Power: A Radical View

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I first read Lukes' work about two years ago after trying for years to make sense of the power dynamics in public education systems, and it was a source of extreme clarity, putting names & rationale to much of what I had observed. I don't think there is anything wrong with his work at all. It is possible that you fail to appreciate the value it brought in its time, and also, the value of his focus on the pure model. Knowledge advances through a combination of going wide and going deep, and those of us who are generalists rely more than we realize on the people who develop an obsessive focus on one thing and delve to its wellspring. This is what Lukes did - applying the model to the myriad of situations in which it applies is left to the rest of us to do in our time, whenever that may be. Selective perception and articulation of social problems and conflicts. Sports news and celebrity news often override news that is important to the interest of the citizen - but these interests may just as well be overridden by an emphasis on foreign affairs.

Dimension 1, Quality: I’m inclined to break power down into four categories: coercive, manipulative, cooperative, or altruistic--with each of those categories having various tactical subdivisions.

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Highly theoretical but mostly accessible, the book asserts that the concept of power has to be looked at in 'three dimensions.' It is not enough to say that 'A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do.' That is the one-dimensional view. Likewise, even the two-dimensional conception is inadequate: 'Power is also exercised when A devotes his energies to creating or 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.' Rather, in 3-D, power can be described thus: '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. Indeed, is it not 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? One does not have to go to the lengths of talking about 'Brave New World,' or the world of B. F. Skinner, to see this: thought control takes many less total and more mundane forms, through the control of information, through the mass media and through the process of socialization.' The article and comments about theories of power in society were interesting but unsatisfying, and prompted me to formulate the following analysis of power: However, personal real interests may not be manifested by the increased egalitarianisation of Indian society due to universal suffrage - individuals often attempt to find their direct needs, not their long-term interests; and their interests are often defined in terms of power and money, which I do not find appealing as an end state, instead proposing the essential yet essentially unquantifyable interest of happiness over money and power. Robert Dahl exemplifies the pluralistic view of power with his analysis of the power structure in New Haven, Connecticut; in the 1950s (Domhoff, 2005). In Dahl’s view, there were a number of influential groups whose opinions held weight when it came to making and influencing decisions about the city (Domhoff, 2005). His conclusion about the power structure in, New Haven was that no single group held the monopoly on power (Domhoff, 2005). Although there were inequalities within the society, the fact that power was dispersed among different elites with different interests at heart meant that the situation was one of ‘dispersed inequalities’; where no one group controlled all of the important resources (Domhoff, 2005). Steven Lukes provides three theories of power and evaluates them, and at the same time building on their scope and complexity. His third dimension of power does a good job of exploring and explaining the mechanisms behind complex and entrenched power. The other two dimensions account for weaker forms of power that can be exercised. Lukes third dimension of power can be applied in explaining corporate power in the modern world. Corporate power is built on an unquestioned and accepted ideology, founded on the premise that it is the natural way of being of as Margaret Thatcher voiced out, “There is no alternative”. Acceptance of the free market ideology inevitably means acceptance of its consequences; the status quo of our world today. Lukes’ theory also helps us to explain why despite the destruction that is done to the planet, and the disregard for humanity, that characterises the system, it has survived and still thrives. Lukes, then, very aptly describes this form of power as both “insidious” and “supreme” (Lukes, 1974: 23).

Steven Lukes's Power: A Radical View was a very important contribution when it appeared in 1974. Lukes emphasized several important points that became landmarks in subsequent discussions of the social reality of power: that power is a multi-dimensional social factor, that power and democracy are paradoxically related, and that there are very important non-coercive sources of power in modern society. In the second edition in 2005 he left the 1974 essay unchanged, but added a substantive introduction and two new chapters: "Power, Freedom and Reason" and "Three-Dimensional Power". Also new in the second edition is substantially more attention to several other writers on the social context of power, including James Scott and Michel Foucault. The three-dimensional theory of power turns to a different problem -- the fact that peoplesometimesact willingly in ways that appear contrary to their most basic interests. So the third dimension is the set of ways in which the powerful transform the powerless in such a way that the latter behave as the former wish -- without coercion or forcible constraint -- for example, by creating a pervasive system of ideology or false consciousness. Both pluralists and their critics overlook an important point, in Lukes's view:Non-decision-making power is that which sets the agenda in debates and makes certain issues (e.g., the merits of socialism in the United States) unacceptable for discussion in "legitimate" public forums. Adding this face gives a two-dimensional view of power allowing the analyst to examine both current and potential issues, expanding the focus on observable conflict to those types that might be observed overtly or covertly. [8] The third criticism Lukes has, of the two dimensional view of power, is that when it analyses if power has been exercised or not, it looks only at the subjective interests, policy preferences and grievances that are overridden (Lukes, 1974: 24). The view holds that if the observer can find no grievances there is the assumption that there is ‘genuine consensus’ on the issue at hand (Lukes, 1974: 24). The view, however, does not consider the possibility of a group having preferences that do not necessarily include all of its real interest (Lukes, 1974: 24). For example, in 2009 the number of American workers in trade unions was 12.3% and only 7.2% in the private sector (White, 2010). The ‘peak’ in the private sector was 30% in 1958 (White, 2010). Trade unions can organise and empower workers if they have significant membership and worker support. It is a real interest for workers to be involved in them, but partly due to the historical linking of trade unions with communism and partly due to other factors, few American workers choose to exercise their rights to join trade unions (White, 2010). He is a member of the editorial board of the European Journal of Sociology and directs a research project on what is left of the socialist idea in Western and Eastern Europe.

Even if the original author is correct that Lukes intends to lead us to believe that the three "dimensions" each contributes its own influence to an ultimately singular overall force or character of power, he may be right: it is not clear why the original poster thinks that decision-making, agenda-setting, and ideology are somehow intrinsically separate. It seems pretty plausible that they may be simultaneously relevant, even combinatory, in one arena of interactions where power is exercised.

From 1974 to 1983, he was President of the Committee for the History of Sociology of the International Sociological Association. He was the co-director of the European Forum on Citizenship at the European University Institute from 1995 to 1996. Seeing this post long after it went up, I'm not sure if it's worth commenting, but - it does strike me that the critique of using the word dimensions is off the mark for at least two reasons: The one dimensional view of power is very simple to grasp and can be observed with relative ease. The theory gives a straightforward way of thinking about “the behavioural study of decision-making power by political actors” (Lukes, 1974: 57). It would be useful in many cases, especially where pluralist power structures have been established. However, the view fails to observe, in any system, the means by which the political agenda is controlled (Lukes, 1974: 57). In many cases, the exercise of power is more subtle and results from the use of mechanics beyond the scope of the one dimensional view. Thus I conclude that this first, 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 expressing policy preferences, revealed by political participation. (19)The second dimension that Lukes discusses was brought forward in rebuttal to this pluralist theory; critics pointed out that it is possible to influence decisions by shaping the agenda, not merely by weighing in on existing decision points. Lukes quotes from Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz in their 1962 "Two Faces of Power" ( link): "'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'" (20). So shaping the agenda is an important source of power that is overlooked in the pluralist model, the one-dimensional view. Decision-making power is the most public of the three dimensions. Analysis of this "face" focuses on policy preferences revealed through political action. [7]