PWM-5

The concept of Power

PYQs
1. Examine the nature and meaning of power. 2020
2. Explain the relationship between power, authority and legitimacy. 2018
3. Distinguish between Power and Authority. 2015
4. Discuss the ‘crisis of legitimacy’ in capitalist societies. (Habermas) 2015
5. Examine the conditions that are required for the maintenance of legitimacy in modem
societies. 2014
6. Attempt a Comparative examination of the views of Marx and Weber on ‘Power’. 2011
7. Comment on: "Power flows throughout the system like blood in the capillaries of our body."
(Foucault) 2010
8. Comment on: Robert Dahl’s concept of deformed polyarchy. 2010
9. Comment on: Politics as a power concept 2008
10. Comment on: In so far as national events are decided, the power elite are those who decide
them (C Wright Mills). 2002
11. Distinguish power from authority. How does reliance on authority affect the nature of power?
1996

Introduction

• Central issue.
• Harold lasswell , Abraham Kaplan--' Power and society ': Political Science as the study of the
shaping and sharing of power
• Varied meaning of power :
o Conventional sense: power is domination.
o Robert Dahl: Relational concept…" when compliance is attained by creating the
prospect of severe sanctions for noncompliance".
o Hannah Arendt: sui-generis → Constructive view
o Foucault : complex set of relations… sovereignty – centric (Hobbesian) → ‘post-
modernist view of power’.
o Marx.
o Mao Zedong.
o Max Weber: power refers to the capacity of the actor to carry out his will inspite of
resistance….Power as a form of domination.
o Bertnand Russell-"Power:A new social analysis"--Power is the production of
intended effects"

Power as a debatable concept:

• Power at :
o Individual Level (Robert Dahl)
o Structural Level (caste, religion, gender) (Marx, Gramsci)
• Nature of power :
o Extractive/coercive → Power over (Hobbes, Marx, Robert Dahl)
o Developmental → Power to (Gandhi’s oceanic circle of power, Hannah Arendt)
 • Means of power :
o Institutional/legal → Hobbes
o Capital → Marx
o Ideology → Gramsci, Althusser
o Sui Generis → Arendt

Steven Lukes:

• Power as decision making (Institutions) → Hobbes, state has monopoly for exercising power.
• Power as agenda setting → Marx
• Power as thought control process → Gramsci, Althusser, Foucault

Theories of Power

• Hobbesian Theory of Power

• Marxist Theory of Power
• Max Weber : Legitimacy
• Feminist Theory
• Gramscian Theory of Power : Hegemony
• Arendtian Theory of Power

Conventional View: State → ‘Leviathan’ of Thomas Hobbes…Hegel…Benito Mussolini: ‘nothing

against the state, nothing above it’.

Class Perspective: Marx and Engels

Gender Perspective: Feminists, patriarchy.

Group Perspective: Pluralists…class, elite and gender → Dahl's model of democracy → 'polyarchy'

Elitist theory of power

• Special/natural qualities
• Roots- Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli
• Gaetano Mosca – “The Ruling Class”:
o First → elite and the masses.
o Two classes : Ruler and the ruled.
o Sub-elite → ‘new middle class’….provides new recruits to the elite class….stability of
any political system.
• Wilfredo Pareto-"Mind and Society" :
o "History of mankind is to be seen in the graveyard of aristocracies"
o the non-elite and the elite.
o 'governing elite' and 'nongoverning elite' → a constant competition
between governing and non-governing elites → 'circulation of
elites'

• Robert Mitchells - “Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of

Modern Democracy”
 o 'Iron Law of Oligarchy': every organization—whatever its original
aims—is eventually reduced to 'oligarchy' → power has tendency to
concentrate
o Human nature..Masses await leaders.

• C Wright Mills – “The Power Elite”

o Concept of Power Elites - USA - Federal politicians, Corporate leaders and military
officials.
o Momentous decisions with no accountability.
o David Riesman - veto groups
o Mills lays emphasis on increasing concentration of power ,
Riesman lays emphasis on increasing dispersion of power
o Mills: the power elite lays down all important public policies….who
determines the policy largely depends on the issue
o Mills : power elite represents a body of people with common
interests, for Reisman:diversity of interests.

Conclusion :In Reality → crony capitalism, corruption, dictatorships and authoritarian form →
“Circulation of Elites”

Pluralist Theory Of Power

• Robert dahl - “A Preface to Democratic Theory”

o Context - C wright Mill's Theory of Power Elites
o The democracy in USA is not as narrow → Multiple pressure groups
o Not oligarchy but polyarchy
o Democracy as ideal → polyarchy is actual
o In a liberal democracy → highly decentralized process of bargaining among relatively
autonomous groups.
• Deformed Polyarchy - "Who Governs?"
o Dahl + Neo-pluralists like Charles Lindblom (“Politics and Markets”) and J.K Galbraith
o "corporate houses"
o Brings Dahl near to Elitist view of democracy, and Marxist
o Lobbying is legal in America
o Different from Marxist.
• Criticism: Macpherson: Dahl’s theory reduces democracy to pressure group politics.
• Conclusion: Despite criticisms → Deformed Polyarchy.

Marxist theory of power

• Karl Marx:
o Class and Power : the bourgeoisie (or the ruling class) and the proletariat (or the working
class) in the capitalist society
o The basis of the power - capital and means of production.
o Political power = economic power
• Gramsci
o Hegemony
Postmodernist Theory Of Power

• Michael Foucault - ‘Discipline and Punish’, “Madness and

Civilization”, “The History of Sexuality”
• Significance: Challenged conventional/ juridico-legal→ ‘disciplinary
power’, ‘biopower’ and ‘governmentality’.
• Micro / Sociological
• ‘power is everywhere’→ capillaries.
• Power is post-structure.
• Influences:
o Martin Heidegger , a phenomenologist.
o German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche → truth, knowledge and power.
• Location of power :Individuals are not the objects of powers, but they’re the locus where the
power and the resistance to it are exerted.
• Technique of power: 3 primary techniques of control : hierarchical observation, normalizing
judgment, and the examination.
• Purpose of power :
o Discipline, through the methods of punishment and reward → cohesion of the social
body….Bentham’s Panopticon.
o Reform → society’s standards (“normalization”)…different from the older system →
“normal” or “abnormal”….“to punish less, perhaps; but certainly to punish better”.
o Bio-power & Govern-mentality → double role of punishing and correcting →
“docile bodies”
o Knowledge Power Connection→ “knowledge is power”…“Will to truth is always will
to power”

Characteristics of power

• Isn’t necessarily ‘coercive’.

• Power is impersonal…a web of relations among actions rather than among agents.
• Power is pervasive
• Power generates particular types of knowledge and cultural order.
• Power circulates and functions in the form of a chain
• Power comes with resistance…“where there is power there is resistance… where there is no
resistance it is not, in effect, a power relation.”
• Power re-creates itself.

Conclusion:

• Noam Chomsky mentions Foucault as someone who wildly exaggerates the influence of
power in scientific discourses.
• Foucoult’s theory later influenced Derrida → Deconstruction & Double Reading

Legitimacy
 • ‘Legitimacy’ reflects the consent of the governed
• Legitimacy,like beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder
• Robert M MacIver: " …use of force only when legitimacy fails .If we think of power as a
naked sword ,authority may be sword in scabbard”
• Social Contract Theories: HOBBES AND LOCKE
• Montesquieu , in his work The Spirit of the Laws: alternative forms of legitimacy : a socially
responsible role + constitutionalism, and the safeguard of basic civil liberties.
• Rousseau: General will + Active participation of citizens.
• Karl Marx’s Views

Max Weber- “Protestant Ethics & Rise of Capitalism”

• Concept of legitimate power i.e. authority
• Authority is institutional and legal Right to obtain compliance and exercise power. While
power denotes the capacity or the ability to affect and change one’s environment, authority
refers to both the capacity to change as well as the right to change.
• ‘Authority’ = ‘Power’ + ‘Legitimacy’.
• Weber: three types of Authority
o Traditional,
o Charismatic and
o Legal -Rational → bureaucracy.

Power and Dominance :

• Dominance is a psychological concept. Power, a sociological concept.
• Weber: ‘power’ as a general concept is distinct from ‘domination’ as a specific phenomenon.
• Power is a potential..Domination presumes the presence of a master
• Power does not imply the right to command and the duty to obey while the latter implies willing
obedience.

HABERMAS AND THE LEGITIMATION CRISIS:

• Context : Weberian approach to legitimacy.
• Modern welfare societies.
• Fundamental contradictions
• Anthony King: “..government ‘overload’” → fiscal crisis
• Habermas’s analysis suggests that liberal democracies cannot permanently satisfy both
popular demands for social security and welfare rights, and the requirements of a market
economy based on private profit. capitalist democracies will, in his view, find it increasingly
difficult to maintain legitimacy.

Universal Conclusion on power

Power is essentially a complex and contested concept. There is no single framework that can capture
all forms of power in all its manifestations. Hence, to accept or reject the variety of these conceptions
could mean missing out on some fundamental dimension of power.