Divided by a Common Language?

Conceptualising Power
‘That Political scientists remain divided by the common
language of power perhaps testimony to the centrality of
the concept to political analysis’
The concept of power has attracted
quite so much attention, contention
and controversy
Power specifies the sphere of the Political:
Power : Politics
Economy : Economist
‘Power is arguably the single most important
organising concept in social and political theory’

-Terrence Ball
‘For by so doing they would have to
embrace a definiton so all-encompassing
as to exclude almost nothing’
‘For there are a range of authors, many of them
seminal figures in the development of political
science as a discipline, who have sought to
define power in such a way to render it
coextensive with the political while retaining an
essentially arena definition of the latter. Chief
among these is Robert Dahl (1957,1963)’
KEY THEME

‘ like politics itself, power can be

understood in a variety of more or
less inclusive ways’
PRELIMINARIES

• ‘Faces of power’ controversy

• Power : analytical and critical
perspectives
• Foucault and the ‘microphysics’ of power
The ‘Faces of power’
controversy
‘or community studies controversy, -The nature and
definition of power’
• ‘it centers around the extent to which such
definitional questions can and should be
resolved methodologically , -in short, whether
power should be defined in such a way that it
can be measured easily.’

•Is concerned essentially with finding a definiton

of power which might be operationalised
methodologically
I. DECISION – MAKING
II.AGENDA – SETTING
III.PREFERENCE SHAPING
DECISION – MAKING: first face of power
• A classic pluralist conception of power ,
that is one-dimensional in its narrow focus on
power as decision-making and analytically
precise in unambiguously identifying what
counts, and what does count, as power relations.
• It is actor-centered in its focus on power as an
inter-personal and zero-sum phenomenon
• It implies an instrumentalist or input theory
of the state
Definitions of Power:
1. Power is understood in terms of its effects
2. Power is an attribute of individuals,
exercised in their relations with other
individuals – it is behavioral
3. Power is associated with domination or power
over – it is not so much a capacity to affect
outcomes, but to dominate others in so doing
4. Power is unproductive or zero-sum –
some gain only to the extent that others lose
out.
AGENDA-SETTING: second face of power
(Bachrach and Baratz)

• Power is janus-faced, its complex nature merely

obscured by a narrow concentration on the
decision-making process.
• Non-decision- A decision that results in the
suppression or thwarting of a latent or manifest
challenge to the values or interest of the
decision-maker
• Selection of what is and what is not subject to
the formal process of political deliberation
Critique:
• It put paid to the methodological assuredness of
the classic pluralists.
• It had been relatively simple to observe,
catalogue and analyse the formal decision-
making arena.

=non-decision making arena was simply

unresearchable
2 methodological innovations:

1) Consider the informal process of agenda-

setting within the corridors of power before
examining the formal decision-making process
itself
2) Weight issues in the decision-making process
in terms of their ‘importance’ in assessing the
real distribution of power
PREFERENCE-SHAPING: third dimension

• A route out of behaviouralist impasse

• ‘A certainly exercises power over B by getting him to
do what he would not otherwise do. But power is
also exercised when she influences or shapes B’s
very own preferences, by convincing him’
• Political power in three dimensions (Luke)
a. Decision making- strategies, struggles and practices
that characterize DM
b. Agenda-setting- the actions and inactions involved
in shaping the agenda for the DM
c. Preference-shaping- the actions and inactions
similarly implicated in the shaping of perceived
interests and political preferences
Critique:
• Distinction between subjective or perceived
interests and actual or real interests

• False consciousness- deeply condescending

conception of the social subject as an ideological
dupe that it conjures. (Rosen, 1996)
Power: Analytical and Critical
Perspective
• Lukes’ radical conception of power

• Power becomes a purely prejorative concept. The

essence of power is negative, the purpose of
critique to expose power relations as a potential
means to their elimination.
• Generates a situation in which two theorists are
ever likely to agree on what constitutes a power
relationship
Redifining power
• Power as context shaping.

• Power as Conduct-shaping.
 FOUCAULT AND
“MICROPHYSICS” OF
POWER
 What is “microphysics” of power
• Tactical and strategic rather than acquired,
preserved or possessed; not based on
humanitarian penal system nor more punish or
rehabilitate.

• Based on trajectory of subjection.

A CHALLENGE TO HABERMAS’ THEORY
• The theory of Habermas is premised upon the possibility of a
liberation or emancipation from power relations and, hence,
‘undistorted’ by relations of power and domination.

• Focault’s critical theory against Habermas’ theory is further

elaborated in his works Discipline and Punish, and History of
Sexuality.
 Discipline and punish (1977)
• Barbaric torture, drawing and execution of the regicide Robert-Francois
Damiens in the Place de Greve in Paris.
• There was a shift from repressive to disciplinary power in Leon Faucher’s
regime.
• (Young Offenders’ Institution of 1838)
• In Focault’s geneological account of the apparatuses, instrumentalities,
techniques, and conditions of functioning --- a complex and disturbing
picture is build up. From the symbolic and public sovereign’s capacity to
inflict pain and suffering it is replaced by a far more covert, invisible and
sinister capacity of a more decentered state.
• Constitute not merely the preferences but the very soul and identity of
the modern subjects.
Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon
Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon
• Panopticon is to induce to the inmate a state of conscious and
permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of
power . . . In short, the perfection of power ensures that the
individual disciplines herself.
• The body is not anymore the subject of physical repression and
mutilation however, it remains the stage upon which new
discourses and power relations are played out.
• The target is the conduct which is the body but it was mediated
in the soul.
• The soul exists permanently around, on, within the body by the
functioning of a power that is exercised on those punished.
Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon
• The structural machine created an incorporation of power
relations.
• The individual is carefully fabricated according to a whole
technique of forces and bodies; beautiful totality is not
amputated, repressed and altered by our social order.
• With that, another claim of Focault is that POWER PRODUCES
KNOWLEDGE. Power and knowledge directly imply one another.
• His attention was diverted to the motivations underlying penal
reform. (the necessity to ensure a more efficient and rationalized
legal and social field)
 critique

• It is unclear whether the effectiveness of the means of

social control is to be measured by criteria fixed by the
institutional framework of a given social order or by
criteria set by a process of increasing social control that is
independent of a specific social order.
 FOCAULT’S CLAIMS
• It is clear that for Focault, power is ubiquitous and that
consequently there is no subject position beyond or outside
power relations from which to cast a dispassionate gaze.
• Modern subjects ---- subjects of, and subjected to a
carceral and disciplinary power.
• Focault’s idea is a postmodernist since he challenges,
problematizes and disarms the ease which we might
attribute a progressive path exhibited historical tendencies
and trajectories after the fact; he also challenges our ability
to project future scenarios.