Bulletin n. 3/2011
February 2012
CONTENTS
  • Section A) The theory and practise of the federal states and multi-level systems of government
  • Section B) Global governance and international organizations
  • Section C) Regional integration processes
  • Section D) Federalism as a political idea
    • Sokhi-Bulley Bal
    The Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union: A New Panopticism
    in Human Rights Law Review , Vol. 11, issue 4 ,  2011 ,  683-706
    The Fundamental Rights Agency of the European Union (FRA) is the European Union's newest, and only, human rights institution. The FRA represents a new way of speaking about rights in the European Union, using ‘governance’ language. It was not conceived as a traditional human rights monitoring body and the monitoring mission was actively abandoned in favour of an advisory one. This article examines how the FRA's governance-related role actually reveals a type of monitoring best understood as ‘surveillance’ in a critical, Foucauldian sense. In exercising surveillance tactics, the FRA represents a model of panopticism which allows it to carry out a new form of government. This is an interesting observation not only because of the implications it has for a European Union that is striving to move away from government towards governance, but also because it challenges the assumption of the FRA as a ‘beacon on fundamental rights’ and a model of apolitical progress.
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