CONF 803: Notes and Discussions - Power edited by Steven Lukes: Chp 9-13

CONF 803: MACRO THEORIES OF CONFLICT RESOLUTION

Professor Ho-Won Jeong
George Mason University
Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution
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Notes for Power edited by Steven Lukes: Chapters 9-13
By Rob Ericson

Chapter 9, "Domination and Freedom" - Georg Simmel

I. Domination, a Form of Interaction

- People want their influence to act back on themselves. Acting or suffering of the other is a product of the dominator's will. The function of domination is not necessarily exploitation, but the consciousness of the possibility of exploitation, to break down the internal resistance. The other person represents value.
- If one person has no significance in relationship to the other, there can be no notion of society. The insignificant becomes an object or a tool (e.g. carpenter's bench).
- Even in the most oppressive relationship, there is considerable freedom, but the price of freedom may be more than the oppressed is willing to pay. Even cases of superordination and subordination are societal forms, where there is a process of interaction.

II. Authority and Prestige

- We must not minimize the role of the subordinate in social life.
- By acting authoritatively the superordinate transforms to a new quality of objectivity.
- Authority also descends from above granted by super-individual power (e.g. institutions).
- Leadership by prestige is entirely based on the strength of the individual. Followers are enchanted and thus have less freedom than when following authority.
- Feelings are different: with authority, followers feel defenseless; with prestige, followers feel spontaneous.

III. Leader and Led

- Leaders are led by their followers; there is a controlling reaction. For example, a journalist forms public opinion, but must conform to what the public wants.
- The exchange of influences transforms superordination and subordination sociologically.

IV. Interaction in the Idea of "Law"

- Even the most extreme superordinate and subordinate relationship contains spontaneity. When an absolute despot promises reward or threatens punishment, the subordinates have a claim on the despot for the reward or the limits of the punishment.
- In the medieval state as well as the modern, there was a reciprocal character to rule of authority that Hobbes considered an unbreakable relationship.
- The source of the tyranny of a group is that the members are themselves the group, and the group deals with confrontation by disposing of members.
- In the original conception of Roman law, the citizen cooperates in making the law, so the subject and object of the law are embodied in the same person. However, because the king alone was allowed to speak to the people, returned the relationship to a contract.
- Though a mechanical relationship is set up, there is a return to the spontaneity of a superordinate and subordinate relationship.

Chapter 10, "Power and Organization" - John Kenneth Galbraith

I. The Anatomy of Power

- Weber defined power as the "possibility of imposing one's will upon the behavior of other persons." Power is so commonplace that it hardly needs definition, yet the question of how power is imposed is not so simple.
- The instruments of power and sources of power are interrelated, these may be concealed, and they may be subject to rapid change.
- The rule of three: (1) Condign power is able to impose sufficiently unpleasant alternatives to win compliance. (2) Compensatory power gains submission by offering an affirmative reward. (3) Conditioned power changes belief so submission is the preferred course.
- The three coinciding sources of power are: (1) personality, formerly due to personal traits used to impose condign power but now more related to conditioned power; (2) property, primarily monetary wealth and related to compensatory power; and (3) organization, the most important source closely aligned with conditioned power but able to impose condign and compensatory power as well.
- The purpose of power is for the powerful to seek submission in support of the interests of the group or person wielding the power. The deeper purpose is often hidden, but societies usually recognize that fact. To a great extent power is often exercised for the purpose of power itself.
- References to power are rarely neutral; some win and others lose, but social conditioning conceals the purpose. In modern society, nothing whatever is accomplished without it.

II. The Age of Organization

- Though the economic order may change, the social conditioning does not, so the changing order is disguised. The rise of the organization influences all society.
- Personality and property as a source of power is on the decline. Management selects the directors who select the management. Stockholders have no influence over decisions.
- Shifting power source reduced effectiveness of compensatory power and increased the use of conditioned power. Unions, monopolies, market forces, advertisement, cooperatives, and the consumer movement have influenced conditioned power.
- Wealth now buys conditioned power, but the process is not very efficient and can be counteracted by those who can form an organization.
- Power is served most by cultivating the belief that it does not exist. But reality impairs the value of conditioning, and disbelief is a mark of sophistication. Other than in the military industrial complex, government is at odds with industry. The state is no longer an instrument of those seeking power, but more a power in its own right.

Chapter 12, "Power and Privilege" - Gerhard Lenski

I. Force and its Transformation.

- Principles govern distributive processes: need and power. Power is least understood.
- Force trumps all other forms of power because survival is the chief goal for most.
- Force is the foundation of sovereignty; no state can tolerate independent exercise of force.
- Conservatives use force to restrain self interest; radicals use force to defend self interest.
- Force is the foundation of distributive systems for societies with surpluses.
- The level of conflict will escalate in proportion to the weakness of current regime.
- Edmund Burke: force is not the most effective instrument to retain and exploit power.
- Ruling by force is costly and will eventually consume all profits.
- Those who seize power by force must legitimize their rule by means of persuasion.
- Laws can be written to protect the interests of the elite while giving legitimacy to power.
- Institutions shape public opinion and are the second instrument of legitimacy.
- Consensus and coercion are closely related; propaganda manipulates consensus.
- Propaganda disseminates ideology providing a moral justification of power.
- Pressures of daily life prevent most people from involvement in politics.

II. The Rule of Right

- (1) Shift from rule of might to rule of right; power must conform to justice and morality.
- (2) In the rule of law, the interests of a single member of the elite cannot be equated with the interests of the elite as a whole.
- (3) Praeto observed that those who won power by force are replaced by a new kind of elite, using the metaphor of power moving from the lions to the foxes emphasizing cunning. The military declines and the commercial and professional class increases.
- (4) In the rule of law, there is a transition to decentralized power, unity, and less fear.

III. The Varieties of Institutionalized Power

- Though power continues to determine privilege, power changes from force to institutions.
(1) Institutional power is socially acceptable. (2) Institutional power is impersonal, insuring that it flows automatically to those who occupy a role or office.
- Authority is an enforceable right while influence is a subtle ability to manipulate.
- Power of position implies power rightfully belonging to the incumbent.
- Private ownership of property has authority when the property is in short supply.
- Reminder: Simmel observes that in the rule of law there is a two way flow of influence.

Chapter 13, "Macht, Power, Puissance: Democratic Prose or Demoniacal Poetry" - Raymond Aron

- A common historical belief is that power corrupts, e.g., Machiavelli's power elite.
- A more recent view is that power is a relationship that opens up possibilities.
- Modern sociologists consider power relationships to be complex and power to be diffuse.
- The French words for power: puissance implies potential and pouvoir involves action.
- Those who control nuclear weapons have puissance but not the pouvoir to use them.
- Weber's fundamental concepts include Macht (power) and Herrschaft (dominance).
- Herrschaft includes a wider institutional power; individuals and groups are integrated.
- Economic competition is an instrument of power, not to be confused with power itself.
- In tribal societies wealth is zero-sum; in modern societies growth changes the dynamics.
- Power is also dynamic, where those under control can limit the options of the controller.
(1) One person does not hold all instruments of power, (2) there is a clash between rules of one sector and those of another, and (3) formal organizational relationships do not correspond to authentic informal relationships. Does dispersion lead to paralysis?
- Morgenthau: power is both the immediate objective and the means of international actors.
- International politics is carried out be people who are rooted in the state of nature.
- Power should not be confused with force; States are under no laws, but try to avoid force.
- Since 1962, it has become clear to both sides that nuclear weapons could not be used.
- Now the biggest fear is the dispersion of weapons of mass destruction.
- Concentrated weapons cannot be used to impose will among states and reduces risk.
- In Machtpolitik each actor was responsible for their own destiny, a nationalist view.
- In power politics the concept is the same, but the doctrine emphasizes diplomacy.
- Within states power is dispersed but people feel increasingly powerless; the degree of autonomy is not necessarily aligned with the hierarchical level of the individual.
- Rigid hierarchical organization leads to demoniacal one person rule.
- Historical decisions are far reaching, and the "man of destiny" makes the difference.
- But in periods of calm, conservatism dominates: decisions by power elite or dispersion?
- In a free society, rule of law prevails, but there is a nostalgia for personalized power.

Power: Talcott Parsons

Sascha Sheehan

Lukes, Steven (ed.), Power (Readings in Social and Political Theory, No. 4), New York: New York University Press, 1986.

Parsons, Talcott, "Power and the Social System," in Power, ed. by S. Lukes. New York: New York University Press, p. 94-143 (Chp. 6)

"Power…is generalized capacity to secure the performance of binding obligations by units in a system of collective organization when the obligations are legitimized with reference to their bearing on collective goals and where in case of recalcitrance there is presumption of enforcement by negative situational sanctions- whatever the actual agency of that enforcement" (Parsons, p. 103).

Background:

· American Sociologist (Professor at Harvard University)
· Founder of the Functionalist school of sociology
· Heavily influenced by Durkheim
· Concerned with creating a general theoretical system for the analysis of society
· Viewed society as an organism rather than a rigid structure like the Structuralists. Each part of the larger social body played role in maintaining the equilibrium and stability of the system.
· Chp. 6 in Lukes is a reprinted former version of earlier famous article titled "On the Concept of Political Power" written in 1963.

Main Arguments:

Parsons writes:

"This paper has been designed a general theoretical attack on the ancient problem of the nature of political power and its place, not only in political systems, narrowly conceived, but in the structure and processes of societies generally."

· Prior discussion of power in political thought has not been, Parson argues, "couched at a sufficiently rigorously analytical level…"

· Parsons, unlike many of his predecessors (e.g. Hobbes) contends that it is possible to disconnect power from conflict.

· Unlike Hobbes, who believed that self interested individuals needed a powerful sovereign to prevent a war of all against all, Parsons asserts that individuals are "socialized actors" who follow the norms of society and who work together through the sharing of binding obligations. Individuals, he argues, are not self interested actors who stand apart from society; rather they are a function of society.

· In this light, power is seen- not in a conflictual relationship- but as an attribute of the social system, as something that facilitates the accomplishment of certain things. In this sense he is the ultimate functionalist.

· Parsons likens Power to money: both are circulatory mechanisms facilitating the obtaining of goals in the economic sphere (money) and the political sphere (power). According to this view, power becomes quite a neutral thing, with no connotations of repression or injustice.

· Power is not always, in all circumstances a "zero-sum entity.

Note: It might be argued by those like Giddens that this view makes it impossible to see power as something that is exercised over someone. That is, Giddens shifts the focus back from the social system, where power is a neutral resource, to the social actor, where power is something involving hierarchies, competing interests, and conflict. Giddens sees power as something with both structure and agency aspects, rather than one or the other.

According to Parsons, Power involves the following elements:

· It involves influence over others.
· It involves a social relationship
· It involves a specific mode of communication - a signal in terms of the frame of reference.
· It involves deterrence.

àSimply stated: Power is a resource to attain collective goals.

Definitions of Power: Integrating Multiple Theories

"Power is one of the key concepts in the great Western tradition of thought about political phenomena. It is at the same time a concept on which, in spite of its long history, there is, on analytical levels, a notable lack of agreement both about its specific definition, and about many features of the conceptual context in which it should be placed" (Parsons, p. 94).

· For Hobbes and his institution of the Leviathan, power was seen as something above society. Hobbes saw human beings as power seekers with a "a general inclination of all mankind, {and} a perpetual and restless desire of power after power, that ceaseth only in death." According to Hobbes, our endless craving for power is due to our natural instinct for self-preservation. Hobbes concludes that peace can be achieved when we transfer our collective strength to a sovereign authority.

· Michel Foucault reverses Hobbes, and sees power not as something above society but rather located within it. Instead of focusing on notions of sovereignty, Foucault turns the spotlight on domination through discipline. Power becomes an aspect of daily life, right down to the "dust of events". His notion of biopower refers to the ways in which bodies are subjugated and the population controlled through the prison, factory, asylum, school and other such mechanisms. Power, according to Foucault, is exercised not through persons but through disciplinary arrangements like the architecture of the prison or timetables for events.

· Nietzsche argued that said "This world is the will to power and nothing else besides"

· Bertrand Russell defined power as "the production of intended effects and the two methods of producing intended effect are force and persuasion, which are both a kind of influence."

· Weber defined power as "the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his will, even against resistance." Authority, he said, was the probability that a command would be obeyed.

· C. Wright Mills defined the powerful as "those who are able to realize their will, even if others resist it."

· Talcott Parsons defined influence as "a way of having an effect on the attitudes and opinions of others through intentional action." Influence consists of the capacity to convince, to persuade, to change the attitudes and opinions of other people.

He writes, however, that "These claims are put forward in full awareness that on one level there is an inherent arbitrariness in them, namely that I have defined power and a number of related concepts in my own way, which is different from many if not most of the definitions current in political theory.

Discussion Questions:

· Is power the effect of structure or the outcome of actions of agents? In other words, is power the property of actors or the property of the system in which it functions? What would Giddens say? Would Parsons agree? How about Habermas? Gramsci? Marx?

· Parsons likens power to money. He writes, "Power is here conceived as a circulating medium, analogous to money, within what is called the political system." In what ways is power like money? In what ways is it different?