Showing papers in "Journal of political power in 2015"

Dimensions of everyday resistance : the Palestinian Sumud

Abstract: This article applies our earlier proposed theoretical framework on everyday resistance in the case of Palestinian Sumūd (steadfastness) in relation to the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories and the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon. Our original framework rests on the dimensions of: (I) repertoires of everyday resistance; (II) relationships of agents; as well as the (III) spatialization and (IV) temporalization of everyday resistance. The already existing complex theoretical debates as well as the rich body of empirical work regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict give us an opportunity to illustrate and explore the possibilities as well as the limits of the proposed framework. Our hope is that in this way, we encourage more systematic research on and a more nuanced understanding of everyday resistance.

On the source, site and modes of domination

Abstract: This article seeks to examine how domination manifests in social relationships and institutions. It does this by examining two debates in republican literature. The first of which is whether domination requires institutionalisation? This addresses the source of domination. The second debate is on the nature of arbitrary power. This raises questions about the site of domination. It will be argued that the source of domination can be personally or socially constituted and that the site can be interactional or systemic. This yields four modes of domination that can be used to examine social institutions and relationships.

(Re)Conceptualising the third face of power: insights from Bourdieu and Foucault

Abstract: The strength of Lukes’ third face of power is the recognition that agents can be influenced by structures and ideas in ways of which they are unaware. The weakness of Lukes’ position is that his consideration of the third face is under-developed. In this article, we argue that Bourdieu and Foucault’s work offer fruitful ways of exploring this ‘pre-conscious’ dimension. Using Bourdieu’s work, the core of any understanding of the third face is rooted in the relationship between the social field and the habitus, while, for Foucault, the focus is upon the construction of the subject and her preferences in relation to the ongoing production of power. We subsequently explore the differences between their positions.

Robert Dahl on power

Abstract: Two questions about Dahl’s evolving view of power are addressed Have critics failed to distinguish his broad concept of power from the operational measures required for its study? It is argued that his classic study Who Governs? was driven by a concept of power on whose narrowness they rightly focused because it excluded important questions about power relations and mechanisms Secondly, how satisfactory is his final conceptualization of power? This, it is argued, is still too narrow It conflates power and influence, failing to see the importance of its dispositional character It advances too narrow a view of its origins and its impact And it fails to acknowledge the virtues of relating the concept of power to that of ‘interests’

‘The revolution will not be televised’: the institutional work of radical change in China’s Cultural Revolution

Abstract: Mao Zedong sought both to destabilize existing institutional categories for ordering meaning, and impose new ones, initially through the Great Leap Forward and subsequently during the Cultural Revolution. The paper explores the institutional work that made this process of radical change possible. At its core was the construction and deployment of a set of binary categorization devices. These are explored in the paper to argue that persistent and morally sophisticated institutional work is necessary to make radical change possible. Macro, meso and micro processes of institutional work operate in parallel, reinforcing each other and articulating utopian desire with local possibility. There is no single revolutionary event, no central scene to be represented. Together, leaders and followers at several levels participate in the processes of categorizing and managing the result of such categorizations. Categorizations of radical change have explicitly stigmatizing purposes and managing categorization/stigmatiz...

Misinterpreting Dahl on power

Abstract: Dahl’s critics have often called attention to important aspects of power relations – e.g. the suppression of issues and consciousness control. The critics, however, have not always portrayed Dahl’s views as accurately as one might wish. Distinguishing between an abstract concept of power and operational definitions adopted for purposes of specific research projects is fundamental for Dahl. Furthermore, Dahl’s concept of power implies nothing about the preferences of B, is not zero-sum, does not necessitate compulsion, may or may not be subtle or visible, is not confined to material resources, and may be either direct and immediate or indirect and long term.

Robert A. Dahl and the essentials of Modern Political Analysis: politics, influence, power, and polyarchy

Abstract: In Modern Political Analysis (MPA), Robert A. Dahl presents what he saw as the essentials of politics and political science. Spanning four decades of Dahl’s scholarly career, the six editions of MPA address (i) the nature of politics; (ii) ‘influence’, the constituent element of politics and MPA’s term for what political scientists often call ‘power’; and (iii) similarities and differences among political systems. Seven ‘forms of influence’ – power, coercion, force, persuasion, manipulation, inducement, and authority – are distinguished and analyzed. In exploring similarities and differences among the world’s political systems, MPA presents an overview of Dahl’s insights on democracy and polyarchy. The six MPA editions also provide an opportunity to observe how Dahl’s thinking about the essentials of his discipline evolved over forty years.

Power to the people: freedom as non-domination, disabling constraints and the eyeball test

Abstract: While there has been a large focus on what it means to be unfree in the neo-Roman republican literature, what it means to be non-free has received much less attention. Prima facie, this should not be surprising. After all, we tend to hold a special place in our normative theorising for the kinds of constraints that come about via the intentional actions of other agents rather than those that come about via the indirect, aggregate action of independently motivated social actors. However, as I argue in this article, if republicans advocate ‘structural egalitarianism’ as Pettit claims, then there are certain disabling constraints – constraints derived solely from being non-free in a choice – that deserve closer attention. Indeed, I claim that in failing to fully appreciate the importance of non-freedom, Pettit’s ‘eyeball test’ – the yardstick for republican justice – leaves in place certain disabling constraints to action which render some citizens structurally unequal vis-a-vis others.

The concept of power in the analysis of organisations with social and political goals

Abstract: I propose a theoretical framework for examining the extent to which organisations with social and political goals empower (or disempower) participants as effective political citizens. Theories of power – including behaviouralism, structuration and Foucauldian notions – are drawn on to illuminate relevant aspects of organisational life. Together they account for the role of individuals, rules and processes, procedure and administration, culture and practice, techniques of organisation and communication. The intention is to shed light on how groups or individuals are empowered or otherwise and provides a basis, where necessary, for challenging existing structures and practices in the name of greater empowerment.

Philosophy as an art of living/writing

Abstract: What is philosophy? Is philosophy relevant to everyday life; is philosophy simply a general theory of representation (Rorty 1979) or is it something else entirely? Towards the end of the twentieth century, a number of philosophical works emerged to challenge the ‘representationalist’ or ‘systematic’ conception of philosophy. This trend of meta-philosophical revaluation involved a wide range of philosophers, from the ‘post-analytic’ Rorty (1979, pp. 357–389) advocating an ‘edifying philosophy’ in America, to philosophy understood as ‘the creation of concepts’ in the ‘post-structuralism’ of Deleuze and Guattari (1994) to the understanding of philosophy ‘as a way of life’ by the philosophical historian Hadot (1995) in France. This diverse group of philosophers all share and emphasise a sensibility to affirm ‘life’, which differs from modern philosophy’s epistemological fixation on language, concepts or logic. Zeynep Talay-Turner’s book can be seen as a continuation of this metaphilosophical revaluation. In this ambitious book, Talay-Turner discusses the limits of the convention of ‘static conceptualisation’ in philosophy, and how literature – specifically the novels of Robert Musil and Oğuz Atay – can be an alternative resource for an ethical or indeed philosophical affirmation of life or ‘care of the self’. In setting out her objectives in the introduction, Talay-Turner explains that:

The contingencies of power: reformulating Foucault

Abstract: In a critique of Michel Foucault’s understanding of power relations, Andrew Sayer outlined an alternative that was both more conceptually rigorous and offered a clearer analytical framework with which to approach the analysis of power. Part of Sayer’s development was to distinguish not only between the holding and the operating of power(s), but also the three contingencies that always exist alongside power(s). The paper argues that Sayer’s critique of Foucault, while a welcome theoretical clarification, partially mistakes Foucault’s project (which was to analyse power ‘as is’, not power ‘in the abstract’) and also misses some of Foucault’s own clarifications to his understanding of power. The paper develops Sayer’s position by integrating important elements of Foucault’s approach – namely his concept of ‘dispositif’ – that illustrate Foucault’s more nuanced understanding of power. This is developed by arguing that there is, in fact, a fourth level of contingency that Sayer does not articulate. The paper u...

An institutional palimpsest? The case of Cambodia’s political order, 1970 and beyond

Abstract: How do continuity and change coexist and coevolve? How does continuity enable change and change reinforce continuity? These are central questions in organizational and political research, as organizational and institutional systems benefit from the presence of both reproduction and transformation. However, the relation between the processes of change and continuity still raises significant questions. To contribute to this discussion, we analyse the coexistence of deep institutional continuity and radical political change in the second half of twentieth-century Cambodia. Over a two-decade period, Cambodia was ruled by radically different political systems of organization: a traditional monarchy with feudal characteristics, a failing republic, a totalitarian communist regime, and a Vietnamese protectorate, before being governed by the UN and finally becoming a constitutional monarchy. We use an historical approach to study how a succession of radical changes may in reality signal deep lines of continuity.

Reflections upon empowerment/domination, social change and the four dimensions of power

Abstract: This issue of the Journal of Political Power opens with one of the classic conundrums of political power, which was stated so convincingly by Robert Michels, in Political Parties, already back in 1...

Power and animality in Kafka’s The Castle

Abstract: Animality is a leitmotif in Kafka’s works. It has been studied from various points of view, but rarely in the context of power. Further, The Castle has been largely ignored in studies on animality in his oeuvre. This paper suggests that the novel, though animals as such are basically absent from it, is permeated with animality and that its focus on power interacts with animality in various ways. In particular, by the metaphor of animality, the three well-known dimensions of power can be illuminated; animals/humans used as pets reveal how the very human attitude of caring may be a fertile ground for a totalizing type of power; and finally, animality turns out to be deeply connected with divinity in terms of absolute or perfect power, knowledge and eternal happiness. Kafka’s last and unfinished novel can be read as a study about the theology of power, with the conclusion that to exist as a human being means to be doomed to will, to acquire knowledge by power, that, however, cannot bring us eternal bliss, on...

Ethically ethnic: the ethno-culturalization of the moral conduct of the Sámi and the Roma in the governance in Finland between the 1850s and 1930s

Abstract: Although there was no focused administration of ethnic minorities in Finland until the last decades of the twentieth century, there was a variety of rationalities, techniques and practices of governance used for their conduct. In this article, I analyse how the governance of the Roma and the Sami – the two biggest minorities at the time – changed after the mid-1800s, when the new ethno-cultural understanding of population spread throughout administration and governing bodies. This Foucauldian analysis concentrates on the descent of this ‘event’, the social and political conditions of its emergence and the actual changes it entailed in the governance of these minorities.

Dahl’s concept of leadership: notes towards a theory of leadership in a democracy

Abstract: Robert Dahl’s writings contain a number of intriguing passages about leadership. The relevant sections appear in several of his key writings, including the Preface to Democratic Theory, Who Governs?, Modern Political Analysis, After the Revolution, and Democracy and its Critics. In these works, Dahl’s conception of leadership evolves from an emphasis on ‘control’ to ‘influence’, and finally broadens to include ‘competence’ and ‘expertise’. These sections are episodic and disconnected from one work to another; they repay close attention, nonetheless. This essay identifies these promising themes and sketches out some directions that a political theory of democratic leadership based on Dahl’s insights might take.

Power and resistance in Cameroon – strategies, intentionality, intersectionality, and shifting spaces and identities

Abstract: This paper examines how forest communities in Cameroon engage in social transformation when faced with social injustices and uneven power relations in their interactions with local state authorities and transnational corporations. It focuses on the different strategies that marginalized resource-dependent communities employ in resisting existing forms of domination manifested in public–private-community forest governance relations. We show how power operates in closed governance spaces to work against equitable, democratic and effective policy-making. We take as a point of departure that resistance or social change cannot be understood in isolation from power. Moreover, we engage with the intentionality debate and make the case that some forms of resistance are goal oriented in character. We reveal how disenfranchised communities, using powerful traditional ritual as a form of public protest, can effectively open up closed spaces and obtain effective participation in processes denied them. Our findings ha...

Dahl’s feminism?

Abstract: This tribute to the life work of Robert A. Dahl briefly analyzes the place of women, and issues raised by the status and treatment of women, in the sweep of his iconic contributions to democratic theory. The article traces his inclusion of women from the beginning to the end of his writings on politics in democracies and, in a more critical vein, casts light on some central concepts in his work that the insights and information of feminist scholarship would deepen, modify, or question.

Robert Dahl: scholar, teacher, and democrat

Abstract: Robert Dahl’s greatness as a political scientist rested on three qualities: the analytic clarity of his definitions of democracy, his insistence on studying complex ideas such as ‘power’ in a systematic empirical manner, and his commitment to a moral or normative underpinning for one’s scholarship. He was a deep egalitarian intellectually and interpersonally. However, many of Dahl’s publications had a considerable blindspot; until late in life, he did not fully recognize how much racial hierarchy and discrimination undermined his and others’ claims that the United States has a reasonably well functioning and robust democracy. This blind spot teaches us to be intellectually humble, to recognize the defects of even the strongest methodological strategies, and to recognize our own mistakes, as Dahl did.

Sexual abuse of children by the Catholic priests in the US: from a ‘charismatic bureaucracy’ to a governance regime

Abstract: The article focuses on the sexual harassment of children by the Catholic clergy in the US up until the early 2000s. The goal is to show how the emotional regime determining the relations between the clergy and the faithful changed as a result of successive revelations about clerical sexual abuse and the intransigence of the church on this issue. Both deprived it of much of its protective charisma and thus untouchability. Faced with mounting contestations and financial pressures, the upper echelons of the church hierarchy were forced to switch from unilateral bureaucratic to multilateral decision-making forms. The text highlights the contribution of the women’s and victims’ movements, popular culture (Oprah Winfrey!), insurance rules, and courageous journalists and lawyers to this process.

Foucault and ancient polizei: a genealogy of the military pastorate

Abstract: While Foucault claimed that biopower, as a form of political pastorate, did not exist in ancient Greece, he did take the view, following Hegel, that the ancient ‘ethical community’ [sittlichkeit] constituted a kind of ‘political technology of the individual’, an ancient form of ‘police’. In this paper, I trace Foucault’s conception of ‘police’ in his Tanner Lectures to Hegel’s analysis of politeia as the origin of the modern polizei. Through an examination of politeia in ancient political and military literature, I uncover a military–pastoral technology, founded on the relation not between shepherd–flock, but between leader [hegemon] and follower [epistatae]. I suggest two forms that a military–pastoral technology has taken shape, both in the politeia of the Spartans and in the early American Republic. This line of inquiry, I conclude, would not only suggest that a political pastorate existed in ancient Greece, but would also force us to re-consider modern forms of ‘police’ through the lens of a military–...

Hidden conflict, resistance and counter-ideology in hegemonic relations of domination

Abstract: James Scott’s Decoding subaltern politics: ideology, disguise and resistance in agrarian politics brings together several lines of enquiry concerned with understanding power relations in situations...

Domination and agency

Abstract: The theme of domination and its relationship to agency runs through this issue. The collection opens with a paper by Gwilym David Blunt, on the normative aspects of domination, which is theorized w...

Untold stories of elite power brokers

Abstract: Elite corruption is by no means a new problem, and in her new book titled Unaccountable, Janine R Wedel acknowledges that this has long been ‘committed by public-sector bureaucrats, with the typica...