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1 Personal journey and predispositions
Being asked by the editors to describe my personal
journey to a current focus on issues of power, and
striving to do this in a spirit of critical reflection, has
startled me with what I have found and how it has
influenced the argument of this article. At some
level, I already knew this but never before have I seen
so clearly how it coheres. Four influences and
tendencies appear to have intermingled.
The first is the exercise of authority at several stages
during my schooling, again during my National
Service in the British Army, and then as a District
Officer and trainer of administrators in Kenya. As a
researcher later, this led me many times to see
situations from the point of view of the powerful
rather than the powerless. Despite a long
convalescence traces of this orientation remain.
The second is the fascination with how we learn and
mislearn in development, and especially why
development professionals are so often wrong: this
has led repeatedly to the idea of power as disability,
summarised, with apologies, to Lord Acton, as ‘All
power deceives’.
The third is the experience of the innovations and
practices which were part of the flows and
transitions from RRA (rapid rural appraisal) to PRA
(participatory rural appraisal) and then to PLA
(participatory learning and action). The attitudes,
behaviours, roles and mindsets of researchers and
then of facilitators emerged as key dimensions,
shifting as they did from extracting information from
local people to empowering them to do their own
appraisal, analysis, planning, action, monitoring and
evaluation.
Fourth, I tend to see the world through rose-
coloured spectacles, and to search for and argue for
win-win solutions to problems. These are, I happily
believe, more common than many suppose. This
means that I may underestimate the degree to
which conflicts of interest are truly zero-sum.
If we take ‘mindset’ to refer to the ensemble of a
person’s ideas, attitudes, values, beliefs, mental
categories and predispositions, then these four
influences and tendencies are part of mine. They
show in the arguments I present and the conclusions
I believe these lead to. In writing and reflection, I
have questioned them and the conclusions they lead
to, but they are still there. We all have
predispositions. I believe that it is good that a
diversity of views, whatever their origins, enables us
to come to problems from different angles and to
identify different solutions. So I ask readers not to
dismiss what follows because I have shown where
some of it comes from, but to treat the points and
arguments on their own merits.
2 Words, meanings and usage
These life experiences and mindset, and discussions
with Jenny Chambers, led to the concept of ‘uppers’
and ‘lowers’, common words of deceptive simplicity
because of the complex, shifting, subtle and nuanced
relationships they represent, at the same time
diverse, intangible and elusive. Upper can refer to a
person who in a context is dominant or superior to a
lower in that context. Lower can refer to a person
who in a context is subordinate or inferior to an
upper in that same context. Being an upper or a
lower is, to use current language, situational and
positional, summarised by ‘in a context’. It is common
experience, especially in gender relations,
1
that a
person can be an upper to another in one context,
and a lower to the same person in another, and that
many reflexes and habits, tacit agreements,
mirrorings of views, concealments, evasions, lies and
unspoken understandings can be at play, sometimes
known only to the actors and not always even
consciously to them. There are resonances with the
Transforming Power: From
Zero-Sum to Win-Win?
Robert Chambers
*
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insights and theoretical frameworks of various
writers, both post-modern and others, but they are
not needed for the analysis and discussion which
follow.
‘Power’ has been given many meanings and
interpretations. In this article, I take power to be, as
described by Vermeulen (2005: 12) ‘… generally
understood as an ability to achieve a wanted end in a
social context, with or without the consent of
others’ and ‘… one reason why ‘power’ is a useful
term is because it has a commonsense meaning
rather than a difficult academic definition’ (ibid.: 11). I
take its sister word ‘empowerment’ to mean
‘enhancing an individual’s or group’s capacity to make
purposive choices and transform that choice into
desired actions and outcomes’ (Alsop 2005: 1).
In distinguishing types of power, the most useful
framework I have found for this article is that of
VeneKlasen and Miller (2002: 45) who have four
categories which can be described as follows:
1 Power over, meaning the power of an upper over
a lower, usually with negative connotations such as
restrictive control, penalising and denial of access.
2 Power to, also agency, meaning effective choice,
the capability to decide on actions and do them.
3 Power with, meaning collective power where
people, typically lowers, together exercise power
through organisation, solidarity and acting
together.
4 Power within, meaning personal self-confidence.
Concerning common usage, three tendencies can be
noted in how discussions of power are framed.
First, usage and mindsets often support meanings in
which power sounds like a commodity, so that
having more is better. People are empowered (good)
or disempowered (bad). We talk of gaining,
acquiring, seizing and enjoying power and negatively
of losing, surrendering, abandoning, relinquishing and
abdicating it. People are driven from power, are
deprived of it, excluded from it and stripped
2
of it.
Less negatively, power can be handed over or shared.
Even then, as with the earlier usages, the mindset
tends to be zero-sum: one’s gain sounds like
another’s loss.
Second, power is often spoken of as bad. It is
associated with a Hobbesian pessimism about human
nature. Power goes with authoritarianism, bossing,
control, discipline, domination – and that only
reaches ‘d’ in an alphabetical listing. In these negative
usages, power is abused and exploited. All power
corrupts. All power deceives. Bad people are power-
hungry, intoxicated with power, obsessed with it,
and use it for their own ends.
Third, the discourse about power in development has
been and remains predominantly about
transformations which are bottom-up. The view
taken by activists, advocates and radical academics
starts with the realities and interests of the
powerless. It may stay there, or it may extend
upwards to seek to influence the powerful. Typical
strategies for change involve those who are
marginalised and powerless gaining power with and
power within and then applying these against power
over. Power with is achieved through activities like
group meetings and discussions, protests, collective
resistance, collective action through marches and
demonstrations, and lobbying. The power within
comes from awareness and self-confidence. These
combine as power to influence and change the
power over, through which people are oppressed
and kept down.
In this article, I question and qualify all three of these
usages and mindsets. I argue that for the powerful,
power over does not need to be like a zero-sum
commodity; that there is nothing inherently bad
about power over – it all depends on how it is used;
and that the importance of bottom-up power with
and power within strategies, vital and often primary
though they are, should not distract from the
potentials of top-down transformations using power
over in ways which are win-win, with gains for the
powerful as well as for those who are empowered.
3 Reversing pathologies of power
The pathologies of power are so manifest and
commonplace that they scarcely bear enumerating.
They include most of the bad conditions and
experiences of social life – expressing domination,
greed, exploitation, violence and intimidation by the
powerful, and with the experience of subordination,
deprivation, expropriation, fear, pain and insecurity
for the powerless. A host of bad relations have
dimensions of social power through patriarchy and
age, of physical power through strength, weapons
Chambers Transforming Power: From Zero-Sum to Win-Win?
and violence, of legal power through laws and
conventions, and of links with and between
economic and political power. The pathologies of
power also include syndromes of deception, delusion
and myth.
Normatively, against this background, good change
entails transformations of many power relations.
Often these can be seen as reversals, turning what is
common and normal on its head. These have been
extensively treated in organisational and political
theory and practice, and in work on gender, but less
at a more general level of the behaviour, attitudes
and mindsets of uppers. Pervasively then, good
change means changing interpersonal power
relations and the processes which mediate them. This
is so embarrassingly obvious, it is strange that until
recently its generality and relevance has been largely
overlooked in development thinking and practice.
3
For many years, binary lists have been made and
published for top-down and bottom-up, and the
term reversal is not new. But except with gender,
patriarchy, and local elites, the word ‘power’
referring to interpersonal relations has scarcely been
there at all. We have had, for instance, oppositions
like these:
Normal New
Top-down Bottom-up
Centralised Decentralised
Blueprint Process
Closed Open
Time-bound Open-ended
Target-driven Process-led
Pre-planned Participatory
Preset Emergent
Standardised Diverse
Advocates of participation tend to hold that good
change has to come much more from the ‘new’
bottom-up column than from the ‘normal’ top-
down, especially when the change concerns people
rather than things. To the extent that the top-down
mode is normally found in bureaucracies, the case is
made for reversals, that is, for countervailing and
balancing shifts from top-down towards bottom-up.
Reversals have also been implicit in the rhetorical
‘Who?’ and ‘Whose?’ questions referring to uppers
and lowers, and concerning power and ownership.
Some of the most common are:
Whose reality?
Whose knowledge?
Whose appraisal?
Whose analysis?
Whose planning?
Whose action?
Whose M and E?
Whose indicators? and
Who participates in whose project?
There are many others. In Critical Webs of Power and
Change, Chapman and Mancini (2005: 5) said: ‘We need
to give a lot more attention to who is involved, who
assesses, who learns, whose opinion counts and who
has access to information’. For the new field of
Participatory Geographic Information Systems (PLA
2006), a total of 42 ‘who?’ and ‘whose?’ questions have
been listed (Rambaldi et al. 2006) including, for example:
Who decides on who should participate?
Who participates in whose mapping?
And who is left out?
Who has visual and tactile access?
Whose map legend?
Who gains?
Who loses?
Who is empowered and who is disempowered?
A further step is to ask: Who determines the ‘Who’
questions?
The normative implication of these rhetorical
questions is that the answers should be lowers – those
who are poor, excluded, marginalised, subordinate and
powerless. And this leads to asking how power can be
transformed, how they can empower themselves or
be empowered. Two main modes or fields can be
identified: those which start from below, more with
organisation, and those which start from above, more
with the personal, in each case moving into and
overlapping with the other mode or field.
4 Starting with the powerless: a zero-sum?
Many of the better-known successful initiatives in
development have been initiated working from below
and then spreading laterally and vertically, for example
the Self-Employed Women’s Association (SEWA) in
India; Integrated Pest Management in Indonesia and
now in many countries; the Grameen Bank in
Bangladesh, spreading similarly; and the Reflect
movement, now with at least 300 organisations in
over 40 countries. To varying degrees, these have
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101
sought to empower through power within and power
with. These are widely characteristic of social
movements and of women’s groups. Starting and
organising from below is also the orientation of recent
writings and source books on power, rights, advocacy
and action like the four cited below. These are rich in
their reviews of ways in which power has been and
can be transformed bottom-up. The examples are
many and inspiring, where oppressive and abusive
power has been overcome by countervailing and
ultimately stronger power from below.
This orientation has been reinforced as rights-based
approaches have come to complement and to
varying degrees, replace service-delivery approaches,
notably among international non-governmental
organisations (INGOs). Thus, for example, ActionAid
International in its mission statement ‘Rights to End
Poverty’ point out:
We believe that poor and excluded people are
the primary agents of change. Poverty and
injustice can be eradicated only when they are
able to take charge of their lives and act to claim
their rights. (ActionAid International 2005: 17)
The means and modalities are many (see for example
VeneKlasen and Miller 2002: 50). Typical examples are
education for confidence, citizenship and collaboration;
affirming resistance; speaking out and connecting with
others; participatory research and dissemination;
building active constituencies around common
concerns; mobilising around shared agendas; litigation;
voting; and running for office. Confrontation and
conflict are recognised as often integral to success.
Power has to be contested. The mindset and
orientation are that those with power have to be
induced to lose, implying a zero-sum situation.
Nothing in what follows should be taken as an
alternative to these approaches from below. In my
view, they are primary and should remain so. At the
same time, a complementary discourse and strategy
can start with closer engagement with and
understanding of powerful people and organisations
themselves.
5 Starting with the powerful: the limits of
‘normal’ approaches
In a search for sources of methods and approaches
for transforming power relations that are
contemporary and authoritative, four stand out:
1 A New Weave of Power, People and Politics: The
Action Guide for Advocacy and Citizen Participation
(VeneKlasen and Miller 2002)
2 Critical Webs of Power and Change (Chapman and
Mancini 2005)
3 Tools for Influencing Power and Policy (PLA 2005)
4 Policy Powertools, www.policy-powertools.org, a
website of the International Institute for
Environment and Development (IIED), London.
These have enough in common in their approaches
to decision-makers and policymakers to be described
as normal. All four sources go some way towards
including the powerful, especially decision-makers
and policymakers in organisations, in their analysis
and prescriptions. The issue is how far they go, and
whether as practical guides they could and should go
further.
Let us start with how far they do go. Identifying
power-holders and their interests and engaging with
them are recurrent themes.
VeneKlasen and Miller devote thought and space to
identifying forces, friends and foes (2002: 211–27),
including detailed mapping of power. They mention
the importance of knowing about government or
economic and international decision-making
structures and officials. In forcefield analysis, the
short-term and long-term interests of each actor in
relation to the issue are to be charted. The
viewpoints of identified players with respect to the
issue are to be noted. Questions to be asked include
why opponents oppose. But while they go a long
way in their comprehensive analysis, there is scope
for more when it comes to incentives, mindsets, and
institutional cultures. The text teeters tantalisingly on
the edge of the further step of standing in the shoes
of decision-makers, or sitting on their chairs, and
seeing things their way round from their stance or
seat, and weighing gains and losses from their point
of view.
Similarly Critical Webs of Power and Change states
that ‘Strengthening … collective action, critical
consciousness and leadership should always be a
crucial strategy within people-centred advocacy, but
will rarely be the only strategy’ (8). It has a section
(18) on analysing context and power. This includes
Chambers Transforming Power: From Zero-Sum to Win-Win?
102
identifying and mapping the major players and their
real and expressed interests. It also asks: ‘Who do
you consider your allies and opponents?’ (18) and,
‘Who in power can make the decisions that will help
bring about these changes?’(41). On its CD ROM
there is a section on ‘Naming the powerful’ and
sections such as ‘Mapping the Policy System and
Mapping Power’, and a whole chapter on
‘Manoeuvring on the Inside: Lobbying and
Negotiating’. Primary targets are the decision-
makers with the most power to address an issue,
and secondary targets are individuals who do not
have the power to solve the problem but who are
close to the primary target.
Similarly, in Tools for Influencing Power and Policy, the
editor wrote:
Many of the policy tools in this special issue aim at
engaging with rather than resisting powerful
bodies such as companies and government
agencies, albeit engaging tactically rather than
playing along with the naïve idea that if
stakeholders just sit down and talk, it will be all
right. (Vermeulen 2005: 14)
The tools in that issue are grouped under three
headings: build power to act; claim the tools of the
powerful; take hold of participatory processes. The
authors are careful to recognise and warn against
the armoury of the powerful that can be deployed,
including cooptation, deception, reneging on
agreements and resorting to force.
Finally, a similar orientation and emphases are also
found on the IIED website (2006). This lists 26 tools
for influencing decisions and decision making about
natural resource management. Four groups of tools
are identified – for understanding, for organising, for
engaging and for ensuring. Understanding the
motives and language of the powerful, and building
alliances with sympathetic partners and possible
champions are mentioned, but the orientation of the
tools, as with the other three sources, is mainly
bottom-up with ‘well informed and well organised
groups of marginalised people’.
In all these sources, the dominant strategy is to build
countervailing power and to penetrate and influence
upwards. All recognise the need for allies and friends.
But more so, all see opponents who have to be
confronted and tackled. As The New Weave …
(VeneKlasen and Miller 2002: 225) has it, ‘Rarely
does anyone give up power without a fight’.
Accepting and embracing conflict, the model and
mindset are framed into a game which is
predominantly zero-sum. Practical and realistic while
this often is, it sees things only one way round. The
question is whether it tends to obscure and
undervalue opportunities which start with the
realities and contexts of the powerful.
6 A complementary agenda
Seeing things from the decision-maker’s point of
view, and analysing how they can be influenced and
helped, needs a leap of the imagination. This can
generate a complementary agenda. While this is not
absent from the four sources, it can go further than
they do.
One approach is ‘practical political economy’. For
different measures or courses of action, key players
are analysed for degree of gain, loss or neutrality. For
22 measures concerning water and trees in India, this
was done in a matrix for the rural rich and less poor,
field-level officials, and poorer rural people, enabling
judgements about relative feasibility and degrees of
win-win or win-lose (Chambers et al. 1989: 231–3).
Another approach is to support those of the
powerful who are either allies or opponents and
potential allies, for example providing them with
information and arguments they can use. Treating
those who are undecided, sitting on the fence, or
even hostile, as allies can be self-fulfilling. People
who are assumed to be going to act well are
sometimes induced to do so by the expectation. It
may be harsh to describe naïve optimism as
Machiavellian but it can be worth trying: face-to-face
confidence and assumptions that those with power
will behave well gives them an opportunity to
change and do so without loss of face.
These are elements of approaches to complement
or even substitute for confrontation. To further
illustrate, three more specific activities as part of
what can become a much fuller repertoire are:
4
z Search official statements of policy, mission
statements and the like, and arm and reinforce
policymakers with the rhetoric of their own
organisations, agencies or governments to
strengthen their power to argue within their
bureaucracies
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