The new concepts of power? Power-over, power-to and power-with

ABSTRACT

The distinction between the notions of power-over, power-to and power-with is gaining prominence in contemporary literature on power. In this article, recent contributions to the study of power will be presented and assessed to provide an overview of the evolving meanings of power-to, power-over and power-with. In particular, we will show that the distinction between power-over, power-to and power-with is no longer interpreted as a dispute about the real meaning of a same concept of power; rather, the three expressions appear to have crystallized and institutionalized themselves into three different, freestanding, concepts.

KEYWORDS:

• Power-over
• power-to
• power-with
• domination
• empowerment

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. It should be mentioned that, for certain approaches, the social structure itself is considered as exerting power-over.

2. The present literature review does not pretend to be exhaustive. Its aim is to provide an overview of the main lines of thought recently developed about this topic and to include those contributions that, to our knowledge, better represent the variety of the field.

3. Haugaard specifies that this is the case of a ‘well-balanced democracy’. As Haugaard explains, indeed, ‘If the election is one in which B is some kind of permanent minority, then compliance is zero-sum and B is dominated’ (Haugaard 2015, p. 149).

4. As expounded in the introduction, Allen’s approach slightly differentiates itself by including both descriptive and normative elements in the definition of power-over, power-to and power-with. In particular, she suggests that not all instances of power-over equate to domination.

5. Sutherland and Feltey’s work includes a critique of how women are depicted in Hollywood movies. They underline, for example, the fact that women belonging to minority groups are underrepresented with respect to middle-class women and, when they are, it is more likely to see them reacting to domination with power-over rather than with power-to or power-with (Sutherland and Feltey 2017, in particular p. 628).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Pamela Pansardi

Pamela Pansardi is Assistant Professor in Political Science at the University of Pavia and principal investigator for the project ‘Gender and power in Italian Politics’. Her research focuses on the theory of power, gender and politics, EU politics, and methods in text analysis. Her work has appeared in journals such as European Journal of Political Research, Journal of Political Power, Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy.

Marianna Bindi

Marianna Bindi is Research Fellow in the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the University of Pavia, working on the project ‘Gender and power in Italian Politics’ led by Pamela Pansardi. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Pavia and a MA in Legal and Political Theory from University College London. Her research focuses on political theory and the study of political concepts such as freedom, power and political stability.