The Legal Production of Conflict Law, Security, and Governmentality in the No TAV and No TAP Cases

Abstract

Over the last decades, conflicts surrounding the implementation of large-scale infrastructural and energy projects have made visible significant transformations in the relationship between law, power, and dissent. Drawing on the analysis of the No TAV movement in Val di Susa and the No TAP movement in Apulia, this article examines the role of legal, administrative, and security practices in shaping specific forms of governing conflict. Building on Michel Foucault’s genealogical perspective and his analysis of the Nu-pieds Sedition developed in Penal Theories and Institutions , the article approaches the event as an analytical entry point to investigate the ways in which power redefines its techniques of intervention when confronted with persistent forms of collective opposition. The analysis highlights a progressive shift from the centrality of criminal law towards a broader articulation of administrative, preventive, and security dispositifs aimed at regulating the conditions under which conflict takes shape. From this perspective, law emerges as a technique of government that participates in defining the boundaries of political legitimacy and transforming the relations between governing and governed subjects. The cases analysed thus shed light on how counter-conducts trigger a reorganization of the modalities through which power is exercised, revealing the process through which specific legal techniques for governing conflict are formed, transformed, and progressively sedimented.