ABSTRACT
The state, wrote Nietzsche, is the coldest of all cold monsters ... (it) lies in allianguages of good and evil; and whatever its says, it lies - and whatever it has, it has stolen ... only there, where the state ceases, does the man who is not superfluous begin ... I
174 Nikolas Rose and Peter Mi/Zer
But the political vocabulary structured by oppositions between state and civil society, public and private, government and market, coercion and consent, sovereignty and autonomy and the like, does not adequately characterise the diverse ways in which rule is exercised in advanced liberal democracies. Political power is exercised today through a profusion of shifting alliances between diverse authorities in projects to govern a multitude of facets of economic activity, social life and individual conduct. Power is not so much a matter of imposing constraints upon citizens as of'making up' citizens capable ofbearing a kind of regulated freedom. Personal autonomy is not the antithesis of political power, but a key term in its exercise, the more so because most individuals are not merely the subjects of power but playa part in its operations.
