Definition

1.

The standard theory of power is, as Turner describes it:

‘that power is the capacity to influence other people, that it is conferred by the control of resources (positive and negative outcomes, rewards and costs, information, etc.) that are desired, valued or needed by others and which make them dependent upon the influencing agent for the satisfaction of their needs or reaching their goals, and that different types of resources confer different types of power leading to different kinds of influence.’

Source: Turner, John C. 2005. Explaining the Nature of Power: A Three-process Theory. European Journal of Social Psychology. Vol 35; pp 1 – 22.

2.

Eric Olin Wright:

"Power is one of the most perpetually contested concepts in social theory. Here I want to stress the simple idea of power as the capacity of actors to accomplish things in the world, to generate effects in the world. This definition has both an instrumental and a structural dimension: it is instrumental in that it focuses on the capacities people use to accomplish things in the world; it is structural in that the effectiveness of these capacities depends upon the social structural conditions under which people act. The power of capitalists, for example, depends both upon their wealth and also upon a social structure within which this wealth can be deployed in particular ways. Owning a factory is only a source of power if it is also the case that there is a labor force that is separated from the means of subsistence and must rely on a labor market in order to earn a living, and if there is a set of state institutions that enforce contracts and protect property rights. The simple ownership of this economic resource only becomes a source of real power under appropriate social conditions.

With this definition of power, one of the ways in which forms of power can be differentiated is in terms of the underlying social basis for the capacity to generate effects in the world. In the present context we will distinguish three important forms of power: economic power, based on the control over economic resources; state power, based on control over rule making and rule enforcing capacity over territory; and what I will call social power, based on the capacity to mobilize people for voluntary collective actions of various sorts. As slogans you can say that there are three ways of getting people to do things: you can bribe them; you can force them; you can convince them. These correspond to the exercise of economic power, state power, and social power. Because social power is rooted in voluntary association, and voluntary association is intimately connected persuasion and communication, social power is also closed linked to what might be termed ideological or cultural power. As we shall see, these are closely linked to the distinctions between capitalism, statism, and socialism." (http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22074)

Typologies

Turner's Three-process theory

Persuasion: "‘a collective attempt by a group to develop a consensual response to some stimulus situation… Thus a judgement is assumed to be informational, to provide evidence about reality, precisely to the degree that it has ingroup consensual support… the power to get people to believe that certain things are correct.’

Authority: "Authority ‘is the power to control ingroup members because they are persuaded that it is right for a certain person to control them in certain matters…. a person, role or group has the right to prescribe appropriate beliefs, attitudes or behaviour in certain areas… Authority is not direct persuasion but groups confer authority to in order to get things done right. This acceptance of leader authority carries a presumption the leader is likely to be right about the matter in hand and can lead to validation and internalization of the leader’s view under certain conditions.’"

Coercion: "‘Coercion is authority in a dark mirror. It is defined here as the attempt to control a target against their self-will and self-interest through the deployment of human and material resources to constrain and manipulate their behaviour.’"

Source: Turner, John C. 2005. Explaining the Nature of Power: A Three-process Theory. European Journal of Social Psychology. Vol 35; pp 1 – 22.

Stephen Lukes three dimensions of power

From Stephen Lukes at http://www.gdnet.org/middle.php?oid=603

"In his seminal book, Lukes outlines three dimensions of power. The first dimension is the power of A to influence the behaviour of B. This exercise of power is observable and is tied to public conflicts over interests. It is played out in public decision-making processes. Dahl's classical study, 'Who Governs?', defines power in this way.

The second dimension is the power of A to define the agenda, and thus to prevent B from voicing her/his interests in the public negotiation and decision-making process. Potential issues and conflicts are not brought into the open, to the benefit of A and to the detriment of B. This exercise of power can be both overt and covert.

The third dimension is the power of A to define what counts as a grievance, and to mould B's perceptions and preferences in such a way that B accepts that she/he does not have any significant grievances. The power to shape people's thoughts and desires is the most effective kind of power, since it pre-empts conflict and even pre-empts an awareness of possible conflicts. This dimension of power can be played out for example in processes of socialisation, the control of information, and the control of the mass media." (http://www.gdnet.org/middle.php?oid=603)

Domination vs. transformative power

From a seminar on networked politics at http://www.networked-politics.info/research-lines/political-parties-and-representation-systems

"The importance of distinguishing two senses of power:

Power 1: as transformative capacity

Power 2: as domination, as involving an asymmetry between those with power and those over whom power is exercised.

The recent reassertion of power as transformative capacity first by the feminist and also radical trade union student and community movements of the late ’60s and ’70s and more recently by the global justice movement of the late ’90s underpins and sustains a far wider understanding of the scope of politics beyond the traditional focus on state, government and legislation. This recognition of the importance of power as trans- formative capacity and an associated enlargement of the definition of politics, also lays the basis for rethinking representation. It suggests a direction of strategic thinking about social transformation which goes beyond the coun- ter position of movement forms of democracy on the one hand, and representation – as “making present” – on the other. It implies the need to inquire into forms, conditions and limits on representation as a way of “making present” within the political system, movements and struggles and the sources of transformative capacity that they contain or indicate.

This implies that rethinking political organisation must be guided by investigating and understanding the present sources of transformative capacity; and this in turn re- quires recognition of the third point of the search 3. The multiplicity of levels of creative human activity – all of which are potential locations of transformative capacities.

The multiplicity of levels of creative human activity – all of which are potential locations of transformative capacities.

This involves an understanding of social reality as consist- ing of at least four levels: • interactions/relationship between people; • enduring social structures that pre-exist particular indi- viduals and relationships; • the formation and character of human personality and consciousness; • transactions and relations with nature.

Social movements and struggles involve all these levels of social being but their importance will vary from case to case, as will the appropriate forms of political organisation.

Just to list these indicates the dramatic enlargement of politics which flows from a recognition of power as trans- formative capacity and also points to the importance of a multiplicity of autonomous levels to politics. It also indi- cates the complexity of giving organisational reality to the idea of representation as “making present” autonomous forces for democratic transformation. The other side of this enlargement of politics and recogni- tion of the different levels at which transformative activity takes place is the four point of the search: 4. A radical development in our understanding of the mechanism of social change.

We are working with a knowledge of open systems, an incomplete knowledge; we are increasingly aware of knowledge as tacit, practical and experiential as well as scientific.

These understandings of knowledge are closely associated with the understanding of power as transformative capac- ity and with the diffusion of efforts at social change. The implications for political organisation point towards an em- phasis on horizontal sharing and exchanging of knowledge; co-operative attempts to build a common memory; the self-consciousness of action and struggle as also an ex- periment and therefore the importance of ensuring spaces for reflection, debate and synthesis." (http://www.networked-politics.info/research-lines/political-parties-and-representation-systems)

Power in markets, bureaucracies, networks

Manual De Landa:

"Herbert Simon's distinction between command hierarchies and markets may turn out to be a special case of a more general dichotomy. In the view of philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, this more abstract classes, which they call strata and self-consistent aggregates (or trees and rhizomes), are defined not so much by the locus of control, as by the nature of elements that are connected together. Strata are composed of homogenous elements, whereas self-consistent aggregates articulate heterogeneous elements as such. {6} For example, a military hierarchy sorts people into internally homogenous ranks before joining them together through a chain of command. Markets, on the other hand, allow for a set of heterogeneous needs and offers to become articulated through the price mechanism, without reducing this diversity. In biology, species are an example of strata, particularly if selection pressures have operated unobstructedly for long periods of time allowing the homogenization of the species gene pool. On the other hand, ecosystems are examples of self-consistent aggregates, since they link together into complex food webs a wide variety of animals and plants, without reducing their heterogeneity. I have developed this theory in more detail elsewhere, but for our purposes here let's simply keep the idea that besides centralization and decentralization of control, what defines these two types of structure is the homogeneity or heterogeneity of its composing elements.

Before returning to our discussion of agent-based interfaces, there is one more point that needs to be stressed. As both Simon and Deleuze and Guattari emphasize, the dichotomy between bureaucracies and markets, or to use the terms that I prefer, between hierarchies and meshworks, should be understood in purely relative terms. In the first place, in reality it is hard to find pure cases of these two structures: even the most goal-oriented organization will still show some drift in its growth and development, and most markets even in small towns contain some hierarchical elements, even if it is just the local wholesaler which manipulates prices by dumping (or withdrawing) large amounts of a product on (or from) the market. Moreover, hierarchies give rise to meshworks and meshworks to hierarchies. Thus, when several bureaucracies coexist (governmental, academic, ecclesiastic), and in the absence of a super-hierarchy to coordinate their interactions, the whole set of institutions will tend to form a meshwork of hierarchies, articulated mostly through local and temporary links. Similarly, as local markets grow in size, as in those gigantic fairs which have taken place periodically since the Middle Ages, they give rise to commercial hierarchies, with a money market on top, a luxury goods market underneath and, after several layers, a grain market at the bottom. A real society, then, is made of complex and changing mixtures of these two types of structure, and only in a few cases it will be easy to decide to what type a given institution belongs." (http://t0.or.at/delanda/meshwork.htm)

Discussions

The Three Domains of Power

Eric Olin Wright on Three domains of power and interaction: the state, economy, and civil society:

"I will define these three domains of social interaction in relatively conventional ways, bracketing a number of difficult problems of conceptualization:

The State is the cluster of institutions, more or less coherently organized, which imposes binding rules and regulations over a territory. Max Weber defined the state as an organization which effectively monopolizes the legitimate use of force over a territory. I prefer Michael Mann's alternative emphasis on the state as the organization with an administrative capacity to impose binding rules and regulations over territories. The legitimate use of force is one of the key ways this is accomplished, but it is not necessarily the most important way. State power is then defined as the effective capacity to impose rules and regulate social relations over territory, a capacity which depends on such things as information and communications infrastructure, the ideological commitments of citizens to obey rules and commands, the level of discipline of administrative officials, the practical effectiveness of the regulations to solve problems, as well as the monopoly over the legitimate use of coercion.

The Economy is the sphere of social activity in which people interact to produce and distribute goods and services. In capitalism this activity involves privately owned firms in which production and distribution is mediated by market exchange. Economic power is based on the kinds of economically-relevant resources different categories of social actors control and deploy within these interactions of production and distribution.

Civil Society is the sphere of social interaction in which people voluntarily form associations of different sorts for various purposes. Some of these associations have the character of formal organizations with well-defined membership and objectives. Clubs, political parties, labor unions, churches, and neighborhood associations would be examples. Others are looser associations, in the limiting case more like social networks than bounded organizations. The idea of a "community", when it means something more than simply the aggregation of individuals living in a place, can also be viewed as a kind informal association within civil society. Power in civil society depends on capacities for collective action through such voluntary association, and can accordingly be referred to as "associational power" or "social power."

The state, the economy and civil society are all domains for extended social interaction, cooperation, and conflict among people, and each of them involves distinct sources of power. Actors within the economy have power by virtue of their ownership and control of economically relevant resources. Actors in the state have power by virtue of their control of rule making and rule enforcing capacity over territory, including coercive capacity. And actors in civil society have power by virtue of their ability to mobilize people for voluntary collective actions of various sorts." (http://www.zcommunications.org/znet/viewArticle/22074)

Freedom or Power?

From Bradley M. Kuhn and Richard M. Stallman at http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/freedom-or-power.html

Freedom is being able to make decisions that affect mainly you. Power is being able to make decisions that affect others more than you. If we confuse power with freedom, we will fail to uphold real freedom.

Proprietary software is an exercise of power. Copyright law today grants software developers that power, so they and only they choose the rules to impose on everyone else—a relatively few people make the basic software decisions for everyone, typically by denying their freedom. When users lack the freedoms that define Free Software, they can't tell what the software is doing, can't check for back doors, can't monitor possible viruses and worms, can't find out what personal information is being reported (or stop the reports, even if they do find out). If it breaks, they can't fix it; they have to wait for the developer to exercise its power to do so. If it simply isn't quite what they need, they are stuck with it. They can't help each other improve it.

Kinds of Power

More Information

From the P2P Manuscript

Books to Read

A Theory of Power Jeff Vail. 2004
Protocol. Alexander Galloway.
Stephen Lukes. Power: A Radical View. Macmillan, 1974

Power

Contents