Governmentality and expertise: imagining economy after crisis

Panel convened by Amelie Kutter and Jens Maesse (University of Giessen) at the 11th Interpretive Policy Analysis conference, 5-7th July, University of Hull, UK

Abstract: Policy responses to the recent financial and economic crisis may not have induced a shift in general paradigms of economic policy and economic theory. But they reflect, for instance, a new emphasis on the provision of financial stability in central banking and revisions in the classification of risks in financial services. Within the European Union, a new legal-political architecture of joint financial and fiscal supervision is emerging, which is oriented towards ensuring macro prudence at European scale.
This panel invites contributions from economic sociology, economic policy analysis, political economy and others that use the lens of discourse analysis to explore modes of economic governance developing since the crisis. We particularly welcome contributions that focus on governmentality following Foucault or investigate how economic expert discourse has re-constituted itself. From the perspective of governmentality, the question arises how modes of liberal government and risk management are being re-articulated in adjusted rationalities, technologies and dispositives of economic and financial policy. The perspective of expert discourse, on the other hand, suggests looking into different forms of economic expert knowledge, such as economic models, ideologies, or discourses on (economic) policy formation and market performance. We invite papers that explore how these forms of knowledge are implicated in sustaining and adjusting specific modes of economic governance.