Political economy originally meant governing economically, not economy as government’s model.

Evidence

Tim Mitchell notes that the term “political economy” originally referred to an economical manner of governing. This suggests not that the economy becomes the model for government, but rather that governments can be economical, efficient, lean, qua governments. The difference is vast. — Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos, 495

Categorization

• DEFINE: Recovers the original sense of ‘political economy’ as economizing governance, a crucial etymological point for the reader charting how neoliberal rationality inverts this meaning.
• XREF: Directly relevant to the reader’s theorizing of how austerity ideology deploys ‘economy’ language — the shift from economy-as-adjective to economy-as-model is the move Brown critiques. — connects to: Economics is lateral to governing, not its internal rationality — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 1467; Political economy founded itself on the impossibility of an economic sovereign — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at…, 1456
• CANDY: An elegant reversal: ‘political economy’ originally meant the opposite of what it now signifies.

Broader Connections

• Political economy founded itself on the impossibility of an economic sovereign #contradicts (0.70) — Michel Foucault, The Birth of Biopolitics, 1456