American governmentality - Michel Foucault and public administration

The governing that now pervades the developed world is so omnipresent that it seems virtually natural Administration-specific forms of rationality, authority, and participation-was, nonetheless, a development. French philosopher Michel Foucault argued that this development could be understood as ''governmentality''-a new arrangement among sovereignty, discipline, and government that made the art of governing both thinkable and practicable. This article explores the utility of French philosopher Michel Foucault's approach within the field of public administration. Reinvestigating the works of Woodrow Wilson, Frederick Winslow Taylor and Mary Parker Follett, we demonstrate that their approaches can be interpreted as establishing the basic contours of American governmentality.