Bates College Journal of Political Studies
Abstract
This article examines addiction care as a form of moral governance through a comparative anthropological analysis of the United States and the Netherlands. Drawing on a Foucauldian theory of biopolitics alongside this study argues that approaches to addiction treatment reveal how states differentially value life, citizenship, and vulnerability. Joan Tronto's relational definition of ethical care is used to move beyond a solely moral context, towards an ethical understanding of both caretakers and those who require care. In the United States, addiction policy has historically functioned as a punitive and moralizing project, shaped by racialized drug criminalization, neoliberal ideals of individual responsibility, and abstinence-based models of care. These frameworks render access to care conditional upon moral rehabilitation, reinforcing stigma, shame, and necropolitical ideals that mark people who use drugs as disposable. By contrast, the Netherlands has developed a pragmatic, health-centered model grounded in harm reduction, opioid substitution therapy, and supervised consumption–treating care as a public right rather than a reward for compliance. Through historical and theoretical comparison, the article demonstrates how addiction care operates as a biopolitical dispositif that produces distinct forms of subjectivity, citizenship, and trust in public institutions. The analysis further situates these divergent models within contemporary crises of public health legitimacy, highlighting how moralized governance in the United States exacerbates distrust and exclusion, while the Dutch approach sustains institutional trust through the prioritization of life and social stability. Ultimately, the article contends that addiction policy offers a critical lens for evaluating the ethical foundations of governance and the politics of care in modern states.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Bagga, Kiren K.
(2026)
"Governing Addiction: An Anthropological Comparison of Care in the United States and the Netherlands,"
Bates College Journal of Political Studies: Vol. 3:
Iss.
1, Article 17.
Available at:
https://scarab.bates.edu/bjps/vol3/iss1/17
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