Environmental governmentality: The case of Canada's green plan

Abstract

Traditionally, the study of public policy focused on the consequential effectiveness of a policy but ignored the broader historical conditions of the emergence of ‘policy’ and its effects on individuals’ subjectivity. The concept of ‘governmentality’ developed by Michel Foucault (1926–84) allows us to address these points. ‘Governmentality’ encapsulates three components of the deployment of power in Europe since the sixteenth century: institutional centralisation around the state; intensification of the effects of power on the entire social body (individual and collective subjectivity); and the emergence of new forms of knowledge ('power/ knowledge'). This article argues that the concept of governmentality is relevant to the study of environmental policy. A study of Canada's Green Plan shows that it constitutes a clear attempt to discipline the population by instilling new norms of environmental conduct and, thus, constructs a new subjectivity based on ‘environmental citizenship’. An interpretation of the Green Plan as a ‘failure’ only makes sense within a narrower and traditional understanding of policy. On the contrary, the Green Plan is an example of resistance against other prevalent kinds of subjectification ‐ such as the market ‐ and could constitute one of the conditions for the emergence of a green ‘self with all the dangers that this entails.