P olitics and Power

1. Politics and Power SO310 Political Sociology Lecture 1

2. Summary • Introduction: Studying Politics and Power • Lukes • Foucault • Poggi • Conclusion and Seminar Reading

3. Studying Politics and Power • There are also a number of theoretical approaches within political sociology to studying politics and and politics (discussed last week). • Focus this week: three perspectives in political sociology with a specific and explicit theoretical and analytical focus on power: Lukes, Foucault, and Poggi, situated in relation to wider debates

4. Steven LukesPower: A Radical View (PRV) (original 1974, 2nd ed. 2005) • Influential critique of prevailing Weberian perspectives (elite and pluralist) on power in 1950s and 1960s US, Lukes’ ‘third dimension of power’ draws on ideas of Gramsci on hegemony and Tilly on the politics of contention • Chapter 2 (2nd edition 2005): critical discussion of Foucault’s analysis of power, and a defence of, and contextualisation/qualification/extension of PRV • Provocative for debating different theoretical approaches to power: critiques Weber, uses Gramsci, provides a counter-point to Foucault

5. Context to PRV: Weberian traditions • According to John Scott (2012), who works within the Weberian tradition of political sociology, there are three dominant methodological traditions through which power is studied in empirical sociology: • Reputational approach: looks at those who are believed to have power (Hunter 1953)- critique: only ‘images’ of power • Decision-making approach: focuses on what actually happens when decisions are made (Dahl 1961)- critique: difficult to access real decision-makers (decision making behind closed doors) • Structural approach: focus on strategic positions in the central organizations and institutions of a society (Mills 1956), which Scott (2012) favours The above three approaches relate to debates within American Weberian political sociology of the 1950s and 60s: elite theory (Hunter and Mills) and pluralism (Dahl)- the background in which Lukes wrote Power: A Radical View (2012)

6. Elite theory and pluralism • The debate: ‘Both methodological questions (how are we to define and investigate power?) and substantive conclusions (how pluralistic or democratic, is its distribution?) were at issue here, as was the link between them (did the methodology predetermine the conclusions? Did it preclude others?’ (Lukes PVR, p. 5)

7. The Power EliteC. Wright Mills (1956) • Elite theory- argues that there is a concentration and centralization of the power elite: • ‘As the means of influence and of power are centralized, some men come to occupy positions in American society from which they can look down upon, so to speak, and by their decision mightily affect, the everyday worlds of ordinary men and women’ (Mills 1956: 3) • Structural- based on overlapping and interlocking institutional hierarchies of power

8. Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers Floyd Hunter (1953) • Study of leadership patterns in Atlanta, Georgia (called ‘Regional City’ in the study) • Focused on powerful individuals in fours arenas of power- business, government, civic affairs and leaders of wealth’ • According to Lukes, this is another examples of elite theory, with similar focus to Mills on elite domination over powerless populations • According to Scott (2012), this is a ‘reputational approach’ which at best provides evidence on images of powerbecause it relies on key informants to ‘judge’ and ‘rate’ people’s level of influence

9. Who Governs? Robert Dahl (1961) • Critique of the ruling elite model (Weberian) and Marxist-inspired ideas of a ‘ruling class’ • Studied power and influence in the city of New Haven in the 1960s, a pioneering study of ‘community power’ • Focus on decision-making: identified power with its exercise; power seen as intentional, active, and overt • Critique: misses hidden, non-decision-making or non-overt forms of power, too focused on behaviours

10. The influence of Gramsci on PRV Gramsci’s questions (confronting the failure of revolution in the West in his prison cell in Fascist Italy): • How is consent to capitalist exploitation secured under contemporary conditions, particularly democratic ones? How was such consent to be understood? • Gramsci’s answer: through HEGEMONY. A social group manifests its hegemony through both ‘domination’ and ‘intellectual and moral leadership’. ‘A social group can, and indeed must, already ‘lead’ [i.e. be hegemonic] before winning governmental power (this indeed is one of the principal conditions for the winning of such power).’ Lukes’ Gramscian-inspired questions in the early 1970s (for PRV): • What explains the persistence of capitalism and the cohesion of liberal democracies? What were the limits of consent beyond which crises would occur? Were capitalist democracies undergoing a ‘legitimation crisis’? What was the proper role of intellectuals in contesting the status quo? Were revolution or socialism on the historical agenda in the West and, if so, in what form?

11. Lukes: Three dimensions of power1) One-Dimensional View of PowerPluralist: Dahl, Polsby, Wolfinger

12. Two-Dimensional View of Power • Critics of pluralism, Bachrach and Baratz (1963), ‘The Two Faces of Power’

13. Three-Dimensional View of Power • Lukes’ contribution

14. Criticisms of the Three-Dimensional View of Power • Difficulties with studying the third dimension of power: • justifying the relevant counterfactual, and • identifying the mechanism or process of an alleged exercise of power • Focuses only on one type of power: domination, while there are other types of power • Assumes actors to have unitary interests, failing to consider the ways in which everyone’s interests are multiple, conflicting, and of different kinds • Lukes’ defence: makes the case for the existence of power as the imposition of internal constraints.

15. Lukes on Foucault • Foucault: does this offer an ultra-radical, ‘fourth dimension of power?’ • Lukes argues that Foucault’s ideas about power, while influential and stimulating, are ultimately rhetorical, lack methodological rigour, and exhibit the ‘power of seduction’ through their appeal • Critical of the idea that there can be no liberation from power

16. Lukes on Foucault • ‘Should they [Foucault scholars] lead us to conclude that we are all subjected subjects, ‘constituted’ by power, that the modern individual is the ‘effect’ of power, that power needs to be ‘de-faced’, that rationality is ‘contest-dependent’ and ‘penetrated’ by power, that power cannot be based on rational consent- in short, that after Foucault it no longer makes sense to speak… of the very possibility of people being more or less free from others’ power to live as their own nature and judgement dictate?’

17. Who was Michel Foucault?(1926-1984) A philosopher of the left... who was a powerful critic of Marxism • Student of Althusser (Marxist) • But also a gay man with mental health problems – sensitive to issues beyond class struggle and economics • French Communist Party 1950-1953 • Increasing awareness of atrocities of communist party in USSR • The ‘May 68’ generation/Civil rights and social movements

18. Who was Michel Foucault?(1926-1984) • A child of war… who saw war everywhere • WWII • Anti-colonial wars of independence (esp Algeria) • Activist and observer of political struggle against totalitarianism and authority in 20th century... a pragmatic, embodied, approach to power • Tunisia • Poland • Prisoners’ rights • Iran

19. Foucault & (the Critique of) Marxism Getting away from dualistic account of power – as bourgeoisie dominating proletariat • Power relations and struggle are diverse and dispersed (it’s not all about class) • No innocent ‘outside’ of power from which do politics or emancipation... Politics always takes place within power relations; Freedom is produced by power. • Not ‘ideology vs truth’ but discourses that produce multiple truths • Not ‘true class consciousness’ but the ‘insurrection of subordinated knowledges’ BUT it is easy to overplay the distance between Foucault and Marx.

20. Foucault & the ‘Theory’ of Power Foucault’s ‘propositions’ on power • Power is productive – it creates things, including freedom and resistance • Power is immanent in economic processes, knowledge relationships, sexual relations etc • Power ‘comes from below’ it is not a dualistic relation between powerful and powerless • Power should be thought about as so many strategies (not as domination) – they are intentional but not subjective • Where there is power there is resistance – resistance is never outside of power (see History of Sexuality 1 pp. 92-95)

21. Foucault & the ‘Theory’ of Power Key Concepts • Power/Knowledge • Discipline (panopticon, the inscription of the soul, and the production of docile bodies) • Biopolitics (regularisation of population life, security as flipside of liberalism, modern power and domination as ‘care for life’) • Governmentality (modern liberal politics governs through ‘the conduct of free conduct’ more than through domination – knowledge and objectification is central to this) • We need to ‘cut off the kings head’ in theorising power.

22. Foucault & Political Sociology • 1980s – 90s Feminists take up Foucault’s work especially in the 1980s – when disillusioned with ‘second wave’. See Up Against Foucault. • Discipline and Punish read widely – demanding a rethink of Marxist approaches to critiquing power. • 1990s Foucault popularised in Anglo-phone social sciences through efforts of Colin Gordon, Graham Burchell, Paul Rabinow, Nikolas Rose , Marianna Valverde and others (the History of the Present Network; Economy & Society) • Established genealogy as a valid research method in sociology and anthropology • Emphasised the empiricism and ‘anti-theory’ aspect of Foucault’s approach • Stress the idea of ‘governmentality’ as a way of making sense of neo-liberalism

23. Foucault & Political Sociology • By 2000 Foucault is considered one of the key thinkers of UK political sociology – Nikolas Rose and Economy & Societyhighly influential by this time. • In France - Bruno Latour , Michell Callon and Actor Network Theory – political sociology (of science) after the subject. Have become very influential in UK sociology, geography and science studies • Since 2000 College de France Lecture series has been published – shedding new light on Foucault’s interest in Racism, Biopolitics, Ethics and Liberalism • Foucault ‘discovered’ by Anglophone politics and IR. Critical security studies becomes a Foucauldian sub-discipline through efforts of Mick Dillon, Julian Reid and – in a roundabout way – philosopher Giorgio Agamben.

24. Loving and Hating Michel Foucault: the New Social Movements Feminism: • Foucault key influence on feminist theory, and Queer Theory, especially ‘post-structuralist feminism’ • Judith Butler; JK Gibson-Graham; Chandra Mohanty • But... Infuriates some feminists because he rejects modern western values Postcolonialism: • Anti-colonial struggle, and it’s intellectuals, clearly a huge influence on Foucault’s thinking • Foucault’s ideas adopted in ‘post-colonial’ and anti-racist theory • Edward Said; Chandra Mohanty; Paul Gilroy; Robert Young • But... Infuriates some thinkers of post-colonial because he remains too close to the project of western modernity (see Foucault and the Iranian Revolution)

25. Reaffirming Weber’s understanding of social power: Poggi’s Forms of Power (2001) • Homo potens: human species whose members must make a difference to nature by gathering, controlling, and deploying natural energies in order to survive, and whose social arrangements are structured in part by the asymmetrical distribution of social power • Poggi’s three types of power: normative-ideological, economic, and military resemble Weber’s ‘class, status, and party’ • Argues against critiques of Weber, that they detach ‘power’ conceptually from ‘agency’ by merging ‘power’ into ‘structure’ (Marxist), or into ‘knowledge’ and ‘discourse’ (Foucault)

26. Poggi’s Forms of Power • Contemporary Weberian conception of power • BUT while Weber stresses the capacity of one party to realize its will even against the resistance of others, Poggi argues that: • ‘social power should be thought of as the capacity of one party to cause another to act in certain ways, which include abstaining or desisting from opposing the former party’s preferences but may go beyond such abstaining and desisting’. (2001:13)

27. Poggi: defining social power • ‘Social power relations exist wherever some human subjects (individual or collective) are able to lay routine, enforceable boundaries upon the activities of other human subjects (individual or collective), in so far that the ability rests on the former subjects’ control over resources allowing them, if they so choose, to deprive the latter subjects of salient human values. The chief among such values are bodily integrity; freedom from restraint, danger or pain; reliable access to nourishment, shelter or other primary material goods; the enjoyment of a degree of assurance of one’s worth and significance.’ (Poggi 2001:14)

28. Conclusion • Different theoretical and empirical approaches to power have different implications for methods and research questions • Power is a key theme in political sociology and we will continue to study the complex relationships between politics, society, and power throughout the module.

29. Seminar Questions Part 1: Close readings (key concepts and passages): • Lukes: Outline the three dimensions of power (see p. 29 overview), comparisons between the three views (from p. 38-47), and difficulties of researching the third dimension of power (p. 48-58) • Foucault: Discuss concepts of positive power (p. 119), the state (p. 122-123), power in terms of relations of war (p. 123), power in relation to truth (p. 131-133) • Poggi: Discuss concepts of power and the homo potens (p. 3), difference between power over nature and social power (p. 4-9, 13), the grounding of social power in asymmetries (p. 10-12), power as ‘potentiality’ (p. 11) and as a ‘dispositional concept’ (p. 12); Max Weber’s understanding of social power reaffirmed (p. 12-13)

30. Seminar Questions Part 2 • Compare and contrast two different theoretical perspectives on power within political sociology (Lukes and Foucault; Foucault and Poggi; or Lukes and Poggi). What are the strengths and weaknesses of these different approaches? Which concept of power do you find the most convincing? Consider questions such as: • How are we to define and investigate power? • What explains the persistence of capitalism and the cohesion of liberal democracies? • What are the relationships between power, consent, resistance, and violence?