Knowing Governance: The Epistemic Construction of Political Order

This book is about the making of knowledge about governance and how it shapes political action. In a sense, doing politics has always turned on knowing governance, since political action builds on a certain understanding of what it is to act politically and how to do so effectively. Those seeking power have invariably wanted to know how collective order can be built and maintained: governing implies knowledge about the world to be governed and the resources available to do so, and about the interests and dispositions of the actors involved. What is more, while knowing governance has always been key to ruling effectively, it is at the same time a principal lever for those who seek to challenge authority. Shared knowledge is a precondition of collective action and of the imagined communities of modern politics, whether nations or social movements or issue-based constituencies.