In the literature of politics, probably the most often cited
definition of power is provided by Robert Dahl.[1] That definition takes the following
form: power is a condition in which one
party, person or collective, convinces some other party or parties to do
something they would not do otherwise.
This is the definition I have used in this blog. I have also cited Harold Lasswell’s context
for power: who gets what, when, how, and
when.[2] I have added, with little humor, “and how
much.” Of course, since political
science is a social science, one should not confuse this use of the term with
how an electrician or a physicist uses it.
They, it turns out, can measure this physical entity; political
scientists cannot measure its social counterpart. Is this important in our attempts to
understand politics? I would say it is.
Power has been considered more or less the central concept in
political science. It’s akin to what the
concept, energy, is in physics. Again,
they can measure accurately and precisely their main variable. Insofar as we cannot in political science or
in the study of civics, we are highly limited in our predictive “powers.” And after all, is it not the main reason for
having a science in the first place to be able to predict and, in turn, control? Perhaps it’s just as well we can’t measure
this essential quality of politics. If it
were possible, those who could would have an untold advantage over the rest of
us. Please don’t think that there have not
been attempts to measure it; there have, but to no avail.
In this posting, I want to consider some of the conceptual
thinking that has gone into this aspect of politics and reported by Joseph S.
Nye, Jr.[3] Starting with the basic structure of Dahl’s
definition, he basically explains that the definition is wanting. It glosses over certain components of a power
relation that, it turns out, are essential to delve into in order to understand
power’s scope and domain in a given relationship between parties. By the scope, Nye is referring to the who –
the who, who is administering the
power (the powerful) and the who, who
is the subject of the power exercise. By
the domain, he is pointing to the substantive issues or social/physical
conditions over which the exercise of power is performed or attempted. So, in the obvious case of a government
instituting a policy on desegregation in schools, the who is those citizens and school officials who will change their
practices in order to comply with the new policy and the domain is the educational
practices involved. But when we look
more closely at the scope and domain we find factors, if you will, that are
very telling about the situation which not only reveal important social
dynamics, but get at what is exactly powerful about what is happening.
Running through this view is the notion that someone with
power is able to get what he/she wants by getting others to do things. But the power lies in the fact that to some
degree, the other person(s) are not disposed to do that something. Here lies the murkiness that prohibits clear
measuring. Simply stated, we don’t know,
in a given situation, how disposed a person is.
But that aside, there are other shortcomings. When a party is getting others to do
something, this is done through mechanisms.
The supposed power holder(s) need resources so as to be able to “convince”
the subject to be a subject. In an
attempt to simplify this, let me point to three types of motivators that solicit
a subject’s compliance. They are to avoid
punishment, to seek reward, or to satisfy an attraction – let’s call these
coercive power, reward power, and attraction power.[4] And in this, we can designate two overall
categories of power: hard power – mostly
referring to coercive power which depends on either authority or destructive
capacity such as with military resources – and soft power – mostly referring to
capacities to change the subject’s mind so that he/she/they want to do the
powerful person’s bidding either through rewards or through a sense of
righteousness, knowledge, personal, or some other appeal. In all of this, the subject need not know who
is exerting power in order for power to be administered – many times the
powerful would rather remain anonymous.
This might assist future exertions of power. Of course, there can be combinations of these
approaches. The point is, though, that
any definition of power should at least allude to these factors; they are that
central to the meaning of the term in how it is used in political/civic
analysis.
This leads to seeing or defining power from two
perspectives. We can define it in terms
of resources or we can define it in terms of behavioral outcomes (what the subject
is either expected to do or actually does).
In each perspective, there is a necessary process. Either resources (e. g., military assets)
have to convert into a viable strategy before desired behavioral outcomes are
accomplished or the means are chosen by which desired wishes are skillfully
accomplished through actions initiated by the powerful. Actually, in either case we are saying the
same thing: a goal or aim is sought by implementing
a course of action that successfully converts desired outcomes into behavioral
outcomes. And this leads to an array of
variables (factors) that have to be accounted for in the development of
that/those strategies.
That is a topic for another day. But let’s make a stab at a definition: power is a social relation in which one party
or parties get another party or parties to do something due to some strategy
which sufficiently eliminates or diminishes any reluctance by the use of
coercive, reward, and/or attraction resources.
While these factors still elude exact measurement, it might lead to
better estimations.
[1] Dahl, R.
(1961). Who governs: Democracy and power
in an American city. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
[2] Lasswell, H. and Kaplan, A. (1950).
Power and society: A framework for political inquiry. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
[3] Nye, J. S. Jr.
(2011). The future of power. New York, NY:
PublicAffairs.
[4] These types are derived from French, J. R. P., Jr.
and Raven, B. (1967). The bases of power. In E. P. Hollander and R. G. Hunt (Eds.) Current
perspectives in social psychology (pp. 504-512). New York, NY:
Oxford University Press. These
writers identify five types: coercive,
reward, legitimate, referent, and expert.
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