Liberal governance is a highway code, neither laissez-faire nor planning

Evidence

Being liberal is not like the ‘Manchester’ attitude, allowing vehicles to circulate in any direction, according to whim, with the consequence of endless congestion and accidents; and it is not that ofthe ‘planners,’ fixing the hours of use and routes to be followed for every vehicle: it means imposing a Highway Code, while accepting that at a time of faster means of transport this code will not necessarily be the saine as in the time of stagecoaches. — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 889

Categorization

• CANDY: The roadway metaphor is a crisp, quotable way to explain the difference between classical liberalism, planning, and the liberal legal order.
• XREF: Foucault’s later use of ‘governmentality’ and traffic metaphors for statecraft resonates here.