barbara

Cruikshank (1999) calls “technologies of citizenship,” or the ways in which

particular governmentalities and regimes of government seek to create and

mobilize forms of active citizenship and make use of individual agency in its

governing strategy. For reasons discussed below, we are particularly interested

in the kind of active democratic citizen required for Obama’s form of govern-

ment to succeed and whether it marks a break from the prudential, entrepre-

neurial citizen of neoliberalism (O’Malley, 1996). The second section of the

article outlines our “analytics of government” methodology, and the third sec-

tion describes the OGD and our discourse analysis/governmentality approach.

The fourth section analyzes the Directive in light of the key elements of neo-

liberalism. We conclude that this emerging governmentality is a form of or

mutation within neoliberalism—what we will call info-liberalism—insofar

as it accepts much of neoliberalism’s postwelfarist conception of society and