I would suggest that a national element in Foucault's late turn to Austrian style liberalism is the nature of the French state and society. It has long been dirigiste and etatiste in comparison to most other societies and still is, with one of the strongest ongoing systems of indicative planning around. Hayek even identified Saint-Simon as the ultimate father of rational constructivist planning and social engineering, of which Hayek disapproved. Indeed, there is a direct line from Saint-Simon to the modern plannificateurs of the French economy, a trend deeply connected to the rationalist Cartesian tradition, as well as the policy tradition handed down from Colbert under Louis XIV. Thus, there has been a countertendency of French liberals to tend to go whole hog in reaction to all of this. Laissez-faire is a French term (as is bureau), and in Jean-Baptiste Say one has a real poster boy of pure classical liberalism with a libertarian bent. Barkley Rosser -- Rosser Jr, John Barkley [EMAIL PROTECTED]