Conceptual analysis of power: basic trends

ABSTRACT

This article identifies and evaluates the main trends and issues in the conceptual analysis of power, their dynamics, and current status. There are several interrelated basic trends in the conceptual analysis of power: conceptual solutions have become more flexible; multidimensional view; synthesis of different approaches; expansion of the concept; blurring the borders between power and non-power. These trends require taking into account a significantly larger amount of empirical data and paying special attention to hidden forms of social interaction. Expansion of the range of power forms increases the difficulties of their systematization, while interpretation and comparison of the outcomes of empirical studies have become more complicated.

KEYWORDS:

• Power
• concept of power
• power to
• power over
• multidimensional view of power

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. According to this concept, the criteria of correct application of the concepts like ‘power’, ‘democracy’, ‘politics’ are inherently complex, multiple, evaluative and in no relation of priority with one another. Disputes over the proper meaning of political concepts are normative.

2. According to the family resemblance view of power, there is no single concept of power; rather there are a number of usages of the concept that reflect particular local practices.

3. ‘The Power of a Man (to take it Universally), is his present means, to obtain some future apparent Good’ (Hobbes 1996, p. 62). Hobbes advanced and developed a causal view of power. The difference between power and cause is relative to the time of action. Cause relates to the effect already produced, i.e. with respect to the past, whereas power relates to the ability to produce something in the future.

4. Various terms are used to refer to this tradition: such as ‘Weberian’, ‘tradition of realism’, ‘sectional conception of power’, ‘power over’, and ‘domination’.

5. For Spinosa, power represents the ontological constitutive force from which all the specific capacities and capabilities of a person or a thing arise (Spinosa 2002; see Saar 2010).

6. For example, classical Marxism explains power in a capitalist society in terms of class domination, i.e. in the spirit of the first tradition, but argues that in the future communist society it will be overcome.

7. For example, Allen considers the constitutive approach as a ‘not completely satisfactorily worked out attempt to reconcile the oppositions between the other two language games’ since ‘it fails to distinguish subjectivation understood as an empirical process from domination understood as a normatively objectionable power relation, and it fails fully to appreciate the significance of power-to or the empowerment that comes with subjection’ (Allen 2014, p. 445).

8. For a more detailed analysis, see (Ledyaev 1998).

9. A good example is the debate between Morriss and Nelson Polsby. Morriss (2002) (Morriss (1987))) insisted that power is an exclusively dispositional concept. Morriss reiterated his position in the second edition of his book, which was published in this century. On the Polsby (1963), Polsby (1980)) denied the existence of power without its manifestation in the activities of agents.

10. However, Hearn (2012, p. 16), Andersson (2007), and the author of this article still include intentionality in their definitions, criticizing alternative approaches for making power and domination as too ‘diffuse’ (Hearn 2008, p. 41). Wrong (2002, p. 4), in the latest edition of his book, continues to emphasize the importance of including intention in the definition of power since it is ‘necessary to distinguish the diffuse controls exercised by the group over socialized individuals from direct, intentional efforts by a specific person or group to affect another’s conduct.’

11. Balanced power means the absence of monopoly power of the power holder in all spheres of interaction with the power subject. Wrong (2002, p. 11) preferred the term ‘intercursive power’ to explain situations where ‘the power of each party in a relationship is countervailed by that of the other.’

12. At one of the conferences, I asked M. Haugaard to clarify which social relations and practices, denoted by the term ‘power’ cannot be properly explained as cases of power. Mark referred to the idea of ‘essential contestability of political concepts’, accepting the possibility of attributing to power all relations and practices that are denoted by the term ‘power’.

Additional information

Funding

This publication was prepared within the framework of the Academic Fund Program at the National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE) in 2019-2020 (grant № 19-01-013) and by the Russian Academic Excellence Project ‘5-100’.

Notes on contributors

Valeri Ledyaev

Valeri Ledyaev is a professor of politics at National Research University Higher School of Economics, Moscow, Russia. His PhD is from the University of Manchester, UK (1997). He has received grants and fellowships from the British Academy, USIA, Soros Foundation, Fulbright Foundation (USA), Research Council of Canada, Central European University (Hungary), Russian Humanitarian Foundation, Russian Fundamental Research Foundation, etc. He has written three books: Power: A Conceptual Analysis. New York: Nova Science Publishers, 1998 (the Russian version: Vlast: Contseptualniy analiz. Moscow, 2001: Rossiyskaya Politicheskaya Entsiklopedia (ROSSPEN, 2001); Sotsiologiya Vlasti (Sociology of Power). Moscow: HSE, 2012; Vlast v Malom Rossiyskom Gorode (Power in the Small Russian Town). Moscow: HSE, 2017; and more than 100 articles published in the USA, UK, Germany, Canada, and Russia. [email protected]