Making government liquid: shifts in governance using financialisation as a political device

The financialised character of contemporary rationalities of public governance has been the subject of increased attention within a range of disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields. With this paper we propose a particular analytical framework, focused on the notion of ‘governance devices’, for understanding the processes that underpin financialised governance and, more fundamentally, maintain the connections between markets and politics. Deploying three distinct cases, we indicate that these devices transcend divisions between the actor and the device and create a different form of agency—an assemblage. We argue that understanding such assemblages—their emergence, activity, and, frequently, their failures—opens a window on analysing the nature of contemporary forms of financialised governance as a technosocial system. In so doing we suggest that the governance devices approach can offer a way of challenging contemporary governance orthodoxies, retracing governments’ lost responsibilities and resurfacing their ‘core tasks’. <br> <b>Keywords:</b> financialisation, governance devices, translation, assemblage, linked ecologies