ABSTRACT

Informed by the works of Michel Foucault, the chapter investigates the rise of the governmentality discourse, as well as the deployment of accounting, accountability and disciplinary practices in the 16th-century Italian feudal State of Abruzzo. Importantly, the analyzed 1571 Margaret of Austria’s Ordinances can be considered as an early example of the “notable series of political treatises that are no longer exactly ‘advice to the prince’, and not yet ‘treatises of political science’, but are instead presented as works on the ‘art of government’ ” (Foucault, 1991, p. 87), thereby contributing to our understanding of the origin of governmentality ideas in a neglected time-space intersection. In a related manner, the chapter unveils the interrelations among accounting, distributive properties and novel incentive schemes, thereby complementing and extending prior governmentality literature.