The faces of power, resistance and justification in a changing world

This issue of the Journal opens with a re-examination of power relations in the light of a changing politics, in particular the rise of populism and the emergence of new forms of Internet-based communication. In the opening article, Catherine Frost argues that detecting the voice of the populus is a critical justificatory criterion of democracy. However, as already identified by Thomas Hobbes in the 17th c., the problem of political ventriloquism can make it hard to know whose voice is coming from whom. Charismatic leaders can act as false prophets who disturb the voices of the political realm by manipulating the more gullible members of the polis into identifying with a viewpoint that is not genuinely their own or in their interest. As explained by Frost, currently, the advent of Internet bots, which appear as actual individuals but are pre-programmed computer interventions, exacerbates the problem of ventriloquism.

Carl Schmitt and Rousseau both saw politics as having a sacred element, whereby the leader’s pronouncements are analogous to the voice of a God. However, to most democrats of liberal and plural orientations this form of charismatic authority poses a threat to the democratic system. Currently, populism builds upon the idea of a pure ‘voice of the people’, which is given a sacred status. Populists conceptualize a singular voice, the voice of the (authentic) people (sacred), which is contrasted with the profane voice of the ‘elites’ (profane), resulting in a binary view of politics. As observed by pluralist critics of populism (for instance, Muller 2016), it is this belief in a singular people’s voice that places populists at odd with democrats who argue that the diversity of individuals (and their interests) means that the people always have a plurality of voices.

While accepting liberal pluralist concerns over populist politics, Frost adds a new dimension to this concern. If we take a constructivist reading of the concept of ‘the voice of the people’, Internet technologies have a greater potential than the print media to create a fictive voice of the people. Internet bots impersonate human voices. They create the impression of widespread consensus on a topic, which constitutes a ventriloquized voice of the people. Because this act of ventriloquism is linked to the sacred authority of the (supposed) ‘voice of the people’, this leads to the destruction of plural democracy.

The idea of manipulation suggests downward power-over that is virtually invisible – a characteristic of three-dimensional power (Lukes 2005). However, as argued by Ralph Schroeder, populism is also an upward movement, caused by previously apolitical people making new demands. Building upon the work of T.H. Marshall and Michael Mann, Schroeder explores how the gradual expansion and evolution of citizenship rights (from political rights, to civil or social rights) contributes to populism. Many social rights are still not fully realized in modern democracies, therefore are subject to contestation. As ‘the people’ look for more rights, this creates upward pressures and conflicts with elites. As resources are scarce, simultaneously there is an outward or sideways conflict that limits who qualifies as ‘the people’. If the (so called) ‘elites’ are perceived to resist challenges to their privilege, while expanding the rights of ‘foreigners’, who do not belong to ‘the people’, this creates fertile ground for populist discontent. This makes populism inclusionary on the vertical axis, while simultaneously exclusionary on the horizontal axis. Both left- and right-wing populists demand more rights from elites (the vertical axis). Typically, right-wing populists try to limit the extent of who qualifies as the people through racist discourse, while left-wing populists practice exclusionary anti-globalism by limiting the free movement of labour. In this characterization of populism there is a curious process of social construction of how these enemies collaborate. As agents of globalization, or as ‘globalizers’, ‘the elites’ collaborate with ‘the foreigners’.

Power and violence are often theorized as opposites (for instance, Arendt 1970). As explored by Patricia Sellick, this opposition does not simply have a practical face, as ‘how to do’ non-violent resistance, as described by Sharp (2010), but it also has a moral dimension. Building upon Arendt, power as the power ‘to act in concert’ is a collective coming together of agents into collective power-with, which mutually re-affirms the action of self and other. This form of normatively desirable power harnesses the potentialities of agency into a collective force that affirms freedom. Resistance creates collective power-with (on power-to, -over and – with, see Allen 1998, 1999) agency, which is morally desirable. Sellick is interested in normatively justifiable forms of resistance, which both create the freedom of power-with, while refusing to collaborate with the social structures that sustain domination. If the response of the more powerful agent is to resort to physical violence then the ultimate resistance is to refuse the blackmail of coercive threats, while demonstrating willingness to accept violent consequences. For the dominant, the activation of physical violence has a potentially self-defeating core. Any violent act requires justification and, in the case of domination, this will expose immoral foundations of the status quo. So, the act of refusal of non-violent resistance creates both a moral power-with, while exposing an immoral power-over.

The power-to act in concert is an act of collective agency, while the act of resistance is agency that resists the reproduction of dominating social structures. As argued by Martin Javornicky, building upon the theories of Mark Haugaard, the problem of social order lies in the collaboration of ego (the singular actor) with alter (a different social actor) in reproducing social structure. Building upon Wittgenstein’s private language argument, social structures are essentially the product of public acts of collaboration. While Giddens emphasizes structuration, in Haugaard’s work the key to structural reproduction is the confirm-structuring other. The refusal to confirm-structure (which is termed destructuration) is a deep refusal of the kind described by Sellick, typical of non-violent resistance. What theorists of non-violent resistance grasp is that all routine reproduction of social order is premised upon confirm-structuration. Therefore, collective destructuration is the key to dissolving social orders of oppression.

Resistance has a dual quality. On the one hand, the power-with aspect of resistance to oppression is an act of confirm-structuration to a new social order. This is why Sharp argues that this form of resistance has an implicit morally democratic core. However, as noted by Javornicky, while acts of destructuration are an act of resistance, destructuration by the elites to any incipient democratic claims is part of the routine of maintaining the status quo. Resistance is not only the prerogative of revolutionaries: it is equally the technique of dominant elites in order to maintain the status quo.

Acts of resistance often make an implicit justificatory claim about the other. The refusal to confirm-structure may de-legitimize the interacting other as ‘unreasonable’. To those maintaining the status quo, that the other is unreasonable is evidenced by their attempt to change the social order, which can be construed as an attack upon the ‘natural-order-of-things’, therefore unreasonable.

In this regard, I would argue that the social construction of the other as an enemy, along the lines suggested by Schmitt (2006), is a refusal to confirm-structure, justified by the social construction of the other as unreasonable. Enemies are enemies because they are incapable of reasonable dialogue. Once the other is deemed unreasonable, they have a lesser moral claim upon others. Recognising the call of other, which is central to an ethical life, can therefore be justifiably suspended. The unreasonable other has no moral call upon the ethical core of the self. For this reason we should be very wary of any labels that imply this kind of unreasonableness, as they have the potential to open the door to perception of other as unworthy of any moral claims upon the self. Even resistance is only a moral act, all the way down, when it is not accompanied with the characterization of the other as beyond the pale of the reasonable. In other words, I would argue that resistance that presupposes a stark friend/enemy distinction is morally suspect. That said, in cases of extreme domination such a social construction may be justifiable.

Overt resistance has a cost, while compliance with unequal structural relations can deliver short-term gains. In their article on women’s experiences of power within a mining community in Zimbabwe, Alix Tiernan and Pat O’Connor explore how women living within a patriarchal system often use that system to gain significant levels of power-to and some power-over but at the cost of challenging the injustice of the system itself. Following the work of Clegg (1989) and Haugaard (2012), Tiernan and O’Connor distinguish episodic from dispositional power. These social actors gain episodic power-to and power-over, while confirm-structuring a patriarchal system that is characterized by unequal dispositional power. These actors are skilled performers in reproducing the social structures of gender. The less powerful women are rewarded for ‘good behaviour’ when they structure their gender roles in a non-challenging way. Ideologically this is partly rooted in the strong communitarian ethos of the local (Shona) society. Core to this is the ethos of Ubuntu, which translates as ‘good behaviour’, which renders confrontation infelicitous. This is further reinforced from a wider tradition of African feminism, where emphasis falls upon the complementarity of the sexes and give-and-take compromise. So, overall, at the level of three-dimensional power, there are epistemic interpretative horizons that encourage strategies of immediate episodic empowerment, at the expense of wider changes in dispositional powers, which might appear confrontational.

Making sense of the tacit interpretative horizons of social actors is key not only in understanding micro qualitative research but also in the academic field of international relations. In his article, Buğra San compares two readings of the 1998 ‘October Crisis’ between Turkey and Syria. The first reading is based upon a relational understanding that emphasizes the first dimension of power, which San explores using the conceptual vocabulary of Dahl (1968). The second reading is a more structural and post-structural interpretation, with emphasis upon the construction of meaning and self-perception, and is influenced by Foucauldian theories of power. In both accounts Turkey prevailed over Syria, the outcome is identical, but for different reasons. In the relational approach the reason for this successful exercise of power was that Turkey had significantly greater power resources: both militarily and economically. In the structural reading, the epistemic framing of the structural context is key. In contrast to a relational view, the emphasis moves from the actions of singular actors (be they individual or collective actors) to the wider structural context that shapes the moral and cognitive self-understandings of those social actors. A structural environment is not simply a context that determines who has what resources, it is also an epistemic and ontological field that shapes an inter-subjective interpretative horizon of interaction. In essence, this entails emphasizing the three-dimensional aspects of power relations.

In the case of Turkey and Syria, there was a perceived difference in authority status, which gave Turkey additional leverage over Syria. In terms of international politics, Western powers perceived Syria as a sponsor of terrorism, thus an unreasonable other, with negative authority status (on authority, see Haugaard 2018). In contrast, as a member of NATO, Turkey was one of the collective ‘us’, thus reasonable. At the time a change of leadership occurred within Syria, leading to a desire to overcome the country’s pariah status. The desire for change in status in the eyes of Western powers,was reinforced by observing the negative consequences incurred in Iraq for acquiring pariah status, especially after the invasion of Kuwait. In line with these interests, Syria was thus strongly incentivized to adopt ‘good behaviour’. This meant compliance with Turkey’s demands, which included ceasing to support the PKK.

It is important to note that the two readings of this crisis were not in anyway incommensurable. Rather, taking account of the third dimension of power, especially the epistemic shaping of interests, gives greater depth to our understanding, without falsification of more realist, resource-based, theories.

Making sense of the self-understanding of social actors links to a wider philosophical issue concerning the essence of human nature. Simon Susen engages in an extensive debate with Daniel Chernilo’s new book Debating Humanity. Towards a Philosophical Sociology (2017), which is an extended philosophical exploration of human nature, as appropriate to the perspective of sociology. Core to Chernilo’s account is the characterisation of humans as reflexive beings. While definitional of the human essence, reflexivity is also what makes the whole idea of a fixed human nature problematic. As observed by Susen, many sociologists of a constructivist bent would argue that the reflexivity of humans is so variable that it is hard to maintain the idea of a core human essence. If we think of the fourth dimension of power in terms of the creation of social subjects, we should consider social ontology as malleable, thus highly variable. Furthermore, central to that variability is the instrumental use of the idea of human nature as a disciplinary measuring rod. When reified, a model of human nature can be used as a principle of normalization. For instance, in Marx’s theory of alienation humans are supposedly alienated from their (so-called) ‘species essence’. This characterization of human nature served as a disciplinary matrix for re-education of the masses under Maoism. Thus, while appearing disinterested, essentialist descriptions of human nature are political interventions that may be used to justify domination.

While appearing empirical, the idea of human nature presupposes a normative claim, which makes it difficult to separate how humans are, from how humans should be. Having acknowledged the danger of using this to dominate others, it should also be emphasized that when we combine the centrality of reflexivity with sociality, we begin to see the contours of a moral grounding that places the construction of subjectivity in direct interactive dialogue with the other. This has the potential to serve as a foundation for the legitimate grounds of justification for resistance to domination. Furthermore, it may have the potential to serve as a way into constructing a moral foundation to justify legitimate episodic and dispositional power in all its forms – power-over, power-to and power-with.