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 extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do (Dahl 1957, in Bell, Edwards and Harrison Wagner (ads) 1969:80)
This first face of power is Robert Dahl’s view and falls under the pluralist view of political power. It exists in a paradigm where both A and B bear conflicts of interests resulting in a need for coercion on A’s part to change B’s point of view. This is traditionally the type of political power we associate with feudal lords and monarchs of certain generations in which overt force was used to garner submission of the people.
The first statement refers to A's capacity while the second specifies a successful attempt - difference between potential and actual power, between its possession and its exercise. The focus on observable behaviour in identifying power demonstrates the pluralists’ method in studying decision-making as their central task. Through this definition, one can conceive of 'power' - 'influence' and 'control' as serviceable synonyms. Domination, according to Spinoza also comes into play in which the power of A impedes B from living as their 'own nature and judgement dictates'
Dahl argues that identifying 'who prevails in decision making' seems the best way to determine which individuals and groups have "more" power in social life, because direct conflict between actors presents a situation most closely approximating an experimental tests of their capacities to affect outcomes (p.41)
He also maintains that one can only strictly test the hypothesis of a ruling class if there are "cases involving key political decisions in which the preferences of the hypothetical ruling elite run counter to those of any other likely group that might be suggested and in such cases the preferences of the elite regularly prevail.
Making of decisions over key or important issues as involving actual observable conflict. Note that this implication is not required by either Dahl's or Polsby's definition of power, which merely requires that A can succeed in affecting what B does. It represents an insight which this one dimensional view is unable to explain - Dahl is sensitive to the operation of power or influence in the absence of conflict; 'rough test of a persons overt or to the fact that covert influences is the frequency with which he successfully initiates an important policy over the opposition of others or vetoes policies initiated by others or initiates a policy where no opposition appears. (Dahl 1961:66)
Conflict, according to that view, is assumed to be crucial in providing an experimental test of power attributions: without it the exercise of power will, fail to show up. Conflict of interests is equivalent to a conflict of preferences.
Thus the One Dimensional view of power involves a focus on behaviour in the making of decisions on issues over which there is an observable conflict of (subjective) interests seen as express policy preferences, revealed by political participation. They fail to consider that people might actually be mistaken about, or unaware of their own interests. Hence the biggest flaw is the assumption that the 'decisions' involve 'direct, i.e. actual and observable, conflict when this factor is not completely addressed.
If we consider the historical studies of countries that were colonized, political power was exercised through force regardless of legitimation to achieve the gains. However, we see that colonialisation was unsustainable due to the condition of the world being in a state of anarchy. Without a legitimate claim on the state for example the colonialisation of Africa by the Europeans was responded with violent reactions from within such as the Ashanti battles against British invaders, 1800s; Maji Maji uprising in East Africa, 1905, with nations demanding or
In addition, consider the case of Egypt under the military rule now, and the vigorous response of its population. Only a week before the start of parliamentary elections in Egypt, Cairo has been hit by massive demonstrations (NYT) calling for an end to military rule, in place since the ouster of President Hosni Mubarak in February. Though the military-appointed civilian government has resigned, it is unclear whether the ruling military council will retain power (AP). Shibley Telhami, an expert on the Middle East, says his latest poll of Middle Eastern attitudes (PDF) shows 43 percent of Egyptians believe the military is working to reverse the gains of the revolution. He says the military maintains "a reservoir of goodwill" because Egyptians want "a powerful and leading Arab state," but multiple segments of society remain concerned about its intervention in politics. About a third of those polled said they would vote for an Islamist party, and no current presidential candidate received more than 20 percent of support.
And the issue of the constitutional amendments was the big one already. You have now multiple segments of society who are challenging the military's political power, and the opposition is coming not from one source--initially the liberals were the most aggressive in wanting the early transfer of authority to civilian control. Now you find opposition among Islamists, who organized the latest demonstrations, but you also find it among many Christians, specifically after the confrontation several weeks ago that led to the death of several Copts (LAT).
There are a number of reasons for the lack of confidence in the military. One is that a lot of people are frustrated that there has not been a transition to civilian administration sooner. They believe the military is trying to consolidate their power. Some of the military's give the military the only point of decision-making on anything related to the military establishment, thereby putting themselves above government. That is worrying a lot of people. Third, the reintroduction of the was really worrisome to a lot of the liberals. There have been a number of confrontations that have soured relations between the military and some segments of the public.
The public's concern is about the military's intervention in politics. The ultraliberals are frustrated; they want far more rapid movement toward civil control, but even many people in the center are worried. And certainly the Islamists have been worried about the way the military is moving, which was obviously evident in the demonstration on Friday that they called for.
What we see here is the effect of education and information influencing the lifespan of a particular type of political power. We will see that this becomes a trend as we progress along with the other dimensions of power.
(INTERVIEW: http://www.cfr.org/egypt/egypts-military-rule-dilemma/p26565)
2D View
Bachrach and Baratz critique this view and argue that it is restrictive and in virtue of that fact, gives a misleadingly sanguine pluralist picture of American politics. Power, they claim has two faces. The first face is that already considered, according to which 'power is totally embodied and fully reflected in "concrete decisions" or in activity bearing directly upon their making' (1970: 7)
Of course power is exercised when A participates in the making of decisions that affect B. Power is also exercised when A devotes his energies to creating/reinforcing social and political values and institutional practices that limit the scope of the political process to public consideration of only those issues which are comparatively innocuous to A. To the extent that A succeeds in doing this, B is prevented, for all practical purposes, from bringing to the fore any issues that might in their resolution be seriously detrimental to A's set of preferences. (p.7)
This conception of power involves creating an environment, which attempts to control the interests or limit the scope of interests that the other party may have.
Their central point is this: 'to the extent that a person or group - consciously or unconsciously = creates or reinforces barriers to the public airing of policy conflicts, that person or group has power' (p.8) citing Schattschneider:
All forms of political organisation have a bias in favour of the exploitation of some kinds of conflict and the suppression of others, because organisation is the mobilisation of bias. Some issues are organised into politics while others are organised out. (S, 1960:71)
A set of predominant values, beliefs, rituals and institutional procedures ('rules of the game') that operate systematically and consistently to the benefit of certain persons and groups at the expense of there. Those who benefit are placed in a preferred position to defend and promote their vested interests. More often than not, 'the status quo defenders' are a minority or elite group within the population in question. Elitism, however is neither foreordained nor omnipresent: as opponents of the war in Vietnam can readily attest, the mobilisation of bias can and frequently does benefit a clear majority (1970: 43-4)
2D in one hand refers to all forms of successful control by A over B - that is of A's securing B's compliance. Indeed they develop a whole typology (which is of great interest) of forms of such control - forms that they see as types of power in either of its two faces. On the other hand, they label one of these types 'power' - namely the securing of compliance through the threat of sanctions. - First sense is typical power and second is coercion.
Coercion exists where A secures B's compliance by the threat of deprivation, where there is 'a conflict over values or course of action between A and B' (p.24) Influence exists where A, 'without resorting to either a tacit or an overt threat of severe deprivation causes B to change his course of action (p.30). In a situation involving authority 'B complies because he recognises that A's command is reasonable in terms of his own values' - either because its content is legitimate and reasonable or because it has been arrived at through a legitimate and reasonable procedure (pp.34,37) Through Force, A achieves his objectives in the face of B's noncompliance by stripping him of the choice between compliance and non compliance. And Manipulation is thus an 'aspect' or sub-concept of force since here 'compliance is forthcoming in the absence of recognition on the complier's part either by the source or the exact nature of the demand upon him' (p.28)
Central critique: Up to a point, this conception of power is anti-behavioural; and thus unduly emphasises the importance of initiating, deciding, and vetoing' and as a result takes 'no account of the fact that power may be and often is exercised by confining the scope of decision-making to relatively "safe" issues' (p.6)
Redefining the boundaries of what is to count as a political issue. For the pluralists those boundaries are set by the political system being observed, or rather by the elites within it: as Dahl writes, 'a political issue can hardly be said to exist unless and until it commands the attention of a significant segment of the political stratum' (Dahl 1961: 92)
It is crucially important to identify 'potential issues' which non-decision making prevents from being actual. 'One that involves a genuine challenge to the resources of power or authority of those who currently dominate the process by which policy outputs in the system are determined' that is 'a demand for enduring transformation in both the manner in which values are allocated in the polity.. and the value allocation itself.' (B & B 1970: 47-8)
Both are similar in how decision-making only shows up where there is conflict. If 'there is no conflict, overt or covert, the presumption must be that there is consensus on the prevailing allocation of values, in which case non-decision making is impossible (p. 49)
B & B answer thus: the observer, must determine if those persons and groups apparently disfavoured by the mobilisation of bias have grievances, overt or covert… overt grievances are those that have already been expressed and have generated an issue within the political system, whereas covert ones are still outside the system.
Thus the two dimensional view involves a qualified critique of the behavioural focus of the first view and allows for the consideration of the ways in which decisions are prevented from being taken on potential issues over which there is an observable conflict of interests, seen as embodied in express policy preferences and sub-political grievances.
Let us take a case study from rural China in which farmers loyalties are achieved through the creation of a “carrot and stick” situation. he Chinese Communists recognized in the rural situation,and particularly in the inequalities of land ownership, the most dramatic and politically exploitable issue. They monopolized the slogan of "land to the landless," and in the minds of the peasantry they succeeded in identifying themselves as the authentic "agrar ian reformers." In China, as inRussia, the Communists successfully translated into political language the peasant's longing for the landlord's acres.
Development of the national economy, not the welfare of the peasants, was apparently uppermost in the minds of the Com munist leaders. The first article states that the purpose of the reform is that "the system of peasant land ownership shall be carried into effect inorder to set free the rural production forces, develop agricultural production, and thus pave the way forNew China's industrialization." "The basic aim of agrarian reform," a Communist leader stated, "is not purely one of relieving poor peasants. The basic reason and aim of agrarian reform stems from the demands of production."
The ideological motives of the agrarian reform, though not spelled out in the Law, were surely as important as the economic ones. Land confiscation and distribution without at the same time "liquidating" the landlords would have been a betrayal of the Communist revolution. Furthermore, the physical annihilation of the landlords was useful to the Communists in that the peasants were made to share the guilt with them. This partnership in crime" served to tie the peasantry more strongly to the Communist kite. There was, above all, the practical advantage of destroying the only alternative source of authority in the countryside. When the drive for collectivization began three years later, the village was without effective opposition.
This fiction of common interests between the collectivized peasantry and the State is likely to persist. The only alternative is freedom with its hundred schools of thought contending. As Mao knows from his brief experiment of last spring, this would give rise to a flood of criticism which, if unchecked, could weaken the regime and doom the collectives. For this reason, the rulers of Communist China, like those of Russia, will continue to treat the non-Communist countryside as if itwere an occupied satellite, carrying on in the familiar pattern "of lurches, checks, and plunges, of sharp frictions, suffering, unrest, and repression."
he key to the mystery of the world's most individualistic
peasantry submitting to a system so alien lies in the land re distribution program. The backbone of effective resistance was
broken when the Communists inaugurated the practice of divid ing and eliminating their class enemies one by one. They have
destroyed the landlord class, and they have played a cat-and mouse game with the rich peasants, to a point where, as one Com
munist leader put it, "they have been rigidly, finally and entirely
isolated." In sum, they destroyed the two groups most likely to
offer effective resistance, while courting the poor peasants and small landholder. By the time the collectivization of the village
became a reality, the opposition that could have come from the small farmers, who accounted for about 20 percent of the rural
population, was neutralized by the 70 percent of poor peasants forwhom the collectives were not altogether an unmitigated evil
?or so they may have thought at the beginning. The Government's exercise of unlimited economic controls also
served to dull the peasants' resistance. With the liquidation of
the "exploiters," the tie of the peasant with the world beyond his
village was inescapably through the Government. The peasant became completely dependent upon the Government for his sales, purchases, credit and a host of items grouped under "technical
improvements." In theory, a peasant could resist the State's em brace, but in practice the cards were stacked against him. The
choice was made for him, and in the time-honored Chinese tradi tion, he proved to be the bamboo bending with the wind rather than the tree breaking against the irresistible force.
If the Communists succeed not merely in subduing the peasants but also in gaining their support, itwill take a good deal of carrot and very little stick. Failing that, the peasant restlessness which once helped to put the Communists into power may well become a festering sore on the face of their regime.
3D View
The 3D view revamps the views of the previous 2 dimensions by focusing on three flaws:
1) Its critique of behaviourism is too qualified or too committed to behaviourism, or the study of overt 'actual behaviour' of which 'concrete decisions' in situations of conflict are seen as paradigmatic.
Giving a misleading picture of the ways in which individuals and above all, groups and institutions succeed in excluding potential issues from the political process. Decisions are consciously made by individuals between alternatives, whereas the bias of the system can be mobilised recreated and reinforced in ways that are neither consciously chosen nor the intended results of particular individuals' choices.
B&B follow the pluralists in adopting too methodologically individualist a view of power. Both follow in the steps of Max Weber for whom power was the probability of the individuals realising their wills despite the resistance of others, whereas power to control the agenda of politics and exclude potential issues cannot be adequately analysed unless it is seen as a function of collective forces and social arrangements.
There is the phenomenon of collective action, where the policy or action of a collectively (whether a group e.g. a class, or an institution, e.g. a political party or an industrial corporation) is manifest, but not attributable to particular individuals' decisions or behaviour and there is the phenomenon of 'systemic' or organisational effects, where the mobilisation of bias results as Schattschneider put it from the forms of organisation. Power they exercise cannot be simply conceptualised in terms of individuals decisions or behaviour.
Marx: Men make their own history but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it in circumstances chosen by themselves but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.
2) Association of power with observable conflict is second flaw.
Two of the types of power based on their analysis may not involve such conflict: manipulation and authority - which they concede as 'agreement based upon reason' (B&B 18970: 20) though elsewhere they speak of it as involving a 'possible conflict of values' (p.37)
Second reason is that power is not only exercised in situations of such conflict.
*A may exercise power over B by getting him to do what he does not want to do but he also exercises power over him by influencing, shaping or determining his very wants. The supreme exercise of power to get another or others to have the desires you want them to have- that is to secure their compliance by controlling their thoughts and desires.
Thought control takes many less total and more mundane forms through the control of information through the mass media and through the processes of socialisation. On one extreme end we have the example of North Korea in which information coming in and out of the country is heavily regulated and the type of propaganda almost ludicrous to the extreme such as claiming that the North KoreanConsider the massive effect the WikiLeaks scandal had on governments because once the information was released, the public realized how much their information was being filtered.
Dahl also sees the phenomenon at work under modern 'pluralist conditions': leaders, he says, 'do not merely respond to the preferences of constituencies, they shape preferences' (p.164) and again, almost the entire adult population has been subjected to some degree of indoctrination through the schools' (p.317). The concept of observable conflict being necessary ignores the most crucial point that the most effective and insidious use of power is to prevent such conflict from arising in the first place.
3) Insistence that non decision-making power only exists where there are grievances which are denied entry into the political process in the forms of issues. If the observer can uncover no grievances than he must assume there is a genuine consensus on the prevailing allocation of values. To put it another way, it is here assumed that if people feel no grievances then they have no interest that are harmed by the use of power.
The supreme and most insidious exercise of power is to prevent people, to whatever degree from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things, either because they can see or imagine no alternative to it or because they see it as natural and unchangeable, or because they value it as divinely ordained and beneficial. To assume that the absence of grievance equals genuine consensus is simply to rule out the possibility or false or manipulated consensus by definitional fiat.
In summary, the 3D view of power involves a thoroughgoing critique of the behavioural focus as too individualistic and allows for consideration of the many ways in which potential issues are kept out of politics, whether through the operation of osical forces and institutionl practices or through individuals' decisions. This moreover can occur in the absence of observable conflict. Latent conflict! Contradiction between the interest of those exercising power and the real interests of those they exclude.
This view, according to Joseph S. Nye can also be called soft power. Soft power, is the ability to get desired out comes because others want what you want. It is the ability to achieve goals through attraction rather than coercion. (Nye, 2001) It works by convincing others to follow or getting them to agree to norms and institutions that produce the desired behavior. Soft power can rest on the appeal of one's ideas or culture or the ability to set the agenda through standards and institutions that shape the preferences of others. It depends largely on the persuasiveness of the free information that an actor seeks to transmit. If a state can make its power legitimate in the eyes of others and establish international institutions that encourage others to define their interests in compatible ways, it may not need to expend as many costly traditional economic or military resources.
This is why threats like Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks are extremely dangerous to the stronghold of such states. Consider the reactions to the WikiLeaks crisis by the governments and contrast it to that of the people. As a population or the person being subjugated gets influenced by the masses especially if we consider the impact mass media and new media has had on our new generation as a consequence of globalisation – the spread of information can no longer be curtailed and hence this form of coercion cannot last.
SOFT POWER:
If we consider the case of America, it has gradually and consistently reasserted its claim on the global stage through institutions such as the UN and WTO and the WB. By creating attractive foreign policies etc. it has not only spread its realm of control but reasserted and reaffirmed its claims. Although currently its power is being contested with China, ultimately the deep rooted cultural and ideological beliefs of America have been too deeply ingrained across the globe to have it completely upheaved.
The indirect way of getting what you want without tangible threats or payoffs "second face of power" - country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries - admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness - want to follow it.
This soft power - getting others to want the outcomes that you want - co-opts people rather than coerces them
Soft power rests on the ability to shape the preferences of others
Personal level: power of attraction and seduction
Community level: get others to buy into your values
Soft power is a staple of daily democratic politics
Soft power uses a different type of currency (not force, not money) to engender cooperation - an attraction to shared values and the justness and duty of contributing tot eh achievement of those values.
Distinction between hard and soft power is the degree:
1) Command power - the ability to change what others do - can rest on coercion or inducement
2) Co-optive power - the ability to shape what others want - -can rest on the attractiveness of one's culture and values or the ability to manipulate the agenda of political choices in a manner that makes others fail to express some preferences because they seem to be too unrealistic
E.g. Americans are powerful because they can inspire the dreams and desire soy others thanks to the mastery of global images thoruhg film and television, because for these same reasons large no of students from other countries come to the US to finish their studies.
International power in three categories (E.H. Carr) - military, economic and power over opinion
Sometimes the same power resources can affect the entire spectrum of behaviour from coercion to attraction. A country that suffers economic and military decline is likely to lose not only its hard-power resources but also some of its ability to shape the international agenda and some of tis attractiveness.
Deceived by the myth of invincibility.
Soft power does not depend on hard power
sometimes countries enjoy political clout that is greater than their military and economic weight because they define their national interest to include attractive causes such as economic aid or peacemaking e.g. Norway
Michael Ignatieff: Influence derives from three assets: moral authority as a good citizen which we have got some of, military capacity which we have got a lot less of, and international assistance capability." US - we have something they want. They need legitimacy." (Of Canada)
Institutions can enhance a country's soft power - Britain in the 19C and US in the 20C advanced their values by creating a structure of international rules and institutions that were consistent with the liberal and democratic nature of the Biritshand American economic systems: free trade and gold standard in case of Britain, IMF, WTO and UN for US. When countries make they power legitimate in the eyes of others, they encounter less resistance to their wishes
SOURCES OF SOFT POWER
The soft power of a country rests primarily on three resources: its culture (in places where it is attractive to others), its political vaues (when it lives up to them at home and abroad) and its foreign policies (when they are seen as legitimate and having moral authority
US benefits from a universalistic culture - exciting, rich, exotic, powerful, trend-setting - the cutting edge of modernity and innovation
Commerce is only one of the ways in which culture is transmitted - occurs through personal contacts, visits and exchanges
The ideas and values that America exports int he mids of more than half a million foreign students who study every year in American universities and then return to their home countries or in the minds of the Asian entrepreneurs who return home after succeeding in SIlicn Valley, tend to reach elites with power.
Government policies at home and aboad are another potential source of oft power. 1950s racial segregation at home undercut American soft power in Africa, and today the practice of capital punishment and weak gun control laws undercut American soft power in Europe. Similarly foreign policies strongly affect soft power. HR policies - promotion of democracy.
Government policies can reinforce or squander a country's soft power. Domestic or foreign policies that appear to be hypocritical arrogant, indifferent to the opinion of others, or based on a narrow approach to national interests can undermine soft power.
Iraq War 2003 - decline in popularity
The values a government champions in its behaviour at home (for e.g democracy) in international institutions (working with others) and foreign policy (promoting peace and human rights)
LIMITS
Skeptics think of power narrowly in terms of commands or active control
They ignore the second or "structural" face of power - the ability to get the outcomes you want without having to force people to change their behaviours through threats or payments.
All power depends on context - who relates to whom under what circumstances - soft power depends more than hard power upon the existence of willing interpreters and receivers.
Soft power is also likely to be more important when power is dispersed in another country rather than concentrated.
Though soft power sometimes has direct effects on secpific goals - inability of the US to obtain votes of Chile or Mexico in UN SC in 2003 after policies reduced our popularity.
2 things to consider - possession goals that countries pursue and their broader milieu goals, like shaping an environment conducive to democracy
Civil society is the origin of soft power.
In a liberal society, government cannot and should not control the culture.
Firms, universities, foundations, churches and other NG groups develop soft power of their wont hat may reinforce or be at odd with official foreign policy goals. Private sources of soft power are likely to become increasingly important in a global information age.
The interplay of hard and soft power
Weaker states have joined together to balance and limit the power of a stronger state that threatens.
2003 Iraq War provides an interesting example of the interplay of the two forms of power. Some of the motives for war were based on the deterrent effect of hard power.
Neoconservatives believed that American power could be used to export democracy to Iraq and transform the politics of the Middle East. If successful, war would be self-legitimising.
Iraq provided France an opportunity to create the first coherent challenge to that dominance (Charles Krauthammer)
By depriving the US of the legitimacy of the second SC resolution - $$
Power in a Global Information Age
Information revolution and globalisation of the economy are transforming and shrinking the world - 2 forces have enhanced American power. But with time, technology will spread to other countries and peoples and America’s preeminence will diminish.
TNCs and NGOs will play larger roles
Politics then becomes in part a competition for attractiveness, legitimacy and credibility
The political game in a global information age suggests that the relative importance of soft power will increase.
SOURCES OF AMERICAN SOFT POWER
Good:
Us is admired for its technological and scientific advances as well as its music, movies and television
Certain actions such as Vietnam War/Iraq War caused a drop in attractiveness
Anti-americanism In the sense of a deeper rejection of American society, values and culture. Some Europeans in the 18C were already
7 The three views compared
1D
Virtues of the 1D view are obvious and have often been stressed: the pluralists 'studied actual behaviour, stressed operational definitions and turned up evidence (Merleman 1968a: 451)
Trouble is that by doing the they were simply taking over and reproducing the bias of the system they were studying.
By analysing the decisions on urban redevelopment, public education and political nominations, Dahl tells us a good deal about the diversity of decision making power. Responsive to the prefeecens of citizens because the elected politicians and officials engaged in it anticipate the results of future elections "unwise to underestimate the extent to which voters may exert indirect influence on the decisions of leaders by means of elections (Dahl 1961: 101)
Dahl pictures politics as both diverse and open: "The independence, penetrability and heterogeneity of the various segments of the political stratum all but guarantee that any dissatisfied group will find spokesmen in the political stratum (p.93)
But this is misleading if power is being exercised within the system to limit decision making to acceptable issues. Individuals and elites may act separately in making acceptable decisions but they may act in concert or even fail to act at all -in such a way as to keep unacceptable eissues out of politics thereby preventing the system from becoming any more diverse than it is.
In brief, the 1D view of power cannot reveal the less visible ways in which a pluralist system may be biased in favour of certain groups and against others.
2D
The 2D view gets some way to revealing this - but still confines itself to studying situations where the mobilisation of bias can be attributed to individuals' decisions that have the effect of preventing currently observable grievances (overt or covert) from becoming issues within the political process.
A deeper analysis would concern itself with all the complex and subtle ways in which the inactivity of leaders and the sheer weight of institutions - political, industrial and educational - served for so long to keep the blacks out of Baltimore politics and indeed for a long period kept them even trying to get into it.
3D
Offers the prospect of a serious sociological and not merely personalised explanation of how political systems prevent demands from becoming political issues or even from being made.
How can one study or explain what does not happen (Polsby +Wolfinger)
"Non-events make more significant policy than do policy-making events"
Redefining what exercising power means:
IT conceals an interesting and important ambiguity. Suppose that A can normally affect B. Tis is to suppose that against the background of what is assumed to be a normally ongoing situation, if A does x he gets B to do what he would not otherwise do. Here A's action, x is sufficient to get B to d o what he would others not do. Suppose however that exactly the same is true for A. He can normally affect B his action is also suffieicnet o get B to do what he wouldl not otherwise do in just the same way. Suppsoe that A and A both act in relation to B simultaneously and B changes his at ion accordingly. It is clear B's action or change of course is overdetermined both A and A1 have affected B by exercising power but the result is the same as that which would have occurred had either affected him singly.
They both exercised power in a sense that is a power sufficient to produce the result yet one cannot say that either of them made a difference to the result.
Contrast this with the case where A does make a difference to the result: so x is an intervening cause which distorts the normal course of event.s
A wishes B to do some particular thing but in exercising effective power over him he may succeed in changing B;s course in a wide variety of ways
POWER FREEDOM AND REASON
Peter Morris - Practical, Moral, Evaluation
POWER of the powerful lies in their being capable of and responsible for affecting (- or +) the (subjective/objective) interests of others. SOCIAL LIFE is the interplay of power and structure
FOUCAULT (An Ultra-Radical View) 1980:
-Conceived of power as both bodily and mental capacity to influence judgement
-omnipresence of its resistance to sway
-Subverts freedom and reason
-Mechanism by which compliance of willing subjects secured
-power infinite knowleded *effectiveness)
-micro-physics of power: capillary forms of existence, point where power reaches into the grain of individuals, touches bodies and influences actions, attitudes, discourses, learning processes and everyday lives
-not to be thought of as the property of particular classes or individuals who have it nor as an instrument which they can somehow use at will
DAVID GARLAND (1990) Power is a pervasive aspect of social life and is not limited to the sphere of formal politics or of open conflict, it is also to be thought of as productive in its effect rather than repressive in so far as power shapes the actions of of individuals and harnesses their bodily powers to its ends. In this sense power operates 'through' individuals rather than 'against' them and helps constitute the individual who is at the same time its vehicle (Garland, 1990:138)
IN SUM:
Foucault's first way of interpreting the key idea central to his view of power- that power is productive through the social construction of subjects, rendering the governed governable made no sense. Those subject to power are constituted by it is best read as a striking overstatement deployed in purely ideal typical depictions of disciplinary and biopower not as an analysis of the sent to which the various modern forms of power he identified actually succeed or fail, in securing the compliance of those subject to it.
Individuals are socialised they are oriented to roles and practices that are culturally and socially given they internalise these and may experience them as freely chosen indeed their freed may as Durkheim liked to say, be the fruit of regulation - the outcome of disciplines and controls
Conclusion
As humanity becomes increasingly informed and interconnected from the developing world to the developed world through the process of globalisation and the spread of information communication technologies, the relationships between the public and those in power will inevitably be pressurized. No longer will a simple system of force and coercion work for a mass who are capable of over turning the status quo through their sheer number, for example the Arab Spring, due to their unhappiness with the incumbent powers. This is why a more comprehensive mode of political power has seen a gradual rise across the globe with the US being the front liner and more and more countries adopting a democratic regime – the regime most conducive for the sustainability of the third face of power. have seen how in essence the definition provided exists and has evolved in terms of the way it is achieved via overt or covert means. We have also seen how the basis of conflict can be rewritten through means other than overt force such as more
Bibliography
Soft Power: Joseph S Nye
- Steven Lukes: Power: A Radical View (3 Faces of Power)
- Steven Lukes: Power
- Bertrand Russell: The Forms of Power
- Domination by Economic Power and by Authority: Max Weber
- Power as the Control of Behaviour: Robert Dahl
- Communicative Power: Hannah Arendt
- Hannah Arendt’s Communications Concept of Power: Jurgen Habermas
- Power and the Social System: Talcott Parsons
- Class Power: Nicos Poulantzas
- Toward a Theory of Social Power: Alvin I. Goldman
- Domination and Freedom: Georg Simmel
- Power and Organisation: John Kenneth Galbraith
- Disciplinary Power and Subjection: Michael Foucault
- Power and Privilege: Gerhard Lenski
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R. Dahl Who Governs? Democracy and Power in an American City
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C. Wright Mills The Power Elite (Oxford University Press, 1956)
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H. Lasswell Politics: Who Gets What, When, How (World Publishing Company 1958)