Power. A gets B to do something that he or she would not otherwise do. Does this sum up the essence of political power?

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Intro to Politics – Essay 1 (Term 2 Week 5)

‘A gets B to do something that he or she would not otherwise do’. Does this sum up the essence of political power?

As a whole, this statement sufficiently provides an overarching view of political power in the presence of conflict. However, according to Steven Lukes, we need to acknowledge the existence of various other conceptions of political power, especially in the absence of a direct conflict of interest. This essay will attempt to use his arguments to demonstrate the nuances that underpin political power and will contextualize using the various case studies ranging from the politics in China to Latin America and USA. It will also examine the political paradigms from a micro scale, within a constituency for example to the macro scale, on the global arena. Ultimately it will demonstrate that political power has evolved in accordance to the sophistication of the population and this has demanded radical shifts in the way those in power govern them. This of course is not to say that the above said view of political power is defunct, on the other hand, it is still widely enforced and rather the method in which it is achieved has evolved greatly in certain parts of the world.

Analysis of Definition Provided

Before approaching the concept of political power in depth, a brief analysis of the statement given is in order. The definition is broad enough that it highlights the basic idea of political power in successfully getting someone to achieve what one party ones, and it enables one to look into a more comprehensive conception of power. Firstly, we will be prompted to consider the means in which this is achieved either via coercion, cooption or manipulation and influence. Consequently we will seek to identify these forms of power within existing regimes across the world from seeing correlations of force in military regimes to the insidious manipulation in North Korea evident to us and perhaps even within our own democratic regimes, a degree of influence and manipulation. Thus it enables us to question the legitimacy, authority and livelihood of political power across various levels.

Underlying Conception of Power

Moving on to defining power, we will now consider the motivations, which drive political power:

Mills interprets power 'exclusively as a facility for getting what one group, the holders of power, wants by preventing another group, the "outs" from getting what it wants'. This is in conflict with Parsons, who disputes this view demanding power to be seen as a facility for the performance of function in and on behalf of the society as a system. (Parsons 1957: 139).

According to Parsons, “Power is the generalised capacity to secure the performance of binding obligations by units in a system of collective organisation when the obligations are legitimised its the reference to their bearing on collective goals and where in case of recalcitrance there is a presumption of enforcement by negative situational sanctions =whatever the actual agency of that enforcement (p.308)”

Parsons thus ties power to authority, consensus and the pursuit of collective goals and dissociates it from conflicts of interest and in particular, from coercion and force. Thus power depends on the 'institutionalisation of authority' (p. 331) and is 'conceived as a generalised medium of mobilising commitments or obligation for effective collective action'. By contrast the threat of coercive measures or of compulsion without legitimation or justification should not properly be called the use of power at all (p.331)

In continuing this argument, Arendt’s use of political institutions affirms this view:

 “All political institutions are manifestation and materialisation's of power they petrify and decay as soon as the living power of the people ceases to uphold them. This is what Madison meant when he said 'all governments rest on opinion' a word no less true for the various forms of monarchy than for democracies (p.41)

In this perspective power (power of the people) dissociated from the command-obedience relationship (p.40) and the business of dominion (.44). Power is consensual, needs no justification being inherent in the very existence of political communities, what it does need is legitimacy.

Violence unlike power contrast is instrumental, a means to an end, but never will it be legitimate. Power far from being a means to an end is actually the very condition enabling a group of people to think and act in terms of the means-end category (p.51)

Power and violence are opposites; where the one rules absolutely, the other is absent. Violence appears where power is in jeopardy, but left to its own course it ends in power's disappearance (p.56) - Arendt (1970)

Giddens: Authoritative decisions very often do serve sectional interests and that the most radical conflicts in society stems from struggles for power… power as expressing a relation between individuals and groups, toward seeing power as a 'system property'. That collective goals or even the values that lie behind them, may be the outcome of a negotiated order built on conflicts between parties holding differential power is ignored, since for Parsons power assumes the prior existence of collective goals (Giddens 1968: 265)

Thus, power has been defined as the capacity to do things and obtaining the outcomes one desire. Power means having the capabilities to affect others behaviours to make those things happen. Specifically, power is the ability to influence the behavior of others to get the outcomes one wants hence it is the ability to make or be able to receive any change; power is capacity, potentiality not actuality. (LOCKE)

On the other hand, Dahl and Polsby claim that power demands the need for success of decision-making. To be powerful is to win, to prevail over others in conflict. Power with resources, wealth status/military forces and power/weapon. What Lukes seeks to do is to combine the two and create a form of power in which successful prevalence is achieved through potentiality, without overt actions.

For political power, we need to acknowledge that there are a variety of ways in which those in power achieve it. Evidently history has shown that much of the successes of major countries has been accorded to masses of physical might be it from the ancient conceptions of monarchy from the time of the ancients to colonialisation and now democratic elections. In other words, different forms of powers highlight different regimes.

There are those that go by force thus falling into the first face of power, those that shape the structure of society in which they govern through the “carrot and stick” method to a more insidious form of influence or “thought-control” as championed by Steven Lukes. His views are supported by Bertrand Russell who dictates that power relationships amongst human beings can be classified by the manner of influencing individuals, or by the type of organization involved in the discussion. An individual may be influenced: (a) by direct physical power over his body, e.g. when he is imprisoned or killed; (b) by rewards and punishments as inducements e.g. in giving or withholding employment; (c) by influence on opinion i.e. propaganda in its broadest sense.         

Ultimately, the goal of political power is the same, to achieve the ends that the group aiming for power desires, be it global hegemony, economic preponderance or military infallibility. The focus, based on definition now is to explore how far particular approaches of achieving such ends can last and hence what type of political power might loom as predominant in the future of the global arena.

Power and Interests

Underlying the basis of power is the relationship between the agent and the one being acted upon. The variable that will undergo change is the interests or desires of the one in which action is being exerted on. This can be defined as interests or naturally imbued desires. There are various arguments in which political power is accepted by the one being subjugated and hence it would mean the different lifespans of the varying political powers.

Reformists deplore that not everyone's wants are given equal weight by the political system. The radical maintains that people's wants may themselves be a product of a system which works against their interests and in such cases relates the latter to what they would want and prefer were they able to make the choice. And the liberal takes people as they are and applies want-regarding principles to them relating their interest to what they actually want or prefer. For the purpose of this essay, it will tend towards the view of the radical in paving an answer for the future of political power paradigms.

Real Interests and False Consciousness

Marxists claim that power is, at root, class power: the dominant ideology thesis leaves no room for doubt that those subject to ideological domination are deflected from the perception and pursuit of their own class interests by hegemonic forms of thought. Hegemony for Gramsci – the ideological subordination of the working class by the bourgeoisie, which enables it to rule by consent.

Ideological power to transform and subvert common sense.

How can we speak of real interests, given that people’s interests are many conflicting and of different kinds – where is one’s real interest if one’s well-being interest conflicts with one’s welfare interest in meeting a basic need – fundamentalist Christian believers refuse life-saving medical interventions on the grounds that they violate God’s will and will damn them eternally?

False consciousness is an expression that carries a heavy weight of unwelcome historical baggage. Not to the arrogant assertion of a privileged access to truths presumed unavailable to others, but rather to a cognitive power of considerable significance and scope: namely, the power to mislead. One-Dimensional Man: Marcuse wrote that an increasingly all-embracing “one-dimensional thought” is systematically promoted by the makers of politics and their purveyors of mass information. Their universe of discourse is populatied by self-validating hypotheses which, incessantly and monopolistically repeated, become hypnotic definitions or dictations (Marcuse 1964: 14)

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Power’s third dimension is always focused on particular domains of experience and is never, xcept in fictionally dystopias, more than partially effective. IT would be simplistic to suppose that willing and unwilling compliance to domination are mutually exclusive: one can consent to power and resent the mode of its exercise. Furthermore, internalized illusions are entirely compatible with a highly rational and clear-eyed approach to living with them.

The Three Dimensions of Power

We will now address Lukes denominations of power in three dimensions, which critiques outwardly the statement presented above.

One-Dimensional View

A has power over B to the ...

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