ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that failure and denial are crucial to the responsibilisation process whereby different actors are encouraged to govern themselves in the most appropriate ways. The wholesale blurring of the bigger picture leads to an increasing turn to micro-level activity where individual actors are encouraged to behave in such a way as to better cope with the uncertainty. The presentation of the bigger picture as blurred leads not to a lessening of regulation, but to an enhancement of governmentality. In domestic cases of governmentality such as resilience strategy in the United Kingdom, this might be said to enhance micro regulation at the individual and local level. Double failure allows the international community to deny responsibility for continued failure, while continued failure allows for a focus back upon the state as the main body responsible for dealing with the resilience and wellbeing of populations.
