Lecture 2 Political Power
Power is probably the most central concept in politics, Steven Lukes (1974) suggested that power is an essentially contested concept. What that means, is that like justice equality and fairness there are competing accounts of what political power is, where it is located and how, if at all, it can be measured.
Today we are going to look at the development of power analysis through five stages:
- Classical Elitism
- Post War Elitism
- Pluralism and Behaviourism
- Neo (new) elitism
- Marxism
Just a few definitional points to help you along:
Elitism is the belief that there is or there ought to be a small ruling group. The notion that elitism is normatively desirable has a degree of pedigree to it. Thinkers from Plato through to Machiavelli have followed the elitist tradition associated with 'political realism'.
Pluralism is the belief that there is or there ought to many things. A multiplicity of beliefs and interests and provides either a descriptive or a normative (cf. lecture1) antidote to 'monism' the belief that there is or ought to be only one thing. In our sense 'one ruler, one ruling elite or ruling class.
The reason we introduce these schools of thought in our second lecture is that they all offer compelling arguments as to both what power is and where it is located in both society and the state.
Classical Elite Theorists
Elite theory in its classical guise arose in the late nineteenth century as an antidote to the growth of both democracy and socialism. The principal names associated with early elitism are Vilfredo Pareto (1848 - 1923), Gaetano Mosca (1858 - 1941) and Roberto Michels (1876 - 1936).
All three were concerned to argue that the classification of political systems into say democracy, aristocracy, monarchy qua Aristotle, ignored the fact that all were ruled by a minority elite. Moreover, elite domination was a necessary and inevitable fact of modern society. Elitists claimed to have found or 'discovered' universal laws of social science.
Gaetano Mosca in his book "The Ruling Class" argued that all societies from the most meagrely developed to the most advanced has one universal characteristic: a class that rules and a class that is ruled. Michels further argued that one such universal 'law' was the 'Iron Law of Oligarchy'. In his classic work "Political Parties", (1911) he developed the thesis that society in general and all organisations were subject to oligarchic domination.
He gives two principal reasons for this:
1. Organisations of any size and complexity require specialisation of function and expertise. It becomes impossible for the mass to supervise such specialists.
2. The mass of people has a psychological need to be led. The mass in this view is seen as an incoherent rabble unable to galvanise themselves into action unless led by an activist minority.
The obvious inference here is that democracy (taken to mean that in some mediated or unmediated form the people rule) is impossible. Social reality decrees that such aspirations are the utopian dreams of Marxists, Socialists and democrats.
The power base for elitists is a combination of economic and non-economic factors:
Organisational cohesion
Intellectual superiority.
Psychological characteristics: e.g. a greater desire for power than the non elite.
Rhetorical skill.
Organisational ability, the ability to influence and manipulate people
Post War Radical Elite Theorists
Recent elite theories have drawn upon classical elitism in their studies of national and community decision making. Whereas the classical elitists argued that the existence of elites was normatively desirable (so much so that it led them to openly advocate Italian Fascism in the early 1920s and 1930s), contemporary elitists see the existence of dominant elites as very much a corrosive factor in modern society.
In his classic study of the United States C. Wright Mills argued that the American political system was dominated by a power elite.
He argued that key positions in American government were occupied by this power elite which crystallised around the US Presidency:
AThe corporate rich: From whose ranks most presidents emerge.
B The military hierarchy: of which the president is commander in Chief.
C The presidential staff: where the senior civil service overlap with corporate executives, and campaign management personnel brought to Washington by the presidential election machine.
For elite theorists like Wright Mills the site of power was the elite. What Wright Mills called the military industrial complex; we might rightfully refer to as the core executive.
Wright Mills argued that in most western political systems the core executive's role has expanded. In the US for example the post new deal (Roosevelt’s response to the depression) period saw the expansion of presidential power.
Similarly, the UK saw an expansion of government in the post war period with the emergence of the Welfare State. Arguably, greater state intervention has seen a narrowing of the executive power base. It is a commonplace to note that a cabinet system of government regularly gives way to the dominance of a single premier.
In all cases so the argument goes the core executive has been streamlined into a smaller more compact, coherent power elite.
The most obvious characteristic of elite power was its selectiveness. While many run of the mill domestic issues may be left to 'democratic' decision making processes, post war elitists argue that critical decisions such as the future conduct of economy policy or foreign and defence policy are the reserved domain of the core executive.
Lets recap just a bit, we've looked at the classical accounts of elitism and the radical elitism of Wright Mills and Hunter, all of which claim the existence of a ruling elite. Important to note how elitist theory has swung from a predominantly right wing account of politics to one, which sits happily on the left. (Presuming right and left are terms which make any sense to us now!). The main difference being that classical elitists saw minority domination as both inevitable and desirable. Wright mills on the other hand saw the possibilities for democratic politics undermined by cosy networks of elite groups.
But, how coherent was the elitist view of politics and the political process, in particular its characterisation of power.
The, elitist arguments of Wright Mills were sharply criticised most notably from the pluralists Robert Dahl and Nelson Polsby.
Dahl in particular in his now classic work 'A Critique of the ruling elite model' argued that
"The evidence for a ruling elite, either in the United States or in any specific community, has not yet been properly examined as far as I know"
What Dahl and Polsby were after was a reputable or scientific (c.f. lecture 1) methodology to test the hypotheses that were posited by Wright Mills.
So they began with an intuitive formula of power which goes something like this:
"Power involves a successful attempt by A to get B to do something (s) he would not otherwise do"
Dahl's method in his book 'Who Governs'is to study decision making by focusing on the range of alternative preferences made by particular actors, those participants with the greatest number of successes were deemed to be the most influential and hence most powerful.
So as Polsby puts it the Pluralist approach is concerned to study the specific outcomes in order to determine who prevails in community decision making.
What is distinctive here is the stress on actual, observable behaviour in fact this method is commonly referred to as a behaviourist methodology. What this methodology purports to tell us is that who prevails in decision making has power.
Therefore the focus for pluralists was on actual observable conflict and it is only by observing the conflict that we are able to discover where the ‘site’ or ‘locus’ of power in society is.
After major studies notably by Dahl,Polsby and David Truman notably concluded that it was not empirically demonstrable that a ruling elite does regularly prevail over key decisions.
Although Dahl argued that there were many inequalities in society (of health, schooling, income and wealth) and not all groups have equal access to all resources, nearly every group has some advantage that can be utilised in the democratic process.
Because of this there were a multiplicity of power centres, diverse and fragmented interests, the marked propensity of one group to offset the power of another, and a characterisation of the state as a neutral arbiter between competing preferences.
The important thing here is that power is characterised as being non-hierarchically and competitively arranged. That there is a focus on peoples express preferences or rather subjective preferences
Key terms in the pluralist model:
- Observation
- Behaviour (hence behaviouralism)
- Preferences as interests
- Overt conflict
- Actual decisions (as opposed to non-decisions - see below).
Not surprisingly, there was a raft of critical work, which attacked the entire basis of the pluralist account of open competition, and characterisation of power in such a one-dimensional way. Leading the way were the neo-elitist theorists Peter Bachrach and Morton. S. Baratz.
Peter Bachrach and Morton S. Baratz joined the debate and in 1962 argued that examining power in political communities does not simply involve looking at express preferences and what goes on. Rather we ought to be concerned with what doesn't go on.
If we remember Dahl defined power as A getting B to do something they otherwise would not do. Bachrach and Baratz argue that:
'Power is also exercised when A devotes his energies to creating or reinforcing social and political values and institutional practices that limit the scope of the political process to public consideration of those issues which are comparatively innocuous to A'
They describe this as non-decisionmaking: the process by which challenges to power holders can be screened out in a sort of political gatekeeping process.
They describe this as non-decisionmaking: the process by which challenges to the dominant order or existing power holders can be screened out in a sort of political gatekeeping process.
Borrowing a term from E. E. Schattschneider, (The Semi Sovereign People) they call this the 'mobilisation of bias'.
The mobilisation of bias can take a number of forms:
- Firstly the use of force to prevent issues entering the political system.
2. Secondly, there are the various ways in which power can be used to deter the emergence of issues - co-option of groups into the political process is one such.
3. Thirdly, rules or procedures may be invoked to deflect unwelcome challenges
4. Finally rules or procedures may be changed or reshaped as a way of blocking challenges:
Lukes and Marxism
Argues that both the pluralist and non-decision models of power are inadequate and suggests his own three dimensional model of power which has the following core elements:
(a) Exercises of power do not necessarily entail observable conflicts, but latent conflicts.
(b) That these latent conflicts are a function of collective forces and social arrangements.
(c) That this needs an understanding of real interests as opposed to subjective interests characterised as actual policy preferences in the decision and non-decision models.
What Lukes is concerned with is the control of the political agenda which is not so much a question of conscious decisions taken to limit the scope of the political process as Bachrach and Baratz argue.
He argues that the bias of the system can be mobilised, recreated and reinforced in ways that are neither conscious or chosen.
He points to the fact that organisational bias is more than the sum of individual choices but the result of socially structured and culturally patterned behaviour.
In this sense we may see the power to control the political agenda and exclude potential issues as a structural and collective phenomena. The political agenda, what is up for discussion or not, is unquestioned and unchallenged.
He puts it like this:
‘To put the matter sharply A may exercise power over B by getting him to do what he does not want to do, but he also exercises power over him by influencing, shaping or determining his very wants...is it not the supreme exercise of power to get another or others to have the desires that you want them to have...to secure their compliance by controlling their thoughts’.