The aim of this article is to provide a comparative reconstruction of concepts of biopolitics as distinct ways of conceptualizing the relationship between life and power. The analysis examines the approaches of Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito and Thomas Lemke, using five criteria to compare them: the status of life as an object of politics; the dominant model of power; the historical or ontological status of biopolitics; the potential for empirical operationalization; and the capacity to account for the economic, material and infrastructural conditions of life. The central argument is that the different concepts of biopolitics exhibit distinct profiles of analytical selectivity: they achieve analytical precision by foregrounding particular dimensions of power over life, but become reductionist when this results in the systematic omission of mechanisms relevant to the problem. The comparison demonstrates that none of the perspectives discussed provides a complete analytical framework; however, their selective combination enables the conceptual foundations to be established for a biopolitics of resources.
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