Showing papers in "Journal of political power in 2016"
TL;DR: For example, the authors pointed out that it is hard for a country facing economic stagnation to project a positive international image and that Russian leaders have largely failed to develop soft power as an effective policy tool.
Abstract: Moscow came late to the soft power game, but made it an integral feature of the drive to restore Russia’s great power status. Russia has a proud cultural legacy and has invested heavily in trying to promote a positive image of the country abroad, for example through the Russia Today television channel. However, the leadership faced the challenge of dealing with the complex legacy of the Soviet past, and finding a viable development model for Russia: it is hard for a country facing economic stagnation to project a positive international image. Russia’s authoritarian turn since 2004, and its use of force in Georgia, Ukraine, and Syria, have reinforced negative stereotypes of Russia as a hard power. For these reasons Russian leaders have largely failed to develop soft power as an effective policy tool.
47 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors conduct an inductive study of how people experience and deal with the Kafka-like bureaucracy, focusing on the Kafkaesque organization as constructed by those who experience its effects as citizens and clients.
Abstract: The metaphor of Kafkaesque bureaucracy has attracted the imagination of organization theorists for decades. While the critical and metaphorical approach offers vibrant insights about organizing, it has not been complemented by systematic empirical analysis. We take a step in that direction and conduct an inductive study of how people experience and deal with the Kafkaesque bureaucracy. We focus on the Kafkaesque organization as constructed in process and practice by those who experience its effects as citizens and clients. Data uncovered three major affordances of Kafkaesque bureaucracy: inactiveness, helplessness and meaninglessness. These combine in a mutually debilitating configuration that constitutes the Kafkaesque bureaucracy as an effortful everyday accomplishment.
39 citations
TL;DR: Based on Nye's soft power concept, the authors examines Brazil's soft-power characteristics (preference for diplomacy, peaceful conflict resolution, use of force as a last resort; actions as agenda-setter, bridge-builder, Southern interests' supporter, pro-multilateralism, etc.).
Abstract: Rising powers gain economic and political clout and challenge the post-Cold War world order. Located in a relatively peaceful region away from global conflict zones, Brazil has fought no war with its neighbours in 150 years, and with limited military capabilities, Brazil differs from its BRICS peers as a non-militarised emerging power. Based on Nye’s soft power concept, this article examines Brazil’s soft power characteristics (preference for diplomacy, peaceful conflict resolution, use of force as a last resort; actions as agenda-setter, bridge-builder, Southern interests’ supporter, pro-multilateralism, etc.). This paper compares Brazil’s role conception to its role performance to conclude that Brazil projects itself as a soft power broker.
35 citations
TL;DR: This paper proposed that the affective basis of powerlessness is comprised of four primary emotions (acceptance, anticipation, expectation, sadness, and fear) and six secondary-level emotions (fatalism, pessimism, resignation, anxiety, submissiveness, and shame).
Abstract: After briefly considering cognitive aspects of powerlessness, we propose that the affective basis of powerlessness is comprised of four primary emotions–acceptance–acquiescence, anticipation–expectation, sadness, and fear. Plutchik’s psychoevolutionary model of primary emotions, together with a partial classification of pairwise combinations of these four emotions, enables a theoretical model hypothesizing that powerlessness also involves six secondary-level emotions – fatalism, pessimism, resignation, anxiety, submissiveness, and shame. A quantitative content analysis of 564 life-historical interviews of Australian Aborigines and Euro-Australians was used for structural equations models relating objective and subjective powerlessness. The results of these analyses fit the data. Cultural and sex difference in the manifest variables were analyzed. This work aspires to contribute to alienation theory, to establish a linkage between alienation theory and the sociology of emotions, and to develop hierarchical...
30 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a dialogue between the two major understandings of relational approach to power, that the author dubs "the fable of the Bs" and "trans-actionalism", is discussed.
Abstract: The paper aims at drawing out concisely the differences and potentials for a dialogue between the two major understandings of relational approach to power, that the author dubs ‘the fable of the Bs’ and ‘trans-actionalism’. Compared to traditional substantialist approaches that overwhelmingly focus on the As (the powerful) ‘the fable of the Bs’ highlights the importance also of considering the contribution of the Bs (the powerless) in creating and upholding power relations. ‘Trans-actionalism’ or ‘deep relational thinking’ presumes the primacy of relations over entities. The elements of power relations are viewed not as being ‘given’ prior to those relations, but as being constituted within them.
30 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that despite remarkable economic growth during the first decade of the twenty-first century, BRICS countries' capacity to enhance their soft power is highly uneven and they still struggle to rival established Western powers in most of the concept's dimensions.
Abstract: Has soft power in the emerging world risen commensurately to its hard power? Can the BRICS’ soft power rival that of the West as emerging powers expand their global presence? An analysis of the questions above shows that, despite remarkable economic growth during the first decade of the twenty-first century, BRICS countries’ capacity to enhance their soft power is highly uneven, and they still struggle to rival established Western powers in most of the concept’s dimensions. Still, the BRICS grouping, created on the basis of economic forecasts, is increasingly being used as a platform to enhance soft power, primarily through the creation of the New Development Bank and a series of other institutions.
29 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the global imprint of Bollywood as an instrument of soft power and suggests that the globalisation of the country's popular cinema aided by a large diaspora has created possibilities of promoting India's public diplomacy.
Abstract: Among BRICS nations, India has the most developed and globalised film industry, and the Indian government as well as corporations are increasingly deploying the power of Bollywood in their international interactions. India’s soft power, arising from its cultural and civilizational influence outside its territorial boundaries, has a long history. Focusing on contemporary India’s thriving Hindi film industry, this article suggests that the globalisation of the country’s popular cinema, aided by a large diaspora, has created possibilities of promoting India’s public diplomacy. It examines the global imprint of this cinema as an instrument of soft power.
26 citations
TL;DR: In a new global order that has moved well beyond the bipolar world of the cold war, scholars are trying to assess how the power structure of international power is changing as discussed by the authors, and the emerging powers are the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
Abstract: In a new global order that has moved well beyond the bipolar world of the cold war, scholars are trying to assess how the power structure of international power is changing. Pre-eminent among the nations that will be challengers for primacy in the new world order are the emerging powers. Leading this cadre of emerging powers are the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa). This special issue explores an important and neglected type of power possessed by the BRICS: their soft power, both individual and collective. This introduction summarizes the principal arguments of the contributions to this special issue, and also examines the concept of soft power.
23 citations
TL;DR: The authors highlights the particular conception of China's of soft power which reflects the dualistic nature of the Chinese strategic culture: it has two components, a direct (zheng) and an indirect (qi) dimension which are not in opposition; rather, they are integrated.
Abstract: This article highlights the particular conception of China’s of soft power which reflects the dualistic nature of the Chinese strategic culture: it has two components, a direct (zheng) and an indirect (qi) dimension which are not in opposition; rather, they are integrated. The Confucius Institutes and China’s naval diplomacy are two relevant components of ‘soft power with Chinese characteristics’. Both carry political values and are policies that no other BRIC country has fully developed. They depend on and serve China’s political agenda since they mirror Beijing’s efforts to increase domestic cohesion, re-gain international recognition as a great power and avoid repeating the Soviet mistake of focusing exclusively on hard power.
22 citations
TL;DR: This paper introduced Margaret Archer's research on reflexivity to the power debate, alongside Pierre Bourdieu's already influential concept of habitus, and adopted Haugaard's family resemblance concept of power as an important new binary of power instead of a conceptual zero-sum game.
Abstract: This article introduces Margaret Archer’s research on reflexivity to the power debate, alongside Pierre Bourdieu’s already influential concept of habitus. Both offer significant insights on social conditioning in late modernity. However, their tendency to the extreme of social determinism and voluntarism must be avoided. To do so, this article adopts Haugaard’s family resemblance concept of power, describing habitus and reflexivity as an important new binary of power instead of a conceptual zero-sum game. This strengthens the explanatory role of agency, central to the three dimensions of power, without losing sight of constitutive, structural power. It also helps overcome the habitus–reflexivity dichotomy in social theory and provides a starting point to evaluate Archer’s work from a power perspective.
21 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a complementary analysis to the prevailing literature on soft power by addressing the issue of multilateral soft power is presented. But this analysis is restricted to the context of the BRICS, and it is intended to be generalized to the study of all international organizations.
Abstract: This article offers a complementary analysis to the prevailing literature on soft power by addressing the issue of multilateral soft power. While the prevailing literature on soft power tends to look at how soft power manifests itself within individual nations, this article attempts to analyze the manifestations of collective soft power in the vehicle of a multilateral organization. This can be referred to this as compound soft power. Such an analysis looks at a macro-level class of soft power. In doing so, it looks more broadly at the configuration of the forest, in contradistinction to the prevailing research on soft power, which looks predominantly at individual trees (i.e. individual country analysis). While this analysis of compound soft power is undertaken specifically within the context of the BRICS, it is intended to be generalized to the study of all international organizations.
TL;DR: In this article, a quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the encyclopedic and dictionary entries demonstrates a divergence of approaches: on the one hand, there is a fundamental separation between the two theories, while on the other hand, a tendency to identify the one with the other.
Abstract: ‘Leadership’ and ‘elites’ are two crucial concepts that refer to individuals who hold power within a community. The aim of the article was to demonstrate to what extent the two concepts and theories are linked with each other in the literature. A quantitative and qualitative content analysis of the encyclopedic and dictionary entries demonstrates a divergence of approaches: on the one hand, a fundamental separation between the two theories, while on the other hand, a tendency to identify the one with the other. This shows the need for much more dialog between the frameworks of these two closely related phenomena.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors illustrate how these tensions illuminate the extent to which South Africa's more independent, cosmopolitan, bridge-building posture under Mandela has increasingly given way to an orientation emphasizing its Africanist credentials as more of a liberationist than liberal democracy.
Abstract: South Africa’s soft power capacity is often constrained by the tensions emerging between regional normative commitments on the one hand and more cosmopolitan, liberal democratic norms on the other. The country’s African leadership aspirations, which require sanctifying state sovereignty and non-intervention over human rights and democracy, is one such example. This article illustrates how these tensions illuminate the extent to which South Africa’s more independent, cosmopolitan, bridge-building posture under Mandela has increasingly given way to an orientation emphasizing its Africanist credentials as more of a liberationist than liberal democracy and soft balancing against the OECD world. Whether this move has resulted in unequivocal African followership as a form of soft power remains uncertain.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine surveillance and transparency not as a dichotomy but as a constitutive relation in the field of academia, focusing specifically on ranking and rivalry in the context of competitive performance.
Abstract: Transparency is both a powerful idea and a technology of power associated with accountability, justice and democracy, which opposes the secretive and shadowy power of surveillance wielded by states and corporations. This article examines surveillance and transparency not as a dichotomy but as a constitutive relation in the field of academia, focusing specifically on ranking and rivalry in the context of competitive performance. Transparency-as-openness (open access platforms) is enmeshed in enclosures assembled from (self-) surveillance, personal data, public institutions and private enterprise. The analysis pays particular attention to how altmetrics and credibility metrics – used to enhance personal prestige and professional standing – reinforce the neo-liberalisation of higher education. The article concludes by engaging critically with the politics and poetics of open enclosures with a view to re-imagining the practice of academic freedom.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the extent to which intergenerational domination applies to two familiar phenomena: climate change and constitutionalism, and they show that constitutional provisions introduced in order to protect future generations from climate change is more likely to contribute to rather than to protect them from it.
Abstract: Intergenerational domination is the idea that future people’s freedom is violated insofar as they are vulnerable to the capacity of the people living before them to interfere. This paper explores the extent to which intergenerational domination applies to two familiar phenomena: climate change and constitutionalism. The first part of the paper argues that the emission of greenhouse gases does not amount to intergenerational domination. Being hurt by climate change does not equal subjection to the capacity of previous generations to interfere. The second part argues that intergenerational domination is under certain conditions applicable to the relationship exemplified by political constitutionalism. Hence, this study shows that constitutional provisions introduced in order to protect future generations from climate change is more likely to contribute to rather than to protect them from intergenerational domination.
TL;DR: In this paper, the similarities and differences between the two approaches with regard to their purpose, methodology and understanding of power and agency are discussed, and the potential for mutual dialogue and inspiration is discussed.
Abstract: Historical Institutionalism and genealogy are two strong analytical approaches that emphasise the importance of history in grasping contemporary politics that so far have lived in isolation from each other. This article, firstly, accounts for the similarities and differences between the two approaches with regard to their purpose, methodology and understanding of power and agency. Secondly, it discusses the analytical potentials and limitations of the two approaches, and the possibilities of mutual dialogue and inspiration. It is argued that the two approaches display a number of significant differences which make any analytical synthesis both a difficult and a questionable endeavour. In particular, whereas historical institutionalism seeks to explain the present in terms of its dependence on past events, genealogy seeks to provoke the present by demonstrating its historical contingency. In spite of these differences, the two approaches may benefit from engaging in analytical and methodological dialogue.
TL;DR: The authors reconstructs Gramsci's account of social objects in light of recent developments in analytic social ontology and argues that when taken together their theories constitute a robust and nuanced view of the relation between social reality and power.
Abstract: This paper reconstructs Gramsci’s account of social objects in light of recent developments in analytic social ontology. It combines elements of Gramsci’s account with that of John Searle, and argues that when taken together their theories constitute a robust account of social reality and a nuanced view of the relation between social reality and power. Searle provides a detailed analysis of the creation of social entities at the level of the agent, while Gramsci, by employing his concepts of hegemony and domination, is able to provide an analysis of the differential ability of societal subgroups to construct the social world.
TL;DR: The Journal opens with an article by Stewart Clegg, Miguel Pina e Cunha, Iain Munro, Armenio Rego and Marta Oom de Sousa on Kafkaesque bureaucracy and power as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: This issue of the Journal opens with an article by Stewart Clegg, Miguel Pina e Cunha, Iain Munro, Armenio Rego and Marta Oom de Sousa on Kafkaesque bureaucracy and power. In the literature, and in...
TL;DR: The earliest human civilisations such as the ancient Sumer, the early Dynastic Period of Egypt, Shang dynasty in China and the Harappa civilisation of the Indus Valley were all very distinct mo...
Abstract: The earliest human civilisations such as the ancient Sumer, the early Dynastic Period of Egypt, the Shang dynasty in China and the Harappa civilisation of the Indus Valley were all very distinct mo...
TL;DR: Morley et al. as mentioned in this paper discussed the problem of negotiating the territory of socially engaged art in the Journal of Political Power (9:1, 147-152, DOI: 10.1080/2158379X.2016.1149329
Abstract: ISSN: 2158-379X (Print) 2158-3803 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rpow21 Negotiating the territory of socially engaged art Megs Morley To cite this article: Megs Morley (2016) Negotiating the territory of socially engaged art, Journal of Political Power, 9:1, 147-152, DOI: 10.1080/2158379X.2016.1149329 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2158379X.2016.1149329
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that the rhetorical angle and the phronetic science assume and complement each other in a propaedeutic way and can be interpreted as a narratological tendency that corresponds to a Nietzschean moment.
Abstract: The social sciences have long been facing the challenge of establishing their own status.One solution to this challenge has been the use of the natural sciences as a ‘model of modernization’. This has led to various critical reactions within social sciences. Two have been particularly relevant recently. The rhetorical angle that Skinner, McCloskey, and Klamer, among others, suggest in their respective disciplines, and the rescue of phronesis by Flyvbjerg, who tries to account for absent realities in the mathematical models as for example power. My hypothesis is that both (the rhetoric angle and the phronetic science) assume and complement each other in a propaedeutic way and can be interpreted as a narratological tendency that corresponds to a Nietzschean moment.
TL;DR: Invisible Hand of Power as discussed by the authors, the authors propose a model of explanation by focusing on invisible forms of power and situations in which power takes the least obvious forms, with a special emphasis on "antagonistic invisible hands" on the exercise of power in an invisible and adversarial manner.
Abstract: There are numerous books about power. Most modern scholars are quite pessimistic about the possibility of constructing a universally accepted explanation of the phenomenon: the idea of essential contestability of political concepts makes inevitable the coexistence of different taxonomies of power. The author of the book under review does not claim to resolve this situation; he offers merely a ‘small building block in our fragmented knowledge of power’ (p. 2). However, his position is much closer to those scholars who are not satisfied with the proliferation of equally acceptable conceptions. Oleinik notes that ‘the multiplicity of the taxonomies of power complicates empirical studies’ and, moreover, do not ‘form a coherent picture’ – that ‘we know something about some elements of power, but little about power as a whole’ (p. 2 emphasis added). Therefore, he does not limit his conceptual enterprise by mapping and clarifying the existing approaches and power forms, which is a tried and tested approach used by many scholars. Instead, Oleinik offers his own model of explanation by focusing on ‘invisible forms of power’ and ‘situations in which power takes the least obvious forms’, with a special emphasis on ‘antagonistic invisible hands – on the exercise of power in an invisible and adversarial manner’ (pp. 2–3). After the seminal works of P. Bachrach and M. Baratz, S.Lukes, M. Foucault, K. Dowding, S. Clegg, M. Haugaard and other scholars involved in the debates over the ‘faces’ of power, this focus on the invisible (‘hidden’, ‘covert’) forms (or dimensions) of power seems natural and is in line with the mainstream tendency to view power as a multidimensional phenomenon. The title of the book (Invisible Hand of Power) derives from Oleinik’s definition of power as
TL;DR: The BRIC/BRICS group as discussed by the authors is an international framework uniting Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, which was created by the BRIC Leader's Summit in Yekaterinburg (Russia) in 2009.
Abstract: Over the past seven years, since the first BRIC Leader’s Summit in Yekaterinburg (Russia) in 2009, the phenomenon of the BRIC/BRICS group – an international framework uniting Brazil, Russia, India,...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the notion of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which is increasingly presented as the socially acceptable way to deal with ethical, social and environmental issues stemming from economic activities.
Abstract: In this article, I will examine the notion of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), which is increasingly presented as the socially acceptable way to deal with ethical, social and environmental issues stemming from economic activities. Using a public problems framework of analysis, I will build upon empirical work in the field of bio-engineering in order to argue that, on the contrary, CSR is a contentious notion. I will demonstrate that this is because CSR increases corporations’ involvement in the shaping of the definitions and solutions to our public problems and is thus based on a distribution of power and responsibility which is seen as potentially securing the power of corporations rather than offsetting it. In addition, this distribution does not correspond to most social actors’ representation of how power and responsibility should be shared in our society.
TL;DR: This article found that the US has not enough representational inequality to be a plutocracy, contrary to Gilens and Bartels' claim that the United States is a polyarchy, considered as rule by multiple minorities.
Abstract: The conventional understanding of the contemporary US as a polyarchy, considered as rule by multiple minorities, is not now supportable. It relies upon the salience of pluralism over political inequality, but these conditions are now inverted. The current salience of political inequality is the chief characteristic of unequalocracy, a political system type intermediate between polyarchy and plutocracy. Contrary to Gilens and Bartels, the US has not been demonstrated to have enough representational inequality to be a plutocracy. Using an alternative conception of what constitutes preference differences between high- and low-income groups, and applying it to Gilens’ own data, I find too few preference differences to show plutocracy exits in the US.