Encyclopedia of
POWER
Editorial Board
Editor
Keith Dowding
Australian National University
Advisory Board
David A. Baldwin
Princeton University
Nicholas R. Miller
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Susan Fiske
Princeton University
David L. Swartz
Boston University
Mark Haugaard
National University of Ireland,
Galway
Encyclopedia of
POWER
Edited by
Keith Dowding
Australian National University
-6905-694(;065!
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Copyright © 2011 by SAGE Publications, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval
system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Encyclopedia of power/edited by Keith Dowding.
4H[O\YH9VHK5L^+LSOP
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7LRPU:[YLL[ p. cm. — (A SAGE reference publication)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-1-4129-2748-2 (cloth : acid-free paper)
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1. Power (Social sciences)—Encyclopedias.
I. Dowding, Keith M.
HN49.P6E53 2011 303.303—dc22 2010032325
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11 12 13 14 15 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents
List of Entries
vii
Reader’s Guide
xi
About the Editor
xvii
Contributors
xix
Introduction
xxiii
Entries
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
1
45
83
163
209
239
269
301
331
357
365
369
Index
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
725
395
435
457
471
543
549
585
657
677
683
701
List of Entries
A Priori Unions. See Owen
Value
Ability
Ableness
Absolutism
Adler, Alfred
Adorno, Theodor
Adverse Selection
Agency
Agency–Structure Problem
Agenda Power
Agenda Setters
Alliances
Althusser, Louis
Anarchism, Power in
Anarchy in International
Relations
Animal Groups, Power in
Apparatus. See Dispositif
Appeasement
Arendt, Hannah
Argument, Power of
Aristotle
Arms Race
Authoritarian Personality
Authority
Autonomy
Autonomy of the State. See
Relative Autonomy of the
State
Bachrach, Peter, and Baratz,
Morton
Bakunin, Mikhail
Balance of Power
Banks
Banzhaf. See Banzhaf Voting
Power Measure
Banzhaf Value
Banzhaf Voting Power Measure
Bargaining
Bargaining in International
Relations
Barry, Brian
Bases of Power
Bicameral Legislature
Biopower
Blackmail
Blocking Coalition
Bourdieu, Pierre
Bribe Index
Budget-Maximizing
Bureaucrats
Bull, Hedley
Bureaucracy. See Bureaucratic
Power
Bureaucratic Power
Business and Power
Cabal
Capability
Capital, Marxist
Capital, Neoclassical
Capture Theory of Regulation
Carr, E. H.
Cartwright, Dorwin
Caste System (India)
Castells, Manuel
Causal Theories of Power
Causation
Central Intelligence Agency
Chicken Games
Civil War
Clausewitz, Carl von
Clegg, Stewart
Coalition Theory
Coercion, Analytic
Coercion and Power
vii
Coleman, James S.
Coleman Index
Collective Action Problem
Collective Goods. See Public
Goods
Community Power Debate
Complex Equality (Walzer)
Compliance (International)
Computer Algorithms for
Power Indices
Consensual Power, Theories of
Consent
Constructivist View of Power
in International Relations
Control
Conventional Deterrence
Cooperation
Coordination
Core of a Game
Core Parties
Corporatism
Corruption
Coup d’État
Cox, Robert W.
Critical Theory
Cuban Missile Crisis
Dahl, Robert A.
Decentering (of Subject, of
Structure)
Defensive Realism
Deflected Wants
Deliberation
Deliberative Democracy
Democracy
Dependency Theory in
International Relations
Determinacy
Determinism
viii
List of Entries
Deterrence Theory
Deterrent Threats
Deutsch, Karl
Dictatorship
Diplomacy
Discipline
Discourse
Dispositif
Distributive Justice
Domain
Domhoff, G. William
Dominant Parties
Domination
Dowding, Keith
Eagly, Alice
e-Governance
Elections
Elite Theories
Empire
Entrepreneurs
Environmental Treaties
Espionage
Essentially Contested Concept
Exchange Theory
Exclusion
Executive Power
Exercise Fallacy
Exit and Voice as Forms of
Power
Expectancy Confirmation,
Power and
Exploitation
Extended Deterrence
Fair Division
False Consciousness
Fascism
Fear, Use of
Federal Structure
Felsenthal, Dan S.
Female Leadership Among
Mammals
Feminist International
Relations, View of Power
Feminist Theories of Power
First-Strike Capability
Fiske, Susan
Flyvbjerg, Bent
Foucault, Michel
Framing
Free Market
Free Rider. See Collective
Action Problem
Free Will
Freedom
French, John R. P., Jr
Fungibility of Power Resources
Imperialism
Influence
Intelligence
Interdependence Theory
Interests
Internet and Power
Invisible Hand
I-Power
Game Forms, Power in
Game-Theoretical Approaches
to Power
Gender, Role of Power in
Giddens, Anthony
Global Cities. See World Cities
Global Governance
Globalization
Governmentality
Gramsci, Antonio
Grand Coalition
Granovetter, Mark
Groupthink
Growth Coalitions
Growth Machine. See Growth
Coalitions
Gunboat Diplomacy
Jessop, Bob
Jost, John
Jursidictions and StructureInduced Equilibria
Justice
Habermas, Jürgen
Habitus
Hall, Judith A.
Harsanyi, John C.
Haugaard, Mark
Hegemonic Power
Hegemonic War
Hegemony
Heresthetics
Heterosexism, Role of Power in
Hierarchy
Hobbes, Thomas
Holler, Manfred
Homogeneous Weighted
Majority Games
Human Dominance Motivation
Hunter, Floyd
Idealism in International
Relations
Ideas
Ideology
Imperial Power
Knowledge and Power
Kropotkin, Peter
Laclau, Ernesto, and Mouffe,
Chantal
Language and Power
Lasswell, Harold
Leadership
Leadership and Gender
League of Nations
Legislative Power
Legitimation
Lewin, Kurt, and Power
Liberalism
Loyalty
Luck
Luck, Brute
Luhmann, Niklas
Lukes, Steven
Machiavelli, Niccolò
Machine. See Dispositif
Machover, Moshé
Manipulation
Mann, Michael
Martin. See Martin Index
Martin Index
Marx, Karl
Marxist Accounts of Power
McClelland, David
Mechanisms
Media, The
Michels, Robert
Miliband, Ralph
Miliband–Poulantzas Debate
List of Entries
Military in Government
Mills, C. Wright
Minimal Winning Coalition
Mobilization of Bias
Monopoly Power
Moral Hazard
Morgenthau, Hans J.
Morriss, Peter
Multinational Corporations
Mutually Assured Destruction
Nash Equilibrium
Nationalism
Neocorporatism. See
Corporatism
Neoliberalism
Neorealism
Networks, Power in
Networks and Communities
Nietzsche, Friedrich
Non Decision Making
Noncooperative Games
Nonverbal Communication and
Power
Offense/Defense Dominance
Offensive Realism. See
Defensive Realism
Opportunity
Organization of the State
Owen Value
Paradox of New Members
Parsons, Talcott
Parties, Policy-Seeking Versus
Power-Seeking
Parties, Strong and Very Strong
Paternalism
Penrose Voting Power Measure
Perceptual Symbols of Power
Persuasion
Pivot Player
Pivotal Politics
Pluralism
Police State
Policy Entrepreneurs
Political Entrepreneurs. See
Policy Entrepreneurs
Political Legitimacy
Political Parties
Political Thinking as Power
Post-Fordism
Postmodernist View of Power
in International Relations
Poulantzas, Nicos
Power, Cognition, and
Behavior
Power as Control Theory
Power as Influence. See I-Power
Power as Prize. See P-Power
Power Elite
Power Indices
Power Laws
Power Motive
Power To and Power Over
Power to Initiate Action and
Power to Prevent Action
Power Transition Theory
Power With
P-Power
Preference Versus
Nonpreference-Based
Concepts
Prime Ministerial and
Presidential
Principal–Agent Relationship
Prisoner’s Dilemma
Propaganda
Proper Simple Game
Psychological Empowerment
Public Goods
Public Goods Index
Qualified Majority Voting
Quarreling Paradox
Queer Theories of Power
Racism, Role of Power in
Rationality
Raven, Bertram
Realism in International
Relations
Realist Accounts of Power
Referendums
Regime Theory in International
Relations
Regime Theory in Urban
Politics
Relational Power
Relative Autonomy of the State
ix
Religious Power
Reputational Analysis
Resources as Measuring Power
Responsibility
Revolution
Revolutionary Cell Structure
Rhetoric
Right-Wing Authoritarianism
Riker, William H.
Riots
Sabatier, Paul
Scope
Scott, James
Sea Power
Second Dimension. See Second
Face
Second Face
Security
Security Dilemma
Separation of Powers
Sexism, Role of Power in
Shapley Value
Shapley–Shubik Index
Shareholder Voting Power
Simple Games
Small Worlds, Power in
Social Breakdown
Social Capital
Social Dominance Theory
Social Exchange Theory. See
Exchange Theory
Social Power
Sovereignty
Spatial Voting Analysis
Spence, Janet
Spiral Model
Sprout, Harold
Square Root Rules
Status
Strategic Interaction in
International Relations
Strategic Power Index
Strength of Weak Links. See
Strength of Weak Ties
Strength of Weak Ties
Striving for Superiority
Structural Power
Structural Suggestion
Structuration
x
List of Entries
Structure-Induced Equilibrium
Submissive
Subordination
Substructure and
Superstructure
Swing Player. See Ability
Symbolic Power and Violence
System Justification Theory
Systematic Luck
Systemic Power
Throffers
Tijs Value
Totalitarianism
Trade
Transactional and
Transformational Leadership
Transnational Corporations.
See Multinational
Corporations
Trust
Terror Regimes
Terrorism
Testosterone, Power and
Third Dimension. See Third
Face
Third Face
Threats
Three Faces of Power
Unicameral Legislature
Unintended Consequences
U.S. Electoral College, Power
in
Value of a Game
Variable-Sum Games
Vehicle Fallacy
Veiled Women
Veto Players
Veto Power
Vote-Maximizing Parties
Voting
Voting Paradoxes
Voting Power
Waltz, Kenneth
War
Weber, Max
Weighted Majority Game
Weighted Voting
Wight, Martin
Will to Power
Wolfers, Arnold
Women as Political Leaders
World Cities
Wright, Quincy
Reader’s Guide
Biography
Adler, Alfred
Adorno, Theodor
Althusser, Louis
Arendt, Hannah
Aristotle
Bachrach, Peter, and Baratz,
Morton
Bakunin, Mikhail
Barry, Brian
Bourdieu, Pierre
Bull, Hedley
Carr, E. H.
Cartwright, Dorwin
Castells, Manuel
Clausewitz, Carl von
Clegg, Stewart
Coleman, James S.
Cox, Robert W.
Dahl, Robert A.
Deutsch, Karl
Domhoff, G. William
Dowding, Keith
Eagly, Alice
Felsenthal, Dan S.
Fiske, Susan
Flyvbjerg, Bent
Foucault, Michel
French, John R. P., Jr.
Giddens, Anthony
Gramsci, Antonio
Granovetter, Mark
Habermas, Jürgen
Hall, Judith A.
Harsanyi, John C.
Haugaard, Mark
Hobbes, Thomas
Holler, Manfred
Hunter, Floyd
Jessop, Bob
Jost, John
Kropotkin, Peter
Laclau, Ernesto, and Mouffe,
Chantal
Lasswell, Harold
Lewin, Kurt, and Power
Luhmann, Niklas
Lukes, Steven
Machiavelli, Niccolò
Machover, Moshé
Mann, Michael
Marx, Karl
McClelland, David
Michels, Robert
Miliband, Ralph
Mills, C. Wright
Morgenthau, Hans J.
Morriss, Peter
Nietzsche, Friedrich
Parsons, Talcott
Poulantzas, Nicos
Raven, Bertram
Riker, William H.
Sabatier, Paul
Scott, James
Spence, Janet
Sprout, Harold
Waltz, Kenneth
Weber, Max
Wight, Martin
Wolfers, Arnold
Wright, Quincy
Concepts Related to Power
Ability
Ableness
Absolutism
Adverse Selection
xi
Agency
Agenda Power
Agenda Setters
Argument, Power of
Authority
Autonomy
Bargaining
Blackmail
Bureaucratic Power
Cabal
Capability
Capital, Marxist
Causation
Coercion, Analytic
Coercion and Power
Collective Action
Problem
Complex Equality (Walzer)
Consent
Control
Cooperation
Coordination
Corruption
Decentering (of Subject, of
Structure)
Deflected Wants
Deliberation
Determinacy
Determinism
Discipline
Discourse
Dispositif
Domain
Domination
Entrepreneurs
Exclusion
Exercise Fallacy
Exit and Voice as Forms of
Power
xii
Reader’s Guide
Expectancy Confirmation,
Power and
Exploitation
Fair Division
False Consciousness
Fear, Use of
Female Leadership Among
Mammals
Free Market
Free Will
Freedom
Governmentality
Habitus
Hegemony
Hierarchy
Ideas
Ideology
Influence
Interests
Invisible Hand
Leadership
Legitimation
Loyalty
Luck
Luck, Brute
Manipulation
Mechanisms
Mobilization of Bias
Moral Hazard
Networks and Communities
Nonverbal Communication and
Power
Opportunity
Perceptual Symbols of Power
Persuasion
Pluralism
Policy Entrepreneurs
Political Thinking as Power
Power Elite
Power Motive
Propaganda
Public Goods
Racism, Role of Power in
Rationality
Relative Autonomy of the State
Responsibility
Rhetoric
Scope
Second Face
Social Capital
Subjugation
Submissive
Subordination
Systematic Luck
Systemic Power
Third Face
Threats
Throffers
Trade
Trust
Unintended Consequences
Vehicle Fallacy
Will to Power
Decisions and Game Theory
Agenda Power
Agenda Setters
Banzhaf Value
Banzhaf Voting Power Measure
Bargaining
Blocking Coalition
Bribe Index
Chicken Games
Coalition Theory
Coleman, James S.
Coleman Index
Computer Algorithms for
Power Indices
Core of a Game
Dowding, Keith
Fair Division
Felsenthal, Dan S.
Game Forms, Power in
Game-Theoretical Approaches
to Power
Grand Coalition
Gunboat Diplomacy
Harsanyi, John C.
Holler, Manfred
Homogeneous Weighted
Majority Games
I-Power
Jurisdictions and
Structure-Induced Equilibria
Machover, Moshé
Martin Index
Minimal Winning Coalition
Mutually Assured Destruction
Non Decision Making
Noncooperative Games
Owen Value
Paradox of New Members
Parties, Policy-Seeking Versus
Power-Seeking
Penrose Voting Power Measure
Pivot Player
Power Indices
Power Laws
Power to Initiate Action and
Power to Prevent Action
P-Power
Preference Versus
Nonpreference-Based
Concepts
Proper Simple Game
Public Goods Index
Qualified Majority Voting
Quarreling Paradox
Shapley Value
Shapley–Shubik Index
Shareholder Voting Power
Simple Games
Small Worlds, Power in
Spatial Voting Analysis
Square Root Rules
Strategic Power Index
Tijs Value
U.S. Electoral College, Power in
Value of a Game
Variable-Sum Games
Veto Players
Veto Power
Voting Paradoxes
Voting Power
Weighted Majority Game
Weighted Voting
Institutional Issues
Agenda Power
Agenda Setters
Bicameral Legislature
Budget-Maximizing
Bureaucrats
Bureaucratic Power
Capture Theory of
Regulation
Central Intelligence Agency
Corporatism
Dominant Parties
e-Governance
Elections
Federal Structure
Internet and Power
Reader’s Guide
Leadership
Media, The
Organization of the State
Political Parties
Prime Ministerial and
Presidential
Principal–Agent Relationship
Prisoner’s Dilemma
Referendums
Structure-Induced Equilibrium
Unicameral Legislature
U.S. Electoral College, Power in
International Relations
Alliances
Anarchy in International
Relations
Appeasement
Arms Race
Balance of Power
Banks
Bargaining in International
Relations
Bull, Hedley
Carr, E. H.
Cartwright, Dorwin
Chicken Games
Civil War
Clausewitz, Carl von
Compliance (International)
Constructivist View of Power
in International Relations
Conventional Deterrence
Cox, Robert W.
Cuban Missile Crisis
Defensive Realism
Dependency Theory in
International Relations
Deterrence Theory
Deterrent Threats
Deutsch, Karl
Diplomacy
Empire
Environmental Treaties
Espionage
Executive Power
Extended Deterrence
Feminist International
Relations, View of Power
First-Strike Capability
Gunboat Diplomacy
Hegemonic Power
Hegemonic War
Hegemony
Idealism in International
Relations
Imperial Power
Imperialism
Intelligence
Lasswell, Harold
League of Nations
Military in Government
Morgenthau, Hans J.
Multinational Corporations
Mutually Assured Destruction
Neoliberalism
Neorealism
Offense/Defense Dominance
Postmodernist View of Power
in International Relations
Power Transition Theory
Realism in International
Relations
Regime Theory in International
Relations
Sea Power
Security
Security Dilemma
Separation of Powers
Sovereignty
Spiral Model
Sprout, Harold
Strategic Interaction in
International Relations
Terror Regimes
Terrorism
Waltz, Kenneth
War
Wight, Martin
Wolfers, Arnold
Wright, Quincy
Interpersonal Relationships
Agency–Structure Problem
Authority
Caste System (India)
Chicken Games
Deliberative Democracy
Gender, Role of Power in
Heterosexism, Role of Power in
xiii
Hierarchy
Interdependence Theory
Leadership and Gender
Power as Control Theory
Psychological Empowerment
Submissive
Veiled Women
Intrapersonal Matters
Agency
Agency–Structure Problem
Autonomy
Bases of Power
Free Will
Gender, Role of Power in
Interdependence Theory
Leadership and Gender
Psychological Empowerment
Submissive
Key Debates
Agency–Structure Problem
Bachrach, Peter, and Baratz,
Morton
Barry, Brian
Bourdieu, Pierre
Community Power Debate
Consensual Power,
Theories of
Critical Theory
Dahl, Robert A.
Defensive Realism
Deliberative Democracy
Dependency Theory in
International Relations
Discourse
Domhoff, G. William
Domination
Dowding, Keith
Elite Theories
Essentially Contested Concept
Free Will
Freedom
Global Governance
Hunter, Floyd
Liberalism
Luck
Miliband, Ralph
Miliband–Poulantzas Debate
Mills, C. Wright
xiv
Reader’s Guide
Mobilization of Bias
Neoliberalism
Neorealism
Non Decision Making
Organization of the State
Pluralism
Postmodernist View of Power
in International Relations
Poulantzas, Nicos
Power as Control Theory
Power Elite
Power To and Power Over
Psychological Empowerment
Queer Theories of Power
Rationality
Realism in International
Relations
Regime Theory in International
Relations
Regime Theory in Urban
Politics
Relative Autonomy of the State
Resources as Measuring Power
Second Face
Social Dominance Theory
Spiral Model
Structural Power
Structural Suggestion
Structuration
Three Faces of Power
Transactional and
Transformational Leadership
Methodological Issues
Adverse Selection
Agency–Structure Problem
Community Power Debate
Essentially Contested Concept
Exercise Fallacy
False Consciousness
Fungibility of Power Resources
Mechanisms
Pluralism
Power Elite
Power Laws
Preference Versus
Nonpreference-Based
Concepts
Principal–Agent Relationship
Rationality
Realism in International
Relations
Realist Accounts of Power
Reputational Analysis
Resources as Measuring Power
Systematic Luck
Third Face
Three Faces of Power
Political Science
Agenda Power
Agenda Setters
Authority
Banzhaf Value
Bicameral Legislature
Budget-Maximizing
Bureaucrats
Bureaucratic Power
Business and Power
Capital, Marxist
Capital, Neoclassical
Capture Theory of Regulation
Central Intelligence Agency
Civil War
Coalition Theory
Collective Action Problem
Community Power Debate
Core Parties
Corporatism
Coup d’État
Dahl, Robert A.
Democracy
Dictatorship
Dominant Parties
Dowding, Keith
e-Governance
Elections
Executive Power
Fascism
Federal Structure
Global Governance
Globalization
Governmentality
Grand Coalition
Growth Coalitions
Heresthetics
Hierarchy
Hunter, Floyd
Intelligence
Internet and Power
Jursidictions and StructureInduced Equilibria
Lasswell, Harold
Leadership
Legislative Power
Liberalism
Lukes, Steven
Martin Index
McClelland, David
Michels, Robert
Military in Government
Mills, C. Wright
Minimal Winning Coalition
Morris, Peter
Nationalism
Organization of the State
Parties, Policy-Seeking Versus
Power-Seeking
Parties, Strong and Very Strong
Pivotal Politics
Pluralism
Police State
Policy Entrepreneurs
Political Parties
Post-Fordism
Power Elite
Power To and Power Over
Prime Ministerial and
Presidential
Principal–Agent Relationship
Realist Accounts of Power
Referendums
Relative Autonomy of
the State
Revolution
Revolutionary Cell Structure
Right-Wing Authoritarianism
Riker, William H.
Riots
Second Face
Social Capital
Social Power
Spatial Voting Analysis
Structural Power
Structural Suggestion
Structure-Induced
Equilibrium
Terror Regimes
Terrorism
Testosterone, Power and
Totalitarianism
Reader’s Guide
Unicameral Legislature
U.S. Electoral College, Power in
Veiled Women
Veto Players
Vote-Maximizing Parties
Voting
Voting Paradoxes
Voting Power
Weber, Max
Weighted Voting
Women as Political Leaders
Political Theory
Agency–Structure Problem
Anarchism, Power in
Authority
Barry, Brian
Bourdieu, Pierre
Capital, Marxist
Capital, Neoclassical
Castells, Manuel
Deliberative Democracy
Democracy
Dispositif
Distributive Justice
Domhoff, G. William
Dowding, Keith
Freedom
Global Governance
Globalization
Governmentality
Gramsci, Antonio
Habermas, Jürgen
Hobbes, Thomas
Hunter, Floyd
Jessop, Bob
Justice
Liberalism
Lukes, Steven
Macchiavelli, Niccolò
Marx, Karl
Michels, Robert
Miliband, Ralph
Mills, C. Wright
Morriss, Peter
Nationalism
Nietzsche, Friedrich
Paternalism
Pluralism
Political Legitimacy
Post-Fordism
Poulantzas, Nicos
Power Elite
Power To and Power Over
Power With
Sabatier, Paul
Scott, James
Second Face
Social Capital
Social Power
Sovereignty
Structural Power
Structural Suggestion
Will to Power
Social Psychology
Adler, Alfred
Authoritarian Personality
Bases of Power
Deflected Wants
Eagly, Alice
Expectancy Confirmation,
Power and
Fiske, Susan
Framing
French, John R. P., Jr.
Granovetter, Mark
Groupthink
Hall, Judith A.
Human Dominance
Motivation
Interdependence Theory
Jost, John
Laclau, Ernesto, and Mouffe,
Chantal
Lewin, Kurt, and Power
Power, Cognition, and
Behavior
Power as Control Theory
Power Motive
Psychological Empowerment
Rationality
Raven, Bertram
Social Dominance Theory
Status
Striving for Superiority
System Justification Theory
Transactional and
Transformational Leadership
Social Theory
Agency
Agency–Structure Problem
Biopower
Caste System (India)
Clegg, Stewart
Decentering (of Subject, of
Structure)
Deliberation
Flyvbjerg, Bent
Foucault, Michel
Free Will
Giddens, Anthony
Governmentality
Groupthink
Habermas, Jürgen
Habitus
Haugaard, Mark
Jessop, Bob
Luhmann, Niklas
Lukes, Steven
Mann, Michael
Michels, Robert
Miliband, Ralph
Mills, C. Wright
Morriss, Peter
Nationalism
Parsons, Talcott
Perceptual Symbols of Power
Post-Fordism
Propaganda
Rationality
Realist Accounts of Power
Revolution
Rhetoric
Right-Wing Authoritarianism
Scott, James
Second Face
Small Worlds, Power in
Social Breakdown
Social Capital
Substructure and
Superstructure
Status
Strength of Weak Ties
Structural Power
Structural Suggestion
Structuration
Subjugation
Trust
Veiled Women
xv
xvi
Reader’s Guide
Weber, Max
Will to Power
Theories of Power
Animal Groups, Power in
Causal Theories of Power
Coercion and Power
Collective Action Problem
Community Power Debate
Elite Theories
Exchange Theory
Feminist International
Relations, View of Power
Feminist Theories of Power
Marxist Accounts of Power
Neoliberalism
Neorealism
Post-Fordism
Postmodernist View of Power
in International Relations
Power as Control Theory
Power To and Power Over
Queer Theories of Power
Realism in International
Relations
Realist Accounts of Power
Relational Power
Social Power
Striving for Superiority
System Justification Theory
Third Face
Three Faces of Power
Types of Power
Animal Groups, Power in
Consensual Power,
Theories of
Constructivist View of Power
in International Relations
Critical Theory
Defensive Realism
Deterrence Theory
Elite Theories
Exercise Fallacy
Exploitation
False Consciousness
Female Leadership Among
Mammals
Fungibility of Power Resources
Hegemonic Power
Hegemony
Heterosexism, Role of
Power in
Human Dominance Motivation
Ideology
Imperial Power
Influence
Invisible Hand
Knowledge and Power
Language and Power
Legislative Power
Manipulation
Media, The
Military in Government
Mobilization of Bias
Monopoly Power
Networks, Power in
Networks and Communities
Nonverbal Communication and
Power
Perceptual Symbols of Power
Persuasion
Pluralism
Police State
Political Thinking as Power
Power, Cognition, and
Behavior
Power as Control Theory
Power Motive
Power To and Power Over
Power Transition Theory
Power With
Prime Ministerial and
Presidential
Propaganda
Psychological Empowerment
Regime Theory in International
Relations
Relational Power
Relative Autonomy of the State
Religious Power
Revolutionary Cell Structure
Rhetoric
Sea Power
Second Face
Sexism, Role of Power in
Social Capital
Social Dominance Theory
Social Power
Striving for Superiority
Subjugation
Symbolic Power and Violence
Systematic Luck
Systemic Power
Terrorism
Testosterone, Power and
Third Face
Threats
Three Faces of Power
Throffers
Transactional and
Transformational
Leadership
Will to Power
Urban Studies
Bachrach, Peter, and Baratz,
Morton
Castells, Manuel
Community Power Debate
Dahl, Robert A.
Domhoff, G. William
Dowding, Keith
Elite Theories
Flyvbjerg, Bent
Growth Coalitions
Hunter, Floyd
Lukes, Steven
Mobilization of Bias
Non Decision Making
Pluralism
Post-Fordism
Power Elite
Regime Theory in Urban
Politics
Sabatier, Paul
Systematic Luck
Systemic Power
Third Face
Three Faces of Power
World Cities
About the Editor
Keith Dowding is Professor of Political Science in
the School of Political Science and International
Relations, Research School of Social Science, and
Director of Research for the College of Arts and
Social Science at the Australian National University.
He has published extensively in political science,
political philosophy, social choice theory, public
administration, public policy, and urban politics
in journals such as American Political Science
Review, American Journal of Political Science,
British Journal of Political Science, European
Journal of Political Research, Journal of Politics,
Public Choice, Public Administration, Rationality
and Society, and Urban Studies Quarterly. He
has published two books, Rational Choice and
Political Power (1991) and Power (1996), and
many articles on the subject of political power.
He is on the boards of the Journal of Power and
British Politics. In 2009, he coedited the fourvolume Rational Choice Classics for SAGE as
well as The Selection of Ministers in Europe for
Routledge, published under the auspices of the
network of scholars Selection and De-Selection
of Political Elites (SEDEPE), which he chairs. He
has been coeditor of the Journal of Theoretical
Politics since 1996.
xvii
Contributors
Kate Allison
University of Manchester
André Azevedo Alves
London School of Economics
and Political Science
Joseph Angolano
London School of Economics
and Political Science
John Breuilly
London School of Economics
and Political Science
Ian Carter
University of Pavia
Philip G. Cerny
Rutgers University
Andreas Antoniades
University of Sussex
Zsuzsanna Chappell
London School of Economics
and Political Science
Stuart Astill
London School of Economics
and Political Science
Brian D. Christens
University of Wisconsin–
Madison
David A. Baldwin
Princeton University
Philip Cunliffe
University of Kent
Alex Bavister-Gould
University of York
Douglas J. Dallier
Western Carolina University
Coral Bell
Australian National University
Jennifer L. Berdahl
University of Toronto
Cesarino Bertini
University of Bergamo
Malgorzata Olimpia Bielenia
Technical University of Gdansk
Tanja A. Börzel
Freie Universität, Berlin
William Bosworth
Australian National University
Michael Dalvean
Australian National University
Philip H. J. Davies
Brunel University
Rekha Diwakar
Goldsmiths College
Andrew M. Dorman
King’s College London
Keith Dowding
Australian National University
Matthew Braham
University of Groningen
Lindy Edwards
Australian Defence Force
Academy, Canberra
Steven J. Brams
New York University
Lina Eriksson
Adelaide University
xix
Dan S. Felsenthal
University of Haifa
Jennifer Filson
University of Minnesota
Bryan Finken
University of Colorado at
Denver
Susan Fiske
Princeton University
Michael Freeden
University of Oxford
Gianfranco Gambarelli
University of Bergamo
Azar Gat
Tel Aviv University
Peter Glick
Lawrence University
Dogan Göçmen
University of London
Gregg J. Gold
Humboldt State University
Brooke C. Greene
Columbia University
Catia Gregoratti
Lund University
Penny Griffin
University of New South Wales
Ana Guinote
University College London
Vsevolod Gunitskiy
Columbia University
xx
Contributors
Stefano Guzzini
Danish Institute for
International Studies &
Uppsala University
Judith A. Hall
Northeastern University
Mark Haugaard
National University of Ireland,
Galway
Paul ‘t Hart
Australian National University
Mary Hawkesworth
Rutgers University
Jonathan Hearn
University of Edinburgh
Paul Henman
University of Queensland
Andrew Hindmoor
University of Queensland
Manfred J. Holler
University of Hamburg
Li-Ching Hung
Overseas Chinese University
György Hunyady
Eötvòs Loránd University,
Budapest
Marc Kilgour
Wilfrid Laurier University
Helen Margetts
University of Oxford
Ruth Kinna
Loughborough University
Aaron Martin
Australian National
University
Andrew James Klassen
Australian National University
Mathias Koenig-Archibugi
London School of Economics
and Political Science
Edward A. Kolodziej
University of Illinois,
Urbana-Champaign
Bernd Lahno
Frankfurt School of Finance &
Management
Valentino Larcinese
London School of Economics
and Political Science
Dennis Leech
University of Warwick
Liane J. Leedom
University of Bridgeport
Chris Lewis
Australian National University
Robert H. Lieshout
Radboud University
Oliver James
University of Exeter
Johnson Y. K. Louie
Australian National University
Bob Jessop
Lancaster University
Melissa Lovell
Australian National University
Peter John
University of Manchester
Debra Lucas
D’Youville College
Christer Jönsson
Lund University
Moshé Machover
University College London
Jonathan Joseph
University of Kent
John Madeley
London School of Economics
and Political Science
John T. Jost
New York University
André Kaiser
University of Cologne
Martín A. Maldonado
Universidad Católica de
Córdoba
Alem S. Kebede
California State University,
Bakersfield
Siniša Maleševic´
National University of Ireland,
Galway
Matt Matravers
University of York
Nicholas R. Miller
University of Maryland,
Baltimore County
Patit Paban Mishra
Sambalpur University
Maria Montero
University of Nottingham
Peter Morriss
National University of Ireland,
Galway
Vanessa E. Munro
University of London,
King’s College
Stefan Napel
University of Hamburg
Sik Hung Ng
City University of Hong Kong
Hannu Nurmi
University of Turku
Rosemary H. T. O’Kane
Keele University
Adam Packer
Australian National
University
Pamela Pansardi
University of Pavia
Fioravante Patrone
University of Genoa
Hans Peters
University of Maastricht
Bertram H. Raven
University of California,
Los Angeles
Ingrid Robeyns
Erasmus University Rotterdam
Contributors
Daniel Rubenson
Ryerson University
Caryl E. Rusbult
Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Kevin Ryan
National University of Ireland,
Galway
Lawrence Sáez
London School of Economics
and Political Science
Izabella Stach
AGH University of Science and
Technology, Krakow
Steven J. Stanton
University of Michigan
Bernard Steunenberg
Leiden University
Kennedy Stewart
Simon Fraser University
xxi
Bert van den Brink
Utrecht University
Jan-Willem van der Rijt
University of Groningen
Jojanneke van der Toorn
New York University
Peter van der Windt
Columbia University
Ignacio Sánchez-Cuenca
Juan March Institute
David Strecker
Friedrich-Schiller-Universitaet
Jena
Stephen Van Evera
Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
Michael Saward
Open University
Doug Stuart
Dickinson College
Paul A. M. Van Lange
Free University Amsterdam
Darrow Schecter
University of Sussex
Gita Subrahmanyam
London School of Economics
and Political Science
Bertjan Verbeek
Radboud University Nijmegen
Ralph Schroeder
University of Oxford
Oliver C. Schultheiss
Friedrich-Alexander
University
Len Scott
University of Wales,
Aberystwyth
Maija Setälä
University of Turku
Ngai-Ling Ivin Sum
Lancaster University
David L. Swartz
Boston University
Patricia Lee Sykes
American University
James Stacey Taylor
College of New Jersey
Andreas Warntjen
University of Twente
Patricia A. Weitsman
Ohio University
David West
Australian National University
Garrath Williams
Lancaster University
Jeffrey D. Wilson
Australian National University
Julia Skorupska
University of Oxford
Jessica Templeton
London School of Economics
and Political Science
Cary Stacy Smith
Mississippi State University
Geoffrey Till
King’s College London
Peter Wilson
London School of Economics
and Political Science
Mark Snyder
University of Minnesota
Jacob Torfing
Roskilde University
David G. Winter
University of Michigan
Arthur Spirling
Harvard University
John Uhr
Australian National University
Chris Wyatt
University of Brighton
Introduction
Power is a ubiquitous theme in the social sciences,
not only as a topic in its own right, but also as an
issue that underlies many debates and questions
that do not explicitly address it. I believe this is the
first Encyclopedia of Power to be found in the
social sciences; it continues the SAGE Encyclopedia series providing a comprehensive coverage of
disciplines and themes in the social sciences. The
encyclopedia includes entries from political science, international relations, public administration, public policy, urban studies, sociology, social
psychology, cultural studies, some also from the
viewpoint of economics and studies of animal
behavior. Encyclopedias typically offer summaries
and discussions of topics rather than the cuttingedge research presented in a handbook. Nevertheless, many of our entries are by leading scholars in
their respective fields, and they have been encouraged to give their own take on the issues as well
as summarizing the current state of knowledge. In
addition to the longer entries, in keeping with the
SAGE series we also have numerous shorter
entries. Some of these expand on concepts touched
on in the longer entries, and others offer insights
into key concepts related more generally to the
field of power.
Many encyclopedias in the SAGE series are
fields of study—Geography, Social Theory, Political Science, and so on—whereas this one is concerned with a specific concept within social science.
However, as the entries herein demonstrate, that
concept has been treated quite differently within
different fields of study, while we find similar controversies and debates about the concept across
fields of study. Providing a single encyclopedia
where these contrasting or converging debates and
ideas are laid out supplies a ready source of knowledge for scholars working in different fields. Ideas
from different fields of study can be “taken for a
walk” into new areas for mutual benefit and innovation.
Although all of the relevant social sciences are
covered in their accounts of power, the bulk of the
entries relate to political science (and related subdisciplines such as public administration and
urban studies), international relations, and sociology. I make no apology for that fact because power
lends itself to those disciplines more directly than
to others, and there has been far more debate
explicitly about power in those three. We also have
a large number of formal entries concerned with
decision- and game-theoretic measures of power.
One reason for the large number in this field is the
subtleties of the concept of power that have been
formalized and applied particularly in economics,
politics, and international relations, though there
has also been some application in sociology. Some
of these entries provide shorter definitions of technical terms that appear in longer formal entries.
I will begin with a general introduction to the
idea of power in the social sciences that introduces
the types of debates that we find in all fields of
study. I will then discuss the organization and use
of the encyclopedia, explaining the rationale of the
listing in the Reader’s Guide.
Main Themes in the Study of Power
Power can be personal, social, or institutional. It
can involve conflict where one forces another to
behave in ways the second does not wish, or can
be consensual where agents achieve more together
than they could alone. It can be thought of as a
property of people, or of institutions or other
social objects. For some, it can be measured and
analyzed; for others, it is a concept that will forever remain partly mysterious and always qualitative. In some areas of social science, the concept of
xxiii
xxiv
Introduction
power has almost completely disappeared, reduced
to component parts such as resources, or analyzed
in terms of strategic interaction where the term
power has become redundant. I will briefly consider 10 interwoven and overlapping debates or
controversies that cut across many fields of study.
A major debate concerns the issues of whether
power is a property of agents—whether these are
people or institutions—or a property of the relations between agents, the structure of society or
groups. Much discussed in sociology and political
science, the issue also concerns social psychology
where questions about the nature of agency perform a key role. To what extent can we predict
agency by influences around people and subtle
influences outside of their ken, and how far are
people in control? These issues shade into a second
question about the nature of autonomy and free
will. Even if we see power as a property of people,
their actions might still be determined by the environment around them. In many disciplines, the
nature and scope of constraints upon action and
the causes of beliefs and actions constitute important elements in explanation of social outcomes.
Power then can be seen as personal or institutional
or as agency-based or structural.
Another theme that pervades all disciplines is
whether power is exclusively a descriptive or positive term, or whether it is normatively implicated. In
cultural studies, sociology and political theory especially, how far it is possible to produce theory-free
or nonnormative accounts of power is hotly disputed. In international relations too, the types of
theories that are used to describe and explain relationships between nations are normatively implicated in how theorists view power. Here, for
example, realists believe that power relations can be
objectively defined in terms of the strategic concerns
of nations, whereas constructivists believe that we
construct the nature of the conflict, which determines actions, and different nations might construct
the international system differently. See the entries
on realism and constructivism for a much more
nuanced and careful study of these theories. The
normative nature of power means that it is implicated in different theories in different sorts of ways,
and this partly explains different conceptions.
The normative force of concepts such as power
helps explain another set of concerns. Some analysts
see power in terms of one set of agents’ power over
others (or the power of structure over people); others see that form of power as a subset of power
that is descriptive of what people can achieve.
Thus, “power over” versus “power to” is a theme
running through many debates. In a related sense,
some writers concentrate on power as a notion
concerning conflict. Where agents have interests at
variance with each other, they come into conflict
and here power plays out to the advantage of the
strongest. Others see power more in consensual
terms where working together leads people to
achieve more than they could on their own. The
reader should read different accounts of power in
terms of power to and power over, conflictual or
consensual, or in terms of both.
Some believe that power, being a somewhat
mysterious notion, is impossible to quantify. Others believe that it can be quantified, if only roughly,
often in terms of the resources that agents bring to
situations of conflict or consensus. The mathematical and decision-theoretic formalizations of power
are attempts to quantify theoretically and have
been applied most thoroughly to voting power.
Strategic considerations also enter into such formalizations through game-theoretic interactions of
agents. Taken to its extreme, power can disappear
from social scientific analysis if it is reduced to
resources and strategies in games—or rather, the
term power disappears, reduced to other, more
quantifiable and measurable entities. The purpose
of such analysis will reveal power even if the term
does not appear in the analysis itself.
Many other concepts in the social sciences are
related to power, though they are neither reducible
to power nor is power reducible to them. Freedom,
ability, and capability are three such concepts.
Many entries here discuss the relationship between
power and such terms, as well as discussing the
role of power in grand social scientific theories,
whether they be normative, such as liberalism, or
positive, such as pluralism.
The Reader’s Guide
The encyclopedia has 381 entries ranging from
about 400 words to 4,000 words in length, written
by 157 authors from 17 countries (Australia,
Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary,
Introduction
India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, the Netherlands,
Poland, Spain, Sweden, Taiwan, the United States,
and the United Kingdom). We have a very broad
coverage of the field, and no area, I believe, has
been ignored, though the difficulty of finding
authors to provide entries on some topics means
that some entries I would like to have included have
had to be omitted. The editorial board of five each
assisted the editor in selecting topics, authors for
those topics, and in some cases helped edit the
entries. Of the board members, Nicholas Miller
deserves special mention for his extensive work in
editing the decision- and game-theoretic entries to
ensure consistency in algebraic formulation throughout the work. I am deeply appreciative of his help.
I have developed a guide to assist readers in
their examination of entries and will explain the
rationale behind it. The groupings are not mutually exclusive, and many entries appear in more
than one category. Some categories are relatively
straightforward: Biography, International Relations, Key Debates, Political Science, Political
Theory, Social Psychology, Social Theory (whose
disciplinary home largely is sociology), and Urban
Studies are largely self-explanatory. In Biography,
we have a fairly long list of names of major figures
in power studies, again dominated by those in
politics, international relations, and sociology. Key
Debates lists entries that are devoted to a specific
debate—some between a relatively limited set of
authors, others more general. The other categories
just listed are all entries that are discipline-based.
Some entries will occur under several of those categories: what constitutes Political Science, Political
Theory, or Social Theory is somewhat fluid, with
some entries belonging exclusively to one category
but others being discussed across all three disciplines. International Relations and Social Psychology tend to contain more exclusive entries, whereas
many of those under Urban Studies are also listed
under Political Science.
Other categories are not disciplinary but themebased. Under Concepts Related to Power, we have
entries on concepts that are subsets of power, such
as “Bureaucratic Power” or “False Consciousness.” Some are terms closely related to power,
such as “Coercion, Analytic” or “Systematic Luck.”
Others are technical or quasitechnical terms that
denote ways of considering power or are used in
xxv
the explanation of a particular approach to power;
“Ableness” is a good example. Others have more
tenuous connections to power itself but are important in ways of looking at power and are usually
mentioned in longer entries; “Adverse Selection”
and “Dispositif” are examples of such terms. Others still are broader concepts and the way in which
one views these concepts will affect how one conceptualizes power; for example, “Rationality.”
Institutional Issues entries refer to organizations
or ways of organizing the state and how this affects
power—such as “Federal Structure” and “Media,
The”—or they refer to power relations that are
affected by institutions—“Bureaucratic Power”
and “Internet and Power,” for example. The Interpersonal Relationships category refers to power
relations between people; for example, “Interdependence Theory” is about how relations between
people affect power and the ways in which people
look at themselves; although Intrapersonal Matters
entries are those that come largely though not
exclusively from social psychology, and refer to
entries that affect individuals’ abilities to do what
they want—or whether their wants are a reflection
of something else in society; thus, “Agency” and
“Psychological Empowerment” are included in this
category. Methodological Issues is a category for
methodological issues in power studies or sometimes specific models or ways of looking at power
relations that affect how we view power.
Two of the categories are Theories of Power
and Types of Power. The former is concerned with
grand theories about the power structure or midrange theory or models that examine specific
aspects of power. An example of the first is “Feminist Theories of Power”; an example of the second is the “Collective Action Problem.” Types of
Power is concerned more with specific means by
which power is generated, thus “Exploitation”
makes its home in this category, as does “Manipulation.” Again, however, the entries are rather
fluid and some are contained within both of the
categories.
The Decisions and Game Theory category is a
vital one for this encyclopedia. Formal writers
have mathematically defined the nature of power
within voting games and committees. These
entries try to formalize power for clarity and
quantification. Many of these entries appear only
xxvi
Introduction
in this section. Merely because the notion of
power has been formalized mathematically does
not mean that controversy over the concept can
be overcome. Many of the issues that arise in less
formalized approaches remain. Issues arise over
whether power should be defined in terms of
what can be done no matter what actors’ preferences are, or whether it should be defined in terms
of what agents’ actually are. Structural and agential issues arise here too. Some have tried to take
the formalized account of power out of the context of voting within committee and across parties
within parliaments and apply their results to
society more widely. This is a dynamic and growing program.
The Encyclopedia of Power covers most aspects
of power in society as a whole. Undoubtedly some
issues have been left aside and some covered in
more depth than others. That will always be the
case with an enterprise such as this. However, the
encyclopedia provides the reader with all the major
and central debates and covers all the main issues
with regard to power in society. Happy reading.
Acknowledgments
This project has taken longer than originally projected, not helped by my move from the London
School of Economics and Political Science to the
Australian National University. I would like to
thank members of the SAGE team in California
who have kept the encyclopedia on track while I
was distracted and have ensured its steady transition from drafts to final copy, including Diana
Axelsen, Alan Cook, Robin Gold, Leticia Gutierrez, Laura Notton, Yvette Pollastrini, Kate Schroeder, and especially Sanford Robinson. I have
already mentioned the sterling support provided
by Nick Miller of the editorial board. I would also
like to thank Lucy Robinson who first approached
me to run this project and Rolf Janke who together
with Lucy discussed the project in the early stages
and commissioned it. I would also like to thank
Anne Gelling who helped me at the first editing
and checking stage of the entire set of entries.
Keith Dowding
Australian National University
A
Yet, typically, abilities are the sorts of things
that can be exercised: they require a choice. It is up
to you whether to read. But, when you choose not
to, you retain the ability. This sometimes creates
difficulties in deciding whether an ability is present
or not because an ability claim is of the form that
you could have done X, not that you did do X, and
establishing the truth or falsity of such statements
is more difficult than it is for statements about
what did happen. But, difficult or not, it has to be
done and can be done.
The ability approach to power can apply to
both power to and power over. Although it is more
normally associated with power to (because that is
what Morriss concentrated on), someone who has
power over someone else also has a particular sort
of ability. Thus, if a master has power over his or
her slaves, the master can get the slaves to do a
large range of things, some of which are mutually
incompatible; it is up to the master which of this
range of things he or she gets the slaves to do.
Power as an ability is thus different from two
other concepts. First, as a dispositional concept,
power as an ability is different from the action of
exercising power. Second, it is different from a pure
disposition or “natural power”—one that is not
subject to the actor’s choice, such as the capacity to
perform reflex actions under appropriate stimuli. It
follows that when we consider the power of nonhuman actors (such as institutions or countries),
only those that can be said to form intentions and
make choices can have power-as-ability.
A PRIORI UNIONS
See Owen Value
ABILITY
Often when we talk of a person’s power, we are
simply referring to what they can do or have the
ability to do. This is the idea behind the ability
approach to power, which is associated with Peter
Morriss.
Abilities are capacities, or dispositions. This
means that they exist over an extended period.
During the period that they exist, they may remain
unexercised for much, or even all, of the time.
Thus, you (probably) have the ability to read English. If you were to spend the next year doing
anthropological fieldwork in deepest Borneo, you
might not exercise this ability (because there is
nothing there in English for you to read), yet you
would retain the ability to read English.
Abilities are also acquired and lost. When you
were 3 months old, you did not have the ability to
read English; you subsequently acquired it. Conversely, after you had spent 30 years with that tribe
in Borneo, you might well have lost the ability to
read English. But losing an ability is very different
from not exercising it. On the ability account of
power, what matters is what abilities you have, not
what abilities you are exercising.
Peter Morriss
1
2
Ableness
See also Ableness; Exercise Fallacy; Morriss, Peter; Power
To and Power Over
Further Readings
Morriss, P. (2002). Power: A philosophical analysis (2nd
ed.). Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
ABLENESS
The term ableness was introduced into the literature by Peter Morriss to describe a refinement in
the ability account of power. The idea is that there
is an ambiguity in how we normally talk of abilities. Abilities can refer to what you can, in general, do: you can, let us say, read English. But we
are often interested, not in such generic abilities,
but in what you can do now. Or more generally,
we are often interested in your abilities at some
specified time, t.
What you can do at time t will depend on the
particular circumstances that exist at t, and those
circumstances might be unusual. So, although you
are able (generically) to read English, you would
not be able to do so at time t if, at that time, you
do not have your reading glasses with you. Without your glasses, let us suppose, you are not able
to read anything.
To mark this distinction, Morriss used the word
ability to refer to the generic sense, and ableness for
the time-specific sense. So, without your glasses,
you have the ability to read, but lack the ableness.
Confusion can arise if we do not mark this distinction. If, at a time when you do not have your
glasses, someone were to ask you if you are able to
read, you might not know how to reply: if the questioner is conducting a literacy survey, he or she will
be enquiring after the ability to read, but if he or
she needs you to read something right now, then he
or she is asking after your ableness. Here the context makes clear which is meant; in more abstract
academic work, there is no context, and so clarity
requires us to state which sense is to be understood.
Similarly, lack of power can be either lack of
ability or lack of ableness. The poor have the ability to dine on caviar and champagne (because they
could consume them if they were provided), but
they lack the ableness (for they are not provided,
and the poor cannot get them). This example suggests that for most political purposes, ableness is
more important than is ability: usually what people are able to do with the goods they do have is
what interests us, rather than what they would be
able to do with a “standard” allocation of goods.
This example shows why Morriss used the term
ableness rather than time-specific ability. For the
distinction does not rest on whether a time is
specified: the poor can never afford champagne.
What the distinction does rest on is that ableness
refers to a set of actually existing background conditions, whereas abilities are established by reference to some set of hypothetical, standardized,
background conditions.
Peter Morriss
See also Ability; Morriss, Peter
Further Readings
Dowding, K., & van Hees, M. (2008). Freedom, coercion
and ability. In M. Braham & F. Steffen (Eds.), Power,
freedom and voting. Berlin: Springer.
Morriss, P. (2002). Power: A philosophical analysis (2nd
ed.). Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
ABSOLUTISM
In the 17th and 18th centuries, various European
monarchs claimed absolute powers within their
states. Monarchs claimed a divine right to rule
with their subjects having no claim to limit their
powers. The Danish “King’s Law” of 1665 states
that the monarch was the most perfect and
supreme person and stood above all human laws,
having no judge above him apart from God. Louis
XIV of France is claimed to have stated, “L’État
c’est moi” (“the state is me”). The Russian tsars
Ivan III, Ivan IV, Peter the Great, and Catherine
the Great all had absolute powers; Russia had no
parliament until 1905. Even in the 1906 constitution, the tsar is described as an autocrat. Similarly,
absolute monarchs ruled in Austria, Portugal,
Prussia, and Sweden.
The term absolutism is thus often used to
describe the nature of the state in these countries at
Adler, Alfred
this time. These monarchs had great formal powers,
which in practice extended to closing down other
power centers, emasculating parliaments, creating
powerful bureaucracies and standing armies, and
generally centralizing power to a greater extent
than previously happened. This was the time when
many European nation-states were formed, though
not all had absolutist rulers. The English Civil War
was caused by Charles I’s attempt to assert absolutist powers. The idea of a single supreme sovereign
power was an influential doctrine given rational
rather than religious justification by Thomas
Hobbes, precisely because of the fear that divided
sovereignty would lead to discord, strife, and civil
war. Even Hobbes, though, argued that sovereigns
cannot arbitrarily take the life of subjects: that is
one power too far because undivided sovereignty is
justified by the security it brings.
The power of these monarchs can be overemphasized. Certainly there were other centers of
power, notably the churches and nobility, though
absolutist monarchs attempted to enfeeble the latter by requiring them to work with state officials
on their lands. Although the idea of absolutism
was established at this time, it is not clear that the
absolute rulers had significantly greater power
than other rulers. Absolute rulers still needed to
negotiate with barons and with the church and
were beholden to powerful figures within their
palaces and bureaucracies.
Keith Dowding
See also Bureaucratic Power; Hobbes, Thomas
Further Readings
Anderson, P. (1974). Lineages of the absolute state.
London: Verso.
Mettam, R. (1988). Power and faction in Louis XIV’s
France. Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Miller, J. (1990). Absolutism in seventeenth-century
Europe. Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
ADLER, ALFRED (1870–1937)
Alfred Adler is known as the founder of a school
of individual psychology. He was born into a
3
Jewish family on February 7, 1870, in Penzing, a
suburb of Vienna, and at an early age decided to
become a physician. After graduating in medicine
from the University of Vienna in 1895, he became
an ophthalmologist, but soon switched to general
practice, in which he began to study the linkage of
illness and physical deformities to personality
development. In 1902, he was invited to join a
discussion group that had been initiated by the
pioneering Viennese psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud
(1856–1939). Adler, Freud, and two other psychoanalysts met on Wednesday evenings initially, and
the group came to be known Mittwochsgesellschaft (Wednesday Society). Adler’s book, Study
of Organ Inferiority and Its Physical Compensation, was published in 1907. He became the
coeditor of the society’s newsletter and, in 1910,
Adler was named president of the Vienna Psychoanalytic Society.
Adler’s perception of human behavior and personality differed from Freud’s. Adler challenged
Freud’s concept of ego and id and Freud’s belief
that sexuality was the root cause of neurosis; Adler
contended that the social realm, or exteriority, was
as important to psychoanalysis as any internal
realm, or interiority. Adler promoted the importance of perceiving an individual holistically, rather
than reductively. In 1911, Adler parted company
with Freud and his circle and, along with nine of
his associates, established the Society for Free Psychoanalysis, shortly thereafter renamed as the
Society for Individual Psychology. In 1912, Adler
published his seminal treatise, The Neurotic Constitution, describing his main ideas. During World
War I, Adler served as a doctor in the Austrian
army on the Russian front. Later, Adler wrote
numerous books on psychology and organized
counseling centers in the Vienna schools.
As a theorist of human psychology, Adler dealt
exhaustively in psychotherapy, personality theory,
and social action. Between 1907 and 1937 he
developed theories regarding the inferiority complex, superiority complex, and psychological compensation as well as the relationship between body,
mind, and spirit. Adler believed inferiority and
superiority complexes were two sides of the same
coin. The feeling of superiority was the fruit of a
striving whose roots lay in the inferiority complex.
Moreover, each human emotion found expression
in one’s body language, a manifestation of the
4
Adorno, Theodor
close connection between mind and body. Adler’s
social theory arose from his conviction, based on
observation, that to be understood, an individual
must be viewed within a social context. Adler’s
psychotherapy agenda included information about
the lifestyle of patients, self-explanation of patients,
and encouragement of the patient’s social interests.
Adler thought it important to avoid conveying an
authoritarian attitude. His method was to speak
face to face with the patient, unlike the Freudian
method in which the patient lay on a couch and
the analyst sat in a chair not directly facing the
patient.
In 1934, Adler emigrated to the United States
following the forced closure of his clinics under
Nazi policies that targeted Jews and those of Jewish heritage for persecution. While on a European
tour in 1937, he died of a heart attack én route to
a lecture at Aberdeen University in Scotland.
Among those on whom Adler’s work has exerted
an enormous influence are the American psychologists Abraham Maslow (1908–1970), Rollo May
(1909–1994), and Albert Ellis (1913–2007).
Patit Paban Mishra
See also Striving for Superiority; Submissive
Further Readings
Adler, A. (1956). The individual psychology of Alfred
Adler: A systematic presentation in selections from his
writings. New York: Basic Books.
Crandall, J. E. (1981). Theory and measurement of social
interest: Empirical tests of Alfred Adler’s concept.
New York: Columbia University Press.
Grey, L. (1998). Alfred Adler, the forgotten prophet: A
vision for the 21st century. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Rattner, J. (1983). Alfred Adler. New York: F. Ungar.
ADORNO, THEODOR (1903–1969)
Together with Max Horkheimer, Theodor Weisengrund Adorno was the main representative of the
critical social theory of the Frankfurt School. As a
theorist of power, Adorno is perhaps best characterized as an early post-Marxist. As a scholar, his
aim was a critical theory of modern society that
analyzed its social pathologies from an evaluative
standpoint inspired by emancipatory, utopian
interests. All this he shared with Karl Marx. Different from Marx, Adorno analyzed pathological
power relations in terms of the dominance of a
one-sided instrumental rationalization of modernity that leaves no room for genuine self-government and self-realization. According to Adorno,
capitalistic economic relations are just one instantiation of this deeper social pathology of modernity. Bureaucratic power and the culture industry
are two others. The control, discipline, social categorization, and amusement they offer reconcile
people with the reifying functional requirements
of capitalism and stand in the way of genuine freedom. Adorno inherited his focus on rationality
and reason rather than on socioeconomic issues
from German idealism, most importantly from
Georg Wilhelm Friederich Hegel. In its sociotheoretical consequences, Max Weber’s influence
is strong.
With Horkheimer, Adorno developed a critique
of instrumental rationality in Dialectic of Enlightenment. Their main thesis is that in striving for
enlightenment—individual and collective freedom
through the use of reason—humans are doomed to
lose the very freedom they are after. Immediate and
uncontrolled desires, bodily experience, and aesthetical awe for nature have to give way to instrumentalizing forms of control by means of which
we preserve and govern ourselves. This control is
power. It forces us to objectify ourselves, others,
and nature and thus reify ourselves, others, and
nature. We need to exercise power in our struggle
to be free, but in exercising power we necessarily
alienate ourselves from the non-instrumentalizing
relations to self, others, and nature that are a precondition of genuine freedom. As in the writings of
Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and Weber, Adorno’s
rationalized modern person has lost all orientation
in life.
In the 1930s and 1940s, Adorno, who with most
of his colleagues from Frankfurt had to flee Nazi
Germany, lost all socialist hopes of a revolution of
the proletariat against failed modernity. He understood National Socialism as the disappointed
masses’ escape into a quasi-mythical system that
promised to restore the meaning and sentient freedom that modernity had destroyed. Adorno noted
that the proletariat happily accepted this devastating
Adverse Selection
modern myth. He explained the Holocaust as part
of this quasi-mythical struggle against failed
modernity, of which the Jews were presented as the
main architects.
Adorno never developed a systematic theory of
nonpathological rationalization, or productive
power, as his junior colleague and later successor
in Frankfurt Jürgen Habermas did in his Theory of
Communicative Action (1981). For glimpses of
freedom from arbitrary power, Adorno rather set
his hopes on an extra-theoretical form of ethical
reflection (Minima Moralia, 1974), a critique of
identity thinking, deconstructing the power that
generalizing concepts have over our particular
experience of the world (Negative Dialectics,
1966), and an understanding of the aesthetical
experience as a last resort for a critique of rationality. “The falsehood opposed by art is not rationality per se but the fixed opposition of rationality to
particularity” (Aesthetic Theory, 1970).
Bert van den Brink
See also Critical Theory; Habermas, Jürgen; Weber, Max
Further Readings
Adorno, T. W. (1973). Negative dialectics. London:
Routledge & Kegan Paul. (Original work published
1966)
Bernstein, J. M. (2001). Adorno: Disenchantment and
ethics. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Honneth, A. (1993). The critique of power. Cambridge:
MIT Press.
Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. W. (1972). Dialectic of
Enlightenment. London: Allen Lane. (Original work
published 1944)
ADVERSE SELECTION
Gresham’s law states that bad money drives out
good and is the classic expression of adverse selection. In the days when coins were composed of
real silver, their holders might shave a small sliver
off before using the coin in exchange. Everyone
realized that any coin one received might have
been shaved in this manner, so people were not
prepared to exchange as much for any coin as they
5
would for a coin they knew had not been shaved.
Knowing this, those who held unshaved coins
would then not spend them or would shave them
before using them. Bad money drives out good.
The idea of adverse selection is now a key
aspect of economic theory. George Akerlof reintroduced the idea of adverse selection in his classic
article based on the used-car market. In his version, every car owner knows whether his car is a
good one; however, the buyer is unsure. Good cars
are worth a high price to both buyer and seller, but
because buyers do not know if used cars are good
or bad, they will only pay the amount of a bad car.
Thus, good cars will not come on the market.
Adverse selection in the health market, for
example, will come about because those who
know that they have or are likely to have health
problems are those who are keenest on getting
health insurance. The problem arises because, as in
the coin and car examples, there is asymmetry of
information: one contractor knows more about
himself or herself than does the other. However,
the other contractor can realize that there is this
informational asymmetry and respond. Insurance
companies need to price their products on the
assumption that there will be adverse selection,
making insurance in the health case more expensive for those who are not so likely to have health
problems. Of course, insurance companies can
also attempt to gain information, by running
health checks on applicants, and making their customers pay a certain percentage of health costs on
top of their insurance premium.
The idea of adverse selection is used as part of
the principal–agent problem, a problem of contracting. In the principal–agent problem, adverse
selection occurs because those least qualified for a
job are also those most keen to attain it. At any
level of remuneration, those least qualified are
likely to gain the most in comparison to the job they
already have and thus be more eager to get the job.
They will sell themselves more and work harder to
secure the position. Adverse selection only occurs
where there is heterogeneity in the population of
qualified candidates, and those with some characteristics that the principal does not want are most
likely to be those who come forward.
In general, we can see adverse selection as an
informational problem that gives one person some
power over another to the latter’s disadvantage. In
6
Agency
that sense, this is an example of the idea that
“knowledge is power.”
agency. Collective agency is therefore discussed
toward the end of this entry.
Keith Dowding
See also Knowledge and Power; Moral Hazard;
Principal–Agent Relationship
Further Readings
Akerlof, G. (1970). The market for lemons: Quality
uncertainty and the market mechanism. Quarterly
Journal of Economics, 84(3), 488–500.
AGENCY
Agency plays a central role in social science and
yet, outside of ethical theory, it is rarely discussed
except in the context of the agency–structure
problem. Agency has an obvious relationship to
certain understandings of power. Agents have
effects on the world through their actions. Outcome power is often defined as the extent to
which agents could affect the world. In that sense,
the degree of individual agency specifies an agent’s
outcome power. However, delving deeper into the
concept of agency itself raises questions about
how those agents’ actions are determined. The
extent to which agency is constrained by others,
and the extent to which individual agency is
caused by environmental or structural factors,
limits what we see as individual agency. We can
see immediately why agency is so often discussed
only in relationship to structure. Issues of free will
and autonomy are also therefore implicated in
discussions of agency.
The bulk of the discussion here will be concerned
with human agency. In many social science applications, however, collective agents appear. Social science often describes organized collectives—such as
political parties, firms, or governments—as agents.
In some applications, unorganized collectives such
as social classes and factions are considered agents.
One of the problems in discussing human agency is
seeing inside the person (the issue of free will or
autonomous behavior), so considering collective
agency where the “inside” is easier to perceive
might help us understand some aspects of human
Norm-Based Versus
Instrumental Rationality
We can define action as a contemporary event
embedded in an environment informed by the past
and oriented to the future. In such a definition, we
give credit to the causal aspects of agency: that is,
the past is implicated in current agency, either
through rational calculation or causal determination, and we give credit to the fact that acts are
directed at changing the world in some sense. They
are future-oriented.
Historically, a great deal of debate about agency
is normative in the sense that what constitutes
agency is thought to define human agency. Some
argue that human agency needs to be seen as rational will driven by norms of appropriate behavior.
Others argue that agency is best seen as instrumental rationality where people rationally choose their
actions given the information they have about the
world. The first sees certain goals as being rational; the second does not question the goals that
people might have: rational action is only concerned with the best way of attaining those goals.
The former approach can be traced to a Kantian
idea that freedom is normatively grounded within
the human will governed by categorical imperatives. Agents choose to act based on their will
within a rationalized moral framework; they do
not act out of material necessity. On the other side,
some see freedom as individuals rationally choosing actions based on their desires and goals. Such
instrumental rationality is often seen in purely selfinterested or material terms, though modern
accounts of instrumental rationality deny the distinction and suggest that goals can be equally
value-based as self-interested. This distinction
between norm-based and instrumental rationality
should not be confused with habitual versus
autonomous action.
Habitual Versus Autonomous Action
A great deal of modern sociology from Talcott
Parsons to Anthony Giddens, from structuralists
to poststructuralists, uses a norm-based approach
to agency. However, the norm-based accounts here
Agency
are not Kantian as such but rather based on
notions of habit, which owe more to stimulus
response than to normatively grounded rational
will. Parsons believed humans create understandings of themselves in the roles they play in society
by internalizing the standards expected of that role
as they see them within their environment. Their
conformity to those roles then has that same effect
on others. In a similar fashion, Pierre Bourdieu
uses the concepts of field, habitus, and capital to
explain action in terms of conformity to expectations. A field defines a set of roles and relationships that develop over time and their worth or
capital is given by the differential rewards and
status afforded to those roles by the fields. Actors
develop values based on the reward systems within
each field. Each agent thus internalizes a set of
values that is expected of him or her, and these
form the agent’s habitus. Neither Parsons nor
Bourdieu denies autonomy, but they emphasize
habit as a learned environmental response. Giddens, despite claiming he transcends the dualism of
structure and autonomy, also places routine at the
heart of his account of structuration where rules
and resources ensure the replication of structure.
Agency in these habitual accounts is explained by
dispositions or habits, themselves explained in
terms of the environment or structure that causes
them. These habits are not simply learned responses
but also include the actors’ own interpretations of
their responses in terms of their values. Here, the
Kantian norms seem to be explained not through
rational reflection and free will, but through
socialization. It appears that on these accounts
autonomous action can only be identified through
the fracturing of habits, when individuals break
away from their roles and values.
It might appear that instrumental accounts of
agency do not suffer the determinism of habitual
accounts. If every action that an agent takes is
based on the agent’s aims and objectives—directed
at some future gain—and based on the agent’s own
beliefs and desires, and we model that action as
based on instrumentally rational reflective action,
then we seem to be assuming autonomy. Many
writers who work with the tradition of instrumental action assume individuals are autonomous and
rationally decide their actions through free choice.
However, those very beliefs and desires might
have come about through stimulus response,
7
through habit; modeling human action as though
it is instrumental and reflective is not to say that
action is instrumentally rational and reflective. In
other words, modeling the world in terms of
instrumental rationality in the manner of rational
choice theory or economics does not demonstrate
agency; it merely posits a particular way in which
we can view social processes.
The Evolution of Human Agency
If stimulus response is not considered to be agency,
then we need to consider how we move from
stimulus response to agency. Although animals,
and indeed plants, act on the world in some way—
grazers eat grass, bees pollinate flowers, and so
on—their behavior with regard to the external
world is generally modeled as stimulus response.
The right kinds of external stimuli lead a bee to a
plant; the right kind of stimulus leads to fight-orflight responses in animals. Agency is thought to
be beyond such simple stimulus response. It might
be related to Kantian norm-driven behavior or
might result from instrumental reasoning, but it is
not a straightforward stimulus response. That is
not to deny, of course, that humans react to the
world both habitually and through learned
responses, but their behavior is more self-reflective
than simple stimulus response. Self-reflectivity thus
looks like a candidate for the “internal” aspect of
agency. How does self-reflectivity evolve?
Simple organisms track their environment
through simple cues. Simple cues can, however, be
exploited by other organisms. For example, some
fireflies are exploited by predators that use the
fireflies’ signals as lures. Any creature whose
behavior relies on simple cues is fragile. More
complex creatures develop multiple cues for their
stimulus–response reactions, allowing more robust
responses within strategic environments of competing creatures. Apes monitor the body language,
facial expressions, and relative location of rival
apes using three complex cuing systems. These
might still be considered stimulus–response mechanisms, but the important aspect for considerations of agency is how creatures start to predict
the behavior of their fellows. One philosophical
tradition suggests that the apes, including humans,
develop a theory of mind. They track what other
apes are going to do through examining their
8
Agency
behavior and imagining what they would do under
those circumstances. Human children start to
develop such a theory of mind from the age of
three. In some experiments, a toy is placed in a
box. An adult then leaves the room, and the child
sees the toy being removed from one box and put
in another. The adult comes back. The child is then
asked where the adult thinks the toy is. Young
children assume the adult will know what they
know, that the toy has been moved. Older children
realize that because the toy was moved when the
adult was out of the room, the adult will think it is
in the original box. The change marks the ability
to think of the other as having a mind. The child
develops a theory of mind and can make inferences
about what that other person could know given
the information that person has.
Apes seem to have a theory of mind of other
apes. After conflict, chimpanzees seek reconciliation, which seems psychologically important. There
are standard cues for this, such as putting out a
hand, but there are multiple responses. Reconciliation gestures can be strategically refused, perhaps
by an ape demanding the other demonstrate inferiority. In other words, we do not have simple stimulus response—a conflict, a sign of reconciliation,
and then a stimulus response to that. Rather, a
whole suite of cues exists, and the chimps are not
stimulus-bound to respond to them in the same
way. Instead, the chimps respond to the mental
states of others, tracking what those states are by
the cues, but being able to grasp that the behaviors
are only signals of the state, and not the state itself.
Assuming some sort of inner life and interpreting
behavior in terms of reasons for action is named
“the intentional stance” by Daniel Dennett.
The intentional stance occurs when we posit
teleology or intentional action to agents. Thus, we
can suggest that a dog can bark up the wrong tree,
because we assume the dog wants to bark up the
tree with the cat in it, and we know the cat is in a
different tree. By saying the “dog wants” to bark
up the tree with the cat in it, we are positing desires
(to bark at the cat) and beliefs (the cat is in this tree)
to constitute a reason for the act. To what extent a
dog has reasons in this manner (and the barking is
not simply a stimulus response) is not necessarily a
concern for Dennett. What is important is that
imputing reasons to creatures for their actions
allows us to predict and (through prediction)
explain their actions. Positing an internal world of
thought is an efficient means of predicting what is
around us. We can take the intentional stance with
all sorts of things, including plants (the flower
wants to follow the sun) without actually positing
an internal world. However, the more complex the
cuing of behavior is, the more useful and efficient
the intentional stance is. With simple stimulus
response (flowers following the sun), positing
intentionality does not bring any real efficiencies;
with complex behaviors it does. The next step in
intentionality is to posit the intentional stance with
regard to our own behavior. Our reasons for acting
as we do are simply our own interpretations of our
actions.
The intentional stance in this way is sometimes
described as compatibilist because it is compatible
with strict determinism. Even if our behavior is
strictly determined, we might still more efficiently
predict our own and others’ behavior by positing
the internal world. Of course, you might say, “But
I know I have an internal world! I have my
thoughts and plans and so on.” However, having
them does not show they are really causal; one’s
behavior might be caused by elements outside of
oneself, and all one’s thoughts are still interpretations of the actions, just as they are for others. The
only difference is that we are with ourselves more
often than we are with others; hence, our interpretations of our own behaviors are more secure.
However, we might still get a stronger agency out
of this view.
Self-Reflection and Agency
If our reasons for action are our interpretations of
our behavior caused in some manner, those reasons
might still be implicated in further behavior. As we
narrate our lives, we impose a structure on our
actions. That structure might affect our behavior
just as any other structure constrains and opens
possibilities for action. We can return to the idea of
habitual behavior here. Our narration of our own
lives gives us a prediction for how that story will
continue. Our own narration will be built on what
we have learned, the roles or habitus that we have
formed through the expectations we have engendered via the expectations of others. Thus, our own
reasons for action are constituted by sets of external meanings, though they are still our reasons for
Agency
action. Our past behavior need not always be a
good guide for future behavior. Sometimes, notably in strategic situations, we want our behavior to
be unpredictable. We might even randomize our
behavior in certain contexts precisely to fool
equally strategically minded opponents. Either
way, however, our own interpretations of our
actions correlate with our behavior whether or not
those interpretations, in the sense of meaningful
propositions, can be said to cause our actions.
(Our actions might be preceded by neuronal activity, but such neuronal activity does not itself
constitute meaningful propositions without the
interpretation that is given to the action. Indeed it
is unlikely that we will find specific neuronal activity that correlates precisely with meaningful propositions, even if those meaningful propositions
correlate directly with behavior.)
The interpretative stance gives us a way into
agency by suggesting that agency, as opposed to
behavior or stimulus response, is composed of
interpretations of action. We can interpret the
behavior of creatures in terms of reasons for
action. In that sense, we treat animals (or even
plants, robots, or animated characters in computer
games) as agents. However, the agential form is
composed of the imposition of our interpretation
on their behavior rather than on their own. In that
sense, the animals or animations are agents, but
not their own agents. We, however, can also interpret our own behavior, and that self-reflection
makes us agents in our own right.
Losing Agency
So we are agents because we have our own reasons
for action, and these predict our behavior. Can we
be wrong in our assertion of reasons for action? If
some observer were to better predict our behavior
by asserting reasons for our actions different from
our own, then we might think that those reasonsfor-action are superior to those we give to ourselves. And that is not unusual. After all, many
people can realize through discussion with a friend
or psychoanalyst that perhaps they did have ulterior motives in some action of which they were
unaware. Hypnotists can lead people into crazy
behavior, and when asked to justify that behavior,
the subjects come up with plausible reasonsfor-action that observers realize are specious. One
9
way in which we lose agency is to lose the ability
to predict our own behavior. Strong emotions such
as anger or jealousy, drugs and chemicals, or hypnosis might lead to unpredictability. In other cases
where we have been indoctrinated or fall under
another’s sway, that person is better placed to predict our behavior. He or she becomes the agent. All
of these considerations are outside of the free will
versus determinism debate. They show, however,
that the interpretative stance allows us to determine agency compatible with either free will or
determinism.
Collective Agents
Collective agents such as firms, political parties, or
governments have rules and procedures for making decisions. Here, the meaningful propositions
by which we can view their agency are observable.
The more rule-bound an organization is, the more
predictable its behavior is and the more it seems to
be an agent in its own right. For example, an organization whose chief executive could overturn any
decision made at a lower level seems to be an agent
only in the sense that the chief executive is.
(Though if we have a chief executive who never
overturned decisions, then the organization would
gain collective agency again.) For that reason,
organized collectives seem more like collective
agents than unorganized ones such as social
classes. Indeed the latter are only collective agents
in the sense that individual agents work as one.
The explanation of how a social class will act in
concert is also the explanation of how each of its
members acts. With organized collectives, the
explanation of each individual member’s behavior
adds to the collective agency together with the
rules and procedures by which the collective makes
decisions and so acts. In that sense, collective
agency is easier to comprehend than is individual
agency because its internal rules are more observable. Nevertheless, because individual human
agents act through socially meaningful avenues,
our behavior is structured, through roles, through
habitus. However, that does not detract from our
agency; indeed, socially meaningful activity adds
sense to our agency. For completely random, uninterpretable behavior could not be agential.
Keith Dowding
10
Agency–Structure Problem
See also Agency–Structure Problem; Autonomy;
Bourdieu, Pierre; Free Will; Freedom; Interests;
Parsons, Talcott; Power To and Power Over;
Rationality
Further Readings
Dennett, D. C. (2003). Freedom evolves. London: Allen
Lane.
Emirbayer, M., & Mische, A. (1998). What is agency?
American Sociological Review, 1003, 962–1023.
AGENCY–STRUCTURE PROBLEM
Most theories of power either assign power to
agents—which could be individuals, collectives
such as classes or groups, or organizations—or
see power as a pervasive element of the structure
of society that operates outside the control of
agents. The agency–structure problem concerns
how we assign power to one or the other, or how
much importance we place on either agency or
structure.
Agents act. Indeed, part of the very definition of
agency is that it is carried out by agents. The most
obvious agent is the individual. If we assign power
to an individual, we are asserting that, with regard
to the scope of the power claim, the agent can
bring about some outcome. In some definitions,
that power is the power to do some x; in others, it
is the power of the agent over some other agent. In
some definitions, power is simply seen as what an
agent can do; in others, it is what an agent can do
despite the resistance of others. Essentially, assigning some power to an agent is to claim that the
agent could be causally efficacious in bringing
about some result. In that sense, the power seems
to be a property of the agent. However, people do
not act in a vacuum; they act for reasons, and
those reasons might be determined by external
forces that act on them.
What people attempt to do is constrained by
what they see as feasible and enabled by what they
want to do. Indeed, what people want is constrained by what they see as feasible. Hence, we do
not need to reject any claim that (only) agents act to
see that the ultimate cause of some outcome might
be external to the agent himself or herself. If the
external constraints fully determine the individual’s
wants, for example, we can tell a completely deterministic story about the way in which the social
world operates that needs mention the individual
agent as barely more than some causal bearer of
structural features of society.
What is a structure? There are many different
definitions. Structures can be seen as recursively
organized sets of rules and resources that enable
and constrain people. Structures enter into people,
so to speak, by conditioning their thought processes through conventional activity, by copying
others, and through belief systems engendered
through interacting with other agents and the
external world. A simple definition of structure is
the relationship of the constituent parts of something. So the structure of a bridge is the relationship between bricks, mortar, and girders. The
structure of society is the relationship between
individuals and organizations. The same bricks,
mortar, and girders could build different bridges
as defined by the structure. The same genetic
individuals could bear different social relationships constituting very different social structures.
In the latter case, however, those different relationships might have a very different effect on the
individuals. Indeed, different relations will affect
the very matter of genetic individuals. A society
with high social mobility will enable different sets
of people to marry and bear children than will
one with low social mobility. The very physical
nature of people will thus be conditioned by
social structure. Other agents such as organizations or classes are also defined by the structure
itself. Again, structure enters into the very fabric
of agents and thus seems to dominate our account
of power.
One way of viewing the agency–structure problem is to note that we can still maintain that power
is a property of agents without denying the structural conditioning we have been describing. Agents
act, but one agent’s actions are part of another
agent’s structure. The overall interaction of agents
constitutes the social structure. A shallower form
of structural power explanation states that the
environment around actors affects their strategies.
A deeper form argues that the environment around
people not only suggests strategies to actors given
their aims, but gives them their aims in the first
place. The customs, habits, beliefs, and so on of
Agenda Power
the community we live in decide our beliefs and
desires for us even as these customs suggest the
strategies we need to adopt to promote our aims.
Where we have little or no choice in our aims as
well as our strategies, we might be subject to a
system of domination. We are dominated in our
lives. This, though, might simply be the claim that
there is no individual autonomy and our very
thoughts are dominated. This brings to mind the
idea of memes that infect our minds and cause us
to take on attitudes.
Concentrating on individual agents’ (whether
these are people or organizations) power for some
types of questions—such as whether the developers or local voters dominate in a particular conflict
over development—can lead to focusing on the
actors concerned. However, a more complete
explanation of why developers might dominate
more often than do voters would examine the
structural factors that enable and constrain both
the actions and the interests of the agents concerned. This explanation suggests why people
might take on the interests of others in their
actions, even though to an external observer the
interests of each side seem to be in conflict. Such
an approach does not assign part of the power we
examine to agents and part to structure; rather, it
assigns power to agents so they can answer some
questions, but recognizes that those powers can be
explained at another level by examining the structures that engender, constrain, and even define the
powers of those agents.
Keith Dowding
See also Determinism; False Consciousness; Habitus;
Miliband–Poulantzas Debate; Non Decision Making;
Structural Power; Structural Suggestion; Structuration;
Structure-Induced Equilibrium; Substructure and
Superstructure; Systematic Luck; Systemic Power
Further Readings
Bourdieu, P. (1977). Outline of a theory of practice.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Dowding, K. (2008). Agency and structure: Interpreting
power relationships. Journal of Power, 1(1), 21–36.
Foucault, M. (1977). The subject and power. Critical
Inquiry, 8, 777–795.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society.
Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
11
AGENDA POWER
Formally, agenda power is the capability of an
agenda setter to manipulate the specific order in
which N voters will consider J alternatives being
offered. Contingent on the particular preferences
of the voters, this facilitates indirect control over
the outcome of the votes, the alternative(s) actually chosen by the decision process. Agenda power
is typically discussed in the context of majority
rule and pairwise comparisons. More generally, it
refers to the ability to organize legislative business
in parliamentary settings.
A (classic) example is as follows. Consider three
voters voting on three alternatives x, y, and z. Suppose that voter 1 has preference xP1yP1z, voter 2 has
preference zP2xP2y, and voter 3 has preference
yP3zP3x (where “P” stands for “strictly prefers to”).
This produces a Condorcet paradox: x is majority
preferred to y, y is majority preferred to z, and z is
majority preferred to x. Suppose now that an individual—say voter 2—has agenda power in that he
or she can decide the order in which the alternatives will be considered. By making the first vote
between x and y (x wins) and the second vote
between x and z (z wins), voter 2 can attain his or
her preferred outcome. This example holds, with
changes made, for x and y as first preferences too.
Notice that voting cycles are necessary but not
sufficient for agenda power. Consider the following example, devised by Peter Ordeshook: suppose
that there are N 3 voters with preferences over
J 8 alternatives denoted a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h given
by Table 1. For the preferences described in Table
1, there is a cycle through the alternatives {a, b, c}
and a cycle through the alternatives {d, e, f, g, h},
and any alternative from the first set would beat
any alternative from the second. So someone with
agenda power could obtain a, b, or c, but could
not obtain, say, g. Technically, we say that {a, b, c}
are in the top cycle.
Agenda power as described exists only when
there is no Condorcet winner. A Condorcet winner
is an alternative that can beat every other alternative in a pairwise vote. If a Condorcet winner
exists, the voting cannot be ordered such that the
social preference moves away from it. The almost
certain absence of a Condorcet winner in an alternative space of three or more dimensions or in a
12
Agenda Power
Table 1
Not all cyclical social orders facilitate agenda power
Preferences
Voters
1st
2nd
3rd
4th
5th
6th
7th
8th
1
a
d
b
f
c
e
g
h
2
c
e
a
h
b
g
d
f
3
b
g
c
h
a
d
f
e
continuous space (as demonstrated in Richard D.
McKelvey’s chaos theorem) implies that whoever
controls the order of voting can achieve any point
in the space as a final voting outcome.
McKelvey’s result (like the previous examples)
requires that voters vote sincerely, but they might
vote in a strategic fashion. If voters know each
other’s preferences (or at least the majority preference between every pair of alternatives), they can
“look down the agenda tree and reason back” to
see which alternatives will be paired later in the
voting process and decide how to vote at the outset. They can vote strategically to defeat any
attempt at agenda manipulation. As an example,
suppose that there are two stages to voting: first,
on an amendment to a bill, versus the original text
of the bill; second, on the bill versus the status quo.
The comparison to the status quo in the last stage
is actually the method used in the U.S. Congress.
Assume that a legislator prefers the amended bill to
the unamended bill, and prefers the unamended bill
to the status quo. Suppose the legislator is also
aware that the amended bill would lose to the status quo, but that the original bill would win against
it. Then he or she has a strategic incentive to vote
against the amendment when it faces the original
bill, but for the original bill when it subsequently
faces the status quo. Hence, the legislator does not
vote sincerely when considering the amendment.
A seeming exception to this logic is presented by
the case of “killer amendments.” Killer amendments are added to bills that would otherwise pass
to ensure that they will now fail in a majority vote.
Though hardly common, their very existence is
puzzling precisely because the majority of (rational)
voters who support the unamended bill should also
reject the attempt to amend it. The art of crafting
successful killers is part of a more general concept
of political manipulation denoted heresthetics by
William Riker. Successful killers require that herestheticians find an important second dimension
such that voting on the amendment is sincere (for
at least some legislators). In the U.S. context, this
dimension has often been race.
In any case, the dictatorial power that the chaos
theorem implies is rarely enjoyed by agenda setters
in practice. In the study of U.S. politics, scholars
have investigated agenda power empirically, especially for the U.S. House of Representatives. Much
work has focused on the power of the majority
party, which selects organizational leaders such as
the speaker and committee chairs and timetables
legislation. Gary Cox and Mathew McCubbins
argue that the majority party’s agenda power is of
two different kinds: first, the party has negative
agenda power that allows the party to keep issues
away from the House floor that would generally
displease its members, and hence, the majority
party can preserve its past gains. This power is said
to be unconditional in the sense that it does not
depend on the unity of the party members’ views of
public policy. By contrast, positive agenda power is
the ability to propose changes to existing policy but
requires some similarity among the preferences of
the party. Cox and McCubbins construct a cartel
agenda model and show that the key personnel of
the majority party possess agenda power. In a parallel to literature on industrial organization, the
authors contend that the busy world of legislating
compels the majority party to institutionalize its
central authority and that this cartel is generally
responsive to its members. This theory and finding
contrast starkly with earlier accounts that posited
that the legislator who is the floor median enjoys
direct or indirect agenda power. This power is used
in two ways: first for the bills that are actually
Agenda Setters
considered during the legislative session; second,
for the debate and amendments to those bills.
Arthur Spirling
See also Agenda Setters; Heresthetics; Leadership; Riker,
William H.
Further Readings
Cox, G. W., & McCubbins, M. D. (2002). Agenda power
in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1877–1986. In
D. W. Brady & M. D. McCubbins (Eds.), Party,
process, and political change in Congress: New
perspectives on the history of Congress. Palo Alto,
CA: Stanford University Press.
Ordeshook, P. C. (1995). Game theory and political
theory: An introduction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Riker, W. H. (1982). Liberalism against populism. San
Francisco: W. H. Freeman.
AGENDA SETTERS
Formally, agenda setters are actors who control
which alternatives (in addition to the status
quo) other players may vote for and (if there is
more than one) the order in which these votes
will take place. Depending on the extent of their
control, and contingent on the preferences and
behavior of the other players, agenda setters
may possess agenda power. In political science,
the identity, role, and power of agenda setters
have been investigated in at least two scenarios:
legislative voting and approval of agency budgets, either by (local) public referenda or by
executive branch “sponsors.” We illustrate the
role of agenda setters with examples from the
second.
William Niskanen argued that senior bureaucrats have goals that are functions of their agency’s budget: therefore, they seek to maximize their
budgets. They are in a strong position to do so
because the bureau is a monopoly supplier of its
output (such as national defense or education);
officials have an informational advantage over
their sponsors (they know more about the agency’s internal costs, and direct monitoring of the
quantity/quality of its output is difficult); and,
13
crucially, the bureaucrat can make a take-it-orleave-it budget proposal. The bureaucrat here is an
agenda setter with a binary agenda presenting a
choice between his or her preferred budget proposal and some other budget reduced to some
inappropriate or unacceptable level to politicians.
Thomas Romer and Howard Rosenthal posited
a model (which they later tested) based on this
logic. The empirical case in point is the Oregon
school budget process. In that state, each school
has a maximum budget fixed by law but can
expand the upper limit by a referendum at an
annual meeting. If the new budget fails to be
approved by at least 50% of voters, then the budget reverts to that of the previous year. Consider
Figure 1, which displays the utility as a function of
budget level for the median voter who will be decisive in the electorate for the referendum. The curve
is centered at Bmed, which is the median voter’s
preferred level of school spending. When the reversion point is Brev1, the voter—and thus the electorate—will accept anything in the reflection of Brev1
about Bmed. So, for example, they will approve
anything up to Bprop1. Notice though, that an
Brev1
Bmed
Brev2
Figure 1
Bmed
Bprop1
Bprop2
Agenda setter’s power is contingent on
reversion point
14
Alliances
agenda setter does best in terms of maximizing his
or her budget when the reversion level is most
threatening. When the reversion level is higher,
such as at, for example, Brev2, the reflection allows
less expansion: only up to Bprop2 will be approved.
Romer and Rosenthal find empirical evidence in
Oregon that is consistent with their theoretical
model.
It is possible to reframe the Romer and Rosenthal
model for any bureaucrat–sponsor relationship,
although evidence is more difficult to come by. In
general, weakening the ability of the agenda setter
to make take-it-or-leave-it offers significantly
reduces the agenda setter’s power relative to the
sponsor.
Arthur Spirling
See also Agenda Power; Budget-Maximizing Bureaucrats;
Bureaucratic Power
Further Readings
Niskanen, W., Jr. (1971). Bureaucracy and representative
government. Chicago: Aldine-Atherton.
Romer, T., & Rosenthal, H. (1978). Political resource
allocation, controlled agendas, and the status quo.
Public Choice, 33(4), 27.
ALLIANCES
Premier among strategies in a state’s arsenal to
advance its policy agenda is the capacity to form a
military alliance with one or more other states. A
military alliance may be defined as a formal or
informal agreement between two or more states
that is intended to advance militarily the national
security of the participating states. It is a continuing security association among member states with
an element of forward planning and understanding
to aid member states militarily or, at a minimum,
through benevolent neutrality. These security
arrangements may take several forms, with varying
degrees of institutionalization and commitment
levels. For example, one of the most significant
military alliances in the world today is the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which has
a high degree of integration regarding its command
structure, and a high degree of commitment by the
allies, via Article V, which deems an attack on one
signatory shall be deemed an attack on all members. Other military alliances might call for less
concerted action in the event of casus foederis
being met, perhaps merely the observation of
benevolent neutrality in the event that one of the
signatories finds itself at war with a third party.
Alliance Motivations
Military alliances are conventionally understood as
an important avenue for states to augment their
power capabilities. In other words, states are motivated to join alliances to add the power of other
states to that of their own. This will help them
counter threats they might face in the international
system. Kenneth Waltz described this motivation for
forming an alliance as balancing—states form alliances to balance the capabilities or threats facing
them in the international system. Stephen Walt later
argued that states do indeed balance, but against
threats, not power capabilities alone. From this perspective, NATO was formed by its original signatories to counter the capabilities and threats posed by
the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc powers.
Although capability aggrandizement is indeed a
central role alliances play, it is by no means the only
one. Scholars such as Paul Schroeder sought to
understand the conflict management role of these
institutions. Elaborating on this perspective, Patricia Weitsman argued that another motivation for a
military alliance to be forged might contain an
adversarial relationship, that is, states tether their
enemies to them to neutralize the threat. From this
point of view, alliances function as other international institutions do, to enhance transparency,
increase the costs of defection, and make cooperation cheaper, and, therefore, more likely.
Viewing alliances as institutions generates
insights into the ways in which threats within an
alliance are managed. Thus, in the words of its first
secretary general, Lord Ismay, NATO was originally formed “to keep the Soviets out, the United
States in, and the Germans down.” Examining
NATO purely as a balancing response to the Soviet
Union misses the important dynamics that exist
within the alliance. Both Greece and Turkey are
members of the NATO alliance even though they
are mutual enemies; they do not add the other’s
Alliances
power to their own within the context of the alliance. Nonetheless, they might gain important
institutional advantages from being allied adversaries, in transparency and conflict management
functions. One unintended consequence, however,
of effective tethering alliances is that although they
are formed to manage conflicts among signatories,
they might appear threatening to nonmembers,
heightening the level of threat and uncertainty in
the international system. Weitsman calls this
dynamic the alliance paradox and argues that it
culminates in an overall higher probability of war.
A third motivation for states seeking to form an
alliance is to protect themselves from a powerful
and threatening enemy. Here, states bargain with
the threatening state, capitulating to it to ensure
survival. Randall Schweller argues that “bandwagoning” behavior may be viewed as what small
states do for strategic gain, given their inability to
counter the power capabilities of a strong state.
Although bargaining behavior occurs more rarely
than balancing, the logic is used often to explain or
justify certain foreign policy objectives. For example, the fear of “dominoes falling” uses bandwagoning logic—the belief that a hostile state will reap
allies through victory culminating in a snowball
effect.
A final motivation for states seeking to ally
under conditions of threat is hedging. Weitsman
describes this as low-commitment-level alliances
with states to draw them into one’s sphere of influence to allow the initiating state to consolidate its
power, shut off avenues of expansion to potential
adversaries, but not prove overly provocative to
rivals. Hedging alliances allow states more freedom of action in the international system and may
set the stage for enhanced cooperation among signatories in the future. As Michael Jacobson has
written, one such alliance of note in the current
international system is the Shanghai Cooperation
Organization, which includes China and Russia
among its signatories.
In seeking to enhance power capabilities in the
international system, states might seek to arm
themselves or form alliances. How states select
their alliance partners is an important question.
Although some scholars argue that regime type
and ideology matter, others write that geostrategic
concerns dominate. If states seek to ally, they face
the dilemma of a fear of abandonment by their
15
partners versus a fear of entrapment in a conflict in
which they do not want to be involved. This is
what Glenn Snyder has termed the alliance security
dilemma. Furthermore, states seeking to ally face a
trade-off between their heightened security and
their autonomy in action in the system. The extent
to which this is true, however, depends on the
commitment level of the alliance, and the type of
alliance it is: balancing, bargaining, tethering, or
hedging. The higher the commitment is, the more
restricting the commitment is for autonomy. Alliances can be bilateral or multilateral. The number
of states in the alliance has an important effect,
too, on the autonomy of the partners. In multilateral alliances, such as NATO, the alliance must be
reduced to its dyads to understand the motivations
that coexist within it. Such analysis also helps
explain the autonomy of the signatories in projecting their influence in the system.
Alliance Cohesion
The ability of states in an alliance to agree on common goals and strategies is an indication of its
cohesion. The ability of signatories to coordinate
strategies and tactics will be a critical determinant
of its effectiveness. Effectiveness is essential for a
military alliance to manifest power. For example,
the cohesion of the Central Powers—Germany
and Austria–Hungary—during World War I was
quite limited. As a consequence, its military effectiveness was inadequate. In contrast, the Triple
Entente was relatively cohesive; as such, it was
able to prevail militarily over its adversarial counterpart. Maintaining the cohesion of an alliance is
essential to advancing the objectives of the signatories. It is also necessary for the successful exercise of power.
Alliance cohesion is most often a derivative of
threat levels. Threats may emanate from outside
the alliance to the signatories in a symmetrical
way. In this case, states will have an important
unifying cause that will facilitate their coordination of goals and strategies. Thus, balancing alliances will have the highest cohesion levels of any
type of alliance. If threats emanate from outside
the alliance, but not in a symmetrical or uniform
way, it will be harder for states to agree on goals
and strategies. Some threats may be complementary; others may be divisive. When states are
16
Alliances
driven to ally with one another because of the
threats they face from each other, then the principal threat to the alliance exists within it. Here
cohesion is almost impossible to maintain. Tethering alliances, therefore, will be the least cohesive.
Peacetime Versus Wartime Alliances
Military alliances are often concluded to deter or
counter aggression from hostile states. Consequently, alliances must be examined during both
peace and war. During peacetime, alliances serve
principally as deterrents and conflict management
devices. Power capabilities are an important component of alliances, but during peacetime that
power is usually employed coercively, to compel or
deter. States in an alliance will use their collective
power to try to compel an adversary to do something or stop doing something or to prevent an
encroachment on core values. During wartime,
however, the requirements for effectiveness are dramatically different. States must coordinate goals
and strategies even more carefully. During wartime,
for military operations to be successful, joint planning, coordination, and communication are critical. Asymmetries in power capabilities that might
not matter for effective peacetime alliance operations might become a source of tension during
wartime as burden-sharing concerns become paramount. Acting in concert in an alliance presents the
same collective action problems that dominate
other spheres of activity in international relations.
Furthermore, although alliances tend to be more
cohesive when there is a shared external threat during peacetime, during wartime the relationship
between external threats and cohesion is more
complex. Alliances that are losing a war confront
greater threat levels than do those that are winning,
and yet alliances that are losing wars do not experience an upswing in cohesion as a consequence of
this heightened threat environment.
Alliance politics during wartime are closely
related to the dynamics of coalition warfare.
Analytically, coalitions differ only slightly from
alliances. Coalitions are generally defined as collections of states that come together to implement specific military operations. Examples
include the Desert Storm coalition in the Persian
Gulf War in 1991, which included more than 23
nation-states, and the Operation Iraqi Freedom
(OIF) multinational operation that began in 2003
to remove Saddam Hussein from power and stabilize Iraq politically in the aftermath of regime
change. The OIF coalition comprised 34 countries,
including 11 NATO members. These ad hoc coalitions were forged with precise missions in mind.
Their cohesion rested on the ability of the signatories to agree on the goals of the mission as well as
on strategies to attain those goals. The Desert
Storm coalition had more limited objectives than
did the OIF coalition, but had a coordinated strategy to achieve those objectives. The primary goal
was to eject Iraqi forces from Kuwait. The strategy
was implemented through an integrated force
structure for U.S., U.K., and French troops, and
integrated Arab forces under the Saudi commander
of the joint forces theater of operations, with the
two structures linked in the Coalition Coordination, Communication and Integration Center. Its
cohesion, as a consequence, was quite high. In the
OIF coalition, divisions within the coalition about
its continued mission rendered the coalition less
effective and less cohesive than its predecessors.
Several countries dropped out of the coalition after
the operation began in 2003.
Coalition warfare has a long history. States frequently opt to embark on war with other states at
their side rather than on their own. In other words,
states frequently choose to resolve their military
conflicts by force multilaterally rather than unilaterally. This is especially true in the present day. The
United States, in particular, has increasingly sought
to forge coalitions in advance of pressing forward
with military operations in the post–cold war era.
The United States embarked on 12 multilateral
operations between 1900 and 1982 and 12 operations from 1991 to 2005. In addition, the size of
these coalitions has been on the rise. Part of this is
because there are more states in the international
system now than there ever have been, and part of
this is the diminishing legitimacy of unilateral
military operations. As coalition size grows, traditional problems of alliance management, such as
burden sharing and the alliance security dilemma,
grow as well. Intra-alliance dynamics are always
important for optimal performance, but this
becomes especially important during wartime.
Command, control, and communication failures
during joint wartime operations have potentially
lethal effects.
Althusser, Louis
Collective Defense Versus
Collective Security
Although most alliances function as collective
defense organizations—that is, they provide mutual
defense arrangements for the signatories—some
security institutions may be put into place to
provide collective security. Collective security
agreements are pacts among all states to counter
aggression whenever and wherever it occurs. The
point of a collective security arrangement is not to
defend any one state but to defend the order of the
system as a whole. The distinction between collective defense and collective security is an important
one; a true collective security arrangement would
actually mean the end of competing alliances. All
states would, in essence, be allied together to
defend the order of the system. Historically, collective security has been difficult to achieve. The most
important attempts have followed major power
wars of some significance: the Concert of Europe
following the Napoleonic Wars; the League of
Nations following the World War I; and the United
Nations in the aftermath of World War II. In
design, the League of Nations was the closest to a
true collective security organization, and that
played a significant role in the organization’s
paralysis and subsequent demise. The United
Nations has been more successful as an organization, but does not truly operate as a collective
security institution. This is why in the event that
defense of the system is required, coalitions must
be put into place in an ad hoc fashion, as was done
during the Persian Gulf War of 1991.
Alliances are a key component of the workings
of the international system. They play an important role in determining systemic stability and the
frequency of major power war. They play an
essential role in determining who prevails in
military conflict. They also are an essential
component of the foreign-policy-making tools
in the arsenal of any state. Alliances are a powerful tool of statecraft, both historically and in the
present day.
Patricia A. Weitsman
See also Anarchy in International Relations; Balance of
Power; Coalition Theory; Hegemonic War; Realism in
International Relations; Riker, William H.; Security;
Waltz, Kenneth; War
17
Further Readings
Schroeder, P. W. (1976). Alliances, 1815–1945: Weapons
of power and tools of management. In K. Knorr (Ed.),
Historical dimensions of national security problems
(pp. 227–262). Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
Schweller, R. (1994). Bandwagoning for profit: Bringing
the revisionist state back in. International Security,
19(1), 72–107.
Snyder, G. H (1984). The security dilemma in alliance
politics. World Politics, 36(4), 461–495.
Walt, S. (1987). The origins of alliances. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press.
Waltz, K. N. (1979). Theory of international politics.
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Weitsman, P. A. (2003). Alliance cohesion and coalition
warfare: The Central Powers and the Triple Entente.
Security Studies, 12(3), 79–113.
ALTHUSSER, LOUIS (1918–1990)
Louis Althusser was a French structural Marxist
and professor of philosophy at the École Normale
Supérieure. His work evolved over time, especially
because he was subject to the dictates of the Communist Party, of which he was a lifelong member.
He defended a version of Marxism that opposed
the humanist turn in Marxist thought that came
about, especially in France, after the death of
Joseph Stalin. Althusser’s work is most relevant to
the concept of power in his account of ideology.
In Althusser’s account, ideology represents an
artificial or illusory relationship between individuals and the real conditions of their existence. Ideology also has a material existence beyond ideas that
exist within human minds. The first part or “thesis” is a version of the familiar Marxist claim that
human exploitation is hidden from people by the
ideology under which they live. In Althusser’s
hands, the relationship between individuals and
the real conditions of their existence is complex.
Rather than claiming that there is a real material
existence, and then there is our representation of
that existence—the latter perverted by ideology—
he argues that our existence is a consequence of
social practices such that individuals are created in
the image of the society in which they live. People
take on roles determined by their place in the
socioeconomic structure and behave in these roles
18
Anarchism, Power in
as they are expected to, given the nature or function of the role. Our broader values and desires,
however, are implanted in us by ideology that creates people as subjects.
The entire ideology is a collection of institutions
Althusser calls ideological state apparatuses, which
include the family, religious organizations, social
networks, the media, and the educational establishment. Different societies have different ideological
state apparatuses, but they all create individuals as
“subjects.” He illustrates this by suggesting we
become subjects when we react to how others treat
us. Our total reaction to social practices is what
creates us as a subject. In this sense, it is not that
we misperceive a reality: what we perceive of our
society is what it is. However, through that perception we do not notice the exploitation and true
relations between agents. Althusser believes that
this represents the true account of Marx’s later
vision of the dialectic that breaks the distinction
between subject and object.
The second aspect or thesis of ideology is its
material existence. The first aspect is designed to
privilege structure over agency by making agents—
individuals—the creation of society or structures.
The second is to take ideology out of the minds of
the individuals whose perceptions it perverts and
place it into the structure of society itself. Ideology
in the material form is composed of the actions of
people governed by the state apparatus. In that
sense Althusser is a strong determinist: our actions
are caused by the structure of society and are then
interpreted by us through the roles we are called
on to play.
Sometimes individuals or classes pose threats to
the dominant structures of society; at such times,
what Althusser calls the repressive state apparatus
comes into play through systems of law and order,
which become increasingly repressive as people
attempt to break out of the ideological state apparatus through social disorder and revolution.
Althusser was very influential in continental
philosophy, influencing Pierre Bourdieu and Michel
Foucault, among others.
Keith Dowding
See also Agency; Agency–Structure Problem; Bourdieu,
Pierre; Determinism; False Consciousness; Ideology;
Marx, Karl; Marxist Accounts of Power; Structural
Power
Further Readings
Althusser, L. (2010). Ideology and ideological state
apparatuses (notes towards an investigation). In
I. Szeman & T. Kaposy (Eds.), Cultural theory: An
anthology. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Elliott, G. (1987). Althusser: The detour of theory.
London: Verso.
ANARCHISM, POWER
IN
Power is a central issue in modern anarchist thought.
Whereas anarchism was traditionally linked to
authority—or its rejection—anarchists now talk in
terms of power and counterpower. The change in
emphasis is linked to the emergence of “postanarchist” theory: anarchism that draws on postmodern
and poststructuralist thought, associated with Todd
May, Lewis Call, and Saul Newman.
The leading figures of 19th- and early 20thcentury anarchism—Pierre-Joseph Proudhon,
Mikhail Bakunin, Peter Kropotkin—were not
unconcerned with power. On the contrary, even
Proudhon, often regarded as the most individualist
of the three, talked enthusiastically about the collective power of the workers. And many others
defined anarchism as the abolition of power. But
the concept was not made subject to sustained
analysis—in contrast to law, authority, God, and
science, for example. When they talked about
power, 19th-century writers usually had one of
two things in mind: the repressive machinery of the
state or the liberating potential of collective actions.
These two aspects of power were typically counterposed such that collective actions were believed
to hold the key to the destruction of the state’s
capacity to repress. What was important in this
analysis was the image of power that it captured.
On this account, power was about struggle against
physical force (or as Max Weber would put it, the
state’s monopoly of physical violence). Thus, the
power of the state was typically equated with
police, armed forces, prisons, torture, corporal and
capital punishment—later on, surveillance—and
the power of the oppressed was variously identified with barricades, terrorist or guerrilla actions,
spontaneous revolt, the organization of peasants
and workers in syndicates, ethical change, and the
development of other nonhierarchical grassroots
Anarchism, Power in
organizations. In the 1870s and 1880s, when
memories of the Paris Commune were still very
fresh and optimism about the prospects for European revolution high, the association between
power and physical force was strong (though Tolstoyan anarchists always rejected the necessity and
justifiability of this link). The same was true in the
early 20th century, when anarchists were again
engaged in revolutionary war. Nestor Makhno,
who led anarchist resistance against counterrevolutionaries and Bolsheviks in the Ukraine during the
civil war, characterized revolutionary action as a
capacity to conquer or exterminate oppressors.
The power of revolutionaries depended on overt
coercion. In the latter part of the 19th century and
again after the defeat of the Republicans in the
Spanish Civil War, the emphasis shifted to the ethical and communitarian aspects of collective power:
the ability of oppressed groups to find ways of
living, organizing, and behaving—often explicitly
nonviolent—that did not mimic the repressive
practices of the state. This way of thinking about
power was resurgent in the 1960s in the work of
such anarchists as Colin Ward, George Woodcock,
and Paul Goodman. Capturing the change, Woodcock described the old-style anarchists as “bellicose
barricaders.” The new anarchists, he suggested,
“had forgotten Spain and had no use for the
romanticism of the dynamitero. . . . They were
militant pacifists” (Woodcock, 1992, 45–46).
One of the premises of postanarchist thinking is
that classical anarchism (Woodcock’s old and new
anarchists) has a narrowly structural idea of
power and wrongly considers that power can and
must be abolished. May distinguishes between
“strategic” and “tactical” philosophical approaches to power. The first—which captures the classical anarchist position—assumes that power
refers to the central problematic, that it derives
essentially or for the most part from the site on
which that problematic focuses (the economic system, the state, etc.). In contrast, tactical political
philosophy suggests, “there is no center within
which power is to be located.” Power might conglomerate around particular sites, but these points
of concentration are not points of origin, and
power extends to multiple sites as well as to the
interplay between them. Like May, Call draws on
Michel Foucault to elaborate his idea. Finding
classical anarchists guilty of an obsession with
19
capital and the state, Call rejects the simplistic
top-down model of power to argue that it is present in any social relation. Power, he adds, always
implies resistance. But resistance, counterpower,
or antipower is nothing like the struggle of the
classical anarchist, which was motivated by ideas
of emancipation and wrongly assumed the existence of a human subject with free will. Why?
Because on the one hand, postanarchists characterize the repressive nature of capitalism in novel
ways, taking their lead from surrealists and situationists, and on the other hand, they deny the possibility of achieving a condition of liberation.
Resistance, then, is about experimentation in
everyday life and escaping the deadening discourses and consciousness of bourgeois capitalism
through permanent resistance or, following Gilles
Deleuze, rhizomatic action.
The difference between the classical and the
postanarchist positions should not be exaggerated.
Although postanarchists challenge the rationalist
epistemology of much 19th- and 20th-century
anarchist thought, the political significance of the
revision is not as great as sometimes claimed.
Insofar as arguments about power are concerned, the
comparison between the two positions is misleading.
Postanarchists have accurately characterized the
19th-century conception of power, but overlooked
the analyses of related concepts—notably authority—
in which the relational issues so central to
contemporary thought were first probed.
Ruth Kinna
See also Bakunin, Mikhail; Collective Action Problem;
Foucault, Michel; Kropotkin, Peter; Revolution;
Revolutionary Cell Structure
Further Readings
Call, L. (2002). Postmodern anarchism. Lanham, MD:
Lexington Books.
May, T. (1994). The political philosophy of
poststructuralist anarchism. University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press.
Newman, S. (2001). From Bakunin to Lacan: Antiauthoritarianism and the dislocation of power.
Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.
Woodcock, G. (1992). Anarchism revisited. In Anarchism
and anarchists (pp. 41–58). Kingston, Ontario,
Canada: Quarry Press.
20
Anarchy in International Relations
ANARCHY IN INTERNATIONAL
RELATIONS
Anarchy—from the Greek a (no) and archè
(dominion/authority)—in international relations
refers to the situation that the international system
lacks an agency that if necessary can force the
members of the system, even the most powerful
ones, to abide by the rules and keep their promises.
Like all anarchical systems, the international system is a self-help system: it does not have bailiffs.
Anarchy and Sovereignty
Although circles of friends or gangs of criminals are
also examples of anarchical systems, the presentday system of states is without doubt the bestknown example of such a system. This system
originated on the European continent and is the
outcome of an evolutionary process that took
about 500 years. It started at the end of the 13th
century, with the conflict between King Philip IV
(the Fair) of France and Pope Boniface VIII concerning the right claimed by Philip to impose taxes
on the churches in his kingdom without the pope’s
prior consent, and symbolically ended with the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. The
old, medieval order under the spiritual and secular
authority of the pope and the emperor was gradually replaced by a new one that was based on territorially separate units that recognized one another
as sovereign equals. Sovereignty means that the
states do not attempt to exercise authority on
another state’s territory and do not recognize any
authority above them. This latter “external” aspect
of sovereignty implies that anarchy and sovereignty are two sides of the same coin. They are
mutually constitutive. Sovereignty as a property of
the state cannot exist without anarchy as a property of the structure of the system of states. An
anarchical system is therefore necessarily identical
with a self-help system—a system, that is, in which
no authority exists that can bring redress where
one party has been wronged by another party.
It has become part of the “unproblematic background knowledge” in the study of international
relations that the ground rules of the states system
were laid down in the Peace of Westphalia of
October 1648, which ended the Thirty Years’ War.
For this reason, the states system is very often
referred to as the Westphalian system. Andreas
Osiander has quite recently exposed this as a myth.
The peace consisted of two treaties, the Treaty of
Münster between the French king and the German
emperor, and the Treaty of Osnabrück between the
queen of Sweden and the German emperor. These
treaties settled many questions, but they did not
constitute a break with the past or establish a new
international order based on the principle of sovereignty. Rather, they confirmed the ancient rights
and liberties of the estates of the empire—including
their right to conclude alliances with “strangers”
for their preservation, provided these were not
directed against the emperor or the empire—but
made no mention of the estates being sovereign or
having sovereign rights.
Anarchy and the State of Nature
Anarchy constitutes what John Ruggie has called
the “deep structure” of the states system. Many
students of international relations have concluded
that the absence of a central authority must therefore explain why wars are endemic in the international system. But anarchy never can be the only
factor that explains why states go to war because
states can also coexist peacefully in anarchy. The
history of the states system shows that states can be
unreliable partners, continuously engaged in war
or the preparation for war, as well as faithful allies
cooperating with one another quite extensively.
The European integration process since the 1950s
moreover makes clear how far cooperation can go
between states, the anarchical nature of the states
system notwithstanding. One should also realize
that organized acts of violence in the form of civil
wars are a recurrent feature of hierarchical systems.
Nevertheless, it can hardly be claimed that anarchy
increases the chances of successful cooperation
between actors in a system. In an anarchical system, conflict is more likely to lead to violence to
settle the issue than in a hierarchical system where
actors can appeal to an agency that can adjudicate
between them and enforce a settlement. As a result,
the anarchical structure of the states system has led
many authors to describe life in that system in the
gloomiest terms. The image they evoke of the situation the states find themselves in largely corresponds with Thomas Hobbes’s famous depiction of
Anarchy in International Relations
the state of nature in his Leviathan. Like Hobbes,
these authors argue that anarchy implies that every
state is the potential enemy of every other state and
therefore must lead to a relentless security competition, that a division of labor—and consequently,
prosperity—is impossible to realize, and that the
life of states can be no more than “solitary, poor,
nasty, brutish, and short.”
No matter how much this depiction appeals to
the imagination, or how strongly it appears to be
confirmed by the horrors of the countless wars the
international system has experienced since its
inception—particularly those of the two world
wars in the last century—it is not correct. As
Alexander Wendt has pointed out, states in the
Westphalian system do not see one another as
Hobbesian enemies, but as Lockean rivals. A division of labor is also possible in the states system, and
the states that are part of it are able to cooperate
with one another in all kinds of projects. Moreover,
both Louis Henkin and Hans Morgenthau have
emphasized that, although violation attracts attention, the scrupulous observance of the law and of
obligations has been the rule in the system of states.
Two factors in particular help explain why the
Hobbesian logic of the state of nature does not
apply to the states system. The first is that states
need to protect their credibility. States are very
anxious to prevent a situation in which one state
can establish hegemony over the others. To avoid
such hegemony, states enter alliances with other
states to form a counterbalance against the potential hegemon. Such alliances can only form to the
extent that the states have the reputation of keeping their promises and carrying out their threats.
The reputational element in the states system
enables cooperation even though the states system
lacks an agency to enforce cooperation. Hobbes
might actually have agreed with this, considering
his refutation of the so-called argument of the fool.
The fool argues that, in the state of nature, every
person is concerned only with his or her own conservation, and therefore, that it is not against reason for a person not to keep his or her part of a
covenant if this is to the person’s benefit, even
though the other party has performed already.
According to Hobbes, however, reason dictates
that this person should fulfill his or her part,
because in the state of nature no person has any
hope of defending himself or herself without the
21
help of others and therefore should not deceive
those on which his or her survival depends.
Hobbes seems, however, not to have realized that
this understanding would have made life in the
state of nature less miserable and hopeless than he
himself thought.
Other things being equal, the more credible the
commitment that states can make, the stronger the
alliances they can form. Consequently, more credible states will be stronger and survive more easily
than will less credible ones. Thus, the more weight a
state attaches to its credibility, the greater the probability it will act in accordance with the rule that
constitutes the basis of all international law, namely
pacta sunt servanda (“agreements must be kept”).
This holds true even when states, for whatever reason, regret having entered into an agreement and
would be very glad to get out of it. In this way, the
states’ desire for credibility ensures a level of predictability in their mutual relations, which increases the
possibilities for cooperation and lays the foundation
for regulation of their relations. The more importance the states attach to their credibility, the more
the international system will have in common with
Hedley Bull’s anarchical society: a society of states
in which they recognize that they have common
interests, and accept that in their dealings with one
another they are bound by certain rules, even when
they exercise force against one another.
The proposition that the individuals who find
themselves in the state of nature are more or less
equal in strength is of vital importance for Hobbes’s
characterization of this situation, where “every
man is enemy to every man.” This proposition
fortunately does not apply to the states in the
states system because great differences in power
exist between them. This is the second factor that
helps explain why anarchy should not be equated
with the state of nature. The more powerful one
state is compared with the other states, the more
prudent those other states will be in their dealings
with it. And thus, the less necessary it will be for
that state to consider how the other states will
behave. On the one hand, this makes life in the
states system simpler. The interests of the great
powers are the ones that count—those of the
smaller powers can be ignored. This is what
the Athenian representatives try to make clear to
the council of the Melians when, according to
Thucydides, they argue that the stronger power
22
Animal Groups, Power in
does what it can while the weaker one suffers what
it must. On the other hand, this observation
implies that the states falling within the reach of
power of one of the most powerful states in the
states system will think twice before deciding to
break a promise, whether it be to one another or
to the great power in question, out of fear of incurring the latter’s displeasure.
Just like any other state, a great power tries as
much as possible to organize the states system
according to its own wishes. To the extent that it
succeeds—which is naturally a direct function of
the power preponderance of the great power relative to the other states—a great power may feel
more responsible for the way things run within the
states system. It will be anxious to stop being
dragged into a conflict with some other great
power by the actions of the less powerful states
within its sphere of influence. The great powers
devise the rules to be followed by the lesser states
and may have both the capabilities and the will to
maintain these rules. An important implication of
this is that the fewer the great powers and the
greater their influence, the more the great powers
will act as managers of the states system.
Most authors who equate anarchy with Hobbes’s
state of nature are of the opinion that there exists
only one method to banish war from the international system, and that is by establishing a world
government. Immanuel Kant is one of them. In his
Perpetual Peace, he agrees with Hobbes that
states, because of their independent status, find
themselves in a state of war and that this situation
can only be remedied if the states merge into one
under a central authority. Kant nevertheless prefers
a situation of anarchy to one of “universal monarchy” because the remedy may be worse than the
disease. A world government will lead to ossification, and possibly tyranny. Moreover, a world
government will not be able to prevent civil war. In
line with the argument developed here, Barry
Buzan has emphasized that the choice between
anarchy and world government is not one between
insecurity and security. Anarchy and hierarchy
provide different types of security, where the anarchical type of security has much to recommend it.
World government may achieve more order and
security, but liberty is more secure in anarchy.
Robert H. Lieshout
See also Bull, Hedley; Realism in International Relations;
Sovereignty; Waltz, Kenneth; War
Further Readings
Bull, H. (1977). The anarchical society: A study of order
in world politics. Houndmills, UK: Macmillan.
Buzan, B. (1991). People, states and fear: An agenda for
international security studies in the post–cold war era.
New York: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
Lieshout, R. H. (1995). Between anarchy and hierarchy.
A theory of international politics and foreign policy.
Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar.
Wendt, A. (1999). Social theory of international politics.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
ANIMAL GROUPS, POWER
IN
Power processes in animal groups are strikingly
similar to those in human groups. In both animal
and human contexts, power is an individual’s relative capacity to modify others’ states by providing
or withholding resources or administering punishments. Power is contingent on the actual resources
and punishments an individual can deliver to others but is also much more. Social species vary with
regard to the complexity of power relationships. In
many higher mammals, individuals have the cognitive capacity to recognize one another as individuals and to remember relative power differentials
between group members. These animal groups can
consist of 30 or more members. Thus, cognitive
resources are directed toward the negotiation of
power relationships.
Dominance motivation is defined by the drive
to gain power. Dominance relationships build on
information gathering about the power of opponents. It is important to distinguish power,
dominance motivation, and dominance behavior.
Individuals with high dominance motivation are
sensitive to cues of rank, seek out opportunities
to influence others, and engage in more behaviors aimed at gaining and maintaining power,
including ingratiating, competitive, and agonistic
behavior and alliance formation. Such behaviors,
though, may vary in their success in achieving
power. Thus, although distinct, dominance motivation often predicts dominance behaviors,
Animal Groups, Power in
which in turn predicts attaining power if used
effectively.
Dominance behavior is distinct from aggressive
behavior, which is defined by intent to inflict harm.
Dominance behaviors can involve aggressive strategies for taking resources and threatening subordinates, and so dominance motivation and aggressive
behavior often co-occur. Nonetheless, prosocial
strategies, such as reciprocity and cooperation, can
also reflect dominance motives. Indeed, in primates, prosocial strategies, such as trading favors
and allocating resources justly, appear to be necessary for establishing power. Dominant individuals
have species-specific strategies for signaling their
power to other group members. Group members
are influenced by these signals and by their prior
interactions with each other.
Resources and Power
Power is defined by the ability to control resources.
But, what kinds of resources do animals seek to
control? Resources are the substrates of survival
for both the individual and the species. Important
resources include territory, food, water, and shelter. However, several resources are social in nature.
The group itself is a resource that tends to benefit
higher-ranking individuals more. It is therefore
incumbent on dominants to act in ways that
encourage other group members to stay in the
group because defecting individuals could become
rivals. Influence in the group or social attention is
a sought-after resource, as is political support and
the opportunity to mate. Dominant animals are
the focus of attention in social groups and have
privileged access to mates. In cooperatively breeding animals, reproduction is skewed markedly in
favor of dominant animals that monopolize reproductive resources. In these societies, harsh environmental contingencies make group participation
advantageous to subordinates even in the face of
reproductive skew.
In human economies, resources are exchanged
based on their perceived value. Rhesus macaques
will trade rewards for being able to view images of
high-status troop members, but insist on compensation for viewing images of low-status individuals. Power therefore is indexed by the ability to
gain both social attention and material resources.
Chimpanzees have been observed to trade mating
23
opportunities for political support. Grooming is
another commodity traded for food, mating, and
political support in various species. Selection has
favored individuals with the intelligence and memory capacity required to negotiate the power
dynamics of the social world.
The Basis of Power in Animal Groups
Six bases of power have been defined in human
organizations. Individual recognition and advanced
cognition are required for these bases of power,
which are
1. Informational—power based on provisioning of
information that causes an individual to decide
to adopt a particular behavior
2. Reward—power that stems from the ability of
an individual to offer a resource
3. Coercion—power that stems from threats of
punishment
4. Legitimate—power based on others just
accepting the right of another to control a
resource
5. Expertise—power based on others accepting
that an individual has some superior insight or
knowledge
6. Referent—power that stems from others
identifying with an individual, or using that
individual as a model
All six bases of power are seen in animal societies. Reward and coercive power are the most commonly discussed and are unique in the requirement
for policing or surveillance by the powerful.
Deception is common in societies with this surveillance, and policing can become difficult in large
groups.
Mothers especially wield informational, expertise, and referential power. Leadership in animal
groups (e.g., elephants) is usually the prerogative
of older dominant individuals who have knowledge of resources and travel routes that others do
not possess. Legitimate power is seen in many
hunting predators where individuals often retain
the right to their own kill and the decision to
share is at the discretion of that individual
24
Animal Groups, Power in
regardless of rank. (Legitimacy is common in
chimpanzee society.)
Alliances as Bases for Power
An alliance is a joint effort by two or more individuals. Alliances are common in social mammals
and are theorized to have evolved from group
hunting practices in species such as wolves, lions,
and hyenas. However, alliances in agonistic interactions occur in species such as monkeys with no
history of group hunting. Agonistic alliances are
potentially costly to individuals, who expend
energy and risk injury when they intervene to support another, and are potentially beneficial to
recipients, who obtain valuable support against
opponents. In primate groups, support is primarily
but not completely limited to kin. In the social
economy, support may be exchanged for other
resources.
Researchers have used statistical models to predict alliances within groups. Several interesting
findings have emerged from these models that also
have been substantiated by direct observation of
alliance behavior in many species. These models
assume that an individual’s probability of future
wins and losses is influenced by the outcome of
past interactions; for example, that “winner” and
“loser” effects are in operation. Winning tends to
beget winning and losing tends to beget losing as
winner effects enhance the probability of winning,
whereas loser effects enhance the probability of
losing. Under certain conditions, winner and loser
effects both favor coalition formation as they factor into the equation that determines the risks and
benefits of an agonistic encounter.
Because dominants benefit most from the status
quo, they are likely to intervene to maintain it.
Many studies have also found that subordinates
are often the victims of agonistic alliances. This is
because of an increased probability of winning
against an individual who has previously demonstrated weakness. Similarly, third-party intervention on the behalf of dominants is common as
dominants are more likely to win.
There are conditions under which subordinates
will gang up on and usurp a dominant. Dominants
who win later retaliate, so subordinates rarely act
against a dominant unless victory is certain, as is
the case if the dominant has been injured and is
disabled. Homicide at the hands of an individual’s
own group members is an important cause of
death in adult males of many primate species. Such
homicides nearly always happen when one male is
outnumbered by an alliance. Homicide by alliance
also occurs in the context of animal warfare as
discussed later.
Alliance behavior is not strictly the purview of
males. Females in a number of species do participate in agonistic alliances against other females
and against males. Females may also participate
with males in an agonistic alliance. Females who
are members of losing parties can expect to be
physically punished by dominant males. However,
dominant males have an interest in keeping breeding females in the group and garnering their favor.
Decisions about punishing subordinates are therefore calculated.
Animal Warfare
In animal species, power may be held by individuals and by groups of individuals as resources are
held by both individuals and the collective. When
resources are held and defended by a collective, the
stage is set for war or agonistic encounters between
groups. The laws that govern agonistic encounters
within a group also govern agonistic encounters
between groups. These encounters are more likely
when one group perceives itself to be relatively
more powerful than another. Groups therefore
may advertise their presence to each other visually
and vocally as a way of deterring costly attacks.
Warfare is most likely when one group has a
numerical advantage over another. Wolves, lions,
hyenas, and primates are most likely to attack
when they encounter a lone member of another
group. Coalitions may patrol the boundary of the
group’s territory in search of rivals to attack. If
enough members of a rival group are killed, the
offensive troop can take possession of another
group’s territory.
Correlates and Consequences of
Power in Animal Groups
The correlates of power in animal groups are essentially the correlates of dominance. Dominant males
often have higher testosterone and may have lower
glucocorticoid levels, depending on the species and
Appeasement
the stability of the hierarchy. Higher glucocorticoid levels in subordinates may contribute toward
a dominant’s basis for power (legitimacy) because
high hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) activity may physiologically facilitate an individual’s
acceptance of the submissive role. Dominant
males have more mating opportunity and reproductive success, especially when elevated HPA
activity in subordinates inhibits reproduction (e.g.,
some cooperative breeders). Dominant females
have greater fecundity and greater offspring survival. Dominants signal their status and willingness to defend it with both visual and auditory
displays. Dominants are sought-after partners for
social interactions and are more frequently
groomed by and tend to do less grooming of other
individuals.
Power emboldens animals that possess it because
powerful individuals are free to act without punishment from other group members. The behavior
of the powerful is, however, checked by the need to
maintain favor with subordinates to prevent their
participation in coalitions and by the need to keep
subordinates in the group. Small groups are subject
to attack by other, larger groups; in many species,
it can take years to replace an adult male group
member. The need to have a critical number of
males places constraints on the practice of homicide in species where males stay in their native
groups and cannot be recruited from outside.
Conclusion
Power is defined similarly in animal and human
groups. Strategies for achieving power are also
similar in animals and humans. There is support for
the notion that negotiating power dynamics is cognitively demanding and may have contributed to the
evolution of intelligence. The correlates and consequences of power are no less prominent in animal
societies. Animals commit murder and go to war in
the service of power. These activities are a significant part of group life for the species that engage in
them. Through studying power dynamics in animal
societies, we learn that these dynamics are not part
of what make humans uniquely Homo sapiens.
Liane J. Leedom
See also Bases of Power; Female Leadership Among
Mammals; Raven, Bertram
25
Further Readings
Bergmüller, R., Johnstone, R. A., Russell, A. F., & Bshary,
R. (2007). Integrating cooperative breeding into
theoretical concepts of cooperation. Behavioural
Processes, 76(2), 61–72.
Byrne, R. W. (2007). Ape society: Trading favours.
Current Biology, 17(17), R775–776.
Keltner, D., Gruenfeld, D. H., & Anderson, C. (2003).
Power, approach, and inhibition. Psychological
Review, 110(2), 265–284.
Raven, B. H. (2008). The bases of power and the power/
interaction model of interpersonal influence. Analyses
of Social Issues and Public Policy, 8(1), 1–22.
Wrangham, R. W. (1999). Evolution of coalitionary
killing. American Journal of Physical Anthropology,
Suppl 29, 1–30.
APPARATUS
See Dispositif
APPEASEMENT
The term appeasement still carries negative connotations associated with the failure of Britain
and France to contain Adolf Hitler’s Germany and
stop the onset of war. Appeasement was a respectable term almost until the outbreak of World
War II, signifying the pursuit of peace. Many
believed World War I had been an avoidable conflict caused by an arms buildup and lack of understanding between nations of their grievances.
Accordingly, appeasement was the policy of the
British and French governments with respect to
German and Italian territorial ambitions.
Italy aimed to take over Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in Africa; Germany laid claim initially to the
demilitarized Rhineland, then to Sudetenland in
Czechoslovakia. Many believed that Germany had
been harshly treated in the Versailles Treaty and,
though they did not trust Hitler, felt that German
claims over the Rhineland were reasonable. When
Hitler’s troops entered (under orders to withdraw
if France responded), he was asked to negotiate,
and he proposed a nonaggression pact, though no
such pact was ever signed. The Sudetenland had a
26
Arendt, Hannah
large German population and Sudetenland Nazis
demanded autonomy that was virtually granted by
the Czech government. However, this did not satisfy the Nazis, and Germany began to demand that
the Sudetenland be incorporated into Germany.
In September 1938, British Prime Minister Neville
Chamberlain negotiated directly with Hitler in a
meeting in Munich with the leaders of France
(Édouard Daladier) and Italy (Benito Mussolini).
A peace treaty was signed between Britain and
Germany, allowing Chamberlain on his return a
famous photo opportunity, flourishing a paper and
claiming “peace for our time.” After more concessions
to Germany, Britain finally declared war on September
3, 1939, after Germany had entered Poland 2 days
earlier. The fate of the term appeasement was sealed.
The appeasement of Germany has been blamed
on Chamberlain personally, but the policy was
popular at the time, and historians now argue that
there was little other course for Britain than to try
to contain Hitler, though France and the United
Kingdom could have taken a stronger line at certain times. Britain did rearm during the 2 years
before the outbreak of war, so alongside appeasement went the policy of preparing for war. Modern
historians thus look much more favorably on
Chamberlain and his policies than did those in the
immediate postwar period, though appeasement as
a concept will probably never regain its once positive connotations.
Keith Dowding
See also Balance of Power; Defensive Realism; Extended
Deterrence; Fascism; Realism in International Relations
Further Readings
Neville, P. (2006). Hitler and appeasement: The British
attempt to prevent the Second World War. London:
Continuum.
Taylor, A. J. P. (1961). The origins of the Second World
War. London: Hamilton.
ARENDT, HANNAH (1906–1975)
The political philosopher Hannah Arendt’s conception of power is distinctive. It is rooted in a
political philosophy that celebrates the public
realm of freedom that emerges when people act
with others as citizens or political equals. Arendt
believed power is actualized where people act
together to sustain or to change the world they
share with one another. Her fundamental claim is
that power is consensual, referring to humans acting in concert. Power is never the property of an
individual but of the groups acting together.
Arendt is quite self-conscious in rejecting standard assumptions about power, arguing that political scientists and theorists have obscured its nature
ever since Plato. Regardless of political orientation,
thinkers have assumed that the first question of
politics is, “Who rules whom?” Arendt’s rejection of
this assumption may seem idealistic, utopian, or
simply incredible. It is, however, offered by an
author whose first major work was a three-volume
study of totalitarianism, a work that entertains no
illusions about violence, terror, and domination and
that remains one of the landmarks of 20th-century
political science. Nevertheless, in developing her
account of power, Arendt firmly insists on James
Madison’s maxim, “All governments rest on opinion”—and not, therefore, on qualities that we more
often associate with power, such as rulership or
coercion. She even claims that violence is a “marginal phenomenon” in the political realm, which
may look like a reductio ad absurdum of the claim
that “opinion” forms the basis of government.
Though seemingly eccentric, these claims are based
on profound reflections about the nature of politics.
Arendt’s basic criticism of the political science
of her day concerned its failure to make distinctions. Accordingly, she distinguishes power from a
series of concepts that political science often refers
to under that name—violence, rulership, and
authority (not to mention force and sheer strength).
Although these concepts may appear functionally
alike, inasmuch as each may involve one person
doing something that another wants or expects
that person to do, Arendt nonetheless discerns crucial differences. The next part of this entry considers her thoughts on power rather than violence,
before turning to the more elusive notion of
authority. (More elusive partly because Arendt’s
most obvious discussion of authority [“What is
Authority?”] is largely historical and fits awkwardly with her later comments in “On Violence.”
This entry touches only on the latter.)
Arendt, Hannah
Arendt draws two main contrasts between
power and violence. Although power is, in a sense
that we will return to, “an end-in-itself,” violence is
primarily instrumental. That is, violence is justified
in human relations as a means to secure particular
ends, and it is more justifiable as a means, the nearer
and more certain those ends are. However, Arendt
continually underlines the unpredictability of political action, violent and nonviolent, and the role
played by sheer accident in human affairs. Thinking
of Plato’s metaphors of rulership—the philosopherking who “makes” the ideal republic as the craftsperson makes a table—she writes, “Since the end of
human action, as distinct from the end products of
fabrication, can never be reliably predicted, the
means used to achieve political goals are more often
than not of greater relevance to the future world
than the intended goals” (1972, p. 106). Thus,
Arendt does not deny that violence may have many
effects on the political realm, but trenchantly
observes that the most likely change violence makes
is to a world where the exercise of violence becomes
more usual. No matter how limited, strategic, or
effective violence may be, its instrumentality sharply
marks it off from power. “Far from being the means
to an end, [power] is actually the very condition
enabling a group of people to think and act in terms
of the means-end category” (1972, p. 150). That is,
there is power wherever people cooperate to pursue
shared ends and wherever they address the question,
What ends will we act in concert to pursue? As
Arendt contends, any answer to the question, “To
what end is power a means?” will either be vacuous
(“to enable men to live together”) or dangerously
utopian (“to promote happiness or to realise a classless society”—1972, p. 150f). Thus for Arendt,
power does not call for any justification because it
is bound up with the very existence of political
communities.
A second key contrast: Arendt argues that
power cannot be centralized whereas violence must
be, if it is to be effective. Again, the point is easier
to see with regard to violence. Unless it is to spell
mayhem or warfare, violence requires a relatively
small number of people to be tightly organized,
who may then dominate others. Power, by contrast, arises where many people broadly share
political goals, or invest authority in shared institutions, laws, or holders of political office. Of course,
even the community that is most powerful in
27
Arendt’s terms—for instance, where government is
seen as legitimate, where institutions remain alive
through the combined initiative of many persons—
employs violence. But this is as a sanction against
lawbreakers, understood as criminals who enjoy
no support among their fellow citizens. (Of course,
violence also remains as a strategic means that may
be used against those outside the community’s
boundaries.) In this way, we can see why Arendt
claims that violence is marginal to a political realm.
Such limited uses of coercion are a far cry from
systematic violence against those who are courageous or foolhardy enough to challenge a more or
less tyrannical government—one that most subjects
obey only for fear of coercive sanctions.
This second contrast has an important corollary.
Violence will be the more necessary, the less a government enjoys the real consent of those governed.
Arendt argues that violence becomes more tempting
to rulers, the more they feel that support is ebbing
away from their regimes and the less ready their
“subjects” are to cooperate in their rule: “rule by
sheer violence comes into play where power is being
lost” (1972, p. 152). Although obedience may be
obtained from the barrel of a gun, power—active
support for a mode of government, its laws, and
officeholders—cannot. Further, Arendt emphasizes
that massive technological developments in the
means of violence did not prevent the revolutions of
the 20th century (nor did they decide the outcome
of a war such as that in Vietnam). Rather, increasingly powerless rulers found that the arms changed
hands and that armies and police forces no longer
acted on their behalf. (Nicolae Ceauescu’s fall in
1989 is exemplary here.)
Power in Arendt’s sense does not require unanimity of opinion—as she stresses, that is never to
be found in human affairs. But it does require a
consensus on certain goals, aims, or principles of
organization, and the latter may give rise to authority. Despite the suspicion of utopianism sometimes
felt by her readers, Arendt’s own examples of concerted action are entirely familiar to political science (and indeed, often involve the exercise or
threat of violence): revolutionary uprisings (e.g.,
Hungary, 1956, and Czechoslovakia, 1968), the
U.S. civil rights movement and the student movements of the 1960s, even the French resistance
against the Nazis. Such movements are relatively
short-lived, however. Consensus on constitutional
28
Argument, Power of
principles and modes of organization is a more
durable and equally important source of power. In
this case, common support invests laws and institutions with authority. Arendt stresses that such power
and authority are compatible with a “division of
powers”; indeed dividing power by checks and balances can actually be a source of power. Think, for
instance, of the role a loyal opposition plays within
representative democracy: power is kept alive
through differences of opinion mediated by shared
institutions that embody political authority. Arendt
reinterprets the idea of a social contract—where
political communities are understood as based on a
contract among citizens—to stress the power that
arises from mutual promise. Thus, a group of people
may bind themselves to a constitution and associated institutions, as in one of her favorite examples
from the American Revolution where she claimed
power was understood consensually as reciprocity
and mutuality rather than the power used by princes
or aristocrats that is based on coercion.
In conclusion, recall the slogan that Arendt
appropriates from Madison, “All governments rest
on opinion.” This may, indeed, be the “opinion” of
a small, well-organized minority or elite that uses
systematic coercion to dominate others—in particular, to prevent others from acting together and
hence gaining power to challenge the existing power
structure. But concerted action and organization
remain essential preconditions for the effective use
of political violence. Thus, Arendt is adamant that
although violence may destroy power, it can never
become a substitute for it. At this fundamental level,
even tyranny and totalitarianism rely on the power
that arises from joint action—for example, by the
apparatus of a secret police. Despite enormous
variations in kind and degree, then, all forms of
political community have the same basic requirements of power—which rests on shared opinion—
and authority—which resides in shared institutions.
Garrath Williams
See also Coercion and Power; Consensual Power,
Theories of; Cooperation; Freedom
Further Readings
Arendt, H. (1965). On revolution (Rev. ed.). New York:
Viking.
Arendt, H. (1972). On violence. In Crises of the republic.
New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Arendt, H. (2004). The origins of totalitarianism. New
York: Schocken Books. (Original work published 1951)
Issac, J. (1998). Oases in the desert: Hannah Arendt on
democratic politics. In G. Williams (Ed.), Hannah
Arendt: Critical assessments of leading political
philosophers (Vol. 2, pp. 130–154). London: Routledge.
Kateb, G. (2000). Political action: Its nature and
advantages. In D. Villa (Ed.), The Cambridge
companion to Hannah Arendt (pp. 130–148).
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Ricoeur, P. (2006). Power and violence (Trans. R.
Hausheer). In G. Williams (Ed.), Hannah Arendt:
Critical assessments of leading political philosophers
(Vol. 3, pp. 389–407). London: Routledge.
Waldron, J. (2000). Arendt’s constitutional politics. In
G. Williams (Ed.), Hannah Arendt: Critical
assessments of leading political philosophers (Vol. 3,
pp. 135–153). London: Routledge.
ARGUMENT, POWER
OF
Argument is the provision of reasons to justify a
conclusion. One alternative is bargaining where
the interested parties “cut a deal” so that they all
satisfy at least some of their interests. Another
alternative is assertion, where willfulness is sufficient justification for proposed action. Assertion
goes straight to the conclusion, bypassing the
process of justification. Why is justification
important? The answer takes us to the power of
argument: justification disconnects judgments of
the legitimacy of the proposal from the quantum
of power of the proposer (“do it or else”) and
reconnects them to the qualitative merits of the
proposal (“I accept your reasons”). This entry
deals mainly with the public power of argument in
managing social and political conflict, but says
little about the pure power of logic or the framework of fallacies of bad argument treated in philosophical analysis.
Argument involves claims about evidence and
usually stops short of conclusive demonstration.
Argument is usually part of a process of debate
with different sides contending for different propositions. The frequency of references to “a good
argument” conveys this debating dimension to
argument, with different sides contending “for” or
Argument, Power of
“against” the main propositions or even the very
agenda of business. As a result, many “good arguments” are inconclusive; at the end of the day,
there is no agreement among contending parties
about the right conclusion or sometimes even the
right debating process.
So why bother with argument if the prospect of
agreement is low? Belief in the value of argument
rests on two sets of views of the power of argument. The first set relates to the power of argument
“in theory” and the second set relates to this power
“in practice.” The former deals with the capacity
of argument to contribute to philosophical debate,
whereas the latter deals with the contribution of
argument to practical debate over political and
social affairs. These two sets of theory and practice
are related in the same ways that theoretical and
practical reasoning are related. Theoretical reasoning can be seen as the primary form of argument
and practical reasoning the secondary form. Thus,
the power of argument in theoretical discourse
provides one venerable standard for assessing the
available powers of argument found in practical
discussion. The more open public decision making
can be made to the norms of argument, the more
likely it is that conflict will be resolved impartially
through due processes of decision making—that is,
with decisions based on the merits of the argument
as distinct from decisions reflecting the interests of
those engaged in argument.
Democracy is historically associated with the
belief in the power of argument. Classical Athens
had its moment of high democracy, and Thucydides’
History provides portraits of decent public argument marshaled by rare leaders such as Pericles
(e.g., Thucydides II, 34–46) and case studies of
moving public debate involving contending arguments by such rhetorically gifted speakers as Cleon
and Diodotus (e.g., Thucydides III, 36–50). The
best case for this inspiring world of democratic
argument is probably that left by Aristotle, whose
Politics pays due respect to public reason but whose
Rhetoric lays out the real power of argument in the
public sphere. And here we see the limited nature of
practical argument when compared with the
philosophy standard. Political argument is an exercise in rhetorical as well as philosophical power,
adapting theory to the demands of rhetoric to get
the required assent. Think of this as a theory of the
second best: the power of argument in public
29
affairs is less than the ideal available in pure theory, but the ideal is not practically feasible. The
lesson from Aristotle is that the operational power
of practical argument comes down to the blend of
three elements: the ethos or perceived character of
the argument maker, the pathos or mood of the
audience, and finally (and perhaps least powerfully), the merits of the logos or core reasoning of
the argument.
Aristotle occupies only one end of the political
spectrum. For every Aristotelian realist, there are
many other democratic idealists with greater hopes
for the power of argument. But can the imperfect
world of practical affairs really be modeled on the
rigors of impartial philosophical argument? Plato’s
Republic sketches one famous answer, with its thesis that philosophers must become kings. But what
about the real world as we know it, where political
power is exercised by nonphilosophers: how can
the potential power of argument be realized?
Believers in the pure power of argument often
become despondent in the face of persistent social
conflict. If only those engaged in conflict would lay
down their arms and instead take up arguments
and agree to abide by an impartial arbitration of
the issues on the merits. The everyday realities of
power seem to imply that argument might be pure
but it is powerless if left to itself. Argument needs
friends, notably a friend at court where real power
rests in the hands of those who rule, typically without any obligation to rule impartially or engage in
open argument. Among those who have championed the power of argument in practical affairs are
some of the most influential makers of modernity,
particularly the architects of liberal constitutionalism such as Benedict Spinoza, John Locke, and
Immanuel Kant. Their constitutional design principles included many devices that protect the
power of argument by dispersing political power
away from traditional concentrations (such as
unlimited monarchies) in favor of the rule of law
through a formal separation of ruling powers into
several distinct branches of government. The separation of powers strives to promote argument in
political life through checks and balances to blunt
the power of assertion and willfulness in ways that
promote open argument over the use and abuse of
public power.
Two examples can round out this discussion.
Contemporary democracy honors the power of
30
Aristotle
argument in two important ways. First, democratic theory celebrates “deliberative democracy”
as a regulatory ideal where equality of opportunity
to engage in political argument is matched to procedural norms of engagement inspired by an “ideal
speech situation” of honest argument, as though
all must now meet the high standard of argument
set by Pericles. A deliberative democracy reinforces
argument through fair discussion processes. Second, over recent decades, the practical world of
public policy analysis has taken “an argumentative
turn” and embraced the power of argument, with
the result that policy analysis itself has become
part of the wider argument about ends and not
simply an instrument of policy delivery. Democratic policy analysts are thus encouraged to inject
themselves into the deliberative domain through
analysis about argument as well as argument
about analysis. In both these developments, argument has become central to the action of contemporary democracy.
John Uhr
See also Aristotle; Authority; Bargaining; Discourse;
Persuasion
Further Readings
Barry, B. (1965). Political argument. London: Routledge
& Kegan Paul.
Garver, E. (2004). For the sake of argument: Practical
reasoning, character and the ethics of belief. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
Majone, G. (1989). Evidence, argument and persuasion
in the policy process. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
ARISTOTLE (384–322 BCE)
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher of Macedonian descent. His studies of physics, biology,
psychology, metaphysics, logic, rhetoric, poetics,
economics, and other subjects made him the
most outstanding thinker of his age, if not of all
time. His ideas about power, especially about
political power, have influenced thinkers up to
the present day.
In ontology, Aristotelian power is synonymous
with potency, which has three aspects: as a source
of change, as a capacity for performance, or as a
condition making a thing unchangeable. His thinking on this matter was standard fare until the
Enlightenment, when Thomas Hobbes rejected the
latter two criteria and redefined the first, to see
power only as the source of motion.
In psychology, Aristotle thought of power in
terms of capacity for performance, defining, for
example, talent in rhetoric as the power (dynamis)
to discern what will be persuasive in each domain.
Psychological powers can be active or passive,
operative or receptive, and immediate or remote.
Hobbes altered this definition, so that psychological power or faculty was a capacity to make or
receive change.
Like his teacher, Plato, Aristotle took politics to
be the most important subject in human life. The
art of statecraft is the highest art because it affects
the entire social environment, including every art
practiced within it. As a subject matter, politics is
the study of humans in groups, whereas ethics is
the study of the individual in isolation. Only “a
beast or a god” can actually live in isolation, and
thus humans are social animals. They are also
rational animals, and their rationality chooses
ends from among possible ends and in doing so
attempts to realize a share of human nature by
choosing the best or the better from among any set
of proposals. Political studies are the most important studies partly because they can improve the
art of statecraft, and partly because they enable us
to realize our natures as choosers of the better in
the highest and weightiest affairs.
The only kind of state Aristotle discusses at
length was the city-state or polis. Nation-states,
that is, states having more than one population
center, were too large for their members to be
addressed by a single herald in a single assembly
and, hence, were too large to be effectively governed. In addition, the population centers were
bound to differ in their religious observances, leading to strife.
The polis is a natural result of human association. The basic unit of association is the family.
Families associate together to form villages, and
the polis results from the association of villages.
Each association aims at achieving some end
thought of as good, and thus, the polis is an
Arms Race
association aiming at a good. This definition has
always left open the question of whether Aristotle
is more conventionalist or contractarian. It has also
allowed his thinking to influence both schools. The
fact that the chief goods for which the polis aims
are self-sufficiency and stability—two cognates of
power—allows his thinking to influence other theorists, such as Niccolò Machiavelli, who see the
accumulation of power as the aim of the state.
Political power corresponds to the position
of command in a command–obey relationship.
The command–obey relationship is a natural phenomenon, likely to emerge wherever two or more
persons join in a common endeavor. Hence, any
association, no matter how temporary, might feature it. The position of command can be used in
two ways: either in the interests of the whole,
which accords with justice; or in the interests of
those who rule, which accords with despotism.
Although there are two ways to rule, there are
three forms of rule according to Aristotle. The
forms are rule by one, by a few, or by all. Each
form of rule realizes a better or worse result
depending on how often its agents exercise power
justly or despotically. Hence, the good form of rule
by one is monarchy, in which the ruler frequently
takes action, or is perceived as taking action, for
the sake of all. The degenerate form of rule by one
is tyranny, in which the ruler acts despotically. The
good form of rule by the few is aristocracy; its
degenerate form is oligarchy, in which the ruling
class acts despotically in its own interests. The
good form of rule by the whole is called polity, in
which the demos (the whole population) acts in the
interests of the whole. The degenerate form is
called democracy, in which the mob rules in favor
of itself, which usually means stripping the rich of
their wealth and the better of their honors. The
polis is an imitation of the family and village, and
so, because they are monarchic, it too was originally monarchic. However, it soon became susceptible to all forms of rule.
Degenerate forms of rule are unstable because
they create opponents of the state. States are
defined by their constitutions. Regardless of the
form of rule, the chief causes of instability are
inequality and injustice. In either case, a segment
of the population feels it is not receiving from the
state what it deserves. Radical change of constitution, that is, revolution, could proceed from two
31
likely sources, from a despotic administration, or
from a segment of the population anxious to change
the state for its own sake, or both. The classes most
likely to seek revolution were the rich and the poor.
The rich feel that existing laws hold them back. The
poor feel that existing laws hold them down. Only
the middle class feels that existing rules work to its
advantage and are worth preserving. Hence, the
secret of stability, a variety of power, was a large
middle class able to collectively resist resentment of
the state whether it emanated from the rich or the
poor.
Bryan Finken
See also Ability; Authority; Hobbes, Thomas;
Machiavelli, Niccolò; Persuasion; Power To and Power
Over; Rationality; Rhetoric
Further Readings
Aristotle. (1984). Politics. In J. Barnes (Ed.), The
complete works of Aristotle. Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press.
Kraut, R., & Skultety, S. (Eds.). (2005). Aristotle’s
politics: Critical essays. New York: Rowman &
Littlefield.
ARMS RACE
The term arms race can be used to describe any
competitive situation where the goal of each competitor is to stay ahead of the others. The phrase
came into common parlance in descriptions of the
causes of World War I, where it has been suggested that the major European protagonists—
Austria–Hungary, France, Germany, Russia, and
the United Kingdom—increased their armed forces
to match what they saw their rivals doing. It has
been argued that the massive increase in those
forces and the tensions between the states over
trade and empire inevitably led to war.
In more recent times, during the cold war, a
nuclear arms race developed between the two
superpowers—the United States and the Soviet
Union—as each eyed the other’s nuclear weapons,
and both increased their first-strike capabilities.
Similar arms races with both conventional and
32
Authoritarian Personality
nuclear weapons can be seen in different parts of
the world: between India and Pakistan, between
Israel and Arab nations in the Middle East,
between North and South Korea, and at various
times between neighboring African and South
American countries.
Lewis F. Richardson mathematically modeled
arms races. He suggested three motives led nations
in peacetime to increase or decrease their armaments. First, revenge or hostility to another nation;
second, fear; and third, working in the opposite
direction to reduce weapons to economize. Tension
and past hostility obviously increase the probability of an arms race. Richardson’s work has been
studied extensively by mathematicians, economists,
and others and applied to arms races between
nations and to firms in competitive markets.
The term arms race is now also extensively used
in evolutionary contexts to describe the dynamic
evolution of aspects of plants and animals. For any
two species that compete in a given environment,
any improvement in one species will lead it to have
an evolutionary advantage over its rival. Thus, if
the rival species is not to decline to extinction, it
must also improve in some respect. Thus, two different grass-grazing animals must each increase
their ability to drive off the other from scarce
grassland. The prey must match an increase in the
speed or agility of a predator. Over time, a species
might lose some of the features that made it more
competitive: it might become less agile, but expend
its resources on other features, perhaps stronger
bones or warmer coats, that advantage it in other
ways. The evolution of reproduction is an important consequence of arms races and enables species
to evolve more swiftly. In evolutionary biology, this
has been termed the red queen hypothesis, after the
Red Queen’s dictum (in Lewis Carroll’s Through
the Looking Glass) that one must keep running to
stay in the same place. In evolutionary terms, this
translates to finding that the probability of any
species surviving over geological time remains constant (outside of major environmental changes)
despite its constant improvement in its members’
ability to compete. Coevolutionary processes are
not arms races, but can improve “cooperating species” against other species.
The evolutionary finding can then be applied
back to markets where firms must keep improving
products to give themselves the same chance of
surviving, and countries must keep improving their
weapons to keep the same probability of winning
future battles. As with coevolutionary processes,
cooperation between firms can enable them to
keep their market positions without improving,
whereas countries might tie their futures together
through trade, thus reducing the probability of
future conflict and, consequently, of arms races.
Thus, we can see arms races have both advantages
and disadvantages.
Keith Dowding
See also Conventional Deterrence; Deterrence Theory;
Deterrent Threats; Spiral Model
Further Readings
Richardson, L. F. (1960). Arms and insecurity: A
mathematical study of the origins and causes of war.
Pittsburgh, PA: Boxwood Press.
Ridley, M. (1996). The red queen: Sex and the evolution
of human nature. New York: Penguin.
AUTHORITARIAN PERSONALITY
The term authoritarian personality was first
coined during the early 1940s as a means of
describing such individuals as Adolf Hitler and
Benito Mussolini—that is, a specific set of behavioral characteristics was mapped out for people
with political beliefs that were both extremist and
antidemocratic. Abraham Maslow, the famed
humanistic psychologist, first used the term, but
Erich Fromm, the German psychoanalyst, wrote
about the “authoritarian character.” However,
the seminal The Authoritarian Personality, by
Theodor W. Adorno and his colleagues at the University of California at Berkeley, put the term into
the lexicon of everyday use.
In 1950, the Nazi Holocaust had only been
public knowledge for 5 years, and many in academia
and government wanted to understand how such a
tragedy could have occurred. Many felt that if one
could quantify the psychological basis for antiSemitism, it might be possible to prevent the same
thing from ever happening again. Freudian
psychoanalysis was, during that era, the primary
Authoritarian Personality
tool used in explaining the dynamics of the human
personality. Some of the key qualities of the
authoritarian personality included the following:
1. Conventionalism—a personality construct
where one tended to accept and obey all social
norms, especially the rules of authority figures.
2. Aggression—the exhibition of aggression
toward groups or individuals the state did not
like. This is especially true for specific groups
that threatened the state’s values and morals. In
addition, it is an aggressive attitude toward
people or organizations that the state finds
particularly noxious.
3. Submission—when one submits to those in
authority.
4. Anti-Intraception—when an individual thinks
that subjective attitudes are bad, and “public”
and “objective” are exalted.
5. Substitution—instead of rational beliefs,
superstition and fatalistic determinism are the
norm.
6. Power and Toughness—a heavy identification
with those in power, as well as an excessive
emphasis on citizens acting in a “tough”
manner.
7. Destructiveness and Cynicism—one should not
feel compassion or empathy toward individuals
or groups considered enemies by the state.
8. Projection—the tendency to believe in the
existence of evil in the world and to project
unconscious emotional impulses outward,
especially to individuals demonized by the state,
for example, the Jews in Germany, the
intellectuals in China, or the Kulaks in the
Soviet Union.
9. Excessive Conformity—the belief that one
should comport oneself in a manner that
never diverges from the socially accepted
norm.
10. Insecurity—the fear that if one ever shows any
“weakness,” then one is compromised; thus,
one must remain strong at all times.
11. Sex—exaggerated concerns regarding
“appropriate” sexuality.
According to Adorno, individuals who admire
fascist ideologies tend to think and act in a manner
33
highlighting their dysfunctional views. This often
results in a close match between thought and
behavior, with anti-Semitism and ethnocentrism
standing in close connection with this particular
personality structure. For instance, Nazis saw Jews
as subhuman, and thus, Jews were treated as
beneath contempt and, though not to the same
extent, so were homosexuals, Slavs, and Gypsies
and those regarded as “enemies” of the state. If this
theory is accepted, then fascistic behavior is nothing
more than the expression of personality structure;
that is, if an individual with authoritarian personality lives in a “right-wing” society, then the government usually supports his or her racist behavior.
Generally speaking, authoritarian personality has
usually referred to right-wing thought and behavior; however, after the fall of communism in 1991,
the term was also used to encompass such individuals as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Tsetung. Their absolute lack of empathy for others,
and their cruelty and spite toward anyone not
agreeing with their political views were strikingly
similar to the behavior exhibited by Hitler. On average, authoritarian personality is still used primarily
for ultraconservatives such as religious fundamentalists, military dictators, theocrats, and so on.
Adorno felt that two distinctive behavior patterns coexisted within each authoritarian personality: submissiveness and aggression. At first glance,
the two are diametrically opposed, but they actually work together. The authoritarian wants to fit
into a chain of command and to be told what to do
(submissive to a superior), and similarly, will
accept no discussion when giving orders to those in
the hierarchy below. At the same time, he or she is
often highly aggressive toward others, especially
those considered lesser in some way (not as intelligent, not as strong, not as cultured). For instance,
individuals from a different race or ethnicity and
individuals professing a different religious faith (or
atheism) are often considered subhuman. Authoritarians also enjoy being bossed (think of Heinrich
Himmler’s devotion to Hitler) as much as they
enjoy telling others what to do (Himmler with his
adjutant Reinhard Heydrich).
One primary factor thought to be needed for the
formation of the authoritarian personality was a
pattern of strict and rigid parenting, in which obedience is instilled through physical punishment and
harsh verbal discipline (as found in both Hitler’s
34
Authoritarian Personality
and Stalin’s lives). In this scenario, almost no
parental praise or affection is shown, independence is discouraged (the child should seek the
parent’s permission for most things), and the
child’s behavior is expected to meet a set standard
(if it does not, punishment may result). Significantly, such parents instill in their children obedience to their parents but also a sense of loyalty to
a social hierarchy, entailing obedience to all persons of higher status (once again, Hitler with Paul
von Hindenburg, and Stalin with Lenin).
Once adulthood is reached, authoritarian individuals tend to exhibit their accumulated hostility
and anger by forming negative stereotypes and
discriminating against or overtly persecuting any
group or individual thought to be beneath them;
for instance, showing prejudice against those from
a lower socioeconomic status, education, or family
background. The use of projection (placing one’s
own perceived or actual weaknesses on a group or
individual that is less likely to fight back) is also
considered a primary trait in the authoritarian
personality. Other traits include depending on
authority and rigid rules, with little to no deviation from social values and admiring individuals in
power.
Robert Altemeyer developed the Right Wing
Authoritarianism (RWA) scale, an assessment
instrument based on Adorno’s conception of
authoritarian personality. Altemeyer proposed that
just 3 facets of the authoritarian personality (not
10 as originally conceptualized by Adorno) were
significant (in a statistical sense): conventionalism,
authoritarian aggression, and authoritarian submission. Conventionalism is defined as one accepting and obeying social conventions and laws
espoused by those in power, whereas authoritarian
aggression is aggression aimed at anyone or anything disliked by the authorities. In essence, the
RWA scale gauges the following:
1. Faulty reasoning—RWAs are more likely to
c
c
c
c
Make many incorrect inferences from
evidence.
Hold contradictory ideas leading them to
“speak out of both sides of their mouths.”
Uncritically accept that many problems are
“our most serious problem.”
Uncritically accept insufficient evidence to
support their beliefs.
c
c
Uncritically trust people who tell them what
they want to hear.
Use many double standards in their thinking
and judgments.
2. Hostility toward out-groups—RWAs are more
likely to
c
c
c
c
c
c
c
Weaken constitutional guarantees of liberty
such as the Bill of Rights.
Show harsh punishment toward “common”
criminals in a role-playing situation.
Admit they obtain personal pleasure from
punishing such people.
Be prejudiced against racial, ethnic,
nationalistic, and linguistic minorities.
Be hostile toward homosexuals.
Volunteer to help the government persecute
almost anyone.
Be mean-spirited toward those who have
made mistakes and suffered.
3. Profound character attributes—RWAs are more
likely to
c
c
c
c
c
c
c
Be dogmatic.
Be zealots.
Be hypocrites.
Be absolutists.
Be bullies when they have power over others.
Help cause and inflame intergroup conflict.
Seek dominance over others by exhibiting
competitive destructiveness in situations
requiring cooperation.
4. Blindness to their own failings and to the
failings of authority figures whom they
respect—RWAs are more likely to
c
c
c
c
Believe that they are right in almost
everything.
Never learn anything helpful from past
failings.
Exhibit a self-righteous attitude.
Use religion to take away any feelings of pity
toward others, that is, doing what God
wants.
The etiology of authoritarian personality begins
in childhood. Sigmund Freud felt that one’s personality values came primarily from the father (it
should be remembered that in psychoanalysis, most
workings of the mind are unconscious), and that
these social norms and mores were internalized
Authoritarian Personality
during the child’s development. As the child
attempts to understand his or her ultra-strict father
by behaving in a manner pleasing to the parent,
the superego is produced. In essence, Freudian
theory states that the child realizes that one’s
desires and wishes must be submerged and continually held in abeyance; otherwise, the child will
face the crushing punishment from a very unforgiving father. In other words, we can never show
our true feelings because they are at odds with
society.
In addition, Freud felt that an individual with
unresolved unconscious conflicts would ease his or
her personality problems by projecting fears,
drives, and aggression onto other people. Two
examples illustrate this principle: someone with
latent homosexuality projects his or her yearnings
onto confirmed homosexuals, stating they are
wicked and immoral. A person who feels that he
or she may have the “blood” of a hated minority
feels that minority members are “dirty,” “racially
impure,” or “unfit for life.”
In general, ethnic, political, or religious minorities are selected as a screen for these projections
because they are members of a class of social undesirables; thus, one need not fear any social sanctions, such as the need to worry about criminal
charges if one beats up a member of a minority
group. On the other hand, if charges are filed,
there is little need to fear a prison sentence.
Another psychoanalytic perspective comes from
Alfred Adler. Adlerian therapy is concerned primarily with the individual gaining superiority over
his or her environment, and in an authoritarian
personality, this striving for transcendence over
others is a neurosis, usually emerging as an aggressive need to overcome one’s neuroses (“I must be
cold and hard to that person for if I am not, people
will know how weak I am”). Authoritarians need
to keep control and prove their innate ability over
others is rooted in a mental world full of enemies,
no equality or empathy, and no mutual benefit.
Wilhelm Reich, another renowned psychoanalyst, postulated that middle-class fathers may have
had to accept abuse from the ruling class, but at
home, the fathers were the kings and masters, forcing their families to exhibit the obedience they
showed in the workplace. In essence, this social
structure yielded generations of individuals who
never questioned why they were subservient to an
35
entire class of people; that is, it was natural to
show submission to one’s “betters.” Within the
family, the father held the same position that his
boss held over him in the production process, and
he reproduced this subservient attitude toward
authority in his children, particularly in his sons.
From such social conditions, allegiance to the
“leader” became standard behavior, that is, showing passivity and servility to authority figures.
Hence, it was hypothesized an authoritarian
personality arose in a family where the father ruled
everyone with an iron hand, and the mother exhibited deference toward her husband. The father was
very strict, punishing the child at the slightest
transgression of the rules the father had established. In this environment, children learned that
they could not fight those in power because they
were too strong. Instead, the children quickly realized that it was smarter to express their aggression
toward weak individuals, or those who were also
victims of their father’s heavy-handedness. Possible
victims were usually individuals or groups that the
father hated; thus, aggression against them was
both tolerated and sanctioned. Scholars quit using
psychoanalysis as a means of plumbing the depths
of authoritarian personality decades ago, primarily
because it is impossible to verify Freud’s notions
regarding the conscious and unconscious.
Authoritarianism may also be described as a
government emphasizing social control that is
exemplified by strict obedience to the state’s authority, with control being maintained by the harsh use
of oppressive measures. Authoritarian regimes are
renowned for being hierarchical. In other words,
citizens must obey state authority in different areas
in their lives, and if they do not, they run the risk
of facing trouble. For instance, being able to move
to a new city within one’s state or country, without
conferring with authorities, is a right taken for
granted in the West. However, relocating without
permission within some countries is a grave
offense—with the offending individual receiving
hefty fines or worse. It has been shown that a link
exists between authoritarianism and collectivism
(in the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of
China under Mao, and other communist states). In
both cases, individual rights and goals are subjugated to group goals, expectations, and conformities. Individuals with authoritarian personality are
attracted to these types of governments.
36
Authority
Instead of focusing on a specific personality
type or syndrome, some scholars feel that authoritarianism occurs in specific situations and that the
authoritarian personality has two primary facets:
the desire for life to remain the same, and a strong
dislike for change or difference. Conformity,
respect for tradition (though not in all cases), and
the use of coercion when necessary to ensure conformity are important values to those with authoritarian personality. Perceiving potential threats
triggers this trait, though accounts vary regarding
what causes fear in authoritarians.
Scholars wonder whether authoritarianism is a
type of personality or a trait/disposition, with both
having implications. If authoritarianism is a static
personality type, its effect should remain constant
over time (or if changing, negligibly). Conversely,
if authoritarianism is a situational-sensitive
phenomenon, a premise more consistent with a
disposition, its effect might differ depending on the
circumstances. That is, the impact of authoritarianism on individuals tends to wax and wane
depending on the specific context or situation,
especially levels of threat—not just any threat, but
one that unconsciously triggers authoritarianism.
Cary Stacy Smith and Li-Ching Hung
See also Adorno, Theodor; Power, Cognition, and
Behavior; Right-Wing Authoritarianism
Further Readings
Adorno, T. W., Frenkel-Brunswik, E., Levinson, D. J., &
Sanford, R. N. (1950). The authoritarian personality.
New York: Harper & Row.
Altemeyer, R. (2007). The authoritarian specter.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
AUTHORITY
The concept of authority is closely related to that
of power. However, many writers suggest that it is
possible for an agent to have power without
authority or, conversely, authority without power.
Thus, power and authority are two entirely different concepts.
Authority, unlike power, is usually thought to
have greater normative force. That is, if someone
is in authority, this gives that person some legal or
normative right to issue commands and be obeyed.
Those under the authority of another have a duty
to obey the authoritative commands of the person
in authority. Of course, those with legal authority
might overstep their rights in issuing commands or
issue commands that are immoral. Furthermore, if
a legal system is itself immoral, then we might not
consider the legal authorities to be legitimate in
issuing commands. However, neither of these
points detracts from the point that the idea of
authority itself gives normative force, and the concept is one imbued with rights and duties. The
central question concerning the concept of authority is why people should subordinate themselves to
it. The question itself presupposes some liberal
notion that people are free and relinquishing that
freedom requires justification, but this does not
make the central question any less important.
A distinction often made in the literature is
between a person in a position of authority and a
person who is an authority. Someone who is an
authority is a person considered knowledgeable or
expert in some area. We consult people who are
authorities in this sense to gain advice and information. Thus, one academic might consult another on
a subject about which the latter is deemed particularly knowledgeable. We turn to doctors for advice
regarding medical conditions or to lawyers for legal
advice. These people can be considered authorities
in their particular areas. And they too can recognize other actors as more authoritative than they:
so doctors and lawyers refer patients and clients to
specialist practitioners. We take the advice of those
who are authorities in this sense because we believe
they know better than we do in the areas in which
we consult them. However, we are not obliged
legally or morally to follow it through, though in
most cases we choose to do so because we believe
it in our best interests to do so. We might recognize
that advice to be sage—good doctors and lawyers
will explain why we should follow their advice—
but even when we do not understand the reasoning
behind it, we might choose to follow the advice of
an expert. When we act in this way, we are said
to act for “content-independent” reasons. That is,
although we feel justified in carrying out those
actions because we trust the expert has good reasons for directing us thus, we do not understand
what those good reasons are. Our own reason with
Authority
regard to the justification of the action itself is
“contentless”: “because the expert said so.” We
shall see that the concept of content-independent
reasons is important for understanding the moral
force of authority.
Max Weber’s views on authority have been
influential in the social sciences. Weber made a
distinction between three different types of
authority: traditional, charismatic, and rational–
legal. Traditional authority is bestowed on an
agent because of some convention or long and
hallowed tradition that this person is the authority. Kingships traditionally follow the male line,
and in many communities, figures such as witch
doctors or religious leaders derive their authority
hereditarily. Conventions and ways of behaving
or documents handed down through the generations might be seen as authoritative simply by
tradition. Charismatic authority occurs where the
exceptional abilities of a person cause members of
a community to obey or follow that person as
their leader. Those abilities are not simply some
superior physical size, which means that others
follow by force or simple fear of the consequences, but rather they perceive it right that the
charismatic person leads. The right to lead, or
some legitimacy bestowed on an agent, really distinguishes authority either as some subset of
power or as a separate component. This is seen
more clearly in Weber’s final category, which he
defines as characteristic of modern societies. The
rational–legal authority of an agent gives that
person a right to command and expect compliance because of the office or role the person fills
in society. People might be chosen for those roles
because of their personal characteristics, but the
role or office they hold, rather than those characteristics, defines their authority. Rational–legal
authority simply follows the rights bestowed on
the holder to make authoritative judgments in
given cases. We could see this authority as being
bestowed merely because it is efficient for a modern society to have people fulfilling certain roles.
However, Weber’s legal–rational category also
needs to be placed in the context of his arguments
that bureaucrats need to be chosen on merit and
to be educated and trained in the role. In that
sense, we can see legal–rational authority as being
“an” as well as “in” authority. The important element, however, is that the holders are constrained
37
by the rules and principles of their office. Perfect
rational–legal authority would leave no room for
discretion. In practice, of course, discretion is
required for reasons of efficiency.
Understanding the importance of the office or
role in rational–legal authority also leads us to
distinguish different concepts of authority. Someone might have the rights of some role, but not be
effective in that role. Teachers at a school have the
authority over their pupils given to their position.
However, if the teachers do not command the
respect of their pupils, either in a disciplinary sense
or as enlightening pedagogues, then the teachers
may have no authority in another sense. Lacking
the respect of their pupils means pupils do not
legitimate the teachers’ commands and do not
respect their knowledge. Thus, the teachers will
have little influence over the pupils.
We can make the distinction between de jure
authority—one has the right to command—and
de facto authority—one actually commands. The
important difference between de facto authority
and power is that the former is based on reasons
for obeying or following the authority. Power
might include de facto authority but is a broader
concept that encompasses coercion. The distinction between de jure and de facto authority is
similar but not identical to that between being an
authority and being in authority.
We can see that the content-independence of
authority also extends to those in authority.
Accepting tradition, one might follow the advice of
the oracle or the witch doctor even though one
does not understand it (perhaps it is not understandable!). One follows the charismatic leader
even if one does not know the leader’s plans. The
general expects his or her soldiers to follow orders
even when they do not know the general’s battle
plans. The football coach expects his or her players
to follow his or her instructions even if they do not
understand his or her tactics. Followers of Islam
do not need to know why they are forbidden pork:
it is enough to know that they are. We follow conventions and traditions even though we may have
no understanding of why we should follow them.
The content-independence of authoritative
commands is probably its defining feature though
enduring authorities are likely to endure because
the commands can be justified. One is not likely
to continue to follow the advice of a lawyer or a
38
Authority
doctor if one sees that others do better following
the advice of other doctors or lawyers. We tend to
look askance at witch doctors today, but they are
unlikely to endure as authorities in their fields if
they do not confer some advantage or at least
confer no disadvantage over others or over those
who never consult them. Conventional forms of
behavior are not likely to endure if those communities that follow those conventions or traditions
fare less well than communities following different ones. The general who wins battles and the
coach who wins matches will command more de
facto authority over those below them than will
similar generals or coaches who tend to lose.
Thus, we define those who are in authority de
jure by the rights and duties they derive from their
role; we define de facto authority and the authority of the laws and rules governing de jure authority by the content-independence of the rules and
the content-independence of the commands given
by those in authority. Similarly, we recognize as
an authority someone whose views we respect
content-independently of our own opinions of
those views. But in all cases, the continued respect
and legitimacy we place on the authority is liable
to be affected by its overall contribution to our
interests.
We might finally see this in the case of a coordination or collective action problem. We might all
recognize that it is best if we all pull in one direction—
if we all coordinate our actions toward some
specified end rather than following our individual
wishes. Imagine cooking a dinner for a large group
of people. It might not be advisable for us each to
put in the pot our favorite foods and spices; that is
the recipe for culinary disaster. However, we find
we cannot agree on our precise aim—what dish we
should cook—or how to achieve it—which particular recipe we should follow for the dish we do
decide on. In such a case, we might all agree that it
is best that one person decide what dish should be
cooked and allow that person to choose the precise
recipe. Even if we all think our own dish is preferable to the one cooked, we can agree that the one
cooked is preferable to the dish that would follow
from all trying to cook their favorite dishes in the
same pot. In choosing one chef, we have given that
person authority over our meal for that evening.
There need be nothing special about that person—
he or she is not charismatic, nor a notably good
cook—but there is a role, that of the chef, that we
have bestowed on that person.
We can rationally give authority to a specific
agent, be that an individual or an organization, and
follow their commands because we believe that it is
in our best interests to do so. Where we believe that
an agent is an authority, we might simply feel that
they are better suited to making decisions in the
agent is that field of authority than we are. We trust
our doctor, or lawyer, or the chef because we feel
that in the area of decisions that we have given to
them, they will be better judges, overall, than we
are. In other situations, we might not consider the
agent to be more expert or particularly better
placed to make decisions than ourselves, but we
realize that there needs to be a decision maker.
Coordination and collective action problems arise
because groups of people need information on
what others are doing and might have different
ideas about what should happen, even given common aims. Or they might have some conflicting
aims that make collective action problematic. Giving authority to an agent to direct the group facilitates coordination and collective action.
Thomas Hobbes justified an authoritarian state
on the grounds that in anarchy, where there is no
authority, each will fight all others. People, he suggests, are roughly equal, and each must fear the
others. Each person could be killed by another, and
nobody can expect others to abide by agreements
made because they have incentives to cheat if they
can. “Covenants, without the Sword,” he writes,
“are but words, and are of no strength to secure a
man at all.” In other words, without some authority to back up a contract, people might cheat. I pay
you today to provide goods tomorrow, but tomorrow you can keep my money and your goods. All I
can do is take to the sword to try to force you to
keep your agreement. Knowing I might do this,
you have an incentive to try to kill me before I take
to the sword. But I can work out that you might do
that, so I will not want to contract with you in the
first place. And so on. Hence, Hobbes characterized life with no authority as “solitary, poor, nasty,
brutish, and short.” If all authority is given to the
state, the state can ensure that each person will
abide by the contracts they make. If any person
should unjustly renege on a deal made, the injured
party can appeal to the state, and the state with a
monopoly of force can ensure compensation.
Autonomy
Knowing that the state has this power, each will
abide by the contracts made.
Of course, if we give all power to the state, then
we cannot be assured that the state will not exploit
us. We can see how a community might all agree
that some central organs are required to keep all
particular contracts as made. However, does the
need for a central authority mean that we need one
with absolute power? If Leviathan—Hobbes’s
name for the central authority—is given absolute
power, then why would it retain its role as arbiter
of disputes? It might use that absolute power to
exploit the citizens. In other words, the final
authority of the state does not imply absolute
power for the state.
Two elements are normally thought to emerge
from the lack of Hobbesian justification for absolute authority of the state. The first is the need for
checks and balances. Rather than allow one agent
to have absolute power, several agents are given
powers in separate domains, allowing each agent
to be able to check the power of the others. The
powers are constrained by constitutional requirements that give each legitimate authority within its
domain. Each is given certain powers by law and
the powers they are given are justified by the need
for solutions to collective action problems. The
second is that before we can justify sets of state
powers, we need reasons for accepting authority
within those domains. Thus, we do not simply
allow the state to impose laws for our safety or to
protect our property but require justifications for
specific laws. Similarly, when we give distributional powers to the state, we do not allow it to
have complete authoritative allocation over property rights but, rather, demand justification for the
specific rules that are adopted.
Keith Dowding
See also Consent; Hobbes, Thomas; Interests; Justice;
Legitimation; Weber, Max
Further Readings
Green, L. (1984). The authority of the state. Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press.
Raz, J. (Ed.). (1973). Authority. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Weber, M. (1968). Economy and society: An outline of
interpretive sociology. New York: Bedminster Press.
39
AUTONOMY
The English word autonomy stems from two
Greek words: autos, meaning “self,” and nomos,
meaning “law,” or “rule.” To be autonomous,
then, is to be self-ruled. This term was unproblematic in its early usage, when it was applied to
self-governing, autonomous city-states. In contemporary philosophy, however, the term autonomy is usually applied to persons, with a person
being held to be autonomous if the person rules
himself or herself. This use of the term is an
important one, for the concept of autonomy so
understood is central to many debates within
both applied and theoretical ethics and political
philosophy. However, this extension of the term
to persons has led to some confusion concerning
how the term is to be used, which arises because
the term autonomy plays a major role in two different philosophical traditions: the Kantian tradition and the personal autonomy tradition.
There are also several different accounts of what it
is for a person to be autonomous within the personal autonomy tradition alone: the hierarchical
account of autonomy, the attitudinal-historicist
account of autonomy, the coherentist account of
autonomy, and substantive accounts of autonomy.
The Importance of Autonomy
Since the 1970s, the concept of autonomy has risen
to prominence within both contemporary moral
philosophy (especially applied ethics) and contemporary political philosophy. The question of
whether a person is autonomous with respect to
his or her actions has, for example, been taken to
be closely related to the question of whether the
person is morally responsible for those actions.
Similarly, the question of whether a person is
autonomous, or, alternatively, has the capacity for
autonomy, has been taken to be closely related to
the question of whether the person should be
afforded participation within a liberal democracy,
as well as the question of whether he or she is a full
member of the moral community. Autonomy is
also held to be of great value in many debates
within applied ethics. In bioethics, for example,
the value of autonomy is held to ground the
importance of securing informed consent from
40
Autonomy
patients. It is also often used to justify acceding to
a patient’s request to be euthanized, or to be
allowed to sell his or her body parts for transplantation to others. Similarly, in business ethics, the
value of autonomy is used to ground discussions
concerning the morality of attempting to persuade
persons to buy products by advertising them, as
well as the morality of employing people in sweatshops. The value of autonomy is also central to
many other debates within ethics and political
philosophy, ranging from those that concern the
ethics of allowing plea bargaining within a criminal justice system, to the status of freedom of
speech.
Kantian Autonomy
The first philosophical tradition in which
autonomy plays a major role stems from the
ethical work of Immanuel Kant. Kant believed
a person is autonomous if he or she is selfdirected, where this self consists of those aspects
of the person that are essential to him or her.
Thus, people will not be acting autonomously if
they are moved to act by their desires, for a
person’s desires are only contingent aspects of
his or her self, rather than necessary parts of it.
A person might, for example, have had desires
other than he or she did, and yet would still be
the same person. Thus, a person will act autonomously, his or her actions will be directed by
the person’s essential self, only when he or she
acts rationally. Kant has already denied that
people will act autonomously if they act to satisfy their own desires, so a person will not be
acting autonomously if he or she acts in accord
only with instrumental rationality. Rather, Kant
believed people will act autonomously only
when they act on those maxims of action that
they can consistently will to be universal law,
and so act because they recognize that the maxims on which they are acting could be so willed.
Thus, for example, people would act autonomously when they told the truth if they did so
because they believed that the maxim of their
actions “tell the truth” could be consistently
willed to be a universal law (i.e., one that
everyone could follow without contradiction).
A person who acts on maxims that could not be
consistently willed to be universal law would
fail to act autonomously and would fail to act
morally, also. This is because, Kant believed,
actions whose covering maxims could not be
consistently willed to be universal law are
immoral actions. Consider, for example, the
maxim “lie when it is to your advantage.” This
maxim could not be consistently willed to be a
universal law. Were everyone to lie when it was
to their advantage (i.e., were the maxim to be a
universal law), no one would trust the word of
another person because it would be known that
everyone lies when it is to his or her advantage.
As such, then, lying would become inefficacious, for no one would believe any claim that
could be a lie uttered to secure the advantage of
the person uttering it. Thus, autonomous action
and moral action are linked.
Personal Autonomy:
The Early Hierarchical Account
Partly as a reaction to the Kantian emphasis on
autonomous action as rational, moral, action,
an alternative philosophical tradition arose in
the 1970s that focused on a person’s desires
when assessing whether he or she was autonomous with respect to the actions that the person performed when he or she was motivated to
act by them. The two primary proponents of
this alternative understanding of autonomy as
personal, rather than moral, autonomy were
Harry Frankfurt and Gerald Dworkin, who
independently developed hierarchical analyses
of personal autonomy. Frankfurt believes a person is autonomous with respect to an effective
first-order desire (i.e., that desire that actually
moves the person to act, or to refrain from acting) if the person both wants to have it and
wants it to move him or her to act. If both of
these conditions are met, then the person in
question will “volitionally endorse” that firstorder desire that moves the person to act, and
thus will be autonomous with respect to it.
Dworkin believes a person will be autonomous
with respect to his or her actions if the person
is moved to perform them by desires that are
authentically the person’s, and with respect to
which he or she enjoys both procedural and
substantive independence. A person’s desires
are authentically the person’s if they are desires
Autonomy
by which the person endorses being moved—in
this way, Dworkin’s account of autonomy is
similar to Frankfurt’s. A person enjoys procedural independence with respect to his or her
desires if the person has not come to have them
as a result of deception, manipulation, brainwashing, or other procedures that would
undermine the person’s self-direction were he
or she to be moved to act by them. A person
enjoys substantive independence with respect
to his or her desires if the person has them as a
result of failing to renounce his or her independence of thought and action with respect to
them.
Objections to the Early Hierarchical
Account of Autonomy
The initial hierarchical account of autonomy
was subject to three serious objections. Focusing
on Frankfurt’s account of what it is for a person
to be autonomous with respect to the person’s
effective first-order desires, the critics of this
account charged that it was subject to the problem of manipulation. Thus, all that is required
for a person to be autonomous with respect to a
first-order desire of his or hers is that it meets
certain structural conditions; that he or she
wants to have it and to be moved by it. But,
argue Frankfurt’s critics, a person who is clearly
non-autonomous with respect to an effective
first-order desire could readily satisfy these conditions. For example, people who have implanted
into them an effective first-order desire, and, at
the same time, have implanted into them a desire
for that first-order desire and a desire that it
move them to act (i.e., a volitional endorsement
of the desire in question) would, on Frankfurt’s
account, be autonomous with respect to the
first-order desire that was implanted into them.
But this is implausible. The second objection to
which Frankfurt’s early hierarchical account was
subject was the regress problem. The proponents
of this problem begin by asking what makes
people autonomous with respect to their secondorder volitional endorsements of their effective
first-order desires? If the answer is that these
desires are themselves endorsed by a yet higher
ranked desire, then a regress ensues, for why are
the people in question autonomous with respect
41
to that higher-order desire? If, however, the
answer is that the people in question are autonomous with respect to these higher-order endorsing desires for some other reason, then Frankfurt’s account of autonomy is incomplete until
an account of what this “other way” is, is provided. Finally, Frankfurt’s hierarchical account
of autonomy is subject to the problem of authority. This problem is simple: why is it that a person’s higher-order desires have authority over
his or her lower-order desires in the way that
Frankfurt envisages? After all, they too are simply desires. To see the force of this objection,
consider the case of a woman who has been
brought up in a sexist society, and all her life she
has been taught that a woman’s place is in the
home. Despite her upbringing, this woman still
occasionally desires to leave her domestic prison
and pursue a career. Because of her socialization,
however, whenever she experiences these desires,
she quashes them as being unworthy of her
femininity. In this case, it seems that this woman
would be more autonomous were she to act on
her first-order desires to pursue a career, even
though she repudiates, rather than endorses,
these desires at the higher conative level.
Alternative Accounts of Autonomy
Proceduralist Accounts
These three criticisms are widely taken to be
serious objections to Frankfurt’s original hierarchical account of personal autonomy. Given this,
several alternative accounts of what conditions
must be met for a person to be autonomous with
respect to his or her effective first-order desires
have been developed. On a historical approach
to analyzing autonomy, what matters in assessing
whether a person is autonomous with respect to
his or her effective first-order desires is not the
attitude that the person now takes toward them,
but their history. On an attitudinal–historical
approach (such as that developed by John Christman), people will be autonomous with respect to
their effective first-order desires if they would,
under conditions when they were able to reflect
on their desires rationally and without external
interference, not repudiate their development.
Alternatively, on a coherentist model of autonomy (such as that developed by Laura Waddell
42
Autonomy
Ekstrom), people will be autonomous with
respect to their effective first-order desires if
those desires cohere in appropriate ways with
their preexisting desires. This last approach to
analyzing autonomy has an advantage over those
that are based on an agent’s attitudes toward his
or her desires, for it avoids all three of the problems that Frankfurt’s early account faced. It
avoids the problem of manipulation because the
coherence conditions can be specified in such a
way that no implanted desires could fulfill them.
It avoids the regress problem because people’s
autonomy with respect to their effective firstorder desires does not rest on the attitude that
they take toward those desires. Finally, it avoids
the problem of authority because a person’s preexisting coherent set of desires has authority for
him or her relative to any particular desire that
would be in question when asking whether he or
she was autonomous with respect to it.
Substantive Accounts
So far, all of the accounts of personal autonomy that have been outlined have been procedural accounts. That is, they have been accounts
of autonomy on which a person is held to be
autonomous with respect to his or her effective
first-order desires if they meet certain procedural
conditions, such as being endorsed by him or her,
having the process by which they came about
endorsed by the person, or cohering in certain
ways with the person’s preexisting desires. On
such accounts of autonomy, persons could be
held to be autonomous with respect to any
desires, irrespective of their content, provided
that they met the specified procedural conditions. Such a procedural approach to analyzing
autonomy has, however, been challenged by
autonomy theorists who believe that persons
could never be autonomous with respect to certain desires or, conversely, that persons must possess certain desires or values if they are to be
autonomous. Many feminist autonomy theorists,
for example, hold that persons cannot be autonomous with respect to desires or values that
would lead to their possessors’ debasement.
Similarly, many also hold that persons can only
be autonomous if they value themselves as
autonomous agents—a self-evaluation that
would of necessity preclude any self-debasing
desires or values. These substantive, or valueladen, accounts of autonomy vary in the degree
to which they specify the values that persons
must accept to be autonomous, and, as such,
their proponents are faced with a dilemma. The
more values that they require autonomous persons to accept, the narrower the range of persons
that proponents consider to be autonomous will
be—and the narrower this range is, the more
implausible their theory looks. This is because
such robustly substantive theories of autonomy
would start to exclude persons who would normally be thought to be self-directing, autonomous persons, even though they do not endorse
the values that the proponents of the more substantive accounts of autonomy require them to.
However, the fewer particular values that the
proponents of these substantive theories of
autonomy require persons to have, the more
these appear to be modifications of procedural
accounts, rather than alternatives to them. This
is because the proponents of many procedural
accounts implicitly require persons to adopt
some values, such as the value of critical reflection, to meet the procedural conditions to be
autonomous with respect to their effective firstorder desires.
Conclusion
Although the value of autonomy is held to be of
great importance in many debates within contemporary moral and political philosophy, there is a
great deal of disagreement about precisely what
conditions must be met for a person to be considered autonomous. Although the disagreement
between the proponents of Kantian accounts of
autonomy and the proponents of various accounts
of personal autonomy concerning what the proper
scope of this term is, given the significant dissimilarities between these two conceptions of this concept, easy to identify, the disagreements between
the proponents of the various accounts of personal
autonomy is often less obvious, for they are working within the same tradition as each other. As
such, discussions that draw on this concept should
begin by clarifying exactly what is meant by it, and
then, if there is disagreement about this, it will be
more focused and productive than were it to occur
Autonomy of the State
without an explicit recognition that disagreement
is at hand.
James Stacey Taylor
Frankfurt, H. (1988). The importance of what we care
about. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Taylor, J. S. (2005). Personal autonomy: New essays.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
See also Agency; Determinism; Free Will
Further Readings
AUTONOMY
Christman, J. (1989). The inner citadel: Essays on individual
autonomy. New York: Oxford University Press.
See Relative Autonomy of the State
OF THE
STATE
43
B
BACHRACH, PETER,
MORTON
AND
empirically. How can one study something that
has not happened? But non decision making was
not about processes that had not yet occurred.
Rather, Bachrach and Baratz showed that examining the media to discover important issues was a
flawed technique, potentially overlooking issues
that elites either were not interested in or were
attempting to ignore or remove from the agenda.
In that sense, the idea is about agenda setting and
how to surface important issues that elites and the
mass media are not discussing.
Bachrach and Baratz’s work was later criticized
from the Left for ignoring the processes of interest
formation. Writers such as Steven Lukes argued that
non decision making was only concerned with actual
struggle, albeit a struggle that is submerged. However, important power issues are involved in preference formation and the dominated agents may not
realize that what they take to be in their own best
interests are, in reality, the interests of the dominant.
Bachrach and Baratz argued that, although preference formation was important, emphasis should still
be placed on examining empirically the struggles in
which agents wanted to engage.
Their later work was less influential, and ironically, Bachrach’s later book Power and Empowerment (coauthored with Aryeh Botwinick) argued
for participatory democracy through the workplace, in an account of democracy bearing striking
similarities to that of Dahl from the latter’s doctoral thesis through to his later writings.
BARATZ,
Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz are neo-Marxists
who made important contributions to the community power debate in the 1960s and 1970s. In a
series of articles culminating in a short book, Power
and Poverty: Theory and Practice, they introduced
the concept of non decision making. Criticizing the
pluralist accounts of power in communities, notably
Robert Dahl’s in his Who Governs?, Bachrach and
Baratz argued that pluralists only looked at the surface of conflict. Bachrach and Baratz suggest that
there is a second face (or dimension) of power that
concerns the way in which some issues are organized into politics and other issues are organized
out. Thus, they argued, some issues do not come to
the surface in democratic politics because elites
ensure that these issues stay buried. One example of
such a buried issue is race and poverty (in the late
1950s). In Who Governs?, a study of power in New
Haven, Connecticut, Dahl and his researchers identified important political issues by examining what
was being discussed in the local newspapers. They
then explored who was influential in policy making
for those issues. Neither race relations nor poverty
were discussed in the local media and so were not
studied by the New Haven pluralists. However, as
Who Governs? was published, race riots tore across
U.S. cities, including New Haven. Race was an
important issue, but one that was simply not discussed by the media until the riots.
Some writers, such as Raymond Wolfinger, have
argued that non decision making cannot be studied
Keith Dowding
See also Community Power Debate; Dahl, Robert A.;
Lukes, Steven; Pluralism; Second Face
45
46
Bakunin, Mikhail
Further Readings
Bachrach, P., & Baratz, M. S. (1970). Power and poverty:
Theory and practice. New York: Oxford University
Press.
Dowding, K. (1991). Rational choice and political power.
Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar.
BAKUNIN, MIKHAIL (1814–1876)
Mikhail Bakunin understands power as an exercise
of the will. His analysis is largely critical, and he
conceptualizes power in relation to authority. In
this context, power might be thought of as the will
of those claiming a right of command or those who
by virtue of their resources (wealth, talents, breeding, etc.) are in a position to dominate others.
Where power is institutionalized, as it is in the state,
it gives rise to certain habits, breeding paternalism
and hubris in the elite and servility and diffidence in
the masses. The idea—power corrupts the best—is
similar to Lord Acton’s. In 1867 Bakunin argued,
Nothing is more dangerous for man’s private
morality than the habit of command. The best
man, the most intelligent, disinterested, generous, pure, will infallibly and always be spoiled at
this trade. Two sentiments inherent in power
never fail to produce this demoralisation; they
are: contempt for the masses and the overestimation of one’s own merits. (Power Corrupts The
Best, retrieved from http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/
anarchist_archives/bakunin/bakuninpower.html)
Bakunin neither celebrates this tendency nor
regards it an inevitable feature of government. On
the contrary, returning to the idea of will, he
argues that elite power is open to challenge and
that it is possible to neutralize its effects by abolishing the existing institutional frameworks. For as
long as the downtrodden do not seek to use statist
frameworks to overcome oppression, power can
be exercised without the attendant corruption.
This argument forms the crux of Bakunin’s disagreement with Karl Marx, which came to a head
in 1871 after protracted arguments in the First
International. Although he shares Marx’s view
that the function of the state is to safeguard the
interests of the economically dominant class,
Bakunin also argues that it is too reductive and
fails to consider the structures through which
elites—economic, cultural, religious—exert their
power. Marx’s solution, to capture political power
in the state and use it to further the interests of the
working class, would only result in the domination
of a new proletarian elite, leaving other forms of
oppression unchecked and the principle of command intact. Bakunin’s solution, to encourage
workers and peasants to take direct control of the
means of production, is designed to make state
structures redundant and offer a new way of organizing in which elitism would be overcome.
Bakunin sees no contradiction between his critique of elitism and his advocacy of conspiratorial
organization. Though critics often accuse him of
vanguardism, his position is that dedicated revolutionaries provide an important catalyst for social
revolution, encouraging the oppressed to combat
through rebellion the servility that centuries of elitism have engendered. In this, he was closer to François-Noël Babeuf than to Sergey Gennadiyevich
Nechaev and Pyotr Nikitich Tkachev.
Ruth Kinna
See also Anarchism, Power in; Elite Theories;
Revolutionary Cell Structure
Further Readings
Bakunin, M. A. (1867). Power corrupts the best.
Retrieved September 26, 2007, from http://dwardmac
.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bakunin/bakuninpower
.html
Bakunin, M. A. (1984). Marxism, freedom and the state
(K. J. Kenafick, Ed.). Retrieved from http://www
.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/
mf-state/index.htm
Lehning, A. (1974). Bakunin’s conceptions of
revolutionary organisations and their role: A study of
his “Secret Societies.” In C. Abramsky (Ed.), Essays in
honour of E. H. Carr (pp. 57–8). London: Macmillan.
BALANCE
OF
POWER
The balance of power is a central concept in international relations that first came into widespread
Balance of Power
use in the 16th and 17th centuries. Though many
different meanings have been associated with this
concept, it refers generally to the principle that
powerful states in an anarchic international environment will respond to one state’s increase in
power by striving to increase their own levels of
power. The result of this self-interested action by
states is thought to be a general power equilibrium
among the most powerful states in the system.
Because of the interaction of states’ self-interested
strategies, no one state is able to dominate the
international system. This concept is thus held to
explain why there has never been—nor is there
likely to be—an overarching world government.
Scholars of international relations have often
remarked disparagingly on the ambiguity surrounding the meaning of the term balance of power. Richard Cobden once declared scathingly, “The theory
of a balance of power is a mere chimera—a creation
of the politician’s brain—a phantasm, without definite form or tangible existence.” In a noteworthy
critique, Inis Claude identifies the contradictory
manners in which scholars have referred to the concept: descriptively as a situation that inheres among
states, prescriptively as a policy that statesmen
should follow, and analytically as a system that
regulates conduct among states and limits the range
of possible international political outcomes. Within
each category, there remains considerable variation
in the way that the term is used. When referring to
the balance of power as a situation, for instance,
scholars sometimes use it to describe a situation of
equilibrium, sometimes to describe its opposite, a
situation of imbalance, and sometimes as a synonym for any distribution of power. Similarly,
discussions of the balance of power as a policy
sometimes refer to a policy of maintaining an equilibrium with other states and other times to a policy
of maintaining a favorable balance of power—that
is, a preponderance of power. Because of this confusion about the concept’s meaning, and because of
many scholars’ tendency to slip between conflicting
meanings of the concept with relatively little awareness, readers must take care to ascertain which
meaning of the concept an author is employing at a
particular time.
Despite these sources of disagreement, scholars
of the balance of power share many assumptions.
These assumptions are also held in general by realist scholars of international relations, making the
47
balance of power a central realist concept. The state
is viewed as the central unit of international politics
in a system that is described as anarchical, a term
that refers simply to the absence in the international
context of an overarching world sovereign—anarchy in this context neither means nor implies chaos.
Yet, because there is no international equivalent to
Thomas Hobbes’s domestic Leviathan, states—
which are assumed to desire, at a very minimum,
survival—must jealously guard their own security.
They must be ever circumspect, as the inherent
uncertainty of the international system means that
even states that seem benign today might become
threatening tomorrow. In such a situation, states
that see an emerging power on the horizon should
attempt to counteract this new power. They have
two primary means at their disposal as they attempt
to balance against a rising potential threat: (1) they
may increase their own military strength through
such efforts as armament or (2) they may form alliances with other states against the potential threat.
The first is known as internal balancing and the
second as external balancing.
Assessing the Balance of Power as System
Of the various ways of viewing the balance of
power discussed, the view of the balance of power
as system is the one most relevant to analytical
theories of international relations. The claim is
that the balance of power imposes a degree of
order on the international system that has some
positive consequences. Two questions in particular
are the subjects of debate in this realm: (1) the
automatic or manual nature of the balance of
power and (2) the specific outcomes the balance of
power is expected to produce.
Is the Balance of Power a Law?
One claim made by some scholars of the balance
of power draws on an analogy to laissez-faire economics and the “invisible hand” thought to bring
about a positive collective outcome, the efficient
operation of the market, from the self-interested
action of individuals. Just as individual producers
and consumers do not intend to produce the market but merely intend to achieve individual profit,
individual states do not intend to produce equilibrium. Rather, each individual state aims to achieve
48
Balance of Power
the preponderant power that will ensure its own
security. Yet, as each state attempts to achieve this
goal, the collective outcome is a rough balance of
power, at least among the major states, because no
state is able to achieve preponderance when other
states simultaneously seek the same goal. Thus, the
general security of the system, and the survival of
the major state units, is ensured. To some scholars,
then, the balance of power expresses a general law
of how the international system operates regardless of the intentions of the individual states. No
balance of power policy, in this view, is necessary
to produce the outcome of equilibrium.
In contrast, however, some scholars view the
balance of power as semi-automatic or manual
rather than fully automatic. In the semi-automatic
view, a specific country able and willing to play the
role of “holder of the balance” is needed for the
balance of power system to operate. This country
has sufficient strength that, by switching allegiance
from one set of countries to another, it can alter the
balance of power within a particular area. This
state is usually in a unique position relative to the
other states, possessing some distance from the
other states but nevertheless being close enough to
affect and be affected by these states. This state,
unlike the others, also makes a conscious decision
to undertake the role of balancer. The paradigmatic example of such a state is 19th-century
Britain, the geographic position and military power
of which made it an able holder of the balance.
Finally, some scholars view the balance of power
as being fully manual, able to function only by the
careful and deliberate manipulation of skillful
statespeople. In these latter two views, in contrast
to the view of the balance of power as automatic,
the balance of power can sometimes fail to operate
effectively.
The failure of states to balance appropriately
can perhaps be partially explained by the concept
of a collective action problem. Although it may be
in the interest of a group of states to balance
against the power of a rising threat, each individual
state might prefer that the other states undertake
the burden of doing so. Such behavior is known as
buck passing, and the result might be that no state
mobilizes against the rising power until it is too
late. Such an explanation might explain why a
coalition formed against Adolf Hitler only at such
a late date. Similarly, states may possess options
other than balancing in their attempt to maintain
security. These options, which may be particularly
tempting for weak states, include allying with the
rising threat, or simply hiding.
Awareness of the potential of the collective
action problem to thwart effective balancing
behavior led to Kenneth Waltz’s claim in his seminal Theory of International Politics that a bipolar
distribution of power is more stable than is a multipolar distribution of power. When only two
superpowers exist, according to Waltz, there is less
uncertainty than in a multipolar world—each state
knows who the potential enemy is and is able to
respond via internal balancing rather than rely on
external balancing, which is easily prone to miscalculation and war. Waltz thus provides a parsimonious account of one variable likely to affect how
automatically—and effectively—the balance of
power operates.
What Are the Consequences of the
Balance of Power System?
A second important debate concerns precisely
what desirable consequences the balance of power
is expected to produce. Some theories view the balance of power system as one that helps bring about
peace, but others dispute that this is a primary
outcome of the balance of power. The balance of
power is thought to contribute to relative—if not
absolute—peace among major powers by ensuring
that no state possesses sufficient power to conquer
all other states. Thus, it is thought, the balance of
power constitutes a disincentive to extreme aggression. However, as Claude perceptively notes, equilibrium is unlikely to be as much of a deterrent to
aggressive behavior as would be a preponderance
of power vested in a countervailing coalition.
Abramo Fimo Kenneth Organski and the power
transition school similarly cast doubt on the supposed relationship between balance and peace.
They argue that, far from causing peace, relative
stability or balance between two powers is a quite
unstable and bellicose situation. A significant disparity of power between two states, they argue, is
likely to result in peace because there is no doubt
which state would prevail in a war. The weaker
state is thus cognizant of its limitations and defers
appropriately to the stronger power. War is most
likely once the weaker state begins to approach
Balance of Power
parity with the stronger state because both the
weaker and stronger parties then possess incentives to fight, the weaker to improve its power
position and the stronger to prevent the emergence
of the weaker as an equal contender.
Balance of power partisans respond to these
critiques in a number of ways. First, they assert
that, though preponderance in a specific context
might indeed be the best deterrent to aggression,
this is not a generalizable rule for system-level
international politics because one cannot determine a priori which states should possess a preponderance of power in the service of peace. The
balance of power system is thus more appropriate
in this regard. Furthermore, balance of power
scholars take issue with Organski’s claim that disparity contributes to peace because disparity and
the unequal treatment that occurs under it creates
the motivation for war in Organski’s theory, even
if war can only occur once relative parity is
reached. Furthermore, such a war is more likely
to be a major, systemic catastrophe, what Robert
Gilpin calls a “hegemonic war,” than is a war that
occurs between two relatively balanced states to
rectify a slight imbalance perceived to exist between
the two. Finally, balance of power theorists may
assert that although the system does not succeed in
completely eradicating war, it does achieve other
arguably desirable outcomes.
Indeed, some scholars have suggested that the
balance of power system maintains the status quo.
Yet, one notable feature of the balance of power
system has been the occasional sacrifice of smaller
powers in order to create a more desirable distribution of power among the major powers. Historically,
the partitions of Poland provide an illuminating
example of such a dynamic. Thus, it seems that the
balance of power does not maintain the status quo
in its entirety, though it may succeed most of the
time in preserving the independence of the major
units of the international system. At a very minimum, though, the balance of power system is
thought to prevent any one state from achieving
world domination, even if war may occasionally be
a necessary means of achieving this end.
How one assesses the outcomes produced by
the balance of power system may depend partly on
what one conceives of as the alternative systems of
power management. One major ideological competitor to the balance of power system has been the
49
system of collective security. Collective security
systems seek to provide a radical alternative to the
self-help system that undergirds the balance of
power. States that are members of the collective
security community declare that a threat to any
member state constitutes a threat to the whole. In
theory, such a threat, once it emerges, is met with
the united force of the community. Collective security thus aims to achieve a universal and automatic
response to international aggression, something
akin to the role of law enforcement in the domestic
context. However, scholars have noted that many
problems plague collective security even in theory,
and it has yet to prove itself successful in practice.
The failure of the League of Nations as a collective
security organization is viewed as evidence of fatal
flaws in collective security as a tool of power management, most notably because collective security
theorists fail to detail how the collective action
problem discussed earlier might be overcome.
Thus, though the balance of power may not be
ideal as a system of power management, it is often
viewed as operating via a more consistent logic
than is the collective security alternative.
The Balance of Power and
the Empirical Record
The historical record of state behavior is relevant to
assessing balance of power theory. Realist scholars
often cite the “long century” from the end of the
Napoleonic Wars to the outbreak of World War I
as evidence of the relative peace and order that the
balance of power provides, as well as of the general
propensity of states to balance. However, the idea
that balancing accurately describes state behavior
in general has been challenged by recent scholarship. Historian Paul Schroeder has argued that
states have historically engaged in a wide range of
behaviors in response to threats, behaviors not at
all limited to balancing. Likewise, some scholars
have argued that the balance of power is a rather
Eurocentric concept, and that the history of the
world outside Europe provides numerous examples
of hierarchical systems in which states did not
effectively balance against overweening power.
China during the Warring States period is a notable
example of such a system.
Post–cold war developments in international
politics have also caused some to question basic
50
Balance of Power
balance of power arguments. Immediately after the
collapse of the Soviet Union, realist scholars such
as Waltz and John Mearsheimer predicted that a
rival to U.S. power would soon emerge because it
was contra balance of power theory for such a
superpower to remain long unchecked. However, a
decade and a half later, a clear rival to the United
States still had not emerged. Two amendments of
balance of power theory have been used to explain
this apparent anomaly.
First, Stephen Walt argued that states do not simply balance against material power, but against
threat. Thus, states should not balance against a
powerful state viewed as having benign intentions.
The explanation for the failure of other states to balance against the United States, then, lies in the U.S.
ability to convince others that the United States does
not pose an actual threat to other states’ security.
U.S. democracy or its involvement in the post–World
War II liberal international order might explain why
the United States is able to convince others of its
benign intentions. One should note that balance of
threat theory represents a significant departure from
the traditional realist skepticism of reliance on estimates of other states’ intentions to ensure one’s own
security. Precisely because state intentions can so
easily change, a conservative statesperson should
balance against power, rather than against estimations of threat. Likewise, evaluating other states’
intentions is an extremely difficult task and one that,
as standard histories of both world wars reveal,
statespeople often do not do well.
The second attempt to explain the purported
failure of other states to balance argues that what
constitutes balancing has changed in recent
decades. States may not be engaging in traditional
forms of balancing behavior, but they are, some
argue, engaging in “soft balancing.” This refers to
political, rather than military, efforts to restrain
the actions of states possessing disproportionate
power; the refusal of many European states to support the U.S. decision to invade Iraq in 2003, for
example, might be viewed as “soft balancing.”
Finally, some argue that changes occurred in the
20th century made it more difficult for the balance
of power system to operate. Democracy has proliferated in many regions of the world, arguably
making it difficult for states to make the rapid
adjustments in foreign policy loyalties that the
balance of power requires. Likewise, technological
changes in warfare, particularly nuclear developments, may have changed the meaning of the distribution of power, making it more difficult to
estimate, and may have likewise increased the
costs of using war as a means of correcting power
asymmetries.
Alternative Views of the Balance of Power
Though the balance of power is a traditionally realist concept, liberal and constructivist interpretations of the balance of power do exist. Hedley Bull
and other scholars of the English School of international relations emphasize the way in which the
balance of power, rooted in understandings about
the possibility for mutual advantage among states,
provides order and predictability to the international system. Others have called this the “associational” view of the balance of power, in contrast to
the “adversarial” view that is traditionally realist.
Departing even further from the realist position,
constructivists highlight the contextual and social
aspects of the ideas of balance and power. Richard
Little, for instance, has argued that the prevalence of
the metaphor of the balance of power in discussions
of international politics contributed to a shift in
mainstream views of power from hierarchical and
agent-based to structural and relational. This constructivist critique relates to a broader critique of the
balance of power—the difficulty of defining, and
thus measuring, power. The typical realist response
to such a critique is that although assessing the distribution of power, a necessary enterprise if the balance of power is to function, is by nature an art and
not a science, statespeople are accustomed to making such estimations and are usually in broad agreement about which states constitute the most powerful states in the system at any given point in time.
Brooke C. Greene
See also Collective Action Problem; Power Transition
Theory; Realism in International Relations
Further Readings
Claude, I. (1967). Power and international relations.
New York: Random House.
Jervis, R. (1997). System effects: Complexity in political
and social life. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Banks
Little, R. (2007). The balance of power in international
relations: Metaphors, myths, and models. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Morgenthau, H. (1949). Politics among nations: The
struggle for power and peace. New York: Knopf.
Walt, S. (1987). The origins of alliances. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell University Press.
Waltz, K. (1979). Theory of international politics. New
York: Random House.
BANKS
Banks, in their most basic function, act as financial
intermediary institutions in an economy. They tend
to act as conduits for capital and credit allocation
between individuals, corporations, and the state.
Banks also function as institutions of financial
deepening—that is, they contribute to the monetization of the economy. Generically, banks are
incorporated into the financial services industry.
Despite the importance of banks in modern
economic systems, the relationship between power
and banks themselves has not been fully evaluated.
A useful departing point from which to analyze
the power of banks may be traced to Vladimir
Lenin’s Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916). In this influential work, Lenin defined
imperialism as “the monopoly stage of capitalism.” Lenin added that such a definition
would include what is most important, for, on
the one hand, finance capital is the bank capital
of a few very big monopolist banks, merged with
the capital of the monopolist associations of
industrialists; and, on the other hand, the division of the world is the transition from a colonial
policy which has extended without hindrance to
territories unseized by any capitalist power, to a
colonial policy of monopolist possession of the
territory of the world, which has been completely
divided up.
In the Leninist critique of the power of banks,
three of the critical ingredients of the last stage of
capitalism (i.e., imperialism) include the merging
of bank capital with industrial capital and the
creation of finance capital, the increasing importance of the export of capital, and the fusion of
the capitalist state with banks and industry.
51
Other recent analytical work has also tended to
view the role of banks from a negative perspective,
largely from the premise that they accelerate the
growth of noxious corporate power. In this critical
framework, the perception that banks hold growing
power is based on the view that the income of many
international banks is growing both absolutely and
as a proportion of the world’s total gross domestic
product (GDP). Viewed in absolute terms, as output
from services becomes more central in emerging
and transition economies, the potential economic
power of banks is staggering. For instance, according to The Banker magazine’s annual index of the
world’s largest banks, the top 10 banks—in total
assets—include those shown in Table 1.
By virtue of holding assets on behalf of individuals and corporations, the analysis of the power
that banks may exert begins with an assessment of
their aggregate assets, whereby it is imputed that
banks with large asset holdings are likely to exert
more power than do those with lesser asset holdings. However, empirical analyses of the relationship between a bank’s size and political power
suggest that there is no apparent correlation
between bank concentration and political power.
The potential economic power exerted by banks
Table 1
World’s top 10 banks by total assets, 2006
($ million)
Bank
Total assets, 2006
($ million)
Barclays Bank
1,591,524
UBS
1,567,564
Mitsubishi UFJ Financial
Group
1,508,541
HSBC Holdings
1,501,970
Citigroup
1,493,987
BNP Paribas
1,484,109
Crédit Agricole Groupe
1,380,617
Royal Bank of Scotland
1,337,512
Bank of America Corporation
1,291,795
Mizuho Financial Group
1,226,627
Source: The Banker (July 2006).
52
Banks
could be considerable, if one equates revenues with
GDP. For instance, in 2006, world GDP was $60.7
trillion, of which assets of the 10 largest banks,
listed in Table 1, equaled about 14.3 trillion, about
23.5% of world GDP.
Although the aggregate economic strength of
the world’s largest banks is considerable, it would
be simplistic to argue that aggregate assets themselves equal political power. First, total assets (or
any other aggregate measure, such as sales or revenues) would not be comparable to GDP because
it excludes liabilities. If one uses other widely used
industry measures of bank strength, such as market capitalization or Tier 1 capital, the potential
economic power is far more modest.
Also, although some banks enhance their market
share through merger, it would be erroneous to
assume that banks act in unison for a defined political goal. Although many banks may prefer to operate in a deregulated environment, at times they
prefer regulatory barriers to entry for their competitors. This suggests that the relationship between
banks and political power is complex. In this sense,
one also ought to consider that most banks worldwide are regulated, sometimes excessively so. Even
in comparatively deregulated business environments, such as most advanced capitalist economies, banks are subject to regulatory controls by a
central bank and by other related government
regulators (such as the Securities and Exchange
Commission in the United States, the Financial
Services Authority in the United Kingdom, the
China Banking Regulatory Commission in the
People’s Republic of China, etc.).
A contemporary analysis of the power exercised
by banks would have to differentiate between the
actual functions that banks perform in an economy and the likely magnitude of their effects. Perhaps a useful way to differentiate these functions
and effects is by looking at banks through a threedimensional typology. Banks can be classified
according to the following:
1. Business type classification
2. Ownership structure
Most banks perform specific functions. Typically, as
a result of performing these functions, banks are
classified as being retail or commercial banks (i.e.,
institutions that hold consumer deposits and transact with these deposits in the form of loans) or
investment banks (institutions that help corporations raise capital, in the form of both debt and
equity). The first type of bank may exercise power
over individual depositors and small businesses,
whereas the latter may have larger macroeconomic
effects on financial markets. In addition, many transition economies also have development banks,
which act as instruments of the state for various
developmental and planning purposes. In this latter
form, a potential linkage between banks and politically well-connected enterprises, whereby capital is
diverted to favored enterprises by the state, could be
assessed.
Over the centuries, the complexity of bank
structures has grown. To determine the capacity
of banks to exercise power, it is worthwhile to
determine their ownership structure—specifically,
whether a bank is wholly or majority owned by
the private sector or by government entities. The
power potentially exercised by banks will vary
considerably based on ownership structure. Private sector banks are accountable solely to their
shareholders, whereas state-owned banks are
accountable to the state. In this sense, the power
exercised by private sector banks will be to the
benefit of their shareholders, whereas state-owned
banks are instruments of state power.
Finally, it is important to determine a bank’s
degree of transnationality. Banks may conduct
their operations exclusively within their country’s
territorial boundaries. Alternatively, banks may
have a transnational or international character,
often determined by the proportion of banking
assets held abroad as a proportion of the bank’s
total assets or by the proportion of the banking
staff working abroad as a percentage of the bank’s
total employment. In this context, international
banks may have a widespread presence worldwide, but their presence in any given individual
country may be small compared with domestic
competitors.
3. Degree of transnationality
Lawrence Sáez
The power potentially exercised by banks can be
determined by their business type classification.
See also Business and Power; Globalization; Neoliberalism
Banzhaf Value
Further Readings
Anderson, S., & Cavanagh, J. (2000). Top 200: The rise
of corporate global power. Washington, DC: Institute
for Policy Studies. Retrieved November 6, 2006, from
http://www.ips-dc.org/downloads/Top_200.pdf
Glassman, C. (1981). The impact of banks’ statewide
economic power on their political power: An empirical
analysis. Atlantic Economic Journal, 9(2 July), 53–56.
BANZHAF
See Banzhaf Voting Power Measure
BANZHAF VALUE
The Banzhaf value is one of the most widely known
solution concepts of cooperative game theory. It
presents a reasonable expectation of the share-out
of the global winnings among players and a fair
division in normative contexts. It was initially
introduced by Lionel Sharples Penrose in 1946 as a
power index for voting games and later rediscovered by John Banzhaf in 1965 and James S. Coleman in 1971. Since then, the Banzhaf value has
been extended to arbitrary (nonsimple) cooperative
games (thus being converted from a power index to
game value) by Guillermo Owen, Pradeep Dubey,
Lloyd Stowell Shapley, and others. A definition of
this value, in absolute and normalized versions, is
given here, followed by an illustrative example.
Let N5f1; 2; . . . ; ng be a set of players. A cooperative game v on N is expressed in characteristic
function form if a function v (the characteristic
function) is given that assigns a value v(S) to every
coalition S N such that vðØÞ50 .
For each coalition S of N and for each player i
belonging to S the “marginal contribution” of such
a player to S is the difference between the winning
of S and the winning of S without player i—that is,
v(S) v(S{i}).
0
The absolute Banzhaf value ðb ðvÞÞ assigns to
each player i the average of the marginal contributions to all coalitions to which the player belongs:
1
0
bi ðvÞ5
2
n21
+ ðvðSÞ 2 vðS/figÞÞ:
SN
ði2SÞ
53
In this definition, all coalitions are considered
equally probable and each player is equally likely
to enter any coalition. The absolute Banzhaf value
does not satisfy the efficiency property—that is,
the sum of the values assigned to all players
0
+ bi ðvÞ is not generally equal to the total worth of
i2N
the grand coalition vðNÞ .
The normalized Banzhaf value ðbðvÞÞ assigns to
each player i a quota of the total win v(N) proportional to the sum of all h players’ marginal contributions to all coalitions:
bi ðvÞ5K + ½vðSÞ 2 vðS/ figÞ;
SN
where K is the quotient between v(N) and the total
of marginal contributions of all players; h is the
index of players; the first summation in the
denominator is over all players h in N
K5
vðNÞ
:
+ + ½vðSÞ 2 vðS/ f hgÞ
h2N SN
The restriction of the (absolute or normalized)
Banzhaf value to simple games is known as the
(absolute or normalized) Penrose, Banzhaf, or
Penrose–Banzhaf–Coleman measure of voting power.
An Example
Consider the three-person game v({1}) v({2}) v({3}) 0, v({1, 2}) v({2, 3}) 1, v({1, 3}) 2,
v({1, 2, 3}) 3. Let us compute the absolute Banzhaf
value of player 1. There are four coalitions containing player 1: {1}, {1, 2}, {1, 3} and {1, 2, 3}. The marginal contributions of player 1 to these coalitions are
v({1}) – v(Ø) 0, v({1, 2}) – v(2) 1,
v({1, 3}) – v({3}) 2, v({1, 2, 3}) – v({2,3}) 2.
0111212 5
5 .
4
4
Let us compute the absolute Banzhaf value of
player 2. There are four coalitions containing player
2: {2}, {1, 2}, {2, 3} and {1, 2, 3}. The marginal contributions of player 2 to these coalitions are 0, 1, 1, 1.
0111111 3
Thus b02 ðvÞ5
5 . Then for player 3:
4
4
0
Thus b1 ðvÞ5
b03 ðvÞ5
0121112 5
5 .
4
4
54
Banzhaf Voting Power Measure
To calculate the normalized Banzhaf values,
we divide the absolute Banzhaf values by the coef3
3
5 . This gives b1 ðvÞ515/13,
ficient K5
51315 13
b2 ðvÞ59/13, b3 ðvÞ515/13 . Note that the sum of
these values gives exactly vðf1; 2; 3gÞ53 .
Gianfranco Gambarelli
See also Coleman Index; Shapley Value; Value of a Game
Further Readings
Banzhaf, J. F. (1965). Weighted voting doesn’t work: A
mathematical analysis. Rutgers Law Review, 19,
317–343.
Coleman, J. S. (1971). Control of collectivities and the
power of collectivity act. In B. Lieberman (Ed.), Social
choice (pp. 269–300). New York: Gordon and Breach.
Reprinted in J. S. Coleman (1986). Individual interest
and collective action. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press.
Dubey, P., & Shapley, L. S. (1979). Mathematical
properties of the Banzhaf power index. Mathematics
of Operations Research, 4, 99–131.
Penrose, L. S. (1946). The elementary statistics of
majority voting. Journal of the Royal Statistical
Society, 109, 53–57.
Van den Brink, R., & van der Laan, G. (1998).
Axiomatizations of the normalized Banzhaf value and the
Shapley value. Social Choice and Welfare, 15, 567–582.
BANZHAF VOTING
POWER MEASURE
0
The Banzhaf voting power measure (b ) is one of the
best known and most widely applied measures of a
priori voting power. Although introduced
in 1946 by Lionel Sharples Penrose, it was unknowingly and more famously reinvented by John
Banzhaf in 1965. Moreover, James S. Coleman
reinvented it once again in 1971. Thus, it is known
variously as the Banzhaf, Penrose, Penrose–Banzhaf,
or Banzhaf–Coleman–Penrose measure (or index). It
is also known as the absolute Banzhaf measure to
distinguish it from the normalized Banzhaf index
(b) introduced by subsequent authors.
The definitions of the absolute and normalized
versions of the Banzhaf measure will be presented,
links with the previously mentioned indices will be
illustrated, and some axiomatizations and algorithms will be noted. An example will be presented
in conclusion.
The essential element in the construction of both
the absolute and the normalized Banzhaf measures
is the concept of “swing.” Let N5f1; 2; . . . ; ng be
the set of members of a collectivity. A swing for
member i of N is a pair of coalitions ðS; S/figÞ
such that S is a winning coalition and S/fig
is not winning. The number of swings for each
member i is called his Banzhaf score and is
denoted by ci. For each voter i, the absolute Ban0
zhaf measure (b ) is the quotient between his
Banzhaf score and the number of pairs of complementary coalitions (or bipartitions), that is,
ci
0
n21
2 . Thus bi 5 n21 .
2
In 1979, Pradeep Dubey and Lloyd Stowell
Shapley developed an axiomatization of the Banzhaf index using four axioms. Guillermo Owen and
others have proposed successive axiomatizations.
As noted at the outset, the absolute Banzhaf
0
measure b is essentially identical to the measure r
previously proposed by Penrose. (Specifically,
0
b 52r .) Furthermore, the measures of the power to
prevent action g and the power to initiate action g
subsequently introduced by J. S. Coleman are both
0
0
rescalings of b (and r). In particular, b and both
Coleman measures are equal if every coalition or
its complement is winning (i.e., there are no blocking coalitions), otherwise b is the harmonic mean
of g and g .
The normalized Banzhaf index b is the rescaling
0
of b such that the power of all voters sums to 1.
That is, for each voter i, this index is the ratio
between his Banzhaf score and the sum of Banzhaf
scores across all voters.
Dan S. Felsenthal and Moshé Machover
have
classified b0 and b , as well as g and g , in the group
of the I-power indices (power as influence).
A key problem with the Banzhaf index regards
0
monotonicity. Both b and b are locally monotonic—
that is, if a member has greater weight than another,
the member’s index is not less. But only b0 is globally monotonic, that is, if the weight of the i-th
member increases and the weights of all other
members decrease or remain unchanged, then b0 of
Bargaining
the member i does not decrease, but this is not
generally true for b .
Numerous algorithms have been introduced to
calculate Banzhaf values given a large number of
voters. In 1962, Irwin Mann and L. S. Shapley proposed a method of calculating the Shapley–Shubik
index that uses generating functions. This method
was extended to the Banzhaf index by Steven J.
Brams and Paul J. Affuso in 1976 and was subsequently implemented by Jesús Mario Bilbao, and
others. Another algorithm, developed by Gianfranco
Gambarelli in 1996, can be applied to weighted
majority games and supplies a method for the direct
calculation of the measure’s variations in response to
variations of weight distribution among the players.
An Example
Assume that a parliament is composed of three
parties (labeled 1, 2, 3). Let (2, 1, 1) be their
respective seats. Suppose that a rule can be
approved only if the votes in favor are equal to or
greater than 3 (i.e., a simple majority). In this case,
the winning coalitions are {1, 2}, {1, 3} and {1, 2, 3}.
Party 1 has a swing for each of these three coalitions, because each of them, without it, becomes a
losing coalition; parties 2 and 3 have swings only
for {1, 2} and {1, 3} respectively. Thus c1 53, c2 51,
n21
c3 51 , S cj 55, and 2 54 . The voting powers
j2N
measured by the non normalized Banzhaf index
are b01 53/4 , b02 5b03 51/4 , whereas the powers
measured by the normalized Banzhaf index are
b1 53/5 , b2 5b3 51/5 .
Cesarino Bertini and Izabella Stach
See also Coleman Index; I-Power; Penrose Voting Power
Measure; Voting Power
Further Readings
Banzhaf, J. F. (1965). Weighted voting doesn’t work: A
mathematical analysis. Rutgers Law Review, 19,
317–343.
Banzhaf, J. F. (1966). Multi-member electoral districts:
Do they violate the “one man, one vote” principle?
Yale Law Journal, 75, 1309–1338.
Banzhaf, J. F. (1968). One man, 3.312 votes: A
mathematical analysis of the Electoral College.
Villanova Law Review, 13, 304–332.
55
Dubey, P., & Shapley, L. S. (1979). Mathematical
properties of the Banzhaf power index. Mathematics
of Operation Research, 4, 99–131.
Felsenthal, D. S., & Machover, M. (1998). The
measurement of voting power: Theory and practice,
problems and paradoxes. Cheltenham, UK: Edward
Elgar.
BARGAINING
Bargaining is a process by which a voluntary
agreement on the division of a good or the terms
of a trade or exchange is reached. The object of
the exchange can be a physical object (e.g., a
commodity), a right, or a change of behavior.
Bargaining is a ubiquitous feature of social interactions. Bargaining takes place, for example,
among businesspeople on the price of commodities, among political parties on the formation of a
government, among legislators on the contents
of a law, among nations on the resolution of a
conflict, among trade unions and employer associations on working conditions, or between an
individual employer and employee on working
hours and salary. The term negotiating is often
used synonymously.
We can distinguish between bargaining situations along several dimensions. Bargaining can be
formal or informal, bilateral or multilateral,
repeated or limited to one instance. Furthermore,
it can take place in a more or less institutionalized
context. Bargaining in a legislature, for example, is
governed by an elaborate set of rules concerning
the process in which proposals are put forward,
amendments (counterproposals) are made, and a
decision is reached. This is not the case with bargaining at a bazaar where the interaction is structured only (if at all) by custom. In settings where
decisions are made by a formal vote, agreement
can be reached by a simple majority, qualified
majority, or unanimity. Bargaining on treaties is
usually based on the consent of all bargaining partners: thus, the decision rule is unanimity. This gives
all parties involved veto power. Bargaining in
legislatures, on the other hand, often uses majority
rule, with qualified majorities (e.g., two-thirds
majority) for particularly important bills (e.g., constitutional amendments). Consequently, some
56
Bargaining
members of the legislative body can be overruled
by the majority. Furthermore, some members
might enjoy procedural privileges such as agendasetting power. Finally, we can distinguish among
bargaining situations based on the nature of the
issue(s) at hand. Bargaining can be limited to one
issue or involve several. The good may or may not
be divisible. In the legislative context, policies can
allocate funding ([re-]distributive) or set rules
(regulatory).
The outcome of a bargaining process can be
evaluated for its efficiency and the distribution of
benefits. Efficiency refers to the minimization of
the costs of the bargaining process (transaction
and opportunity costs) and the realization of
maximum surplus. The latter includes the avoidance of non-agreement when a trade would have
been mutually beneficial (bargaining failure). Distribution refers to the division of the surplus
gained from cooperation or coordination (in contrast to unilateral action). The distributive consequences of an agreement are influenced by the
bargaining power of the actors involved.
The Negotiator’s Dilemma
Bargaining is typically characterized as a mixedmotive situation. Bargaining partners can create
value by changing the current situation in a mutually beneficial way, but have divergent interests
regarding the exact terms of the agreement. For
example, a potential buyer of a commodity might
value an object more than its owner does. In other
words, the reserve price of the seller (the minimum
price at which the seller is willing to sell an object)
is lower than the reserve price of the buyer (the
maximum price he or she is willing to pay). The
difference between the two is the potential joint
surplus from a trade. If this value is positive, both
have an interest in reaching agreement to realize
this joint surplus. However, the buyer would like
to keep the price as low as possible, whereas the
opposite is true for the seller. In other words, buyer
and seller have a common interest in the production of a surplus but diametrically opposed interests with regard to its distribution. The tension
between the desire to find an agreement to create
value and to maximize the individual share of its
distribution is referred to as the negotiator’s
dilemma. Tactics aimed at furthering the latter
goal (e.g., misrepresentation of preferences, threats,
etc.) might jeopardize the former. This also implies
that bargaining tends to be inefficient in the sense
that valuable time and resources are spent on a
“dance of concessions” (in Raiffa’s phrase) rather
than reaching agreement instantaneously. Bargaining success is also threatened if the involved parties
cannot credibly commit to keeping their side of the
deal. Recourse to third parties (e.g., a judicial
system) can ameliorate this problem. In some
instances, third parties can also facilitate reaching
an agreement by mediating between the bargaining
partners.
The Bargaining Space
Bargaining can only be successful if a common
interest exists. Figure 1 illustrates the basic bargaining setting for two actors, A and B, whose
consent is necessary for joint or coordinated
action.
The horizontal axis denotes the utility B would
derive from an agreement and the vertical axis
denotes A’s utility. Thus, any given point shows
the utility A and B would derive from a particular
agreement. A prefers agreements toward the top
of the graph whereas B would like to see an agreement as far as possible to the right. The crosshatched area represents all feasible agreements.
Some agreements might be highly desirable but
are simply out of the reach of the actors. For
example, the quantity of a good a firm can possibly produce and thus sell to an interested party is
limited because the resources used in the production of the good are finite. Similarly, the price a
buyer can pay is limited by the buyer’s budget and
credit line. Another example would be logistical
difficulties that limit the speed with which armies
can be withdrawn from a territory as part of a
ceasefire agreement. Note that the utility an actor
associates with any given agreement can depend
on a number of factors. For example, a buyer’s
utility from a purchase depends on the price,
quantity, and quality of a good. Similarly, the
evaluation by a government of a disarmament
treaty could depend among other things on the
number and type of arms being reduced, the time
frame, and the verification procedure. A widely
shared assumption is that bargaining is effectively
limited to agreements that make both bargaining
Bargaining
A’s utility
57
B’s reserve level
Zone of possible
agreement
Nash bargaining solution
Pareto frontier
A’s reserve level
Non-agreement
B’s utility
Feasible agreements
Figure 1
A bilateral bargaining situation and the Nash bargaining solution
partners better off relative to the Best Alternative
To Non-Agreement (BATNA). This could simply
be the continuation of the present situation (status quo). The broken lines represent the utility
each actor would receive in the absence of an
agreement, for example, from acting unilaterally
(reserve level). The zone of possible agreement
(or bargaining space) is the subset of feasible
agreements that gives all the actors whose consent is necessary a higher utility than they could
achieve in the absence of an agreement. This is
the crosshatched area in Figure 1. A subset of the
zone of possible agreements is the so-called
Pareto frontier. This is the set of agreements that
is Pareto-optimal. An agreement is Pareto-optimal if any change would make at least one of the
involved actors worse off. Movements toward
the Pareto frontier create value for both parties
(although possibly to different degrees), whereas
a movement along the Pareto frontier would only
redistribute value.
Models of Bargaining and
Bargaining Power
Several game-theoretic models of bargaining have
been proposed to capture the strategic aspect of
negotiations. The Nash bargaining solution (NBS)
is based on cooperative game theory. The NBS
derives a unique solution for a bilateral bargaining
situation based on a set of axioms. These axioms
imply that the actors strive to reach the Pareto frontier and disregard irrelevant alternatives (e.g., additions to the feasible set that are Pareto-inferior). It
is also assumed that the utilities completely reflect
the evaluation of various options by the actors (e.g.,
attitude toward risk). The NBS is the maximum of
the product of the gains in utility (relative to the
58
Bargaining
security level) for both actors, possibly weighted by
the actor’s bargaining power. If both actors have
equal bargaining power, they effectively split the
difference of the surplus. This equal division of
created surplus is represented in Figure 2 with the
dotted diagonal starting at the point of no agreement. The 45-degree angle indicates that each
move toward the Pareto frontier gives an equal
share of the surplus to both parties. The point
where this line crosses the Pareto frontier is the
NBS. If A has more bargaining power than B, then
the line would slope upward, and vice versa. Note
that an equal split of the surplus relative to the
point of no agreement does not necessarily imply
equal utility in absolute terms. John Harsanyi has
shown that the NBS is equivalent to the outcome
of a bargaining model suggested by F. Zeuthen. In
this model, both players make proposals until one
of them accepts the proposal of the other. If neither
makes a concession (i.e., moves his or her proposal
toward the last proposal of the other player), bargaining breaks down, and conflict ensues. According to the Zeuthen–Harsanyi model, the player
whose cost of accepting the opponent’s suggestion
is lower (rather than insisting on his or her own
suggestion) relative to the cost of conflict, makes a
concession. Harsanyi offers a psychological interpretation of this bargaining behavior.
A seminal bargaining model based on noncooperative game theory is Ariel Rubinstein’s alternating offer model. The bargaining partners alternate
in making offers to each other. Actors are assumed
to be impatient; the value of later agreements is
discounted relative to earlier ones. If impatience is
sufficiently small, the solution of this game
approaches the NBS. David Baron and John Ferejohn have proposed an influential model of multilateral bargaining in which the probability that an
actor is recognized to make a proposal differs.
Several determinants of the distribution of the surplus have been derived from these and related
game-theoretical models. In general, the share of
the surplus one actor receives increases as his or
her eagerness for striking a deal decreases. Thus,
an actor who is patient can stick to maximal
demands whereas an impatient actor is more willing to make concessions to reach agreement early.
Similarly, a bargaining partner is stronger if he or
she enjoys a valuable inside option. Inside options
refer to the benefits an actor receives during the
bargaining while the current situation prevails.
The distributive properties of bargaining outcomes
are not just affected by the valuation the actors
attach to various agreements but also to events
outside of the negotiations. For example, the less
an actor is concerned about exogenous factors that
would end the negotiations (bargaining breakdown), the stronger the actor’s bargaining position
is. Also, new outside options might become available. For example, while a buyer and a seller are
bargaining, a new customer may make an offer.
The position of the bargaining partner is strengthened if the value of the outside option (i.e., the new
offer) is higher than the previous best alternative to
non-agreement (i.e., no deal).
This is illustrated in Figure 2 where the new
outside option increases the value of non-agreement
(NA) for B. Subsequently, the outcome as determined by the NBS would change. Relative to the
original solution B benefits whereas A loses. Similarly, an actor could gain a bargaining advantage
by decreasing the reserve level of the other actor
(e.g., by foreclosing its outside option). Thomas
Schelling has highlighted the use of commitment
strategies to influence the distribution of the
potential bargaining surplus (“paradox of weakness”). If an actor can eliminate some possible
agreements that are unfavorable to him or her as
principally “unacceptable” or unfeasible, the actor
can restrict the bargaining space in favor of his
or her position. In international negotiations, for
example, a government might credibly commit
itself to certain demands relative to its domestic
constituency to tie its hands and gain an advantage at the international stage. This is related to
the notion of two-level games in international
relations.
Typically, bargaining partners do not know
each other’s reserve level. This gives an incentive to
misrepresent it to gain a bargaining advantage.
Player B in Figure 2 might, for example, just pretend that there was an alternative offer from a
third party that led to a shift in his or her reserve
level. As previously discussed, this would probably
increase B’s share of the surplus. So far, we have
assumed that no deals are possible unless they represent utility gains relative to the point of no agreement for both bargaining partners. Side payments
and issue linkage are two mechanisms to allow
bargaining partners to increase their welfare even
Bargaining
A’s utility
59
B’s new
reserve
level
B’s original
reserve
level
Original NBS
New NBS
Pareto frontier
NA
New NA
A’s reserve level
B’s utility
Figure 2
The distributive consequences of outside options
when this is not the case. Consider the scenario in
Figure 3 where only two agreements (x, y) are feasible. UCA denotes the change in A’s utility if y is
adopted, UCB is the equivalent utility change for B.
In this scenario, A would not support y because it
would make A worse off than would non-agreement.
However, B’s utility gain from adopting y exceeds A’s
loss (|UCB||UCA|). Thus, B could get A’s approval
by compensating A sufficiently via a side payment.
The dotted diagonal represents the welfare boundary. Agreements on this line give the same utility to
both bargaining partners jointly as non-agreement.
For any agreement to the top and right of the welfare boundary, the joint utility exceeds the joint
utility of non-agreement and an agreement could
be struck with the help of side payments. Similarly,
A and B could agree on both x and y (issue-linkage), which would result in the outcome of z for
their utility. The utility gain of B from y would
offset B’s utility loss from x. In the same manner,
the utility gain of A from x would offset A’s utility
loss from y. Logrolling (or vote trading) has the
same effect. It is based on the idea that two bargaining partners might value two issues differently
and hence are willing to make concessions on one
issue in return for the other party’s concession on
the other issue.
Bargaining involving several bargaining partners (multilateral negotiations) encompasses the
same issues. In contrast to bilateral bargaining,
though, the bargaining space tends to be smaller
and the transaction costs of bargaining tend to be
higher. Furthermore, the formation of a bargaining
coalition is thought of as a crucial step in multilateral negotiations, but is not relevant in bilateral
bargaining.
The literature on bargaining in the field of
social psychology points out that humans are
not perfectly rational decision makers who form
the basis of game-theoretical models. Several cognitive biases have been identified that can influence
bargaining behavior. For example, bargaining
60
Bargaining
A’s utility
B’s reserve level
x
z
A’s reserve level
Non-agreement
UCA
B’s utility
UCB
y
Welfare boundary
Figure 3
Side payments and issue linkage
partners are biased by their own position and
value self-serving information more highly than
they objectively should (egocentrism). Furthermore, humans seem to behave differently toward
risk depending on whether they perceive the bargaining object as entailing gains or losses (framing
effect). In addition, negotiators tend to be unduly
influenced by the early phases of bargaining
(anchoring effect) and do not adjust their perception and behavior in a completely rational manner.
Finally, negotiators can be too focused on the competitive dimension of bargaining (fixed-pie perception) and subsequently fail to realize mutually
beneficial outcomes. Psychologists also argue that
the relationship between bargaining partners and
the social context influences the bargaining process. Other work addresses the medium of bargaining and cross-cultural differences.
Andreas Warntjen
See also Bargaining in International Relations
Further Readings
Bazerman, N., Curhan, J. D., Moore, D. A., & Valley, K.
L. (2000). Negotiation. Annual Review of Psychology,
51, 279–314.
Brams, S. (2003). Negotiation games. London: Routledge.
Hopmann, P. T. (1998). The negotiation process and the
resolution of international conflict. Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press.
Muthoo, A. (1999). Bargaining theory with applications.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Raiffa, H. (2002). Negotiation analysis. Cambridge, MA:
Belknap.
Scharpf, F. (1997). Games real actors play: Actor-centered
institutionalism in policy research. Boulder, CO:
Westview Press.
Schelling, T. (1960). The strategy of conflict. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press.
Thomson, L., & Loewenstein, J. (2003). Mental models
of negotiation. In M. A. Hogg & J. Cooper (Eds.), The
Sage handbook of social psychology (pp. 494–511).
Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Young, H. P. (1991). Negotiation analysis. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press.
Bargaining in International Relations
BARGAINING
RELATIONS
IN INTERNATIONAL
Bargaining—whether over arms control, the terms
of a peace settlement, exchange rate coordination,
alliances, or trade agreements—is a central feature
of international relations. In the past decades, the
literature on bargaining in international relations
has seen much interesting research and has been at
the forefront of formal work in international relations. Because bargaining is an activity in which
the strategic interdependence of decision making
is central, much of the literature is based on gametheoretic modeling.
Bargaining is the negotiation over the terms of
an agreement. Although often more than one agreement exists that two or more actors would prefer to
no agreement, the actors disagree regarding their
ranking of the mutually preferable agreement.
Moreover, bargaining involves interdependent
actions. In other words, the decisions made by one
actor will depend largely on the actual or likely
decisions made by another actor. In addition, bargaining often has “rules of the game.” For example,
actors can make demands or offers simultaneously,
one actor could make a demand or offer and the
other accepts or rejects (a so-called take-it-orleave-it game), or the actors can make demands or
offers sequentially. This brings us to another feature of bargaining: it is often dynamic. Finally,
bargaining typically involves uncertainty about the
other actor’s preferences.
In sum, the process of bargaining in international relations is complex, and the literature on the
topic spans the fields of history, economics, political
science, and international relations. As we will see,
conventional measures of power (physical strength
or financial resources) are an important, but certainly not the only determinant of bargaining
power. Issues such as credibility, multiple bargaining levels, enforcement possibilities, asymmetric
information, indivisibility, commitment problems,
political bias, and the social context all affect the
bargaining outcome in important ways.
Bargaining and Credibility
Thomas Schelling’s 1960 book, The Strategy of Conflict, remains the classic work on bargaining in international relations. He argues that bargaining power
61
depends largely on the credibility of threats and
promises. Greater physical power or more financial
resources are by no means the only advantages in
bargaining situations. On the contrary, Schelling
argues that in some situations, restricting one’s
options may be beneficial. Weakness may be strength
because it can force others to make concessions.
Schelling illustrates this concept through the
example of a union bargaining with management.
If the union insists on, say, $2 and expects the
management to counter with $1.60, persuading
the management to pay $2 is not the only option
available to the union. Schelling argues that the
union should lead the management to believe that
it could not accept less than $2 even if it wished to.
The union may, for example, argue that it no longer controls its members. By portraying its own
weakness and confronting management with the
threat of a strike the union itself cannot avert, the
threat is made credible. The paradoxical result is
that in bargaining, weakness is often strength. We
also find this dynamic in international relations. In
a seminal 1994 article, James D. Fearon illustrates
how audience costs, the cost statespeople suffer
among their constituency of backing down after
escalating a conflict, can make actions such as
troop mobilization and other forms of escalation
credible signals. As we shall see later, states can
often deliberately restrict their options in order to
achieve better bargaining outcomes.
Bargaining at Multiple Levels
As the last example demonstrates, bargaining in
international relations often occurs at more than
one level. At the international level, a statesperson
may bargain over an agreement with fellow statespeople, while bargaining with domestic constituents over the ratification of such an agreement.
Thus, the statesperson must consider the interests
of international actors, while considering pressures
from different domestic actors, each pressuring the
statesperson to adopt policies favorable to its
interests. Robert Putnam labeled this the two-level
game. The introduction of the domestic level of
bargaining made an important contribution to the
literature on bargaining in international relations. It
also challenged the state-centered approach of realism and neorealism, which conceive states as unitary
rational actors. Conceiving bargaining as a multilevel game enriches the level of strategic interaction,
62
Bargaining in International Relations
which Putnam analyzed using win-sets, which are
the sets of possible agreements at the international
level that would find the necessary approval at the
domestic level. In other words, larger win-sets
make agreements more likely because they leave
more room for agreement. Conversely, if the winsets of two negotiators do not overlap, no agreement will be reached.
The less “powerful” a negotiator is, the more
bargaining power he or she may have. That is, being
under severe domestic constraints, and therefore
having a small domestic win-set, can be a bargaining
advantage to a statesperson because it limits what
he or she can promise at the international level.
Similarly, just as domestic constraints can improve
statespeople’s international bargaining power, international constraints can enhance the bargaining
power of the statespeople at home. Indeed, international negotiations sometimes enable government
leaders to do what they privately wish to do, but
would otherwise be powerless to do domestically.
Finally, negotiators have a strong interest in the
domestic support of their bargaining counterpart. If
the domestic support of bargaining partners
increases, so does the size of their win-set, thereby
increasing the likelihood of reaching an agreement,
and the relative bargaining leverage of the other
state. Negotiators in international relations are
therefore to be expected to try to reinforce one
another’s standing with their respective constituents.
Bargaining and International Cooperation
Bargaining over an agreement is often only a first
step. States need to look at the future monitoring
and enforcement of any agreement reached. An
agreement reached in principle is not worth the
paper it is written on if it cannot be enforced in
practice. This second stage of bargaining is
addressed by cooperation theory. Compliance with
agreements, according to cooperation theory, is
akin to the prisoner’s dilemma. States may have an
incentive to keep their end of the bargain, but only
if the other side is likely to do so as well. Cooperation under the security dilemma can be sustained if
states interact over a long span of time. States can
deter defection from a bargain through conditional
retaliation such as tit-for-tat. A key condition for
such mechanisms to work is that states should care
sufficiently about future payoffs. This is often
described as “the shadow of the future.” If the utility of future cooperation is greater than the utility
of immediate defection and subsequent punishment, cooperation can be sustained.
In an important 1998 article, Fearon explains
how the shadow of the future can affect international bargaining. First, in cases where effective
monitoring of an agreement is not possible, statespeople know that no bargaining agreement will be
enforceable. Consequently, it is possible to observe
nonserious bargaining in which states will only
commit to vague agreements for various political
purposes, or there will be no bargaining at all.
Second, and more interestingly, although better
monitoring and a long shadow of the future may
make enforcing an international agreement easier,
it also gives states an incentive to bargain harder,
delaying agreement in hopes of getting a better
deal. That is, the more the future is valued, the
greater are the incentives for states to bargain hard
for favorable terms. It is therefore possible to
observe costly, noncooperative standoffs in precisely those situations where cooperation theorists
predict cooperation—that is, in situations where
the shadow of the future is long and there are
potential mutual gains from an agreement.
Bargaining and War
A great deal of work on international relations
bargaining has dealt with war. This topic is also at
the forefront of game-theoretic modeling in international relations. In a seminal 1995 article, Fearon
illustrates the central puzzle about war. When a
war is costly to its parties, each side would have
been better off if they could have achieved the same
outcome without suffering the costs. Consequently,
war should be considered as a bargaining breakdown. Figure 1 illustrates. States A and B compete
over a piece of territory that covers 0 to 1. Initially,
state A (B) owns part 0 to x (x to 1). If country A
fights, it wins the whole territory (0 to 1) with
probability p. However, fighting results in a cost
equal to cA (cB) to state A (B). Accordingly, the
payoff for fighting for country A (B) is given by 0
to p – cA (p cB to 1). The central puzzle about
war is this ex post inefficiency because any settlement between p – cA and p cB is preferred by
both parties over fighting. Why then does war, as
a bargaining breakdown, occur? Fearon suggests
63
Bargaining in International Relations
that there can be only three rationalist explanations for war: asymmetric information, indivisibility, and commitment problems.
Asymmetric Information
Asymmetric information occurs when one state
knows more about its capabilities than does the
other. According to Fearon, asymmetric information can lead to war. Indeed, if both sides knew
who was going to win a war, they would not
bother fighting it. But to know which side would
win the war, there must be symmetric information
between potential belligerents. For example, suppose state A makes a take-it-or-leave-it offer, which
B can accept or reject by fighting. If the states have
complete information, then A will make the largest
demand that B will accept (p cB). B will accept
because it can’t do better by fighting. However, if
A is unsure about B’s cost of fighting (cB), A no
longer knows what to ask without provoking war.
There is now a trade-off for state A between
obtaining better terms and a higher probability
that war will occur. Conversely, in misperceiving
the capabilities of its opponent, B may mistakenly
opt for war. Most tragically, information asymmetries are difficult to overcome because states have
incentives to misrepresent their capabilities to
achieve better bargaining outcomes. Thus, although
states may want to avoid war, they often choose
not to be completely transparent.
finer graded divisions or compromise—then there may
not be any feasible outcome that both states prefer to
fighting. If the issue allows only a finite number of
resolutions, it might be that none falls within the bargaining range (p – cA and p cB). However, although
this is a potential reason why rational states may
go to war, Fearon does not find this explanation
compelling. The issues over which states bargain
typically are multidimensional. Side payments or
linkages with other issues typically are possible.
Also, states could alternate or randomize among a
fixed number of possible solutions to a dispute.
Empirically, therefore, all issues can be divided.
Commitment Problems
Finally, war may occur if states cannot credibly
commit themselves to follow through on a negotiated agreement. That is, mutually preferable bargains may be unattainable because one or more
states has an incentive to renege on the terms. The
prisoner’s dilemma is the classic example of this
problem. Although both actors prefer the cooperative outcome to mutual defection, both have an
incentive to renege. Commitment problems are
usually illustrated in a dynamic bargaining setting.
If state B is expected to decline in military power
(p2 p1), and if state A cannot commit itself not to
exploit the greater bargaining leverage it will have
starting in the second period, a preventive attack
may be rational for state B.
Indivisibility
Political Bias
The indivisibility of issues can also lead to
war. If states A and B bargain over an issue that
is indivisible—some issues maybe do not admit
Recently, Matthew O. Jackson and Massimo
Morelli argued that political bias may also lead
to war. It is possible that a pivotal decision
0
x
A’s status quo payoff
A’s payoff from fighting
Figure 1
The bargaining range
Source: Adapted from Fearon (1995).
p cA
p
p cB
1
B’s status quo payoff
B’s payoff from fighting
64
Barry, Brian
maker—whether an executive, a monarch, the
median member of an oligarchy, or the median
voter—might have relative benefits or costs of war
that are different from the state at large. In an
authoritarian regime, for example, a leader might
keep a disproportionate share of the gains of war.
Jackson and Morelli show that, given sufficient bias
by one or both countries, war cannot be prevented
by any transfer payment. Interestingly, they also
show that a country may choose a biased leader
because it will lead to a stronger bargaining position.
Social Context and Bargaining
Most of the literature on bargaining in international relations takes relations among states as a
function of the material capabilities and interests
of nations. However, interstate relations are often
embedded in socially constructed norms. This
social context can play a role in shaping international bargaining outcomes. In an important article, Leonard Schoppa introduces the social context
in the field of international bargaining and argues
how issues such as identity, trust, and norms influence bargaining. The amount of trust among bargaining parties, for example, can dramatically
affect the likelihood of achieving cooperative
agreements. In addition, in the context of bargaining, threats that are perceived as “fair” (e.g., in
accord with procedural rules stipulated under an
international regime) are more likely to be effective
in extracting concessions. These examples illustrate how the social context might have an effect
on bargaining in international relations, independent of the power and interests of the players.
Conclusion
Bargaining in international relations is at the forefront of (formal) research in international relations. Bargaining can take place in different policy
dimensions, with two or more players, at more
than two levels, with single or repeated interactions, with perfect or asymmetric information,
social context, and so on. Great insights have
been generated by the literature on bargaining in
international relations. These insights have also
paved the way for future potential empirical
work.
Peter van der Windt
See also Bargaining; Cooperation; Game-Theoretical
Approaches to Power; Nash Equilibrium; Neorealism;
Prisoner’s Dilemma; Realism in International Relations
Further Readings
Fearon, J. D. (1994). Domestic political audiences and
the escalation of international disputes. American
Political Science Review, 88(3), 577–592.
Fearon, J. D. (1995). Rationalist explanations for war.
International Organization, 49(3), 379–414.
Fearon, J. D. (1998). Bargaining, enforcement, and
international cooperation. International Organization,
52(2), 269–305.
Jackson, M. O., & Morelli. M. (2007). Political bias and
war. American Economic Review, 97(4), 1353–1373.
Putnam, R. D. (1988). Diplomacy and domestic politics:
The logic of two-level games. International
Organization, 42(3), 427–460.
Schelling, T. C. (1960). The strategy of conflict.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
BARRY, BRIAN (1936–2009)
Brian Barry is one of the most influential political
scientists of the last 50 years and in 2001 was made
the seventh recipient of the Johan Skytte Prize in
political science. In addition to his work on justice,
rational choice theory, and multiculturalism, Barry
wrote several essays on political power—a number
of which have been reprinted in Democracy, Power
and Justice: Essays in Political Theory (1989).
Barry’s first contribution to the study of power
was a methodological one. In the 1970s, he was
one of the first political scientists to apply to the
study of political power some of the analytical
tools used by economists to study markets and
exchange. In “Power: An Economic Analysis”
(1975), he poses a series of questions about the
nature of power and the relationship between having and exercising power. He says that it is his
intention to “dissolve the puzzlement that such
questions reflect” not through the “orthodox” linguistic approach of grappling with the nuances of
meaning but through the construction of a “model
designed to give insight into the processes involved.”
This model, which makes use of such concepts as
ordinal and cardinal utility and equilibrium, is
presented for the reader through a series of 15
Barry, Brian
diagrams. Looked at today, the essay appears
unexceptional because a number of rational choice
theorists apply the methods of economics to the
study of power. Barry was, however, one of the
first to appreciate both the possibilities and limitations of this economic approach.
Barry’s other principal contribution revolves
around the distinction between power and luck.
People are successful to the extent that they get the
outcomes that correspond to their preferences.
People are lucky to the extent that they are successful without having to do anything. The difference
between people’s success and their luck is their decisiveness (luck decisiveness success). When it is
expressed in this way, decisiveness appears to be a
property of individuals. Yet, Barry is also clear that
there may be situations in which a group collectively brings about an outcome though no one person is decisive. If a bloc of voters always agree with
each other and together constitute substantially
more than a majority, then as long as each of them
votes, no one member of the bloc will make any
difference to the overall result even though each
member of the group will always be successful.
What of political power? Power is related to but
is not the same as decisiveness. The difference
between the two is that although decisiveness is a
probability, power is a capacity. An actor’s power
is his or her ability to overcome resistance—not
the actor’s probability of encountering and overcoming resistance. To see what is at stake here,
consider the position of an omnipotent dictator.
We would want to say that the dictator is powerful. But imagine a situation in which the dictator
happens to live in a society in which everyone else
already wants what it is that the dictator also happens to want. In such a situation, the dictator
would be very lucky but completely indecisive
because his or her luck would be entirely responsible for the dictator’s success. If we were to equate
power with decisiveness, we would then be forced
to conclude that the dictator is powerless. What is
missing here is the relevant counterfactual. The
dictator is powerful because, even if every other
person in the society had the opposite set of preferences, the dictator could still bring about the outcome he or she wanted. The important lesson to be
drawn is that power is an “inherently counterfactual notion.”
Is it better to be powerful or lucky? Given any
amount of luck, it is always better to be more
65
powerful than less because the more powerful
you are, the better your chances are of being decisive and so being successful. But unless the possession of power is to be valued as an end in itself
rather than as a means to an end, is there any
necessary reason why it is better to be powerful
than lucky? The answer is that it is better to be
powerful than lucky if you are unsure whether
your preferences will continue to be the same as
those of the people on whom you currently rely.
Someone who is successful today because he or
she is lucky may well be unlucky and unsuccessful
tomorrow. People who are successful today
because they are powerful need not depend on
their luck holding.
In a more recent essay, Barry (2002) argues that
capitalists are powerful rather than lucky. The
definition of power Barry employs here is similar
to that used in the earlier article. Power is “the
ability to bring about desired states of the world
. . . by acting in such a way as to overcome the
resistance of others.” When power is defined in
this way, it is plausible to argue that the option of
voting for another party gives voters power over a
democratically elected government and that the
option of buying a product from another firm (or
not buying it at all) gives consumers power over
firms. This is pretty much standard liberal fare.
The interesting argument is that for much the
same reasons capitalists are not simply lucky in
wanting what it is that governments want but that
they also have power over governments. If it
makes sense to argue that consumers are powerful
even if they do not formally have to write to a firm
to say that they are going withdraw their custom
unless the firm lowers its price or raises its quality,
it also makes sense to argue that capitalists are
powerful even if they do not have to threaten to
withhold their investments unless offered some
policy concessions. Furthermore, if it makes sense
to argue that voters are powerful even if no single
person’s vote can make any difference to an election result, it also makes sense to say that capitalists are collectively powerful even if no single firm
acting alone can change the course of government
policy.
Andrew Hindmoor
See also Banzhof Value; Distributive Justice; Dowding,
Keith; Luck; Systematic Luck
66
Bases of Power
Further Readings
Barry, B. (1989). Democracy, power and justice: Essays in
political theory. Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press.
Barry, B. (2002). Capitalists rule OK? Some puzzles about
power. Politics, Philosophy and Economics, 1, 155–184.
BASES
OF
POWER
The ability to get others to do one’s will is known
as social power. Social power consists of the available tools one person has to exert influence over
another. It is the potential resources (which may or
may not be used) that one has at one’s command
that can lead to an actual change (or deliberate
maintenance) in the beliefs, attitudes, behavior,
emotions, and so on in another person. Much of
human interaction involves attempts to change or
maintain beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors in
another, so this topic has long been of interest to
social psychologists. Because of this, there have
been a number of investigations using different
definitions of social power, and investigations
using different ways of measuring power. However, the approach most commonly used in the
social psychological and industrial/organizational
literature was proposed by John R. P. French Jr.
and Bertram H. Raven in the 1950s. French and
Raven identified specific social resources that people might possess that they could use to influence
others; French and Raven called these resources
the bases of power: informational, reward, coercion, legitimacy, expertise, and referent. Based on
an early paper, some researchers omit informational, which was later listed as a base of power.
With additional research, there has been continual development of the bases of power. Now the
bases of power include the original six resources as
a broad framework, but some of these resources
have been further differentiated.
Origins of the Bases of Power
The bases of power concept was developed at the
Research Center for Group Dynamics at the University of Michigan in the early 1950s. Raven was
a graduate student there working closely with
Leon Festinger, who was Raven’s PhD dissertation
advisor at the time. During this period, Festinger
wrote an article concerning some of the reasons
people agree to do things. In the article, he
observed that when offered a reward or threatened
with punishment, people will often change their
behavior, but only when those trying to influence
them can observe them—when not being observed,
the requested behavior stops. However, Festinger
also found that sometimes the new behavior continued whether or not someone was being observed.
In this case, it appeared that personal beliefs as
well as behavior had changed.
Raven’s dissertation (completed with French as
his advisor when Festinger left for the University of
Minnesota) was, in part, based on factors that distinguished behavior change requiring continued
observation from change that did not. After
Festinger left Michigan, Raven and French began
to look at additional factors that affected changes
in personal beliefs from those that only affected
observable behavior. With the leadership of Dorwin Cartwright, at this point most of the members
of the Research Center for Group Dynamics began
to study social power.
As members of the group, French and Raven
continued their investigations into social power.
Because of French’s extensive background in industrial and organizational psychology, they concentrated on the relationship between supervisors and
subordinates in a work environment. Using the
work environment as a guide while examining both
the experimental literature and their own experiences, they developed the bases of power model.
Bases of Power Defined and Explained
In the power literature, the person who is the
source of influence is commonly known as the
influencing agent, and the object of the attempted
or successful influence is commonly known the
target (of influence). Thus, influencing agents have
social power, which are the means they may use to
influence targets. As discussed, six bases of power
were included in French and Raven’s original statement. Additional research led to continued development of the typology, and these original bases
were further differentiated.
Socially Independent and
Socially Dependent Change
The base (or bases) of power chosen for an
influence attempt can have a number of effects on
Bases of Power
the target in addition to the intended effect to persuade. One such effect that French and Raven
described is in the difference between socially independent and socially dependent change. A successful socially independent influence attempt leads to
a change in the beliefs of the target, and as such,
the change that occurs in the target does not
require the target to refer, remember, or necessarily
think about the agent of change. By contrast,
socially dependent change does require the target
to connect the change to the influencing agent in
some way.
To illustrate: some people wear motorcycle helmets because at some point in the past, they were
convinced that wearing a helmet is a good thing to
do. Because these people believe that helmets make
riding safer, they wear them because they want to.
Thus, their change is socially independent; they do
not need continued outside influence to compel
them to wear a helmet. But other motorcyclists do
not believe helmets make riding safer, and they
may believe that helmets are dangerous. Yet in
states where a police officer has the legitimate
authority to require motorcyclists to wear a helmet, they will do so. As long as the police have that
authority, these motorcyclists will wear their helmets while riding. Take the authority of the police
to require helmets away (as in states that do not
require helmets), and the helmet comes off. In this
case, the change (wearing a helmet) is connected to
the police (and the authority they have), thus it is
socially dependent.
Power That Leads to Socially
Independent Change
Informational Power
Informational power has the property of being
a socially independent source of influence. Informational power, or persuasion, is based on the
information or logical argument that the agent can
present to the target. Information can be presented
directly by the agent, indirectly through a third
party, or by the agent suggesting that he or she
overheard someone else giving such an argument.
Evidence indicates that in certain cases, information presented indirectly as an overheard
conversation may be more effective than is information presented directly. In the latter case, the
target may show reactance (which is resisting
influence because the influence attempt may
67
threaten the target’s sense of independence). Presenting information indirectly avoids the possibility of reactance. No matter how it is presented,
however, if successful, informational power has
advantages because it leads to more a permanent
cognitive change, a personal acceptance of the
changed behavior by the target.
Power That Leads to Socially Dependent Change
With Surveillance Necessary
Coercive Power
The threat of punishment is the basis of coercive
power. The influencing agent brings about a
change in the target by threatening the target with
some sort of negative or undesirable consequences
for not doing what the influencing agent wants.
Though it can be very effective, coercive power
carries with it certain problems and dangers. It
depends on the target expecting that his or her
compliance will be monitored or observed by the
agent. If the threat of being observed is removed,
the behavior itself may also cease. Another negative effect of coercion is that the target will generally resent and dislike such threats and the agent
who might use them.
Reward Power
Reward power stems from the agent’s ability to
grant some reward to the target, such as a promise
of promotion or offering of certain privileges for
complying with a request. Reward power also
requires surveillance of the target, but surveillance
is usually less difficult than with coercion. Here,
the target will generally attempt to let the agent
know that compliance has occurred and the
reward is due. Reward power also may lead to
more positive feelings toward the agent.
In French and Raven’s original statement, both
reward and coercive power were defined in terms
of tangible physical rewards and real physical
threats such as being fired or fined, monetary
rewards, and job bonuses or promotion. Later, it
became clear that both reward and coercion may
have more personal forms, and these personal
forms could also serve as powerful tools for influence. Thus, potential approval and liking can be
seen as very rewarding; disapproval and personal
rejection can be very punishing. So both reward
power and coercive power were later distinguished
68
Bases of Power
along the lines of impersonal coercion and impersonal reward, which concern tangible physical
matters, and personal coercion and personal
reward, which involve intangible personal concerns such as liking. Considering personal as well
as impersonal rewards and punishments helped
researchers better understand certain forms of
influence where surveillance was important, but
that had previously been confused with referent
power (referent power is discussed below).
Power That Leads to Socially Dependent Change
With Surveillance Unnecessary
As discussed, coercive power and reward power
are distinguished in that their effectiveness requires
that the target feel that the degree of his or her
compliance with the influencing agent’s request
will be discernible to the agent. Thus, surveillance
or observability of the target becomes critical. For
the bases of power to be discussed (expert, legitimate, and referent), surveillance by the influencing
agent is not important. However, even though
surveillance is not necessary for expert and referent and legitimate power, it is still important that
the target relate the changed behavior to the agent
in some way. Using expert power as an example: if
your uncle asks you to drive your new car gently
until it is broken in, and if you trust your uncle
(and you care about your car), you will comply
with his request. However, if you later hear differently from someone you trust more (such as your
longtime mechanic), you will probably just drive
your new car normally. In the preceding example,
surveillance is not necessary because, with respect
to the influencing agent, there is no reward or punishment involved. However, the success of the
influence attempt (by the uncle or mechanic) is
socially dependent because it depends on qualities
that the influencing agent is perceived to possess
(in this case trustworthiness, credibility, and perceived automotive expertise).
Expert Power
This form of power (as it was used in the earlier
example) shares some of the positive qualities of
informational power in that it can result in a transformation of a person’s beliefs, with the resulting
personal acceptance of the change. However, it
differs from informational power in that the target
does not need to be convinced by argument or
rationale for the change per se. Indeed, with effective use of expert power, no argument or rational
is necessary. Instead, the target accepts on faith the
accuracy and propriety of the suggestions or
advice, trusting in the superior knowledge or ability and truthfulness of the influencing agent: it is if
targets are saying to themselves, “He or she knows
best, even if I don’t entirely understand why, but
because they are the experts I’ll do what they say.”
Referent Power
Referent power is based on the target of influence positively identifying with the influencing
agent. If the influencing agent possesses referent
power, this leads the target to have a sense of “oneness” and mutuality, or a desire for such a relationship. So if the influencing agent is someone that the
target likes, admires, or feels very positive about,
this gives the influencing agent referent power with
respect to that target. The target wants to do what
the influencing agent wants, because of its feelings
of oneness, mutuality, or a desire to feel a sense of
oneness or mutuality. For example, it is not
uncommon for movie, music, sports, and political
stars to be able to influence their fans simply
because their fans admire these people. Because of
this admiration, fans may do what the star requests
(or what they think the star might request), even if
it would be impossible for the star to know what
the fan did (thus no possibility of reward or punishment from the influencing agent).
Overview of Legitimate Power
Legitimate power is based on social norms, such
that the target feels an obligation to comply with
the requests by the agent. Legitimate power depends
on the target’s acceptance of the right of the influencing agent to require the changed behavior, and
the target’s sense of obligation to comply. Essentially, the influencing agent says, “I have a right to
ask you to do this and you have an obligation to
comply.” Terms such as obliged to, should, ought
to, and required to generally imply legitimate
power. There are four delineations of legitimate
power within the bases of power typology: position, reciprocity, equity, and responsibility.
Bases of Power
Legitimate Position Power
Legitimate position power is perhaps the most
obvious form of legitimate power. Position power
is tied to a certain position in an organization,
society, or group, and the power that comes with
that position. This form of power often (but not
always) depends on a formal hierarchy in an organization, or cultural norms relating power to a
hierarchy in society. So, in organizations such as
the military, this is the power that a superior officer has over a subordinate officer or enlisted person; in companies, it is the power that a supervisor
has over a subordinate worker; and in hospitals, it
is the power that a doctor has over a nurse.
Other examples that reflect specific cultural
norms might be the right of elders to make tribal
decisions, royalty to influence commoners, parents
to influence children, professors to influence students, and traffic cops to direct traffic. The specific
context in which position power is exercised often
matters, so, for example, although professors have
legitimate position power in their classrooms, they
do not have it at a ballgame with friends. However, other less-obvious social norms dictate such
obligatory compliance.
Legitimate Power of Reciprocity
Legitimate power of reciprocity is the type of
influence that essentially says, “I did this good
thing for you and so, in return, you should be
ready to grant my request.” For example, if, while
waiting for the bus, one accepts a ride home, one
would feel obligated to help the person who gave
you the ride in the future. Reciprocity is a basic
social norm, so basic that many respond automatically without thinking when the legitimate power
of reciprocity is invoked. Thus, many will automatically repay small debts unwillingly incurred to
others and find it hard to resist the repayment of
even large debts. Some will resist by avoiding the
receipt of “free” gifts so as not to incur the psychological debt associated with reciprocity.
Legitimate Power of Equity
The legitimate power of equity is based on the
social norm that people should get what they
deserve. So if the agent has worked hard, and suffered for a target, the social norm is that the target
69
should make things more equitable by doing what
the influencing agent requests. Some might refer to
this as the compensatory norm because the agent
might legitimately say, “What you have done in
the past has been harmful or painful for me, so
now you should make up (compensate me) for it
by doing as I ask.” To invoke the legitimate power
of equity, the agent must have done something for
the target that affected the agent in a negative way,
or the target must have done something that has
had a negative effect on the agent. This gives the
agent the social power to ask the target to compensate the agent to make things right.
Legitimate Power of Responsibility
This last named form of legitimacy has also
been called the power of dependence, or the legitimate power of the powerless. This is based on the
social norm of the responsibility, which is that
society expects individuals to help those who cannot help themselves. Examples might include children asking for help with tasks they cannot do
themselves (such as tying their shoes), a stranger
asking for directions, or a homeless person asking
for a handout.
Note that these last two forms of legitimate
power (equity and responsibility) seem to rely
heavily on the target’s feelings of guilt, either for
what he or she has done or not done in the past, or
the anticipation of guilt in the future for not having complied.
The Power/Interaction Model of
Interpersonal Influence
Recent developments concerning the bases of power
have put the bases of power discussed earlier into a
larger context through the development of the
power/interaction model of interpersonal influence.
As in the original statement by French and Raven,
the power/interaction model first considers the
obvious fact that people often change their behaviors, their beliefs, attitudes, or emotions. Often
such changes occur without the involvement of
others—they are responses to the changes in the
environmental conditions, to new insights from
personal observation, and so forth. In the model,
social influence is defined as (a) a change in the
belief, attitude, or behavior of a target of influence
70
Bases of Power
that has its origin in an influencing agent, or (b)
stability or lack of change that is similarly attributable to an influencing agent. The latter point recognizes that sometimes people may be ready to
change in response to the environment or because
of new intellectual insights, but such change may
be mitigated through the influence of others. Social
power is defined as potential influence. The influencing agent has various bases of power, which are
resources he or she may draw on to bring about
such change. These bases of power, in turn, have
important implications for the effectiveness of
influence, whether the influence depends on the
agent socially, whether surveillance by the influencing agent is important for the change to be
maintained, and on the future interpersonal relationship between agent and target. The power/
interaction model assumes that when making an
influence attempt, rational influencing agents will
tend to choose the base or bases of power they use
because of their projected efficacy and anticipated
side effects.
However, other considerations also enter into
the choice: considerations of time and energy
involved, views of third parties, moral or ethical
considerations, personal preference for influence
style, and so on. To avoid negative side effects
during an influence attempt, an influencing
agent may adopt any number of tactics known as
ameliorative strategies. In addition, the power/
interaction model examines preparatory or stagesetting devices that an agent must often use to
strengthen the bases of power that he or she may
plan to use.
Choice of Power Strategy
Motivations may play an important role as the
agent determines what bases of power and influence strategies he or she might use. There may be
considerations other than making sure that the
influence attempt is successful. The rational agent
would examine each available influence strategy
relative to the target and the situation. Which
influence strategy would effectively bring about
the desired change? At what cost and how much
effort? How much time would it take to implement the change with that strategy? Would the
influence strategy be consistent with the agent’s
norms and values? Would the strategy lead to
long-term change? Would continued surveillance
be necessary?
The effects of motivation in influencing the
choice of influence strategy becomes more clear
when we consider that sometimes the agent could
influence the target very readily through the use of
informational power (logical persuasion), but
other motivations would make such a choice less
likely. For example, in certain instances, influencing agents might want to emphasize their superior
position in a hierarchy when influencing a target.
In this case, they could rely on coercion or reward
to emphasize to the target that the influencing
agent is in a position to punish or reward the target, thus reminding the target that the agent is
more powerful than the target. In other cases, the
influencing agent might not feel that he or she
alone has sufficient power resources to produce an
effect in the target. Here, the agent might invoke
what is called the power of third parties—for
example, a mother telling children that if they do
not behave, wait till their father gets home, or a
minister invoking the power of God.
Preparing for Influence
In planning an influence strategy, an agent will
often decide that a particular strategy might be
best, but that some preparation is needed. Research
has described the various preparatory strategies
used by a former president of the United States,
Harry Truman, and the former chancellor of Nazi
Germany, Adolf Hitler. For example, attempting to
establish his expert power with five star general
Douglas MacArthur, Truman spoke of his inside
intelligence information concerning China, about
military preparedness, and the likelihood of diplomatic losses for the United States. In preparing for
the use of referent power Truman emphasized to
MacArthur their mutual military background, and
that they essentially had the same goals. To prepare for coercive power, Hitler sometimes behaved
like a madman who would not be restrained by the
usual protocol in dealing with Austria. He also
showed that he had excellent information about
what was going on in Austria, thus demonstrating
the power of his intelligence services. By the use of
these preparatory strategies, when it came time for
the actual use of power, the effectiveness of the
tactic(s) was enhanced.
Bicameral Legislature
Assessing the Effects and Reassessing Strategies
Once influence has been attempted, the agent
then reviews the success of the attempt, as well as
positive and negative side effects. He or she then
might also reexamine the motivation for influence,
reexamine the choice of influence strategies, and
renew the influence process. If an influence attempt
is effective in obtaining the desirable effect, the
influencing agent need only examine what costs
were involved, whether the target might resent the
influence and the agent, and how to remedy these
side effects. If the influence attempt is unsuccessful, or only partially successful, the agent must
then carefully assess why it might not have succeeded, monitor any changes in the relationship
positive or negative, and then determine whether
the influence attempt should be abandoned or a
change in strategy is called for.
Clever influencing agents will monitor the effects
of their influencing strategies on the target, and
reconsider and change tactics as needed. Sometimes
they will use personal observation, but often it is
necessary to use third parties or other means. For
example, during World War II, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill relied heavily on the British
Ambassador Lord Lothian to keep him informed
about the effects of Churchill’s attempts to influence
the United States to enter the war. Lothian reported
changes in the attitudes and beliefs of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Congress, and other important figures on the U.S. scene, thus enabling Churchill
to better calibrate his influence strategies.
Power/Interaction From the Target’s Perspective
Finally, within the power/interaction model,
social influence is a dynamic interactive process.
Thus, although the focus to this point has been on
the behavior of the influencing agent, it is also
worthwhile to examine the process from the target’s perspective. The target also has extrinsic and
intrinsic motivations to comply with or resist influence. There will be cases when the target will not
be particularly opposed to the requested change,
or when the change, when properly described, will
even be desirable. In other cases, the change would
be particularly undesirable for the target, whose
resistance to change will be all the greater. The
target’s perspective will depend on his or her attitudes toward the agent, concern about internal
71
constructs of self-image, and how compliance or
noncompliance would affect how other persons
would view the target. As noted previously, resistance to change, and even change in a direction
opposite to that desired by the agent, will sometimes result from what has been called “reactance,”
concern that one’s independence or freedom of
choice may be threatened by compliance. In anticipation of influence, the target may also develop a
series of counterstrategies and would then review
the effects of such compliance or noncompliance on
subsequent relationships with the influencing agent.
Gregg J. Gold
See also French, John R. P., Jr.; Influence; Raven,
Bertram; Social Power
Further Readings
French, J. R. P., Jr., & Raven, B. H. (1959). The bases of
social power. In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Studies in social
power (pp. 150–167). Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for
Social Research.
Mintzberg, H. (1983). Power in and around
organizations. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
Raven, B. H. (1992). A power/interaction model of
interpersonal influence: French and Raven thirty years
later. Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 7,
217–244.
Raven, B. H. (2001). Power/interaction and interpersonal
influence: Experimental investigations and case
studies. In A. Y. Lee-Chai & J. A. Bargh (Eds.), The
use and abuse of power (pp. 217–240). Ann Arbor,
MI: Sheridan Books.
BICAMERAL LEGISLATURE
Bicameral legislatures are law-making institutions of
a country with two chambers or houses—a lower
house representing the democratic interests of the
common people and an upper house to represent
specific classes, regions, or people of experience. The
term bicameral was coined by Jeremy Bentham in
1832, and bicameralism gained popularity in the
18th century, even though the concept was adopted
in Britain much earlier, in the 14th century. Bicameral legislatures provide an institutionalized veto
power that aims to prevent tyranny of the majority
72
Biopower
as described by Alexander Hamilton and others,
as well as tyranny of the minority.
In most bicameral legislatures, members of the
lower house are directly elected, whereas those in
upper house are indirectly or directly elected, or
appointed based on criteria such as regional representation, heredity, and expertise in a particular
field. In many countries, members of directly
elected local, provincial, or state governments elect
the members of upper house. About two thirds of
democratic national legislatures are bicameral,
with one third of these located in federal polities.
Examples of upper and lower houses include the
Senate and the House of Representatives in the
United States and the House of Lords and House
of Commons in the United Kingdom.
Different political parties can dominate in lower
and upper houses, so bicameralism can lead to
power struggles to influence legislation and policy
making. The upper house can delay, oppose, or in
some cases even veto a legislation, thus acting as a
check on the powers of the lower house. However,
in most polities, the lower house has the ultimate
power to legislate and can overrule the objections
of the upper house. Arend Lijphart categorizes
bicameral legislatures by congruence of the political composition and symmetry of power of the two
houses. Thus, bicameral legislatures can be strong
(incongruent and symmetric), weak (congruent and
symmetric, or incongruent and asymmetric), and
insignificant (congruent and asymmetric). Under
symmetric bicameralism, both chambers have equal
power—for example, in polities with federal units
or presidential systems, such as the United States—
whereas in asymmetric bicameralism, the lower
house has more power, as in parliamentary democracies and unitary systems such as Britain.
An upper house that has veto power increases
the number of veto players and can thus result in
higher policy stability. For example, in the United
States, the Senate as a veto-player can shift the
legislative status quo. However, this can also lead
to unnecessary deadlocks, delays, and hindrance to
policy making. Powers and practices of the upper
house have come under review in many countries.
Britain, for example, partially abolished hereditary
peerage in the House of Lords in 1999 with a view
to making it more democratic.
Rekha Diwakar
See also Bargaining; Legislative Power; Unicameral
Legislature; Veto Players
Further Readings
Riker, W. (1992). The justification of bicameralism.
International Political Science Review, 12(1),
101–116.
Tsebelis, G., & Money, J. (1997). Bicameralism.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
BIOPOWER
Michel Foucault coined the term biopower to refer
to the administration of human life both collectively and individually. Biopower involves the production and reproduction of life and is evident in
such things as public health, welfare policy, regulation of fertility and heredity, population control
and eugenics, racial ordering, the regulation of
sexuality, and modern biotechnologies. Biopower
emerged in the 18th century, but had its ascendancy in the latter 20th and early 21st centuries.
Foucault and Biopower
Foucault introduced the notion of biopower, and a
related term, bio-politics, in the first volume of The
History of Sexuality. Here, the concept biopower
builds on his earlier reconceptualization of power
as omnipresent capillaries and as productive. In
Discipline and Punish, Foucault contrasts the productive nature of the power of discipline with the
restrictive nature of sovereign power. Foucault later
explains that the disciplinary power that emerged
in the 17th century operates on the body, reflecting
an “anatomo-politics,” whereas biopower emerged
in the following century and involves the regulation
of the population, or species body.
At the beginning of his lecture series, Security,
Territory, Population, Foucault describes biopower
as those mechanisms through which human biological features became the target of political strategies.
Foucault examines the emergence of this governmental interest in the population through liberalism,
the technologies of statistics, and the social sciences,
such as political economy, demography and sociology. Although the emphasis of biopower is on
Blackmail
enhancing the productive aspects of the population,
and contrasts with the sovereign power’s right to
take, biopower also involves the capacity to take,
or withhold, life.
Other Authors
In Homo Sacer, Giorgio Agamben has used Foucault’s notion of biopower as part of his argument
that sovereign power is not eclipsed by biopower.
Rather, Agamben argues that sovereign power and
biopower come together in the formation of “The
Camp,” a zone in which the state of exception is
permanent, and “in which power confronts nothing but pure life.” In Empire, Michael Hardt and
Antonio Negri use the concept of biopower in their
neo-Marxist account of contemporary globalized
power, denoted as “Empire.” They argue that biopolitical production has become the centerpiece of
contemporary power. Indeed, “Empire presents
the paradigmatic form of biopower.” More
recently, Nikolas Rose examined the role of biopower in the operation of contemporary biotechnologies. He argues that emerging biotechnologies
link biopower increasing to the liberal formation
of selves, with their associated questions of ethics,
risk, and responsibility.
Paul Henman
See also Discipline; Foucault, Michel; Governmentality;
Postmodern View of Power in International Relations;
Sovereignty
Further Readings
Foucault, M. (2008). The birth of biopolitics: Lectures at
the College de France, 1978–1979. Basingstoke, UK:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Rose, N. (2007). The politics of life itself: Biomedicine,
power and subjectivity in the twenty-first century.
Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
BLACKMAIL
Blackmail occurs when one person threatens
another that unless the latter carries out some act,
such as paying money or providing some favor for
73
the blackmailer, the blackmailer will reveal information to other people such as family members,
friends, or the general public. This information
need not concern any criminal act by the person
being blackmailed, but will usually be of an embarrassing or socially damaging nature. To succeed, the
blackmailer will need information that is substantially true about the blackmailed person and some
evidence that the blackmailer can reveal to others,
such as tapes, letters, photographs, or video.
The wrongness of blackmail and its criminal
nature are normally thought to rest on the demand
for payment in order not to reveal the information.
Criminal prosecutions might themselves end up
revealing the information, if not publicly then to
the close family or associates of the person blackmailed, and this gives blackmailers advantages
insofar as their victims might prefer to pay to keep
the blackmailer quiet.
In many ways, formally speaking, blackmail
looks like many other contracts. One party asks for
payment from another for services rendered—in
this case to keep information that one has to oneself. There is nothing necessarily wrong with revealing the information itself unless it is considered that
revealing the information is done merely to spite or
hurt others. And there certainly may be nothing
criminally wrong in revealing the information to
others. What is paradoxical about blackmail is that
it concerns two acts, neither of which is illegal, that
combine to make a wrong. Revealing damaging
information about a person is not necessarily
wrong. Asking payment for services rendered is not
necessarily wrong. Why then is the combination of
the two wrong? The moral wrongness seems to
stem from at least two sources. First, if the person
has no reason to reveal the information, then promising not to do so for payment seems to be a form
of exploitation. Second, if the person does have a
reason to reveal the information—say an individual
or the public ought to know this fact—then
demanding payment to keep quiet seems wrong.
Where the information about the blackmailed
person concerns some criminal activity, then blackmail becomes a form of extortion. Here, the blackmailer is also committing a criminal offence in not
bringing the information to the authorities and
being paid not to do so increases the crime.
One form of blackmail is emotional blackmail.
This occurs when the blackmailer understands the
74
Blocking Coalition
vulnerabilities of the victim and plays on these to
get what the blackmailer wants. Emotional blackmail might occur unconsciously on both sides;
might involve close family members, lovers, or
friends; and often involves withholding love or
affection, or threatening to do so if the victim does
not act as the emotional blackmailer desires. Emotional blackmail is a form of manipulation, and it
is often argued that people with weak personalities
or psychological problems are most likely to suffer
emotional blackmail and therefore require greater
recourse to the law.
votes. By looking at the relative frequency of possible blocking coalitions, one can estimate a priori
how likely indecision is for any given combination
of these two factors.
The possibility of a blocking coalition might be
the result of procedural rules other than the voting
rule. For example, in the United States, Senate
decisions are made by simple majority. However,
the rule that allows filibusters means that a higher
voting threshold may be required to bring a bill to
a vote in the first place.
Andreas Warntjen
Keith Dowding
See also Simple Games
See also Exploitation; Manipulation
Further Readings
Further Readings
Forward, S., & Frazier, D. (1998). Emotional blackmail:
When the people in your life use fear, obligation, and
guilt to manipulate you. New York: HarperCollins.
Lindgren, J. (1984). Unraveling the paradox of blackmail.
Columbia Law Review, 84(3), 670–717.
BLOCKING COALITION
A blocking coalition comprises a group of voters
that collectively can prevent the passage of a proposal. Thus, a blocking coalition exerts negative
power. The term is often used in a narrower sense
to denote a coalition that can prevent a measure
from being passed but cannot muster sufficient
votes to pass a proposal.
Whether blocking coalitions exist depends on
the voting rule. Simple voting games without blocking coalitions are called strong. Under simple
majority rule with an odd number of voters, a
coalition is either winning or losing but cannot be
blocking. In contrast, blocking coalitions can occur
if a tie is possible or if a qualified majority is
required. For example, the Council of the European
Union decides on legislation using a qualified
majority or unanimity. In the case of unanimity, any
single member state can form a blocking coalition
consisting just of itself. Under qualified majority,
the number of possible blocking coalitions depends
on the voting threshold and the distribution of
Felsenthal, D. S., & Machover, M. (1998). The
measurement of voting power. Cheltenham, UK:
Edward Elgar.
Ordeshook, P. C. (1986). Game theory and political
theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
BOURDIEU, PIERRE (1930–2002)
Power, particularly in the form of domination,
stands at the core of the work of one of the most
important sociologists of the late 20th century,
Pierre Bourdieu. Widely recognized for his original
contributions to the ethnology of Algeria; to the
sociology of education, literature and art, taste,
class, language, science, politics, and religion; and
to social theory, Bourdieu authored more than 25
books and more than another 30 edited collections of his more than 400 articles, many of which
have been translated into more than two dozen
languages. He established a network of highly
productive scholars around his Center for European Sociology; founded and directed an innovative journal, Actes de la recherche en sciences
sociales; and was elected to the chair of sociology
at the scholarly prestigious Collège de France in
1981. An International Sociological Association
survey ranked Distinction: A Social Critique of the
Judgement of Taste (1984) as the sixth most
important social scientific work of the 20th century. Bourdieu is arguably the most influential and
Bourdieu, Pierre
original French sociologist since Émile Durkheim,
and at the time of his death, Bourdieu was a leading European public intellectual.
For Bourdieu, the analysis of and debunking of
power relations should be the central goals of sociology. Bourdieu analyzes power in three overlapping but analytically distinct ways: (1) power in
valued resources (capitals), (2) power in specific
spheres of struggle (fields), and (3) power in legitimation (symbolic violence).
Bourdieu conceptualizes valued resources as
capital when they function as social relations of
power by becoming objects of struggle. Capitals
can be created, accumulated, exchanged, and consumed. His concept of cultural capital is most
widely known—particularly in the sociology of
education and culture—but his work includes a
wide array of capitals, such as social capital, economic capital, academic capital, and statist capital.
His view of capital extends the analysis of power
to more subtle expressions beyond that of material
advantage and physical coercion.
Capitals as forms of power exist not in isolation
but relationally in what Bourdieu calls fields.
Fields denote arenas of production, circulation,
and appropriation of goods, services, knowledge,
or status, and the competitive positions held by
actors in their struggle to accumulate and monopolize different kinds of capital. Field struggle, for
Bourdieu, has two distinct dimensions: struggle
over the distribution of capitals (i.e., struggle to
accumulate the more valued forms of capital or to
convert one form into another more valued form)
and struggle over the very definition of the most
legitimate form of capital for a particular field.
One particular power arena Bourdieu emphasizes in his sociology of modern societies is the
field of power, which is that arena of struggle
among the different power fields (particularly
the economic field and the cultural field) for the
right to dominate throughout the social order.
Bourdieu identifies different subfields within the
field of power, such as the artistic field, the administrative field, the university field, the political
field, and the economic field. Leaders of particular subfields compete to impose their particular
type of capital as the most legitimate claim to
authority. For example, artists, writers, and professors compete in the field of power against business leaders to impose their respective capitals
75
(cultural capital vs. economic capital) as the most
legitimate.
Central to but not synonymous with the field of
power is the state, which assumes the key role of
regulating the struggle within the field of power.
Bourdieu believed the state consists of bureaucratic
agencies, authorities, ritual, and ceremony but also
official classifications that regulate group relations.
The state regulates the classification struggle among
social groups by giving some classifications and
categories official legitimation and rejecting others.
In this regulatory function, the state institutionalizes its own specific form of capital, statist capital,
a kind of meta-capital that consecrates and renders
official the most legitimate forms of powers.
Bourdieu uses the conceptual language of symbolic power, violence, and capital to talk about a
third kind of power, a power that legitimates the
stratified social order. Following the thought of
Max Weber, Bourdieu argues that neither brute
force nor material possession is sufficient for the
effective exercise of power. Power requires legitimation. The language of symbolic power and violence
stresses that legitimate understandings of the social
world are imposed by dominant groups and deeply
internalized by subordinate groups in the form of
practical taken-for-granted understandings. Symbolic power finds expression in everyday classifications, labels, meanings, and categorizations that
subtly implement a social as well as symbolic logic of
inclusion and exclusion. Symbolic power also finds
expression through body language, comportment,
self-presentation, bodily care, and adornment.
Symbolic violence takes the forms of embodied dispositions—what Bourdieu calls the habitus—that
generate a “practical sense” for organizing perceptions of and actions in the social world. The dispositions of habitus incorporate a sense of place in the
social order, an understanding of inclusion and
exclusion in the various social hierarchies. And
symbolic capital designates the social authority that
individuals and groups can accumulate through
public recognition of their capital holdings and
positions occupied in social hierarchies.
Two key properties of symbolic power are its naturalization and misrecognition. Bourdieu’s symbolic
power does not suggest “consent” but “practical
adaptation” to existing hierarchies. The “practical
adaptation” occurs pre-reflectively, as if it were the
“thing to do,” the “natural” response in existing
76
Bribe Index
circumstances. The dominated misperceive the real
origins and interests of symbolic power when they
adopt the dominant view of the dominant and of
themselves. They therefore accept definitions of
social reality that do not correspond to their best
interests. Those “misrecognized” definitions go
unchallenged as appearing natural and justified.
These properties of symbolic power help explain
how inegalitarian social systems are able to perpetuate without powerful resistance and transformation.
Bourdieu’s sociology of symbolic power sensitizes us to the more subtle and influential forms of
power that operate through cultural resources and
symbolic classifications that interweave everyday
life with prevailing institutional arrangements. He
identifies a wide variety of valued resources (capitals) beyond sheer economic interests that function
as power resources. And his concept of field offers
a conceptual language that encourages examination of interrelationships across levels of analysis
and analytical units that usually are isolated for
specialized focus in empirical research.
David L. Swartz
See also Agency–Structure Problem; Habitus; Structural
Power; Symbolic Power and Violence
Further Readings
Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A social critique of the
judgement of taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press. (Original work published 1979)
Bourdieu, P. (1986). The forms of capital. In J. G.
Richardson (Ed.), Handbook of theory and research
for the sociology of education (pp. 241–258). New
York: Greenwood Press.
Bourdieu, P. (1996). The state nobility: Elite schools in
the field of power. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University
Press. (Original work published 1989)
Swartz, D. (1997). Culture and power: The sociology of
Pierre Bourdieu. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
BRIBE INDEX
A bribe index is an idea introduced by Peter Morriss, following a remark made by Brian Barry that
the powerful people in a society must include
those whom the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA) would want to bribe. The intuitive idea is
that the extent of their power can be gauged by
the amount that they can demand as a bribe.
Morriss applied this idea to the development of
power indices measuring the power of votes. This
discussion abstracts from any consideration the
morality or immorality of taking or accepting
bribes; all it considers is how much one could
charge for one’s vote if votes were for sale. The
same idea has been applied to considering what the
market value would be of shares in a company, if
shares were bought and sold only for purposes of
altering the policies of that company.
Consider, then, voters who each have different
numbers of votes—such as parties in a parliament,
states in the U.S. Electoral College, or shareholders
at an annual general meeting who each have one
vote per share. They are about to make a decision
on some matter of public policy. You do not have
a vote, but stand to gain $100 if policy X is chosen
over the voters’ own preferred outcome. If you
know that voter A by himself or herself could
deliver policy X, then you would be willing to pay
voter A as much as $100 to vote for it. If voter B
could increase the probability of policy X being
chosen from nothing to 50%, then you would be
willing to pay B as much as $50. That shows that
A’s votes have twice the value to you that B’s have,
which is an indication of A’s greater voting power.
Morriss showed how some of the standard
power indices can be understood as bribe indices.
The Banzhaf index is produced under the constraint that you can bribe any, but only one, voter.
But that is only part of the story: for, if you had
bribed B first, then you would still want to raise
your 50% to 100% by buying up the votes of
some others. When you can bribe as many voters
as you wish, until your preferred outcome is guaranteed, we get the Shapley–Shubik index. So the
Shapley–Shubik index measures the relative worth
of votes, and hence their relative power.
This has subsequently been shown mathematically by Dan Felsenthal and Moshé Machover.
They define P-power as the proportion of a fixed
purse (the spoils of victory) each voter could
obtain for himself or herself. This is the same as
what the voter could deliver to an outside briber
and is represented by the Shapley–Shubik index.
Peter Morriss
Bull, Hedley
See also Banzhaf Value; Barry, Brian; Morriss, Peter;
P-Power; Shapley–Shubik Index; Voting Power
Further Readings
Felsenthal, D. S., & Machover, M. (1998). The
measurement of voting power: Theory and practice,
problems and paradoxes. Cheltenham, UK: Edward
Elgar.
Morriss, P. (2002). Power: A philosophical analysis
(2nd ed.). Manchester, UK: Manchester University
Press.
BUDGET-MAXIMIZING
BUREAUCRATS
Budget maximization is put forward as an aim and
practice of bureaucrats operating in a nonmarket
context who are often able to exert informational
or agenda-setting power. Sometimes these practices result in oversupply or other undesirable
outcomes. Whereas Gordon Tullock and Anthony
Downs had previously discussed aspects of budget
maximization, it was most comprehensively developed by William Niskanen in 1971. In Niskanen’s
model, a bilateral monopoly exists between a
sponsor and a bureau. He famously claims,
Among the several variables that may enter the
bureaucrat’s utility function are the following:
salary, prerequisites of the office, public reputation, power, patronage, output of the bureau,
ease of making changes and ease of managing the
bureau. All of these variables except the last two,
I contend, are a positive monotonic function of
the total budget of the bureau during the bureaucrat’s tenure in office. (Niskanen, 1971, p. 38)
However, Niskanen also states that officials are
able to push up budgets only through the production of more output for the sponsor, making the
model one of budget/output maximization rather
than just budget maximization. In the context of
the bureau being able to offer take-it-or-leave-it
outcomes for the sponsor, the budget tends to be
expanded beyond the point where marginal public
benefits equal marginal costs to a point where all
the consumer surplus gains are balanced by the
77
excess of marginal cost over marginal benefits.
This “oversupply” result has been an influential
critique of bureaucratic supply of services, especially in the late 1970s given concerns about the
growth of the public sector. Keith Dowding, however, has noted the difficulty of comparing outputs
from markets and political processes, using a common framework that potentially limits the force of
the critique.
The concept of budget-maximizing has been
extended and altered in many ways, and there have
been many empirical tests of this family of models.
Taking some examples: the take-it-or-leave-it
agenda-setting power of the bureau has been
replaced with a unit price or price schedule. Alternative behavioral assumptions have been posited,
notably budget-slack maximization rather than
budget/output maximization. A trade-off between
benefits from spending time managing a budget
and undertaking alternative, and desirable, policy
work activity has been suggested—resulting in
bureau-shaping as well as budget-maximizing
activity. Overall, the literature suggests that the
agenda-setting power of bureaucrats can facilitate
budget maximization and that sponsors are often
able to use better monitoring and competitive pressures to limit its extent.
Oliver James
See also Bureaucratic Power; Public Goods
Further Readings
Dowding, K. M. (1995). The civil service. London:
Routledge.
Dunleavy, P. (1991). Democracy, bureaucracy and public
choice. Hemel Hempstead, UK: Harvester Wheatsheaf.
James, O. (2003). The executive agency revolution in
Whitehall: Public interest versus bureau-shaping
strategies. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Niskanen, W. A. (1971). Bureaucracy and representative
government. Chicago: Aldine-Atherton.
BULL, HEDLEY (1932–1985)
Hedley Bull was one of most acute and originalminded of the Australian scholars who have
78
Bull, Hedley
worked in the field of international theory and
strategic analysis. He came from a reasonably
comfortable Sydney family, and his high intellectual capacity was recognized early in his life. He
was admitted as a student to the University of
Sydney at the age of 16 in 1949. While there, he
concentrated on philosophy and history and was
strongly influenced by the most controversial of
his professors at the time, John Anderson. Bull
remained an “Andersonian” all his life. He was
also influenced by one of his history professors,
Ernest Bramstead, whose vision of world history
was largely focused on Europe.
Hedley Bull graduated with first-class honors in
philosophy and second-class honors in history in
1952, and was accorded a scholarship to Oxford
University. There, he continued to pursue those subjects, eventually to a master of philosophy degree.
Quite unexpectedly, because he had taken no
courses in the subject, he was offered an assistant
lectureship at London School of Economics and
Political Science (LSE) in international relations.
The professor at the time, Charles Manning, looked
for original minds in his young appointees, and
Hedley Bull certainly offered that. At LSE, Bull
found the second great intellectual influence of his
life in Martin Wight, then reader in the International
Relations department. Wight was an immensely
charismatic teacher, remarkable for the depth of his
learning and the elegance of his analysis.
Moreover, London in the mid-1950s offered an
immense stimulus to someone of Bull’s originality
of mind. Policy makers, even at the level of prime
minister, were beginning to understand the immensity of the dangers that the acquisition of nuclear
weapons by several powers represented for the
whole world. So the old interest in disarmament
reappeared, and Hedley Bull was invited to
assist one of its stalwarts from the 1930s, Philip
Noel-Baker, to produce a new book on the subject. During his research on that project, however,
Bull found himself convinced the earlier approach
to the subject was mistaken and unproductive, and
in due course, he produced a book of his own, The
Control of the Arms Race, which suggested a new
approach to the overall objective of keeping the
peace.
The English authorities in the field, such as
Michael Howard, had recently founded a new
institute, the Institute for Strategic Studies (ISS)
and were instantly impressed when the book
was produced for its 1960 conference at Oxford
University. So when Harold Wilson became prime
minister in 1964 and was looking for a new mind
to head the Arms Control and Disarmament
Research Unit at the Foreign Office, Bull was
appointed.
He stayed in that appointment until 1967, then
accepted a chair in international relations at
Australian National University (ANU). By that
time, Bull’s main intellectual interests had focused
on the general theory of international politics. In
Canberra, he wrote his best-known and most
influential book, The Anarchical Society. In that
book, he continued his English School realist
analysis of international relations, likening the
international scene to a Hobbesian state of nature
where anarchy prevails, kept in check by alliances
and reciprocal agreements. States form a system
when they interact in this manner to form a society
with some common organizations where they see
common interests. One can see in that notable
work the influence of two associations, the ISS,
and a much smaller group, the British Association
for International Theory.
In the years at ANU, Hedley’s interests also
expanded further, to be concerned particularly
with the relationship between the old established
powers of the West and the rising powers of Asia,
especially China and India. That subject was
central to his last two works, The Expansion of
International Society, and Intervention in World
Politics. In 1977, he was appointed to a chair in
International Relations at Oxford and would have
continued to pursue that line of analysis, had he
lived longer. But he died early, at 52, much
mourned by friends and colleagues.
Coral Bell
See also Anarchism, Power in; Hobbes, Thomas; Realism
in International Relations; Wight, Martin
Further Readings
Bull, H. (1977). The anarchical society. London:
Macmillan.
Miller, J. D. B., & Vincent, R. J. (Eds.). (1990). Order
and violence: Hedley Bull and international relations.
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Business and Power
BUREAUCRACY
See Bureaucratic Power
BUREAUCRATIC POWER
Bureaucracy, defined as “rule by the bureau,”
entails the power of career officials in large
organizations and can be considered a form of
government. Max Weber defined the bureaucratic organizational form as allocation of competencies within a hierarchical body, continuity of
office, impersonality of treatment, working according to rules, and expertise entailing selection by
merit and training. Bureaucratic power comes
from authority vested in particular positions and
technical expertise acquired through training and
official sources of information available only
through administrative channels. A further form
of ideational power arises from the domination of
a bureaucratic mind-set, an “iron cage” of reason,
permeating from the bureaucracy across society.
Bureaucratic power limits political elites’ capacity
for control, and limits individuals’ freedom in society. Weber saw multiple sources of power in society, oversight by Parliament, and effective political
leadership as ways of curbing bureaucratic power,
and his work contains a critique of socialism as
empowering bureaucracy both by creating more of
it and removing countervailing forces. In contrast,
Marxists see bureaucratic power emanating primarily from class power.
In contemporary research on public organizations within the liberal democratic state, most
attention focuses on power relations between the
bureaucracy and elected politicians, citizens, interest groups, and others, and on the blurred boundaries between “politics” and “administration.”
Bureaucrats exercise discretion in implementing
laws, make secondary laws in areas delegated to
them, and exert influence through advice—particularly to politicians. Multiple stakeholders are
variously seen as constraining bureaucracies’
autonomy or enabling bureaucrats to use conflicting demands to exercise greater autonomy. Policy
development often involves complex learning in
networks across public and private boundaries,
79
with bureaucrats sharing power with other actors.
Research has examined political control and delegation to bureaucracies, including the role legislatures play in this activity and bureaucratic
“regulatory” oversight of other parts of the
bureaucracy. Sources of power from personal and
professional positions, as well as from formal
bureaucratic posts, have been noted, especially the
discretion of street-level bureaucrats in public services involving direct contact with citizens. Challenges to bureaucratic power from the use of
competitive quasi-markets, private sector contractors, and target regimes have been a focus of
recent research.
Oliver James
See also Budget-Maximizing Bureaucrats; Public Goods
Further Readings
Beetham, D. (1987). Bureaucracy. Buckingham, UK:
Open University Press.
Weber, M. (1978). Economy and society (Vols. 1 & 2;
G. Roth & C. Wittich, Eds.) Berkeley: University of
California Press.
BUSINESS
AND
POWER
When people think about the power of business or
“big business,” they often think of the way in
which business in the form of major companies,
corporations, and major firms dominate the lives
of their employees, the communities in which they
are located, and government. Business power in
this sense comes in several different, though often
subtly related, forms. We consider each in turn.
Obviously business affects the lives of employees
and their families. The livelihood of the workforce
and their families depends on their employers. This
immediately makes for a complex relationship
between employees and the business that employs
them. On the one hand, the managers of the firm,
following the interests of the owners or shareholders, want to get as much from each employee as
possible for as little as possible to maximize profits. This does not necessarily mean paying as low a
wage as possible for the job to be done; managers
80
Business and Power
can realize that giving incentives to workers in the
form of better pay and working conditions can
maximize output and revenue. Nevertheless, the
workers have an interest in higher wages and less
control, whereas their managers have an interest in
reducing the overall wage bill and getting as much
output at possible. On the other hand, the workers
also should have an interest in the business being
profitable. Otherwise, it might go out of business,
leaving them unemployed; so workers do share
interests with stockholders.
It is not enough merely for a firm to keep in
profit. Listed companies can be subject to hostile
takeover bids where other businesses believe that
their profits are not being maximized. Hostile
takeovers often lead to reductions in the workforce, the closure of some factories or offices,
harsher terms of employment, and so forth, in the
attempt to get more profit from the capital stock
than the current company manages. At this level,
the interests of stockholders and workers diverge,
or at least the interests of some of the workers and
stockholders diverge.
In some communities, interest in the firm staying in business goes beyond the workforce and
workers’ immediate families. In some “company
towns” the entire economy is dominated by the
local business. Here, the livelihood of everyone is
at stake if the firm goes out of business. Other
local companies’ business depends on the company’s contracts, and the entire local economy of
shops, service agencies, and so on, depends on the
company’s employees spending their money locally.
And the local government depends on the business
for taxes both directly and through any local
income tax or sales tax that is generated by that
business. This gives the company enormous influence over the lives of everyone. This local power
comes in various forms.
First, local power comes about directly. Because
the firm is vital to the welfare of everyone, if its
managers state that certain local policies are important to its continued existence—whether they claim
competitive pressures or pressures from some corporate headquarters elsewhere, even in another
country—then local politicians are likely to acquiesce. Thus, if a company wants some land rezoned
to allow it to build a factory extension, the local
community is likely to facilitate this. Or if company
owners are concerned with local environmental
laws affecting the company’s profit line, the company might be able to have the laws changed. In
a classic book from the 1970s, The Unpolitics of
Air Pollution, Matthew Crenson was able to
demonstrate that towns dominated by a single
business had lower environmental controls than
did similar towns less dominated by one company. It is not simply that firms can force their
interests on recalcitrant local communities; rather,
the power relationship is more subtle. The local
community also sees these policies in their interests in the sense that the company sustains the
local economy. If it is true that the company
“must leave” without the rezoning or relaxing of
environmental controls, then it is true that those
policies are in the community’s interests too, even
if, in some sense, the community wants clean air,
does not want the land rezoned, and so on. Such
issues sometimes take the form of collective
action problems.
The power of local business can stand as a
metaphor for the power of business more broadly
both at the national level and in the international
arena. Here the power of business can take at least
five forms: to define the agenda; to gain disproportionate benefits from the political process; for
elected and civil officials to pander to the interests
of business; the superior ability of business to
mobilize political resources; and finally, underlying
the first four types, the overarching system of
capitalism that privileges business interests above
others.
Business can define the agenda of government.
With free-flowing international capital, governments are severely constrained in how they can
regulate business over tax policy and even over
social or welfare legislation. Politicians fear the
effects of their announced policies on share prices;
they fear businesses relocating to countries with
more favorable regulatory and tax policies. With
corporate business deciding what is best for the
politicians, corporations define the very agenda by
which national governments operate.
Business can gain disproportionate benefits
from the democratic process. Beyond their privileged or systematically lucky situation, big businesses can threaten governments. Politicians fear
disinvestment and design policy accordingly, but
businesspeople can also ask for tax breaks, for
relaxation of regulatory controls, or directly or
Business and Power
indirectly threaten that some proposed laws would
make them reconsider their investment in a given
location. In doing so, businesses can gain much
more from the democratic legislative process than
the votes they command. Business can also capture
regulatory bodies. Often health and safety legislation comes from business itself, rather than from
consumer or health groups’ demands. Stricter
legislation can make current products obsolete,
forcing consumers to buy the latest products, while
making it more difficult for new entrants to the
market.
In an important article, Jacob Hacker and Paul
Pierson demonstrated that the structural power or
systematic luck of business is not a constant.
Although companies’ influence depends on the
fear of disinvestment, that fear can be reduced at
certain times. Hacker and Pierson show that the
Great Depression of the 1930s enabled government
to bring in welfare reform as the power of business
momentarily waned. The global financial crisis
81
that began in late 2008 demonstrated the power of
the financial sector as governments rushed to bail
out major investment banks deemed too big to fail,
and it provided a window of opportunity for
governments to introduce stricter regulation of
financial institutions.
Keith Dowding
See also Capture Theory of Regulation; Free Market;
Globalization; Growth Coalitions; Neoliberalism;
Relative Autonomy of the State; Structural Power;
Systematic Luck; Systemic Power
Further Readings
Hacker, J. S., & Pierson, P. (2002). Business and social
policy: Employers and the formation of the American
welfare state. Policy and Politics, 30, 277–325.
Vogel, D. (1989). Fluctuating fortunes: The political
power of business in America. New York: Basic
Books.
C
they are remembered. They were united only
because they all signed the Treaty of Dover of
1670 and its renewal in 1672 (a pact to support
French policy to subjugate the Netherlands in
return for a subsidy that helped free Charles from
financial dependence on parliament); only Clifford
and Arlington knew of the Secret Treaty of Dover
(concerned with converting England to Roman
Catholicism). Parliament did not like these secret
advisors and eventually pressed for the whole
Privy Council to meet, which did not happen until
the end of the 1670s.
CABAL
A cabal is a private meeting of a group of people,
usually to conspire against someone or something,
and normally carrying a sinister interpretation.
Thus, intrigues against the monarch or the state
are termed cabals. Sometimes the leaders of parties will denounce some faction or group as a
cabal secretly conspiring against the leadership.
The term carries far more negative connotations
than do faction, coalition, or party.
The word cabal derives originally from cabbala
or kabbalah, a Hebrew word denoting a centuriesold esoteric tradition of Jewish biblical interpretation associated with “secret” learning or mystical
interpretations of Hebrew scripture. Thus, the
term cabal carries anti-Semitic overtones of a
“Jewish conspiracy” against the state or against
current orthodox (Christian or moral) doctrines.
The term cabal also came to prominence politically because of the so-called CABAL ministry of
Charles II of England, deriving from the names of
five privy councilors: Sir Thomas Clifford, Lord
Arlington, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord AshleyCooper, and Lord Lauderdale. Charles II was
known to pursue his own ends while appearing to
defer to parliament, and only a few trusted members of the Privy Council—the body of parliament
that advised the king—might be aware of these
inner machinations. The five members of the
CABAL were the most famous of this inner circle
of ministers, though the fact that their initial letters
could be arranged to spell cabal is probably why
Keith Dowding
See also Coalition Theory
Further Readings
Macintosh, J. P. (1977). The British cabinet (3rd ed.).
London: Stevens and Sons.
CAPABILITY
Capability is the core concept of the capability
approach, which is a broad normative framework
for the evaluation of individual well-being and
social arrangements, and the development of policies and social change. The central claim of the
capability approach is that these evaluations and
proposals should rely on an analysis of the
(expected) changes in the capabilities of individuals
83
84
Capital, Marxist
or groups. Although the precise terminology has
changed a little over time, the most widely used
description of capability is the real opportunity or
freedom to be the person one wants to be and do
the things one wants to do. These beings and
doings are called functionings. The expansion of
people’s capabilities is the central normative goal
of the human development approach, which is
best known from the human development reports
that are published annually by the United Nations
Development Programme.
The concept of power is relevant for the capability approach in two ways. The first is at the ontological level: the concept of capability refers to
human power. In ordinary language, capability
refers to an undeveloped or unused faculty of a
human being, without reference to his or her environment. In this sense, capability is a human power.
However, this is not how “capability” is conceptualized in the capability approach. Martha Nussbaum explains that the philosophical–technical
“capability” has three components: (1) the innate
capabilities such as the capability for speech and
language, (2) the internal capabilities that are the
developed states of the person himself or herself,
and (3) the external conditions that are needed for
the exercise of the functioning. If all three components are present, a person is said to have a capability. Having a capability thus implies having the
necessary internal powers, but goes beyond them
by stressing the external conditions too. If we
rephrase this in terms of the concepts of ability and
ableness, then the notion of capability corresponds
to the notion of ableness because it is not just
about our abilities to do what we can do and be
the person we can be, but also about the right
external conditions that enable us to fulfill our
abilities should we wish to do so.
Power plays a second, and rather different, role
in the capability approach. Structures and relations
of power in society, organizations, and human
interactions influence the capability sets of individuals. Yet, some argue that by shifting the focus
of analysis from the determinants of people’s quality of life to a discussion of what precisely entails
that quality of life, a capability analysis is insufficiently able to analyze these power structures.
Stated differently, critics assert that the capability
approach would focus too much on conceptualizing, evaluating, and measuring people’s well-being,
thereby losing sight of the political and economic
analysis of the causal factors that determine wellbeing, including structures of power.
Ingrid Robeyns
See also Ability; Ableness; Distributive Justice; Freedom;
Opportunity
Further Readings
Nussbaum, M. (2000). Women and human development:
The capabilities approach. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Sen, A. (1999). Development as freedom. New York:
Knopf.
CAPITAL, MARXIST
Generally speaking, capital is any asset that can
potentially be used as a source of income. In academic literature, it has been categorized far more
extensively, especially in Karl Marx’s economic
writings. Marx does not see capital as a thing, that
is, as an inanimate object, but rather as a series of
socioeconomic relations that appear thing-like.
Along with capitalism’s key features of the private
ownership of the means of production, wagelabor, and a market economy, Marx insists that
capitalism, as a finite mode of production, is characterized chiefly by the production and exchange
of commodities. Central to his class-based inquiry
into political economy is an analysis of the valueextending process, the role of constant and variable capital, an account of concrete and abstract
labor, the crucial distinction between socially
necessary labor and surplus labor, and the circulation of capital.
For Marx, value is a social relation that assumes
a particular material form. Capitalist social relations exhibit value relations in the form of
commodities. Commodities are intended to be
exchanged, so they have an exchangeability feature that he argues is its value. In quantitative
terms, use values of various kinds are exchanged
for each other. Commodities therefore are bearers
of use and exchange values. As each particular
product can be differentiated from others, the use
Capital, Marxist
values of commodities are qualitatively distinct.
Yet the values of commodities are equal in qualitative terms; they vary in the magnitude of value they
embody. So in one key respect they must possess
an identical magnitude. The homogeneous property that commodities share is that they are all
produced by labor. On this analysis, value is the
objectification of labor, and this value appears as
the exchange value of commodities. That is, value
is expressed as exchange value. So for Marx, the
magnitude of exchange value is not determined
quantitatively by use value. He held that the time
workers spend creating value, measured by hours
in the working day, has two parts: necessary labor,
time at work in which workers produce an equivalent in the wages needed to meet personal consumption; and surplus labor, where the remaining
hours are worked for the benefit of the capitalist.
The measure of value is accounted for by establishing the amount of labor, calculated through hours
of the day, that is required to produce a given commodity. To summarize, the substance of value is
objectified (abstract) labor, and the measure of
value is socially necessary labor.
Marx draws a distinction between constant and
variable capital. The former is the value of the
means of production embodied in the product during the process of production; it is termed constant
because it does not engender any quantitative
alteration of value in the process of production.
The latter is capital used to hire labor power, it is
termed variable because it alone holds the capacity
to create value; its quantity changes during the
productive process—from the value of labor power
to the value it produces, and the difference between
the two is surplus value. Commodities have use
value as well as exchange value, so the labor that
produces them must also have a twofold character.
The labor with a “definite aim” (Capital, vol. 1,
ch. 1) is concrete labor, which is of a particular
kind and produces a use value. The labor analyzed
without its particular attributes, as simply the
expenditure of labor power in general, is termed
abstract labor—this labor is the source of the value
of commodities.
With these points in mind, it can now be appreciated how Marx tries to capture the flow of capital
by contrasting two sequences of market transactions. First, at the most immediate level, exchange
is commodity circulation, C (commodities)—M
85
(money)—C (commodities) (Capital, vol. 1, ch. 3,
sec. 2a): commodities exchanged for money that is
used to buy other commodities. Second, where
commodities are brought to be sold, M—C—M¹
(general formula of capital, Capital, vol. 1, ch. 4),
the intention being that M¹ is a greater amount
than M. Marx argues that because value is not
actually created in the sphere of exchange, there
must be a factor of production that has a use value
capable of adding extra value to its initial expenditure. This particular commodity is labor power.
Labor power is not just labor, but the capacity
to labor. The labor increases the value of commodities. Labor power does, therefore, have a use
value—its unique capability to create new value
when consumed in the productive process. Marx
believes the distinction he made between labor and
labor power is vital to the understanding of capitalist political economy. Capitalism, he infers, is based
on the unstated yet omnipresent reality that labor
power produces more, in value terms, than the cost
of reproducing labor power.
To elaborate, labor power is exchanged for a
wage, and the commodities it produces are then
sold for a value that exceeds the overall value of
inputs. These total inputs are the value of labor
power combined with the value of the materials
consumed in the process of production. The series of
transactions in C—M—C captures the selling of
labor power for a paid wage, by which the necessary
commodities are brought to reproduce workers.
The series of relations in M—C—M¹ constitutes the
capitalists’ inputs that are transformed into outputs
of greater value. As M¹ is money plus surplus value,
the full formula of capital is
M[C & LP & MP] . . . P . . . C¹—M¹
M and M¹ are money capital; C is productive
capital, in the form of labor power (LP) and the
means of production (MP); C¹ represents commodity capital; and P is the actual process of production
in which the inputs (LP & MP) are transformed
into outputs, which by now have a greater value
(C¹). Marx distinguishes between the productive
sphere, in which surplus value is created, and the
financial sphere within which commodities are
exchanged. These two spheres of activity represent
the circulation of capital, within which the value of
capital is subject to a series of transformations
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Capital, Neoclassical
through which it expands, assuming different
forms at various stages. As the sphere of circulation creates no value, an analysis of value expansion in production, capital’s essence, must precede
a consideration of the circulation of value, capital’s
appearance. Crucially, the assets that expand capital stem from propertied relations in which only a
minority own the accumulated wealth embodied in
productive resources; therefore, this class holds
real power. As non-owners of the means of production, the workers cannot make use of labor
power’s value, they possess no such power; only by
selling their labor power can workers gain access
to the means of production. Here, in the sphere of
production, capital exploits labor through the
extraction of surplus value. The rate of surplus
value/exploitation is the amount of surplus produced over the variable capital laid out. So for
Marx, workers create a relation that exploits
them, they create the capital that fundamentally
shapes the labor process and reproduces the capital/labor relation. In sum, capital for Marx is value
in motion, a social relation attached to things such
as money and commodities.
Marx’s critical analysis of capital has been the
subject of prolonged critical appraisals. Most
notably, it has been suggested that value as embodied labor has an insufficient treatment of demand.
Further, if value is not labor exclusively, the labor
theory of value cannot adequately explain empirical prices. Further still, as even Marxist sympathizers such as John Elster have acknowledged, if only
some labor is irreducibly heterogeneous, then the
labor theory of value is seriously impaired. In
response, although labor may not be the only variable, it remains analytically unique because it alone
is required for all systems of production. As such,
no account of value can ignore labor. Also, wherever there is an unequal ownership of productive
assets, labor values remain a powerful tool in considerations of exploitation. In either of these cases,
all the time capital as inherent self-expanding
tendency exists; Marx’s economic writings will
continue to provide, for both critics and proponents, a focal reference point.
Chris Wyatt
See also Exploitation; False Consciousness; Ideology;
Marx, Karl; Marxist Accounts of Power; Substructure
and Superstructure
Further Readings
Eldred, M., & Roth, M. (1978). Guide to Marx’s Capital.
London: CSE Books.
Elster, J. (1985). Making sense of Marx. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Fine, B. (1975). Marx’s Capital. London: Macmillan.
Howard, M., & King, J. (1975). The political economy
of Marx. London: Longman.
Marx, K. (1967). Capital (3 vols.). New York:
International Publishers.
CAPITAL, NEOCLASSICAL
In the neoclassical tradition of economics, capital
simply means any human-made means of production. Capital goods are products that are made to
be used in the productive process. The term
includes natural assets but their worth or value is
given in terms of the use that might be made of
them in a productive process. Thus, the capital
value of a piece of land might increase as the
potential for its use changes (through new techniques or legal arrangements, for example). Most
firms will monitor capital consumption (i.e., the
amount of capital that is used up in the productive
process) and capital investment (investment in
new means of production that might increase output and profits).
An important difference between capital as
ordinarily understood and human capital and
social capital is that the latter two cannot be
bought and sold in the same way. Human capital
is the value of a person within production. The
amount of capital that resides in a person is usually
thought to depend on the amount of education
and training the person has received. The more
experienced a person and the more transferable his
or her skills, the higher the person’s capital value
and the greater the rewards he or she should be
able to command in the employment market.
However, wages and salaries often depend on noncapital assets such as gender, ethnicity, or contacts.
Social capital has several meanings, but in this
context, it usually means the amount of value
inherent in a person given his or her contacts. If
one has a set of friends or relatives who can help
secure employment, then one’s social capital is
higher than that of others lacking such contacts.
Capture Theory of Regulation
Sometimes being a member of a particular ethnic
group might bring contacts within a specific industry where that group is heavily represented. Again,
education might increase an individual’s capital
through the networks he or she has made. Here, it
might not be the precise level of education that is
important but the school or university one has
attended. This might create a set of networks both
through contemporaries at the school and through
alumni.
The more capital a person has the more powerful the person might be; he or she is able to bargain
for or buy more. Similarly, we might expect the
greater the capital holdings of a firm relative to its
debts and commitments, the more powerful it
might be in relation to other firms and organizations. However, in neoclassical economics, the
term power is rarely used. In contexts where
power might be used, it is replaced by the resources
of the agent. In other words, power is reduced to
the agent’s capital in the three forms mentioned
here. In that sense, within economics, capital is a
measure of an agent’s (a person, a firm, or other
collective entity) power (or power to). Or at least,
capital is the measure of what an agent can bring
to any contractual or bargaining situation.
A second important meaning of the term capital
is in terms of financial stocks. The stocks can provide an income through interest payments. In this
sense, the capital of a firm is the initial amount of
money with which it started plus the profits it has
retained subsequently. This capital can be spent on
future capital goods, held as balances, or used for
credit. The capital market is the system through
which firms gain capital in this financial sense.
Firms sell shares to investors who may be paid
dividends, perhaps annually, or can sell those
shares for profit as the reputation of the firm
increases their value. This capital appreciation is
simply the increase in the value of the firm’s capital.
Keith Dowding
See also Capital, Marxist; Small Worlds, Power in; Social
Capital
Further Readings
Becker, G. (1975). Human capital. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
87
Colman, J. S. (1988). Social capital in the creation of
human capital. American Journal of Sociology:
Supplementary Volume, 94, S95–S120.
CAPTURE THEORY
REGULATION
OF
The capture theory of regulation was first developed by the economist and 1982 Nobel laureate
George Stigler. Regulation of industry is generally
thought to be a government function designed to
protect consumers by setting safety standards and
ensuring good practice in production processes
and sometimes through price regulation. Stigler
and the public choice school suggest that regulators are often “captured” by the firms and industry they regulate and produce regulatory practices
that are in the interests of the industry rather than
the consumer. Although consumers want safe
products and low cost, firms also have an interest
in regulation, first to keep out competitors and
second to build obsolescence into their products.
If firms within an industry are protected from
competition from new entrants, then they can
charge higher prices. Firms have an incentive to
lobby regulators to write regulations that will discourage new entrants into the industry, thus
allowing established firms to act as a cartel. One
way of discouraging new entrants is to have complex regulations. Furthermore, if the safety standards of products, such as gas boilers or cars, are
continually being upgraded then the industry
builds obsolescence into its products, ensuring a
continual demand for new versions.
Sam Peltzman’s model for capture theory reflects
the competition between firms and consumers for
the attention of politicians and state regulators.
Consumers have voting power, and can demand
the type of regulations they desire through the ballot box. Firms within an industry have a concentrated and high financial stake. Thus, they are
prepared to spend large amounts of money lobbying regulators and politicians. Firms are also a
source of expertise for the bureaucrats. Politicians
will support consumer demands to the extent of
their vote power, but financial contributions from
industry to politicians can also buy vote power.
Furthermore, consumer interests are diffuse—they
88
Carr, E. H.
make many demands on politicians—whereas the
industry interests are concentrated. Thus, consumers face a greater collective action problem than do
producers. This can lead to industry capture.
Examples of capture found in the literature
include the commercial airline industry in the
United States. The Civil Aeronautics Board controlled price competition but allowed airlines to
compete on non-price frills such as in-flight entertainment. After deregulation in the 1970s, the
Federal Aviation Administration was also accused
of aiding airlines rather than consumers. The U.S.
Food and Drug Administration has been accused
of acting in the interests of pharmaceutical, agricultural, and health industries at the expense of
consumers. The European Union is also accused
of acting in the interests of industry rather than
consumers.
There has been a great deal of headline deregulation, which seems to undermine capture theory.
However, bureaucracies do continue to regulate in
quiet and unspectacular ways. It is difficult to
judge how far these regulations really work in the
interests of consumers and how far in those of the
industries regulated. However, given the greater
bargaining power of industry, the suspicion will
always be that regulations exist for industry rather
than consumers.
Keith Dowding
See also Business and Power; Collective Action Problem
Further Readings
Peltzman. S. (1976). Towards a more general theory of
regulation. Journal of Law and Economics, 19,
211–240.
Stigler, G. R. (1971). The theory of economic regulation.
Bell Journal of Economics and Management Science,
2, 137–146.
CARR, E. H. (1892–1992)
Edward Hallett (E. H.) Carr was one of the most
brilliant British international relations scholars of
the 20th century, and his strident views caused much
controversy. He began his career as a diplomat in
1916, resigning in 1936 to become Woodrow Wilson Professor of International Relations at the
University of Wales, Aberystwyth.
Carr became interested in the Soviet Union as a
diplomat, having been assigned in 1917 to the
Northern desk that included dealings with Russia.
He became convinced in 1919 that the Bolsheviks
would win the Russian civil war and believed that
for reasons of realpolitik Britain should not support anti-Bolshevik forces. At this time, he had
little sympathy with Marxism or the Bolsheviks.
One of his early books, Karl Marx: A Study in
Fanaticism (1931), was, as its title suggests, so far
from being an apologia for Marxism as to cause
him some later embarrassment; though from the
depths of the 1930s Depression he thought it difficult to completely dismiss Marx’s view that capitalism contained the seeds of its own destruction.
Also during the early 1930s, Carr started to sympathize with the Soviet Union, largely because he
admired Soviet efforts to industrialize and become
a modern civilization.
Carr started writing about Soviet and other
international affairs in the 1930s, reviewing books
and contributing articles to various journals. He
argued that the Nazi regime was caused by the
Treaty of Versailles and the intractable attitude of
France and the other Western powers. His book
The Twenty Years’ Crisis, 1919–1939 (1939)
defended appeasement as the only realistic policy.
He attacked utopians who believed the League of
Nations could provide a new international order.
For these views, Carr became known as a realist
thinker, though he also recognized that realism
lacks goals and grounds for action.
In Carr’s work, we can discern three important
differences between realism and utopianism. First,
utopians want a world of peace but do not consider the constraints on action properly. The realists understand that the world we live in is the
product of a long chain of causation. Second,
utopians derive their conclusions about what
should be done from theory; realists from practice.
For the realists, theory is derived from reality.
Third, utopians tend to be intellectuals with book
learning; realists tend to be diplomats and those
who actually operate in the world of international
relations. Finally, the utopian believes that ethics
should guide policy, the realist that ethics is derived
from power relations as they currently stand.
Cartwright, Dorwin
Making these distinctions, one can see how Marxism came to appeal to Carr, given his views on
realism.
Carr argued that the troubled times of the mid20th century were caused by structural political–
economic problems and should not be blamed on
individual people who lacked morals. He believed
that differences between nations were best traced
to the “haves” and “have-nots,” those with power
in international affairs and those without, and not
to democracies and nondemocracies.
During World War II, Carr’s ideological views
shifted to the left and his interest in the Soviet
Union became admiration, reflected in leader columns he wrote for The Times. Immediately after
the war, he argued that Western civilization was a
sham and that totalitarian societies were more
likely to succeed. Communist totalitarianism was
the most successful and had the most progressive
social and economic policies. His interest in communism and the Soviet Union led him to start his
monumental 14-volume history of the Soviet
Union, the first volume of which appeared in 1950
and the last in 1978. It still stands as an important
work in Sovietology, though many commentators
argue that Carr takes at face value far too many
claims from Soviet sources that do not bear closer
empirical scrutiny.
These days Carr is best remembered for his
short book derived from a series of Cambridge
lectures entitled What Is History? that has become
a key text in historiography. It is relativist in that
it argues both that our morality has changed over
time and that history is understood in terms of our
own morality. Carr also argues against the idea of
contingency in historical understanding, arguing
instead for a strong form of determinism.
Keith Dowding
See also Agency; Agency–Structure Problem;
Appeasement; League of Nations; Marx, Karl; Marxist
Accounts of Power; Realism in International Relations
Further Readings
Cox, M. (Ed.). (2000). E. H. Carr: A critical appraisal.
London: Palgrave.
Jones, C. (1998). E. H. Carr and international relations:
A duty to lie. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
89
CARTWRIGHT, DORWIN
(1915–2008)
Dorwin Cartwright, in his presidential address
to the Society for the Psychological Study of
Social Issues, noted that social power, long the
prerogative of political scientists and philosophers, was a sadly neglected variable in social
psychology. As director of the Research Center
for Group Dynamics, he encouraged and coordinated his colleagues and other social psychologists in clarifying and exploring the dynamics of
social power.
On completing his doctoral studies at Harvard
University in 1940, Cartwright accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at Iowa State University with
Kurt Lewin, who was well known for his work in
field theory. When the United States became an
active participant in World War II, Cartwright
accepted an appointment from Rensis Likert to
move to Washington, D.C., to join Likert’s research
program in evaluating opinions, attitudes, and
behavior related to the war effort. Cartwright’s
first major assignment was to conduct a series of
national surveys evaluating the effectiveness of
war bond drives. Related studies of group discussion and group decision indicated that, beyond
informational appeals, the power of the group
could play an important role in changing food
habits, such as encouraging housewives to serve
nutritious but less popular cuts of meat to help
alleviate the wartime meat shortage. Later research
indicated that in similar fashion, work group productivity could also be increased.
After Lewin’s untimely death in 1947, Cartwright assumed directorship of the Research Center
for Group Dynamics, which Lewin had established
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and
coordinated its relocation to the University of
Michigan. There, Cartwright edited Field Theory in
Social Science, a collection of important articles by
Kurt Lewin. Cartwright also edited Studies in Social
Power, which opened with his presidential address
to the Society for the Psychological Study of Social
Issues and included a series of theoretical works and
experiments. His concluding chapter proposed a
field theoretical conception of social power.
Though the term social power was indeed
neglected by social psychologists, many relevant
90
Caste System (India)
variables had been investigated. This became more
clear once social power was defined as the ability
or potential of an influencing agent (O) to influence a change in a target (P). A substantial body
of research on social influence on attitudes,
beliefs, emotions, and behavior could now be
examined in terms of the potential for such influence—social power. The studies of group norms
and group decisions, as in the studies of food
habits, or group decisions affecting level of
worker productivity (John R. P. French and Lester
Coch), represented the power of the group. Leadership could then be considered in terms of social
power—the manner in which a leader might use
his or her available resources to affect the beliefs
and behavior of followers. Kurt Lewin, Ronald
Lippitt, and Ralph White illustrated this conception of power in experiments on effectiveness of
democratic, autocratic, and laissez-faire leadership. Field studies of the way behavior patterns
spread among boys in a camp setting (Ronald
Lippitt, Norman Polanski, and Sidney Rosen)
could be also be understood in terms of social
power relationships. John R. P. French and Bertram Raven, as part of the Research Center for
Group Dynamics program coordinated by Cartwright, developed their widely cited analysis of
the bases of social power.
Though Cartwright’s research and theory on
social power were important in their own right, he
is even better known for his significant role as an
integrating force for social psychologists and others working in disparate areas, encouraging rigor
in research and theory with applications to important social problems and issues.
Bertram H. Raven
See also Bases of Power; French, John R. P., Jr.; Lewin,
Kurt, and Power; Raven, Bertram
Further Readings
Cartwright, D. (1959). A field theoretical conception of
power. In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Studies in social power
(pp. 183–220). Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for Social
Research.
Cartwright, D. (1959). Power: A neglected variable in
social psychology. In D. Cartwright (Ed.), Studies in
social power (pp. 1–14). Ann Arbor, MI: Institute for
Social Research.
CASTE SYSTEM (INDIA)
The traditional view of caste system in India is
largely associated with the rituals and practices of
Hindus, wherein social stratification is explained
and justified in terms of purity and pollution. The
concepts of purity and pollution are complex, but
in general are interpreted in terms of deeds, occupation, language, dress patterns, and food habits. One
can also distinguish between timed pollution—at
birth and death—and internal and external pollution, which originates from either a polluting
action or an object, and thus, there is a connection
between ritual purity and matters of hygiene and
sanitation. The caste system is an ancient institution with its origin in religious ideology; the
social, economic, and political organization of the
village; and rituals and traditions that evolved
over centuries. The system is usually used to
describe the whole varna-jati system where varna
is a design to organize society, and jati refers to
communities and subcommunities often identified
with their respective job functions. There are four
varnas—Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya, and Shudra—which represent the functional hierarchy
among Hindus within the caste system. D. L. Sheth
cites a 16th-century empirical work of Portuguese
writer and trader Duarte Barbosa who identified
caste in India as a hierarchy with the ritually purest Brahmans at the top and Shudras (untouchables) at the bottom; untouchability as linked to
the idea of pollution; separation of castes by
endogamy, occupation, and commensality; application of sanctions by castes to maintain customs
and rules; and relationship of caste with the
political organization. Although the traditional
varna hierarchy has diminished over the years,
and untouchability was abolished after India’s
independence in 1947, a large number of jatis,
despite having undergone changes over time, continue to have an important place and identity in
the social structure of India.
During British colonial rule in India, caste was
seen in terms of local hierarchies that were embedded in the religious and cultural context of a
region. By the end of British rule, the caste system
had undergone many changes in the horizontal
organization of castes occupying a similar location
in different local hierarchies, and development of a
Caste System (India)
collective identity among lower castes that led
them to question the traditional caste hierarchy
through the modern ideas of justice and equality.
During the first two decades after India’s independence, the Congress Party evolved a stable electoral base across castes by expressing political
issues in terms of common priorities of economic
development and national integration. A key factor in the success of the Congress Party was its
strategy of forming a vertical link between the
upper-caste national elite and the numerically
strong but traditionally lower-caste landowning
peasants who were typically located in the rural
areas. Since the mid-1970s, the lower castes of
peasants, artisans, and the ex-untouchables began
to challenge the political domination of the
Congress Party, which found it increasingly difficult to manage the aspirations and demand of
these castes. This development was helped by the
affirmative action policy of the state that provided
quotas for government jobs and education seats
for selected lower castes—scheduled castes (SCs)—
and tribal communities—schedule tribes (STs)—as
well as by the escalation of appeals made by many
non-Congress parties that mobilized their support
primarily on the basis of caste.
Caste became highly politicized at the beginning
of the 1980s with the extension of the benefits of
affirmative action policy to other backward classes
(OBCs). OBCs comprised a large number of backward castes that could organize themselves outside
the Congress influence because of their numerical
strength. In this changed scenario, Congress and
other Indian national parties had to negotiate with
the OBCs, SCs (and STs), or with the parties constituted by them for electoral alliances and
support. This trend strengthened in the 1990s with
the fragmentation of the Indian party system and
the emergence of coalition politics that increased the
political importance of caste and caste-based parties. Some scholars have described the rise of caste
politics during this period as the second democratic upsurge that brought political leaders from
lower and backward castes to the forefront of
Indian politics. Increasingly, politicians in India
tend to calculate along caste lines, and caste is an
important criterion in choosing electoral candidates. The growth and modernization of the
Indian economy in the 1990s has further weakened the traditional caste hierarchy that has been
91
superimposed by the power system created by
closely fought elections, a growing middle class,
and the policies of affirmative action of the state.
The net result of all these changes is that the ritually determined vertical social hierarchy has been
overlaid by horizontally competing power blocs
comprising heterogeneous castes that occupy different status across traditional hierarchies. An
important feature of the current lower-caste agenda
is the belief that the real improvement in their lives
can come only through pursuit of political power.
Thus, although the caste system in India was
traditionally a graded hierarchy based on a purity–
pollution scale, it has undergone many changes
over the years. After India’s independence, there
has been a de-ritualization of caste, and it has
moved toward being a community based on affinity or kinship rather than representing a fixed
hierarchy. The association of each caste with a
distinct occupation has weakened considerably,
and intercaste marriages across different ritual
strata, even crossing the varna boundaries, are not
uncommon. According to Depankar Gupta, the
task of defining caste is not an easy one because
many fundamental features of the caste system
such as a uniform hierarchical ideology, occupational specialization, and the concepts of purity
and pollution have greatly diminished in the contemporary Indian situation. Accordingly, his view
is that caste should be described as discrete categories that incorporate multiple hierarchies that
overlap and share many commonalities. In the
current phase of coalition governments in India,
the pursuit of social and political power dominates
the caste agenda, and therefore, traditionally
opposed caste groups find it possible to engage in
opportunistic alliances and power-sharing arrangements in a volatile political situation.
Rekha Diwakar
See also Hierarchy; Ideology; Religious Power
Further Readings
Dumont, L. (1980). Homo hierarchicus: The caste system
and its implications. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press. (Original work published 1966)
Gupta, D. (2000). Interrogating caste. New Delhi, India:
Penguin.
92
Castells, Manuel
Sheth, D. L. (1999). Secularisation of caste and making
of new middle class. Economic and Political Weekly,
34 (34/35, August 21–September 3), 2502–2510.
CASTELLS, MANUEL (1942– )
Manuel Castells is a Spanish sociologist who has
worked in Spain, France, and the United States.
His early work was a form of Marxist urban sociology that concentrated on the conception of collective consumption, and how that defines the
needs of the urban masses and displaces conflict in
society from its original Marxist productive site to
the site of consumption. He pioneered the idea
that social struggle concerned these welfare needs
via state intervention in consumption. Castells
saw that social movements within broad networks
were the key to understanding the potential power
of the underclass. His interest in networks led him
in his later work to concentrate on information.
Castells has a straightforward understanding of
power: the ability of a social actor to impose his or
her will over other social actors. Social actors are
not individual human beings; their abilities are
structural: that is, they lie in relational forces
between actors. In Castell’s later work, these forces
reside in new information technologies that have
restructured the economy and society. He sees
three sociological dimensions as important to
understanding the structure of society: power, production, and experience. These create the organization of the economy and of society, which in
turn define the ways in which people create their
own identities through their work and through
their consumption. Castells has always seen a
struggle between individual identity and that of the
collective—the manner in which individuals identify themselves with collective processes. In his
later work, he sees this dichotomy as between the
biological individual human being and the “Net,”
the set of organizations that have transcended the
traditional hierarchies of the state. In a radically
changing cultural environment, people find it more
difficult to affirm their individual identities in relation to a social identity. The media provide the
social space where power is formulated. The development of interactive and horizontal forms of
communication, notably through the Internet, has
created a form of mass individual communication
as opposed to mass communication through institutional actors such as newspapers or TV channels. Castells sees this as a way in which social
movements are able to gain power against the
traditional forms of capitalist and state forces. He
claims that the mass media and horizontal communication are converging, creating a historically
new space of communication that can transform
society.
Castells’s work is bound up with traditional
notions of power through interests and identity,
through the importance of collective action
through networks of social movements (which
themselves bring individual identity), and by the
possibilities of transforming society through those
social movements. He has been an extremely influential sociologist in both the urban and communication literatures.
Keith Dowding
See also Globalization; Governmentality; Marxist
Accounts of Power; Relational Power
Further Readings
Castells, M. (1977). The urban question: A Marxist
approach. London: Edward Arnold.
Stalder, F. (2006). Manuel Castells and the theory of the
network society. Oxford, UK: Polity Press.
CAUSAL THEORIES
OF
POWER
There are key similarities between what is ordinarily
considered an ascription of social power and that
which is considered under the more general rubric of
a “cause.” At one end of the historical scale, Thomas
Hobbes asserted, “Power and Cause are the same
thing.” At the other end, Herbert Simon asserted
that we can substitute the locution “i has power
over j” with “i’s behavior causes j’s behavior,” and
William Riker argued that power and causality are
really two sides of the same coin, so that we can
delete the concept of power from the vocabulary of
social science and political philosophy.
These claims are not surprising because in social
contexts we generally use the terms power and
Causal Theories of Power
cause to refer to circumstances related to the
potential or actual “inducement of change” or of
“making things happen” by some agent or group
of agents against a set of known background conditions and regularities. That is, we are concerned
with an asymmetric relation between two distinct
events in the same time series, in which one ancestral event, an action on the part of some agent (or
group of agents) has the efficacy to produce, or be
part of the production, of another, the effect
(which may or may not be the response of another
agent or group of agents). If a chairperson of a
committee has a casting vote and breaks a tie that
leads to the acceptance of a new policy, we can say
that the chair “induced a change” or “made things
happen” and thus “exercised his or her power” or
“was a causal factor” for the outcome. If there are
good reasons to believe that the committee vote
will be tied, we say that the chairperson has the
power to force the outcome in which the policy is
approved. Similarly, if j alters his or her course of
action of getting into his or her car by instead
handing the keys to i who is pointing a gun at j’s
head, we say that i had power over j because the
latter did something he or she would not have otherwise done. We say i had power over j if he or she
caused j to act in a particular manner; we can
rewrite this as i “induced a change” (of j’s behavior) or could be said to have “made things happen” (the change of j’s behavior or j’s performance
or nonperformance of some specific action).
The Equivalence Thesis
In very broad terms, then, when we say that an
agent was causal for some state-of-affair x or an
agent has, had, or exercised his power with respect
to x, we are suggesting some form of dependence
between the agent’s behavior and x. Causal theories of power are those theories that take the
dependency relations of “power’” to be equivalent
to, or a subset of, “causal” relations.
It is straightforward to show that the equivalence thesis is untenable. First, we need to be clear
about the general nature of the causal relation that
a causal theory of power refers to. When we say
that c is a cause of e, we mean one of two things.
We may be referring to a regularity that exemplifies a “covering law” and takes the form of
“drinking a gallon of wine causes drunkenness.”
93
This says that whenever a specific quantity of wine
is consumed, drunkenness will follow, given a set
of background conditions. Alternatively, by a
cause, we may be referring to a particular or singular event, such as “Mack’s drinking a gallon of
wine was a cause of his drunkenness.” Here, no
“covering law” is implied, but rather, the term
cause is used to refer to a particular contingency,
the occurrence of which is a departure from the
normal or expected course of events. A causal
theory of power refers to this second sense of
cause. Not every piece of behavior that can be said
to be a cause of some event can be said to be an
exercise of power. If I accidentally slipped on the
ice and knocked you over with the result that you
are injured, we would say that I caused the injury,
but not that I exercised my power to bring about
your injury or that I exercised my power over you.
A defender of the equivalence thesis could reply
here that although this is true, equivalence could
be restored for a subclass of events that captures
the way in which we ordinarily use the term power.
Slipping on the ice lacks a defining feature of
power: “getting what you want.” The natural
move here is to constrain power to potential or
actual causal relations that exhibit some further
behavioral characteristic. One route is to take Bertrand Russell’s famous dictum that power is the
“production of intended effects”—which is loosely
the idea of “getting what you want”—and say that
power and cause are equivalents if the agent had
intended the state of affairs and was a causal factor
for it.
Contingent Dependency: The “But For” Test
But this move will also run into difficulties for
reasons related to the precise nature of the causal
relation for singular events, never mind the problems of intentionality. To see this, we need to add
some precision to the dependency relation that is
used to define singular causation. For the sake of
argument, let us adopt a very general theory of
theory of singular causation that is used in law,
known as the NESS test (it has the advantage of
getting around the quandaries of overdetermination). This test is a form of “contingent dependency” and says that c is a cause or causal factor
of e if c is at least a necessary element of a sufficient set of conditions for e. It is a nested version
94
Causal Theories of Power
of the more standard “but for test” for singular
causation, which says that c is a cause or causal
factor of e if, “but for” the occurrence of c, e
would not have occurred. That is, the NESS test
says that but for the presence of c, the particular
set of conditions containing c would not be sufficient for e.
To reject the equivalence thesis for intended
effects we need to find a simple and intuitive
example where an agent’s behavior can be said to
be a causal factor by the NESS test but we would
not say that the agent exercised any power in
bringing about the outcome. Consider the following scenario. Victim is held up in his or her car by
Assassin1, who ties Victim up and locks Victim in
his or her car. Together with Assassin2, Assassin1
pushes the car over the cliff, killing Victim. Assassin1 is sufficient for holding up Victim and pushing
the car over the cliff. Assassin2 cannot prevent
Assassin1 killing Victim. To make matters more
concrete, suppose that it requires at least 2 units of
force to push Victim’s car over the cliff. Suppose
further that Assassin1 has the physical strength to
push with 0, 1, 2, or 3 units of force, while Assassin2 can only push with 0 or 1 unit of force. Finally,
suppose Assassin1 and Assassin2 push the car over
the cliff with 3 units and 1 unit of force, respectively. Now, supposing that the force of Assassin1
can be disaggregated into 0, 1, 2, and 3 units, then
there exists a set of events such that Assassin2’s
actual action of pushing with 1 unit of force is a
NESS condition, namely, the combination with
Assassin1’s 1 unit of force. For this argument, we
can say that Assassin2 made a causal contribution
to Victim’s death, which Assassin2 intended, but it
would be inappropriate to say that Assassin2 exercised any power, either with respect to Victim’s
death or over Victim. Power clearly requires more:
Assassin1 would seem to be powerful because he or
she can force Victim’s death and can prevent it. In
contrast, Assassin2 can neither force Victim’s death
nor prevent it. Power appears to require that the
agent has an action that can contribute to x and to
not-x.
Power and Causation
The question, then, is what is the appropriate
causal relation for describing social power in a
generic sense (power to x or power over x) that
picks up the idea of being able to “get what you
want” as well as “forcing” (x and not-x). Some
writers have suggested that with respect to x,
power requires that an agent have an action that is
necessary condition for x, that is, the agent can
force not-x but not x itself; others suggest that the
agent have an action that is a sufficient condition,
that is, the agent can force x but not necessarily
not-x; and others postulate necessity and sufficiency, that is, the agent can force x and not-x.
Each of these is too strong. Necessity fails because
it means that two assassins, each of whom could
kill their common victim, have no power over the
victim or the power to realize his or her death
because the other assassin could do it; the same
holds true for necessity and sufficiency. Sufficiency
fails because it says that a committee member with
a veto has no power even though he or she can
block x, that is, force not-x.
The solution would seem to lie with a subset of
NESS conditions. Max Weber’s definition of power
gives the hint. In his now canonical definition,
“power is the chance of a man or number of men
to realize their own will in a communal action even
against the resistance of others who are participating in the action.” Consider a three-member
simple-majority committee and suppose that for
some proposal x all three members vote in favor.
The NESS test attributes a causal contribution for
x to all three members on the grounds that the set
of three “yes” votes can be decomposed into sets
of two “yes” votes in which each “yes” is necessary for the set of votes to be sufficient for x. But
there is also an additional property, given the
actions of voting “yes” and “no”—any two-member coalition could force either x or not-x. In other
words, the voters have power and have exercised
this power because they have the chance to force
their desired outcome in a communal action with
others—a coalition—against the resistance of
others participating in the action (in this case,
committee voting). Note that to have power in this
Weberian sense means that the agent must have an
action that is necessary for the coalition to be able
to force an outcome; the agent does not have to be
in a position to contribute to forcing all outcomes.
The difference from the assassin example should
be clear. In the committee case, each voter is a necessary member of a coalition that can force an
outcome; in that sense, they have an action that is
Causal Theories of Power
a necessary causal condition for a coalition of
agents to be able to force an outcome. This is why
we would say they have power, even if it is contingent. In the assassin case, Assassin2 has no such
ability: Assassin2 can only perform an action that
is necessary for a set of conditions to be causally
efficacious but does not have an action or set of
actions that would make him or her an indispensable member of a coalition that can force a particular outcome. Only Assassin1 has this. If an
agent is an indispensable member of a coalition
that has power, that agent has either made a causal
impact on the state of affairs or has the potential
to do so. But as the assassin example shows, having a causal impact does not imply power. So a
causal theory of power must build on a subset of
causal relations.
A theory of power that matches this structure is
Alvin Goldman’s. Although he expressed the view
that causal terminology is likely to obscure the
crucial questions of power, he presented a framework that is implicitly based on the NESS test.
Goldman distinguishes between three categories of
power: individual, collective, and social. In rough
outline, an individual i has individual power with
respect to x if and only if i has an action (or
sequence of actions) such that the performance of
this action (or sequence of actions) under the
stated or implied conditions would result in x but
would not so result if i had not performed this
action (or sequence of actions). This definition
states that individual power is equivalent to the
case of an agent performing an action that is a sufficient condition for x. A collection of individuals
T (a coalition) has collective power with respect to
x if the members of T each have an action (or
sequence of actions) such that if the performance
of these actions (or sequence of actions) under the
stated or implied conditions would result in x, but
would not if any member of T did not perform this
action (or sequence of actions). An individual i has
social power with respect to x if i is a member of
T that has social power with respect to x. In the
NESS structure, i has individual power with
respect to x if i has an action that is a NESS condition on its own (and is a one-member coalition
that can force x), and i has social power with
respect to x if i has an action such that i is an indispensable member of a coalition that can force x,
which means that i is a NESS condition for x.
95
Causal theories of power not only come in
terms of dependency relations. They can also be
framed probabilistically. Robert Dahl’s theory of
power is the prime example. Starting from the
intuitive idea that “i has power over j to the extent
that he can get j to do something that j would not
otherwise do,” he then fleshes this out in probabilistic terms: i’s power is the difference in the probability of an event, given certain actions by i, and
its probability given no such action by i. That is, i
has power with respect to x to the extent that i can
perform an action that raises the probability of x.
This is Patrick Suppe’s well-known definition of a
cause as a probability-raising event. Despite the
intuitive appeal of this approach to causation, it
suffers a fundamental weakness: not all probability-raising events should count as causes because it
is possible to raise the probability of an event via
an unactualized event. Consider two terrorists A
and B fighting for the same cause who each plant
an indeterministic bomb (a and b) on two different
airplanes. Bomb a goes off, but bomb b does not.
As a result, a government that is affected by the
disaster changes its policy. Even though bomb b
raised the probability of the policy change, it certainly did not cause the policy change. Can it be
said that terrorist B exercised power with respect
to the policy change? If yes, then we break the link
between power and actual causation; if no, then
we break the link to potential causal effects.
It is probably not far off the mark to say that any
theory of power entails a theory of causation in
some form. To name a few: classical voting power
indices such as the Banzhaf Index or the Shapley–
Shubik Index can be defined in terms of NESS conditions or in terms of probability raising. This is not
surprising: we use the concepts of power and cause
to capture the generic phenomena of differencemaking in social interactions. Here a cautionary
remark is in order: although power clearly requires
a form of difference making, not all difference making that falls under the rubric of causality is power.
Causes as difference makers can also be functional
relationships between two variables as in the sense
of causation as a regularity expressing a covering
law. In these cases, if some social variable x, is very
sensitive to movements in some other variable y,
this does not by itself express the power of y to
move x or the power of y over x in a social sense.
This is a “marginality” conception of causation and
96
Causation
has been implicitly used recently by some
formal theorists of power, but it is not clear that
“power” is what is expressed in the models if by
power we mean some idea of “getting what you
want” in the face of a “clash of wills.”
Matthew Braham
See also Causation; Dahl, Robert A.
Strict necessity
C is necessary for the
occurrence of x whenever x occurs.
Strong necessity C was necessary for x on the
particular occasion.
Weak necessity
C was a necessary element of
some set of existing conditions that was sufficient
for the occurrence of x.
For sufficiency:
Further Readings
Braham, M. (2007). Social power and social causation:
Towards a formal synthesis. In M. Braham & F.
Steffen (Eds.), Power: Conceptual, formal, and applied
dimensions. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer.
Braham, M., & van Hees, M. (2009). Degrees of
causation. Erkenntnis, 73, 323–343.
Dahl, R. A. (1957). The concept of power. Behavioral
Science, 2, 201–215.
Felsenthal, D. S., & Machover, M. (1998). The
measurement of voting power. Cheltenham, UK:
Edward Elgar.
CAUSATION
Causation is a concept that is at the heart of the
subject of social power, of social relations more
generally, and of questions of legal and moral
responsibility and prediction in the social and
natural sciences. In very general terms, to ask for
the cause of some particular event is to ask what
brought it about. That is, a cause is a relation
between events, processes, or entities in the same
time series, in which one event, process, or entity,
C, has the efficacy to produce or be part of the
production of another, the effect (or outcome) x.
C is causal for x if C somehow makes a difference
to the occurrence of x. In social contexts, C is an
action performed by a person.
Arguments among philosophers about what
actually constitutes this efficacy—or “making a
difference”—are often concerned with whether the
efficacy is a necessity requirement (if x occurred,
then C preceded it) or sufficiency requirement (if C
occurs, then x will follow) or both. There are three
senses for each of these. In descending order of
stringency, for necessity we have
Strict sufficiency
occurrence of x.
C is sufficient by itself for the
Strong sufficiency C was a necessary element of
some set of existing conditions that was sufficient
for the occurrence of x.
Weak sufficiency C was an element of some set of
existing conditions that was sufficient for the
occurrence of x.
There are three remarks to be made here. First,
we can instantly dispense with the concept of weak
sufficiency for the simple reason that it is trivially
satisfied by any condition C by simply adding C to
an already existing set of conditions that is sufficient for x, although C is irrelevant as regards x.
That is, weak sufficiency can fail to satisfy the
simple counterfactual test of efficacy known as the
“but for” test in a very unacceptable way. According to this test, C was a cause of some result x only
if but for the occurrence of C, then x would not
have occurred.
Second, if C is strictly necessary for x, then C
should be ascribed causal status for x, and if C is
strongly necessary for x, then C should also be
ascribed causal status for x. In both cases, C satisfies the “but for” test. Yet strict necessity is inadequate to cover causal relations in general because
it will often not be fulfilled. It would mean that
evidence of an electrical short-circuit that combined with other conditions and resulted in a
house burning down would not qualify for causal
status given that it is not true that for all instances
of a house burning down there must have been an
electrical short-circuit. Strict sufficiency is also
inadequate because it too may fail to exist: it is
rare that a single condition C is sufficient for x.
Strict sufficiency also rules out ascribing the electrical short-circuit causal status for the house
Causation
burning down given that it alone cannot lead to
the fire; the presence of flammable material, and so
forth, is also called for. Moreover, that C may be
strictly sufficient for x and was present on the
occasion of x’s occurrence does not imply that C
actually caused x; x may have brought about by
another strictly sufficient condition that was also
present on the occasion.
Third, although strong necessity is ostensibly an
attractive candidate for ascribing causality, it too
can easily crumble in cases of causal overdetermination. These are those circumstances in which the
causes of an event are cumulatively more than sufficient to generate the effect. That is, there exist
situations in which a strongly necessary condition
will fail to exist.
Causal overdetermination comes in two broad
types: duplicative and preemptive causation. A
case of duplicative causation is one in which two
similar and independent causal processes C1 and
C2, each of which is sufficient for the same effect
x, may culminate in x at the same time. It will be
best to turn quickly to some examples of human
action.
Assassin case 1. Assassin1 and Assassin2 independently and simultaneously aim and shoot at
Victim such that each shot is sufficient to kill
Victim at exactly the same moment.
Thus, neither assassin was strongly necessary
for Victim’s death because, other things being
equal, if either had not fired his shot, Victim would
have died anyway from the shot fired by the other
assassin. Although one could argue that this example is intuitively resolved by saying that a cause is
either strictly sufficient, strictly necessary, or
strongly necessary, this will not work for the following case.
97
of Victim’s car by any assassin alone is neither
strictly necessary nor strictly sufficient nor strongly
necessary for Victim’s death. The absence of strict
sufficiency and necessity is obvious: no assassin
pushing alone can kill Victim, and no particular
assassin must push together with another assassin
to have Victim’s car shoved over the cliff. To determine strong necessity, we again apply the but for
test by holding the pushing by the other assassins
constant and ask whether the car would have gone
over the cliff killing Victim had the third assassin
not been pushing. The answer is affirmative because
it takes the pushing of at least two assassins for this
to happen, and because under the circumstance this
is true, then the car would have gone over the cliff
and killed Victim. Thus, the pushing by the third
assassin cannot be attributed as having causal status for Victim’s death. The same holds true for the
pushing by the other two assassins.
We can now turn to preemptive causation. This
is the case in which an effect x is brought about by
some actual sufficient condition(s) C1 such that had
C1 not occurred, then x would have been brought
about by some alternative sufficient condition(s)
C2. There are two subcases of preemptive causation: (1) The alternative set of conditions C2
emerged after C1 brought about x. (2) The alternative set of conditions C2 did not emerge because C1
emerged and brought about x. The canonical
example of type (i) preemptive causation is
Assassin case 3. Assassin1 shoots and kills Victim
who is embarking on a trek across the desert just
as Victim was about to take a swig from his
water bottle, which was poisoned by Assassin2.
Assassin case 2. Victim is held up in Victim’s
car by Assassin1, Assassin2, and Assassin3, who
together tie Victim up and lock Victim in his or
her car and then push the car over a cliff, killing
Victim. It is sufficient for Victim’s death that only
two assassins hold up Victim and push the car
over the cliff.
Here strong necessity is not correct given the failure of the but for test to allocate causal status to
either assassin: Assassin1 cannot be said to have
caused Victim’s death on the occasion in question
because had Assassin1 not shot and killed Victim,
Assassin2’s poisoning would have, given that Victim
was just about to take a swig from his water bottle,
and Assassin2 cannot be said to have caused Victim’s
death because it was in fact Assassin1’s shot that did
it and not Assassin2’s poisoning of Victim’s water.
A type (2) case is
To simplify matters, we need only focus on the
pushing of Victim’s car over the cliff. The pushing
Assassin case 4. Assassin1 shoots and kills Victim, and Assassin2 decides not to poison Victim’s
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Causation
water bottle (but would have had Assassin1 not
shot Victim).
Here strong necessity is not required because
Assassin1 cannot be considered as having caused
Victim’s death on the occasion in question because
had Assassin1 not shot and killed Victim, then
Assassin2 would have poisoned Victim’s water; yet
Assassin2 cannot be attributed as causal for Victim’s death because Assassin2 did not in fact poison
the water; he or she only would have done if
Assassin1 had not shot Victim.
From the six criteria, we have still to deal with
the equivalent criteria of weak necessity and strong
sufficiency. These were introduced by H. L. A.
Hart, A. M. Honoré, John Mackie, and Richard
Wright in various different forms to deal with
causal ascriptions when an outcome is a result of a
complex of conditions.
The idea behind the weak necessity/strong sufficiency requirement is that to be ascribed causal
status for an event x, a prior event C need not be
the cause as in the sense of it being the single sufficient condition present on the occasion or a cause
in the senses of strict or strong necessity, but
merely shown to be a “causally relevant condition” of x. That is, weak necessity/strong sufficiency drops what can actually be considered a
deeply rooted presupposition that to be ascribed
causal status for x C must be directly related to x
in that any state of affairs is brought about by
some singularly identifiable prior event. In its place
comes a conception of causality that allows for an
indirect relation between a prior event C and its
consequence x; but the indirect relation still
requires a necessity requirement. This is obtained
by combining a sufficiency and a necessity requirement in a set-based framework. That is, weak
necessity/strong sufficiency means it need not be
the case that a single condition is sufficient for x
but that a set of conditions be sufficient (strict sufficiency is then the special case of a singleton set)
on this occasion and combines this with a necessity
requirement in that the members of this set are
necessary for the set to be sufficient—that is, the
set of conditions is minimally sufficient (MSS).
Mackie denoted a test of weak necessity/strong
sufficiency by the acronym INUS: “an insufficient
but necessary part of a condition which is itself
unnecessary but sufficient for the result.” In
Wright’s simpler mnemonic: “a necessary element
of a sufficient set” or NESS.
The attractive feature of weak necessity/strong
sufficiency is that it is general enough to cover strict
and strong necessity and strict sufficiency: (a) if C
is a member of every MSS for any instance of x,
then C is strictly necessary for x; (b) if C was a
member of every MSS for a given instance of x then
C is strongly necessary for x; and (c) if C is sufficient for one MSS, then C is strictly sufficient for x.
To see how NESS works in cases of duplicative
causation the idea is to resolve the excess sufficient
set into its component MSSs. Consider again
Assassin case 1. Each assassin’s act of shooting is a
necessary element of some minimally sufficient set
and therefore the behavior of each marksperson
can be attributed causal status for Victim’s death
because the behavior of each marksperson was
necessary to complete a set of conditions sufficient
for Victim to die, and each of these conditions was
present on the occasion in question.
In Assassin case 2, we see that given that it is
true that the pushing of the car by each of the three
assassins belongs to at least one MSS consisting of
pushing by two assassins and each of these MSSs
was present on the occasion, then the pushing by
each assassin qualifies for causal status for Victim’s
death.
It is similarly easy to disentangle the cases of
preemptive causation. Here, the idea is to check if
a particular act is an element of an MSS that forms
a preempting cause. In Assassin case 3, Assassin1’s
act of shooting is a necessary element of some MSS
and therefore a cause, although Assassin2’s poisoning of the water is not because although poisoned
water would be sufficient for killing Victim, in the
circumstances it cannot be an actual sufficient condition because Victim has already been killed by
Assassin1’s shot. In Assassin case 4, Assassin1’s act
of shooting is a cause of Victim’s death, but Assassin2’s intention to poison Victim’s water is not.
What the NESS condition does in cases of preemptive causation is to evaluate the claim that C1 could
not be a causal factor of x because of the existence
of an alternative cause C2 that either emerged or
could have emerged subsequent to the occurrence
of C1. According to the NESS test, this fact does
not vitiate the causal status of C1. Note that the
NESS test only passes a judgment about the causal
status of an agent’s action and not its moral status.
Central Intelligence Agency
Finally, we should consider the important question of how a power ascription is related to causation. Here, there is a fair amount of debate but
little is settled. One strand of thought, going back
to Thomas Hobbes, considers an ascription of
power and cause as being one and the same; a second strand of thought considers a power ascription to be a subset of causal ascriptions; and a
third strand considers power and causal ascriptions to be merely overlapping categories. Probably the most accurate position is the second one.
This can be seen with another example:
Assassin case 5. Victim is held up in Victim’s car
by Assassin1 who ties and locks Victim up in his or
her car. Together with Assassin2, Assassin1 pushes
the car over the cliff killing Victim. Assassin1 is
sufficient for holding up Victim and pushing the
car over the cliff. Assassin2 cannot prevent Assassin1 from killing Victim.
To make this case more concrete, suppose that it
requires at least 2 units of force to push Victim’s
car over the cliff. Suppose further that Assassin1
has the physical strength to push with 0, 1, 2, or 3
units of force, whereas Assassin2 can only push
with 0 or 1 unit of force. Finally, suppose both
assassins each apply 1 unit of force. In this circumstance, each assassin can be said to have made a
causal contribution to Victim’s death because each
contributed an action to an MSS and therefore
each action satisfies the NESS test. However,
Assassin1 clearly possesses a characteristic that
Assassin2 does not: Assassin1 possesses an action
that satisfies the Weberian definition of power in
that Assassin1 can force the outcome that Victim
lives or dies despite any resistance that Assassin2
may put up. Hence, the difference between an
ascription of power and one of causal contribution
lies in that power demands reference to the potential of overcoming resistance, but a causal ascription does not. Thus, we can say that if a person
exercised power then the person was a causal condition for an outcome but the converse is not true.
Game-theoretically, the difference between an
ascription of causal contribution and power lies in
the objects of analysis. To say that an agent made
a causal contribution to some outcome is to say
that an agent performed an action that was a necessary element of an event, the action profile, that
99
was sufficient for the outcome; whereas to say that
an agent had power with respect to some outcome
is to say that the agent was a necessary member of
a coalition that is sufficient for the outcome. The
set-inclusion proposition goes through because if a
coalition is sufficient for an outcome it means that
the members of the coalition have an action profile
that is sufficient for the outcome: however, the fact
that an agent contributes an action to a minimally
sufficient action profile does not imply that this
agent is necessary for some subset of agents that can
form an action profile to bring about the outcome.
Matthew Braham
See also Game-Theoretical Approaches to Power; Weber,
Max
Further Readings
Braham, M. (2007). Social power and social causation:
Towards a formal synthesis. In M. Braham &
F. Steffen (Eds.), Power: Conceptual, formal, and
applied dimensions. Heidelberg, Germany: Springer.
Hart, H. L. A., & Honoré, A. M. (1959). Causation in
the law. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
Mackie, J. L. (1974). The cement of the universe. Oxford,
UK: Oxford University Press.
Wright, R. (1985). Causation in tort law. California Law
Review, 73, 1735–1828.
CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) was
established under the 1947 National Security Act
in response to the Japanese surprise attack at Pearl
Harbor in 1941. Its statutory functions were to
advise the National Security Council (NSC) on
intelligence matters, to “correlate and evaluate”
intelligence information from across the U.S. government, and to perform unspecified other tasks
that the NSC judged could be “more effectively
accomplished centrally.” Before the 2004 Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, the
CIA was headed by the director of Central Intelligence (DCI), who was also responsible for coordinating the intelligence community (IC), that is, all
of the various departmental intelligence agencies.
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Chicken Games
Under the 2004 Act, which was prompted by the
failure of the intelligence community to detect the
impending 9/11 terrorist attacks, the “community” role was delegated to a new director of
National Intelligence (DNI) and the CIA is now
headed by a director, appointed by the president.
The CIA, and its short-lived predecessor, the
1946 Central Intelligence Group (CIG), were
originally intended to be administrative and analytical staff organizations. Covert operational
capability developed as something of an afterthought when CIG took on the residual elements
of the wartime Office of Strategic Services because
of a lack of viable alternatives. In 1952, the CIA’s
covert capability was consolidated as the Directorate of Plans (DP), redesignated the Directorate of
Operations (DO) in 1972 and the National Clandestine Service (NCS) in 2005. The analytical components became the Directorate of Intelligence in
1952 and have remained that since.
Despite the DO’s improvised origins, the 1976
Church inquiry noted that between 1962 and 1970,
the DO alone accounted for 52% of the CIA’s budget and 55% of its personnel. Most of this was,
however, human intelligence rather than special
activities, although public and press attention over
the years has typically focused on the latter. After
the failed Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961, the
CIA placed steadily less emphasis on large covert
actions and, as documentary releases clearly show
(albeit contrary to conventional wisdom), had no
role in the coup that toppled the regime of Salvador
Allende in Chile in 1972. During the 1970s, the DO
lost about one third of its staff with the end of the
Vietnam conflict and an increased emphasis on
analysis and technical collection methods, although
numbers were partially restored during Ronald
Reagan’s presidency. After the cold war, the CIA
experienced another sharp reduction of approximately 25% in overall funds and humanpower.
Contrary to popular perceptions, the CIA does
not produce national intelligence estimates such as
that on Iraqi nonconventional weapons in October
2002. These are generated by an interagency body
involving all 14 agencies of the U.S. intelligence
community called the National Intelligence Council.
Philip H. J. Davies
See also Espionage; Intelligence
Further Readings
Andrew, C. (1995). For the president’s eyes only: Secret
intelligence and the American presidency from
Washington to Bush. London: HarperCollins.
Darling, A. B. (1990). The Central Intelligence Agency:
An instrument of government, to 1950. University
Park: Pennsylvania State University Press.
Richelson, J. T. (2008). The U.S. intelligence community
(5th ed.). Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
CHICKEN GAMES
The game of chicken refers to (a) a stylized conflict situation, (b) a 2 2 game matrix that provides a simplified representation of this conflict
situation, and (c) a class of real-world conflict
situations for which both (a) and (b) provide oversimplified but perhaps enlightening models.
In the stylized conflict situation, two juvenile
delinquents position their cars at opposite ends of
a deserted stretch of road. With their respective
gang members and girlfriends looking on, they
drive toward each other at high speed, each straddling the center line. The first driver to lose his
nerve and swerve into his own lane to avoid a
crash is revealed to be “chicken” and loses the
game, and the driver with stronger nerves is victorious. If both swerve, the outcome is a draw. If
both drive straight, the outcome is mutual disaster.
The game matrix for this specific stylized conflict is shown on the left in Figure 1.
Many real-world conflict situations in which
each side has a general choice between “standing
firm” or “giving in”—for example, international
crises, hostage-holding negotiations, industrial
conflicts, and bargaining situations generally—
have characteristics of the game of chicken,
as shown in the more generic matrix on the right
in Figure 1, in which P ([Mutual] Punishment) >
L (Lose) C (Compromise) W (Win).
Chicken, probably the most famous 2 2 game
other than prisoner’s dilemma, has the following
properties. Neither player has a dominant strategy;
for each player, the best choice is to do the opposite
of what the other player does, and each asymmetric
pair of choices is a (Nash) equilibrium. But each
equilibrium is a victory for one player over the
other, with the victory going to the more reckless
101
Civil War
(a)
(b)
Player 2
Player 1
Swerve
Straight
Figure 1
Swerve
Straight
2
Player 1
2
0
Give In
2
0
2
10
Player 2
10
Stand
Firm
Give In
Stand Firm
C2
C1
W2
L1
P2
L2
W1
P1
Game matrix for chicken: (a) specific; (b) generic
player. Finally, although compromise is the symmetric outcome best for both players, it is not an equilibrium, and the apparent willingness of one player
to compromise encourages the other to stand firm.
In short, chicken is a particularly nasty game.
Various signals, tactics, and strategic moves can
enhance the bargaining power of a player and his or
her probability of victory. If one player can make an
absolutely credible commitment to stand firm, the
other is compelled to give in. Likewise, if one player
can convey the impression that he or she is crazy,
reckless, stumble-down drunk, and so on (perhaps
by actually being so), the other may likewise be
compelled to give in. Conversely, if one player publicly attributes rationality, caution, or cowardice to
the other, or if the former claims that he or she
believes that his or her car is crash-proof (or that
martyrdom is a ticket to heaven), that player thereby
conveys to the other player that the first player
believes he or she can safely stand firm. More perversely, if a player takes some visible action that
actually increases the player’s cost of giving in, he or
she thereby makes it more likely that the other
player must give in. For example, hostage holders
can kill one or a few hostages, so that they must
expect a worse penalty if they give in and are captured. Real-world conflicts play out through a
chronological sequence of moves not represented in
the 2 2 chicken matrix. In such a sequence, each
player can try to displace onto the other the “last
clear chance” to avoid mutual disaster, forcing the
other player either to give in or “start the shooting,”
anticipating that the other player will be unwilling
to do the latter and will therefore give in. Finally, a
player can explicitly stake his or her future reputation on standing firm in the present conflict. Thus,
although the repeated play of a prisoner’s dilemma
can induce mutual cooperation, the expectation of
repeated play of the game of chicken increases the
incentive for each player to stand firm to gain a
reputation that will intimidate later opponents.
Nicholas R. Miller
See also Bargaining; Game-Theoretical Approaches to
Power; Prisoner’s Dilemma
Further Readings
Kahn, H. (1965). On escalation: Metaphors and
scenarios. New York: Praeger.
Schelling, T. C. (1966). Arms and influence. New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press.
Snyder, G. H. (1971). “Prisoner’s dilemma” and
“chicken” models in international politics.
International Studies Quarterly, 4, 66–103.
CIVIL WAR
Civil wars occur between different groups within a
nation-state so that one group can take control of the
apparatus of the state. Sometimes groups that want
to secede part of the country from the nation-state
also fight conflicts described as civil war. To distinguish civil wars from other disputes, conflicts, or
terrorism within a state, most academics recognize
that at least 1,000 casualties are required for a conflict to be termed a civil war. The number of conflicts
deemed civil wars in the 20th century is much higher
than in the preceding century, almost certainly
because of the increase in the number of nation-states
and because of the end of colonial empires in Africa
and Asia. The cold war has also been a factor.
Academics studying civil wars have examined
factors that are correlated with their onset and
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Civil War
duration. These factors include aspects of the society in which civil war occurs and factors external
to the country. Generally, we might see these factors as incentives to fight or not: the greater the
costs of war, the lower the likelihood they will
occur; the greater the benefits, both to participants
and to outsiders, the more likely they are. Internal
factors include levels of education, per capita
income, and economic growth. The first two factors are related to the potential costs of civil war to
participants. Better-off people have more to lose in
conflict than do poorer people. Education, especially higher secondary school enrolment for boys,
has been shown to be significantly related to civil
war. Most soldiers are young men: those with
higher levels of education have greater economic
prospects and are less likely to be prepared to
fight. Higher economic growth also increases
future expectations, thus lowering the probability
of conflict. Lower per capita income and lower
growth might also be signs of grievance leading to
higher probabilities of conflict. However, measures
of economic inequality do not correlate with the
probability of civil war, which suggests grievance
over inequalities is not a straightforward cause.
Another cause of grievance is ethnic conflict,
especially if one ethnic group feels it is being
exploited by another. Again, economic growth
might alleviate this tension, but not necessarily.
The findings here are complex. Ethnic heterogeneity is not itself correlated with the probability of
civil war; ethnic dominance, however, is. If one
ethnic group comprises more than 50% of the
population and there are large ethnic minorities,
then civil war is more likely. There have to be two
sides in a civil war, and forming coalitions of
smaller groups against a dominant one can be
problematic, as the dominant group can make side
payments to keep some groups on its side. Furthermore, it is not always the largest ethnic group that
is the dominant group controlling the state, which
increases the risk of civil war further. The size of
the population also increases the risk of civil
war, though the smaller the population is, the
less the likelihood of any conflict reaching the
1,000-casualty threshold. There is also a heritage effect, in that the longer since the last civil
war, the lower the probability is of another one.
Past grievance, especially from the losers, increases
the probability of armed conflict occurring again.
Outside factors include large numbers of one
ethnic group living outside the country. Such a
diaspora can fuel discontent and form both a
source of money and organization to fund armies.
Sometimes disaffected peoples live in a country and
plot destabilization from bases outside it. It has
also been found that a high proportion of primary
commodities in national exports increase the risk
of civil war. The likely explanation is that it is
easier to take control of primary industries than of
manufacturing industry, and war creates less disruption of production. Furthermore, sourcing primary commodities means that outside interests,
both countries and, at times, business interests, can
fund and support one side or another in a civil
conflict. The cold war also exacerbated civil wars,
particularly because it coincided with countries
gaining self-rule from colonial empires. In civil
conflicts, both sides gained support from either the
West or the Soviet bloc and received funding, arms,
and training. This encouraged the onset of civil
wars and increased the wars’ duration. The average number of civil wars per year increased dramatically from 1945 to the late 1990s from 2 or 3
to more than 40, though the number has fallen
since the end of the cold war to around 30 per year
in the new century. However, the average duration
of civil wars has continued to rise from about a
year to about 16 years by the beginning of the 21st
century. In addition to outside forces backing the
two sides, their abilities to self-fund through trade
is important, so again each side being able to control mineral or agricultural (often illicit drugs)
commodities is important to a civil conflict’s duration. In contrast, in the 19th century, the major
European powers tended to quell civil conflict (in
Europe at least) by all backing one side, almost
always the government in power at the time.
Nineteenth-century civil wars lasted longer in
Latin America (though they did not always result
in the 1,000 deaths needed to enter the statistics).
Keith Dowding
See also Coalition Theory; Military in Government
Further Readings
Collier, P., & Sambukas, N. (Eds.). (2005). Understanding
civil war. Washington, DC: World Bank.
Clegg, Stewart
Fearon, J. D. (2004). Why do some civil wars last longer
than others? Journal of Peace Research, 41, 275–301.
CLAUSEWITZ, CARL
(1780–1831)
VON
Prussian general and military thinker, whose posthumous book On War has become the most
respected military classic, Carl von Clausewitz’s
ideas were shaped by the coming together of two
revolutions that dominated his life and times: the
French Revolution and the Romantic reaction
against the ideas of the Enlightenment.
Joining the Prussian army at the age of 12, he
took part in the invasion of France in 1793 and
participated in Prussia’s disastrous defeat before
Napoleon at Jena-Auerstädt (1806). Then, in an
effort to rescue Prussia from the verge of extinction, he became one of the young members of the
Prussian reform movement, headed in the army by
his mentor, war minister Gerhard von Scharnhorst.
The reformers traced the roots of French military
power to the political and social revolution that
had given the French state the legitimacy and
means to harness the whole nation—fired with
civic and patriotic energies—to the cause of war. In
the teeth of oligarchic opposition, they worked for
a social and political reform of Prussia as the only
means for reviving its great-power status in the age
of mass social participation. A fervent German
nationalist and Prussian patriot, Clausewitz shared
Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s admiration for Niccolò
Machiavelli’s elevation of the patriotic cause above
all else, the concept of power as the paramount
political factor, and rejection of moral considerations in the anarchic international arena.
Resigning the Prussian service for a while to join
the Russian army to fight Napoleon in 1812,
Clausewitz and his fellow-reformers saw their aspirations fulfilled with Napoleon’s downfall (1813–
1815). However, once the danger had gone, their
program faced even greater resistance than before,
as reaction set in. Clausewitz’s main efforts were
now channeled to the writing of a great work on
war. Deeply impressed by Napoleon’s crushing
strategy that completely overwhelmed the armies of
the ancien régime, Clausewitz rejected the limited
103
warfare of the 18th century. He believed that the
“nature,” “essence,” “concept,” or “spirit” of war
required mobilization of all available forces to be
thrown against the enemy’s main army with the
aim of destroying it in a major battle in pursuit of
ambitious political aims. These notions, cultivated
by the reformers during the heroic struggle against
Napoleon, were systematized in On War. However, after drafting the first six books (of eight) that
make up On War, Clausewitz realized, contrary to
his lifelong views, that limited war was as legitimate as all-out war because “war is nothing but
the continuation of state policy by the admixture
of other means.” He developed these fundamental
new insights in writing Books 7 and 8 of On War,
and in revising Chapter 1 of Book 1, but he died
before completing the revision of the rest of the
work.
The posthumous work thus conserves two different, and conflicting, layers of Clausewitz’s
thought—the cause of much confusion among
later readers. Clausewitz became a man for all seasons: the people of the 19th century canonized his
work for its emphasis on the decisive clash of
forces, whereas in the nuclear age he has been celebrated for postulating the supremacy of the
political aim and for his concept of limited war.
Azar Gat
See also Anarchy in International Relations; Realism in
International Relations; War
Further Readings
Gat, A. (1989). The origins of military thought from the
Enlightenment to Clausewitz. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press. Incorporated in Gat, A. (2001). A
history of military thought: From the Enlightenment
to the cold war. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
CLEGG, STEWART (1947– )
The Anglo-Australian Stewart Clegg has established himself as one of the important figures in
contemporary social theory as a result of his contribution to the study of social power and organization. Although his theory is well informed by
104
Clegg, Stewart
modern theories, Clegg’s recent focus has taken a
postmodern turn. As noted in his 2005 Vita Contemplativa, a clear theoretical thread runs through
his work:
1. Power is a “relation of flows,” rather than an
obdurate reality out there that avails itself to
positivistic analysis.
2. Power is always countered; hence, a theory of
power that disregards the “dialectics of control”
between authority and resistance is deeply
flawed.
3. Resources and surveillance are important, but a
social theory that undermines the role of other
factors in the understanding of power and
organizational dynamics is wanting.
4. The study of power needs to be premised on the
idea that there is no one grand rationality but
disparate rationalities that are embedded in
social history.
Born in Bradford, United Kingdom, Clegg got
his bachelor’s degree in 1971 from Aston University and his PhD in 1974 from Bradford University.
After working briefly for Trent Polytechnic, Nottingham, and the European Group for Organization Studies as a postdoctoral research fellow, he
was hired by Griffith University in Brisbane,
Australia, in 1976. At this time, he was re-socialized as Australian, “slowly losing [his] pining and
allegiance to the other country, the other continent.” Later he worked at the Universities of New
England, St. Andrews, and Western Sydney.
Currently, he is professor of management at the
University of Technology, Sydney, and Director of
the Innovative Collaborations, Alliance, and
Networks Research Center. He has authored or
coauthored 30 books and has published more than
90 journal articles.
Clegg’s first book, Power, Rule and Domination
(1975), deals with the social phenomenology of
power. In this work, he investigated a sociological
topic but relied on assumptions formulated both in
and outside the field of sociology. From sociology,
the concepts of power, rule, and domination, as
spelled out by Max Weber and Georg Simmel, are
used. Conversely, Clegg borrows Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concepts of “language game” and “forms of
life” to help him understand the grammar of
power dynamics. Furthermore, Clegg used an ethnomethodological approach to examine the nature
of power in organizations. This was unconventional for its time because sociologists of organization hardly examined organizational dynamics as a
process in which “practical theorists” are actively
engaged. Ultimately, Clegg’s study of a construction site in Northern England provided a nuanced
relational and contextual analysis of power in
which “deep rules” and “‘iconic’ systems of domination” are critical. Accordingly, he was able to
avoid the flaws of previous theories that have limited themselves to the surface reality of power.
In his later study of power and organizations,
Clegg further extends his position on the need to
transcend a surface analysis of power. This time,
the subjects of his critical exegesis were theories
that dealt with the behavioral dimensions of power
and organizations. Because of their exclusive focus
on the manifest operations involved in the decision-making processes and portrayed organizations in a pluralist fashion, these theories gave
scant attention to the structural basis of power.
According to Clegg, the analysis of power in organizations requires more than understanding which
group has control over which resources. Rather,
emphasis needs to be placed on structural arrangements that constrain social behavior. Yet his structural approach is based on a reconceptualized
notion of structure. Structure is not viewed as a
prearranged social relation. Instead, it is regarded
as “sedimented selection rules,” the understanding
of which entails historical analysis.
In his Frameworks of Power (1989), Clegg further examines the relation between power and
structure. Here, he takes seriously the insights of
Niccolò Machiavelli, whose views on power are at
odds with those of Thomas Hobbes. Hobbes was
interested in legislating a grand narrative of power
that acts as a political instrument that, by way of
perpetuating sovereignty, brings together multiple
social institutions. Machiavelli instead was focused
on the interpretation of power that perceives it as
a set of contingent practices that do not easily lend
themselves to generalization. Accordingly, whereas
theories that have followed the Hobbesian tradition portrayed power as a negative force, theories
that followed the Machiavellian tradition, the
most explicit of which is Michel Foucault’s theory,
Coalition Theory
consider the productive dimensions of power. Following the latter tradition, Clegg notes that power
is not a zero-sum game; rather, it involves a set of
practices that produce needs and impute interests.
Consequently, Clegg has spelled out a novel
theory of power that is multidimensional in its
orientation. Where others see episodic, dispositional, and facilitative facets of power as disparate,
Clegg, in his theory of “circuits of power,” sees
them as interconnected. Episodic power is the
most visible form of power in which rules, relations, and resources are translated, fixed, reproduced, and transformed. Yet episodic power is not
a free-floating level, nor does it serve as a foundation for other forms of power. The strategies
espoused in episodic power require that the “substantive rational conditions” need to be secured
and reproduced. Two other macro circumstances,
accordingly, are salient for its existence, social integration, and system integration, involving both
subjective and material conditions for dispositional and facilitative levels of power, respectively.
Whereas dispositional power mainly deals with the
social construction of meaning and membership,
facilitative power is concerned with “the empowerment and disempowerment of agencies’ capacities.”
Clegg’s theory has the advantage of providing a
micro–macro link between the diverse manifestations of power, although, as some critics have indicated, his theory tends to be too abstract to be
labeled as postmodern.
Alem S. Kebede
See also Giddens, Anthony
Further Readings
Clegg, S. (1989). Frameworks of power. London: Sage.
Clegg, S. (2005). “Vita contemplativa”: A life in part.
Organization Studies, 26(2), 291–309.
COALITION THEORY
Politics can be seen as the art of coalition
formation. Any political leader needs supporters
that he or she must reward in some way and any
opponent can only challenge if he or she allies.
105
Machiavelli himself understood this process, and
every successful leader has applied it whether
consciously or unconsciously. Coalition theory is
normally applied to parties within a democratic
legislature but can be applied to any political
process, and it can be seen as the fundamental
basis of the power of all political leaders and
governments.
The Model
Coalition theory tries to provide answers to two
basic problems: which coalition will form and
what will be the outcome. If applied to an abstract
setting that more or less ignores historical facts
and institutional arrangements and also assumes
rational agents, there seems to be a fundamental
tension between the issues of coalition formation
and outcome determination: the more definitely
we can answer the one question, the less definitively we can answer the other.
Both problems can be described with respect to
a society—that is, a set of agents N, and a value
function v that assigns a value v(S) to each subset
S of N. We call S a coalition. This implies that the
members of A can concert their actions such that
v(S) can be achieved. S is a winning (or effective)
coalition if it determines the outcome of (N,v). To
accomplish this, S either selects an element x or a
subset Y in the set of alternatives, that is, set of
possible outcomes.
The pair (N,v) describes a social decision problem with coalition formation: a coalition game.
There can be a unique winning coalition for (N,v).
Then N\S, that is, the complement of S, is a losing
coalition. This often applies if (N,v) is a political
game and the winning coalition S represents the
ruling government. More generally, the underlying situation can be modeled as a simple game
such that, for every coalition S, either v(S) 1 or
v(S) 0, and S is called either winning or losing,
respectively.
In general, voting bodies such as parliaments
and committees can be portrayed by simple games.
However, an economy is formed by many coalitions that have an impact on the overall outcome
so that each of them determines a component of
the vector x that describes the selected alternative;
so an economy is not a simple game. For instance,
an individual firm can be modeled as a coalition.
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Coalition Theory
Coalition S and its complement N\S form a
coalition structure. More generally, a coalition
structure is a finite partition P of N such that the
(disjoint) sets Sk and St are elements of P (and the
intersection of Sk and St is empty) and subsets of N.
Thus, P {S1, . . . , Sm} such that Sk St , k,t 1, . . . , m (and k t), where k and t are members of
coalitions.
A third question is often relevant for coalition
formation: the distribution problem, that is, how to
distribute v(S). The members of N are assumed to
have preferences with respect to the alternatives in
X, which can be summarized by a payoff profile u (u1, . . . , un). Here ui is the payoff function of member
i of N and i 1, . . . , n such that n is the cardinality
of N. It is not obvious whether the value v(S) is a
utility or a potential such as power; however, if
utilities are transferable, then we have (a) v(N) ui for i 1, . . . , n, and outcome u can be interpreted as the evaluation of the distribution of some
divisible private good—money, patronage, porkbarrel benefits, and so forth. Correspondingly,
coalition S can guarantee its members payoffs such
that (b) v(S)
ui for all members i in S. A payoff
vector x dominates a payoff vector y if S can ensure
that x prevails and xi yi for all members i in S.
A minimum requirement such that i supports
coalition S is that (c) ui(S)
v({i}). Here ui(S) is
the utility that i achieves as a member of S and
v({i}) is the value of i if i “stands alone.” If ui satisfies (a) and (c) for all i in N, then u (u1, . . . , un)
is an imputation.
Solutions and Solution Concepts
Now that we have a model for n-person games that
allows for, or presupposes, the forming of coalitions, we can try to answer the questions of which,
what, and how. We make use of alternative solution
concepts that serve as shorthand to describe possible expectations of rational agents with respect to
coalitions and payoffs in n-person games.
The core is the most prominent solution concept
that considers coalition formation. The concept
gives conditions such that the grand coalition N is
stable. For transferable utility games, the imputation u (u1, . . . , un) is in the core of a game G if
there are no coalitions S (subset of N) such that
v(S) ui. If the latter holds true, then u is coalitionally rational: the forming of S is not profitable
for the members of S if S is a strict subset of N.
More generally, the core is the set of allocations u
such that u is (a) Pareto efficient, (b) individually
rational, and (c) coalitionally rational. (Note that
an imputation is an allocation that satisfies [a] and
[b].) In general, the set of allocations u that satisfies (a), (b), and (c) is large and the outcome is
subject to bargaining among the members of N, or
the set that defines the core is empty.
To illustrate the second case, assume that agents
1, 2, and 3 vote on the distribution of a (payoff)
cake that is normalized to 1. Each agent has one
vote and a simple majority of votes determines the
wining coalition. The core of this three-person
simple majority game v* is empty. For every imputation x, there is an imputation y such that a
majority of agents prefers x to y. A plausible
expectation is that a coalition of two agents will
form and these agents will divide the coalition
value in equal shares. However, there are three
candidates of winning coalitions and the corresponding set of payoffs under the equal share
assumption is V {(1 2,1 2,0), (1 2,0,1 2),
(0,1 2,1 2)}. Note that the elements of V do not
dominate each other (internal stability), but for
every imputation x not in V there is an imputation
y in V that dominates x (external stability). The
multiplicity of coalition possibilities gives stability
to the outcomes in V that describes a von Neumann–Morgenstern solution for the given voting
game; hence, V is called a stable set. According to
V, we expect equal sharing, but we cannot tell
which coalition will prevail. However, V is not the
only stable set of this game: there is an infinite
number of triples of asymmetric payoff vectors
satisfying internal and external stability—for
example, V* {(x, 1 x c, c): 0 x 1} such
that c is a constant smaller 1/2.
The median voter solution for the case of singlepeaked preferences and two candidates can be
interpreted as a stable set. The outcome is well
defined by the median voter position but we do
not know which coalition will form, that is, which
candidate will win a majority and who are the voters in the majority coalition. The multiplicity of
coalition possibilities gives stability to the outcome. Alternative coalitions can reduce the leeway
of bargaining within coalitions to zero such that
there is a unique outcome even if the core is empty.
If x is a payoff vector and the core is empty, then
Coalition Theory
e(S,x) v(S) xi 0 where the sum is over all
members i in S and e(S,x) is the excess of S with
respect to x. The surplus of i against j is defined by
sij(x) max e(S,x) where the maximum is taken
over all coalitions S such that i is in S and j is not
in S. Thus, sij(x) expresses the maximum possibilities of i to gain payoffs in coalitions that do not
have j as a member: v(S) does not guarantee that i
gets this value as payoff. The payoff vector x and
coalition structure P are meant to be stable if, with
respect to any coalition S in P, sij(x) sji(x) for all
i, j in S. The set of combinations of x and P that
satisfy this property describe the kernel K of a
coalition game v.
The kernel is a solution concept that both
(a) helps select an element from the outcome set if
the core is large and (b) determines an outcome if the
core is empty. Consider the previous three-person
simple majority voting game v*. If P {{1,2},{3}}
then x (1 2,1 2,0) is the only payoff vector such
that the payoff configuration 具x,P典 is in K(v*).
If P {N}, then y (1 3,1 3,1 3) is the only
payoff vector such that 具y,P典 is in K(v*). A comparison of these two examples illustrates the
impact of the—exogenously given—coalition
structure.
Now consider the three-person game v° in
which coalitions {1,2},{1,3}, and N win. Given P {{1,2},{3}},冓x,P冔 is in K only if x (1,0,0). Despite
the given coalition structure, {1,3} is still feasible
and player 1 can propose a counter-objection
具z,P典(with z1 1 and P {{1,3},{2}}) to any objection 具y,P典 with y1 1. The effect of this threat
becomes obvious if we assume that 3 is ineligible
for coalition membership, perhaps because of an
extremist political ideology. Then we can predict
that coalition {1,2} will form, but the outcome is
indeterminate, that is, subject to bargaining.
The “potential to object” a payoff configuration 具x,P典 is minimized, and thus the corresponding outcome “relatively stable,” if the excess e(S,x)
is minimal. The application of this principle
defines the nucleolus. For a given coalition structure P, the nucleolus is an element of the kernel. If
the kernel is a singleton, the kernel and the nucleolus are identical. If the core is nonempty, the
nucleolus is an element of the core.
The possibility of objecting and counter-objecting
defines the so-called bargaining sets. Their characteristic feature is that a payoff configuration 具x,P典 is
107
stable (and therefore a likely result of coalition
formation) if for any objection 具y,P,典 there is a
counter objection 具z,P*典 such that 具y,P典 is not
profitable to the members of the objecting coalition. The bargaining sets can be distinguished by
the alternative conditions that objections and
counter objections have to satisfy.
By minimizing the “potential for objecting,” the
nucleolus endogenizes the forming of a coalition
structure. More explicitly, S. Hart and M. Kurz
propose a model that addresses the problem of why
coalition structures form and predicts endogenously
which one will indeed form. They assume that all
coalitions bargain for the division of the total,
which is the worth of the grand coalition. A coalition structure is stable if no group of players can
reorganize itself in a way that is profitable for all.
A reduction of the “potential for objecting” suggests that only minimal winning coalitions (MWC)
will form, that is, winning coalitions that contain
no surplus players. If the members of a coalition
are meant to share the coalition value per capita,
coalitions with fewest members are likely candidates. William H. Riker’s size principle proposes
the forming of MWCs for an environment that can
be described by an n-person zero-sum game and
symmetry. The latter implies that the value of a
coalition is a function of the number of its members only. Such a setting seems highly unlikely
in the political arena; however, there are even logical problems with it. Russell Hardin proposes a
five-person zero-sum game with possible outcomes
x (20,20,20,10,50) or y (20,20,20,10,50)
allocated to players A, B, C, D, and E, respectively.
Let us assume coalition {A,B,C,D} has formed and
payoffs are z (26,26,26,28,50). First, note
that the security level of player D is 50 if coalition {A,B,C} forms and x or y apply. Thus, D could
prefer side payments of 6 to A, B, and C each to
ensure outcome x. Second, despite v({A,B,C}) v({A,B,C,D}), it does not pay for players A, B, and
C to eject D from coalition {A,B,C,D} if z can be
achieved with the help of D. However, if the outcome vector x is predetermined, then D has no
incentive to bribe A, B, and C, and the MWC
{A,B,C} will gain a total of 60, only. What outcome
and coalition structure do we expect if no constraints are given on the imputations that describe
the outcome? The answer depends on the choice of
the solution concept that we apply.
108
Coercion, Analytic
It seems that Riker’s size principle is relevant
only for zero-sum games. However, this does not
imply that MWCs are irrelevant for coalition formation. In simple games, the forming of MWCs
ensures some stability because all members of a
MWC are crucial for its success. In the political
arena, however, political programs are often highly
relevant cases and coalitions are connected with
respect to an ideological space, which can imply
that the winning coalition is not minimal. A number of corresponding coalition models have been
developed with respect to the spatial model and
should be discussed in this context.
Manfred J. Holler
See also Core of a Game; Game-Theoretical Approaches
to Power; Minimal Winning Coalition; Public Goods
Index; Simple Games
every constituent feature of coercion that has been
proposed.
One reason why coercion is a matter of concern
to many authors is because it means that someone
is being made to do something against his or her
will. This formulation, however, is somewhat misleading because in many cases it can still be said
that, in a very basic sense, it is still the coerced who
chooses to undertake that particular course of
action. Certainly, in a case of coercion, the coercer
has influenced this choice, but exactly what kind
of influence has to be exercised for the influence to
constitute coercion is a matter of vehement debate.
This formulation does explain, however, why coercion is often regarded as the opposite of freedom—
which is the traditional view—and why some
others have favored presenting it primarily as the
antipode of autonomy.
The Concept of Coercion
Further Readings
Holler, M. J. (Ed.). (1997). The logic of multiparty
systems. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer
Academic.
Holler, M. J., & Widgrén, M. (1999). The value of a
coalition is power. Homo Oeconomicus, 15, 485–501.
Reprinted in Notizie di Politeia (2000), 59, 14–28.
Leiserson, M. (1968). Factions and coalitions in one-party
Japan: An interpretation based on the theory of games.
American Political Science Review, 62, 770–787.
Miller, N. R. (1984). Coalition formation and political
outcomes: A critical note. In M. J. Holler (Ed.),
Coalitions and collective action (pp. 259–265).
Wuerzburg, Germany: Physica-Verlag.
Riker, W. H. (1962). The theory of political coalitions.
New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
COERCION, ANALYTIC
The concept of coercion plays an important role
in many political, moral, and legal theories. Since
Robert Nozick’s 1969 paper “Coercion,” the concept has become an important object of study in
its own right, whereas before then, coercion was
mainly analyzed as part of broader philosophical
theories. There seems to be little consensus about
the proper analysis of the concept at present
because disagreement persists about practically
The Social Nature of Coercion
Coercion is a phenomenon that only occurs in a
social, political, or interpersonal setting. In a case
of coercion, a certain person, A, coerces another
person, B, to perform a specific action, X. Both
actors in this relation are generally deemed to be
persons or collectives. Other entities such as animals or natural disasters may force or perhaps
compel a person to do something, but this is generally not referred to as coercion. Similarly, animals
(and perhaps even inanimate objects) can be
forced, but not coerced.
To coerce someone is to exercise power over him
or her. This is clearly exemplified by the paradigm
exemplar of coercion: the highwayman A threatens
to shoot his victim B unless B hands over B’s purse.
One of the less-contested features of coercion is
that it is necessarily successful. A can only have
coerced B if B actually performs the action A
wanted B to perform. In the case of a threat (as in
the highwayman example), A gets B to perform
action X by negatively influencing the attractiveness of all other courses of action open to B.
Threats, Offers, and Physical Coercion
Some have argued that this is the essential feature of coercion, and that therefore only threats
can coerce. The main problem for those who limit
Coercion, Analytic
the scope of coercion to threats is to determine the
appropriate definition of what constitutes a threat.
The standard way of tackling this question is to
argue for some kind of baseline. If, as a result of
the threat, B’s alternatives to X fall below this
baseline, B is said to be coerced, whereas otherwise
B is said to have chosen to do X freely or voluntarily. A large number of such baselines are possible, such as the course of events in which A did
nothing, the course of events in which A did what
A normally does, the course of events in which A
acted as A may be expected to act, or the course of
events in which A acted as A should have acted.
The idea that coercion always (either implicitly
or explicitly) implies a threat is challenged from
two sides. Some wish to accommodate cases of
what is sometimes called physical coercion, too;
others argue that certain kinds of offers can be just
as coercive as threats. Physical coercion covers
cases where A makes it physically impossible for B
not to do X. This may be achieved by direct application of physical force or by other means that
make actions physically impossible, such as imprisonment. Opponents of this view often argue that
in such cases B does not really do X.
The position that offers may also constitute coercion is popular among those who regard B’s ability
to resist A’s effort to make B perform X as the central
feature of coercion. One way to address the issue of
inability to resist is to focus on the effect of A’s
efforts on B’s will; another is to analyze the nature of
the options open to B. In this latter approach, the
unavailability of (acceptable) alternatives is regarded
as a fundamental feature of coercion. If B is in a
deplorable situation and A offers B a way to alleviate B’s plight, then B may have just as little choice
but to do X as B would in the situation where the
unacceptability of the alternatives to X is the result
of a threat by A. Usually, however, the unavailability
of (acceptable) alternatives is merely regarded as a
necessary condition, not a sufficient one. A central
problem for this approach, which relies on the availability of alternatives, is to satisfactorily determine
what constitutes a genuine or acceptable alternative.
Moralized Versus Nonmoralized
Accounts of Coercion
A particularly prominent issue within the debate
about the proper description of coercion centers
109
around the question whether it is possible to determine if someone is coerced without referring to a
specific moral theory. Those who claim this is
impossible thus advocate a moralized account of
coercion. Moralized theories of coercion may be
primarily concerned with B’s situation, arguing
that B is coerced if it cannot be morally expected
of B that he or she will bear the consequences of
not doing X. Alternatively, theorists may focus on
A, appealing to the immorality of A’s putting B in
such a position, or of A’s taking advantage of the
position B is in. However, a number of philosophers strongly oppose the idea of invoking a specific normative theory to identify cases of coercion,
claiming that this is a purely factual matter or that
it has to be a purely factual matter if coercion is to
play any significant role in moral, political, or legal
theories. One of the main challenges faced by
advocates of moralized accounts of coercion is to
accommodate cases of justified coercion in their
theory, whereas those arguing in favor of a nonmoralized theory of coercion are more hardpressed by the challenge of adequately distinguishing coercing someone from other kinds of forcing
or compelling.
The Relevance of Coercion
Coercion and Responsibility
One of the main interests in coercion, in both
moral and legal theory, stems from its alleged
effects on a person’s responsibility for his or her
actions. A person who is coerced is often regarded
as not being responsible for the actions the person
thus performs. This feature especially interested a
considerable number of the earlier philosophers
working on coercion. More recently, however, this
relation between coercion and responsibility has
been increasingly questioned.
When analyzing coercion and its alleged responsibility negating effects, much depends on how
“not being responsible for one’s actions” is interpreted. In the strictest sense of the term, coercion
is regarded as a ground for excusing a person for
his or her actions. The person’s actions are still
considered wrong, but no personal blame is to be
ascribed to the person. However, except for
extreme cases, as when shock causes a person to
lose control over his or her actions, it is unclear
why coercion would have this effect on a person’s
110
Coercion, Analytic
responsibility. As long as a person’s deliberative
capacities remain intact, there seems to be little of
special relevance in the presence of coercion that
would explain why the person cannot be held
accountable for the choice he or she makes, constrained though the person’s range of choices may
be. A less rigid interpretation of not being responsible regards coercion as having a justificatory
effect on a person’s actions, rather than an exculpatory one. Whereas it would normally be regarded
as wrong to act in a certain way, the presence of
coercion now makes it morally or legally acceptable to act that way. This implies that the “normal”
moral or legal consequences are no longer to be
applied to the person who performed the action, so
some authors claim that this amounts to the person
not being held responsible.
The Wrongfulness of Coercion
Although most authors agree that a certain level
of coercion is often unavoidable, it is often deemed
a necessary evil at best. Advocates of a moralized
conception of coercion capitalize on this negative
connotation of the term, using the fact that it can
be seen as one of the features by which being
coerced can be distinguished from merely being
forced as support for their claim that this negative
moral content is inherent to the concept of coercion. Whereas being forced to do something
applies to many instances of human life, being
coerced is immediately associated with some kind
of injustice or wrongfulness. Some have described
coercion as hostile to the individual, emphasizing
that a coerced person is made to do something that
does not suit the person’s own goals, but rather
those of the coercer. In Kantian terms, the coercer
uses the coerced purely as a means and fails to
regard the coerced as a being with purposes of his
or her own. In a perverted way, however, many
kinds of coercion use precisely this fact that the
coerced is a rational being who pursues his or her
own interests by providing the coerced with practical imperatives that make him or her choose to act
in accordance with the interests of the coercer.
Another issue that is sometimes used to explain
the wrongfulness of coercion is that it harms the
coerced by taking away his or her freedom. This
concerns not so much freedom understood as the
(immediate) range of options for actions open to
the individual—because those do not have to be
affected by coercion—as freedom understood as
the things the coerced can achieve by his or her
choices of action. When confronted with a robber
requesting one’s purse, for example, one can
choose to give the robber the money or not. This
range of options would be the same had the robber requested it without the presence of a gun; the
(probable) results of the respective actions are
very much affected by the gun’s presence, though.
The coerced can no longer achieve the results or
goals that were open to him or her before the
coercer interfered, and the coerced must now subordinate the execution of his or her previous plans
to the demands of the coercer. Because the coerced
can no longer attain what he or she could before,
the welfare of the coerced is typically reduced by
coercion.
Although this decline in welfare may be obvious
in many cases of coercion, it remains problematic
to explain the questionable morality of coercion
purely by reference to its effect on the coerced’s
welfare or well-being. Many cases of paternalism,
for example, are also instances of coercion, and
whatever the merits or demerits of paternalistic
intervention, it need not be the case that either the
immediate welfare or the long-term prospects of
executing his or her own plans are diminished by
the coerced being subjected to coercion of this kind
at present; they might well be furthered by it.
Given these problems, some have argued that
coercion is not to be regarded as something that is
absolutely wrong, but merely as prima facie wrong.
As shown earlier, coercion often has negative effects
on a person’s welfare or tends to harm his or her
prospects, and it often signifies a lack of respect for
the autonomy of the coerced, which provides us
with a prima facie reason not to engage in it. Only
when specific justifications can be given is it permissible to use coercive means. Despite having a
certain initial degree of plausibility, the problem
with this approach is that it merely postpones the
question about the wrongfulness of coercion, focusing exclusively on first impressions. Furthermore,
the prima facie approach only considers the instrumental qualities of coercion and disregards the possibility that the wrongness of coercion is to be found
in its intrinsic value. According to this latter view,
part of the moral significance of coercion is related
to its inherent qualities, so that its wrongness may
Coercion and Power
be more fundamental than is a mere tendency to
lead to morally undesirable results.
The Coerciveness of the Law
Laws are often regarded as coercive. Laws are
designed to ensure that people exhibit a certain
behavior, and they aim to achieve this compliance
irrespective of the person’s agreement to that
behavior or willingness to so comply. That laws
are backed by sanctions indicates their coercive
nature. Whether laws are necessarily coercive is
debated, but in many instances, the law coerces
those who are unwilling to abide by the rules to
obey them nonetheless.
The coerciveness of law is often unavoidable.
Without the level of compliance ensured by the
sanctions attached to breaking the law, it would be
impossible for a society to function properly. Actually, the law often reduces the number of instances
of coercion between individual citizens, protecting
the weaker members of society from would-be
aggressors.
Most approaches to coercion have little difficulty in showing the coercive nature of unjust laws;
however, when laws are just, problems often arise,
especially for those advocating a moralized concept
of coercion because they are bound to maintain
both that something immoral is happening (otherwise it cannot be coercion under such a conception)
and that it is moral at the same time (because it is
just). Some appeal to other morally relevant factors
outweighing the moral wrongness of the coercive
act to explain this apparent contradiction, claiming
that the lesser of two evils remains an evil nonetheless. This solution, however, remains open to the
criticism that it cannot be morally wrong to do the
best thing possible, and hence, that in such cases,
coercion is not wrong. Others have denied that just
laws are coercive at all. Just laws are in accordance
with morality, so those individuals who are constrained by just laws remain fully free and uncoerced because none of their rights have been violated or because the just laws are the laws they
would have willingly abided by had they known
better. This position is highly problematic, however,
and not just because it seems to presuppose an
objective morality. Those who object to certain
laws and in no way wish to abide by them, but do
so nonetheless purely for fear of reprisal, seem to be
111
coerced by them, independently of whether or not
such institutions can be justified. The thus-silenced
political activist seems to be coerced, for instance,
whether sufficient reason can be given to justify
restrictions on his freedom of speech.
Jan-Willem van der Rijt
See also Coercion and Power; Domination; Threat; Throffer
Further Readings
Pennock, J. R., & Chapman, J. W. (Eds.). (1972). Nomos
XIV: Coercion. Chicago: Aldine Atherton.
Wertheimer, A. (1987). Coercion. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
COERCION
AND
POWER
Coercion can be thought of as a subset of power,
but it is an important subset. We frequently think
about the power of some agents over others as
coercive. Weberian definitions of power often take
the form, “Agent A has power over agent B to the
extent that A can get B to do something that B
would not otherwise do.” Such definitions of
power can be seen as synonyms for coercion.
Agent A gets B to do something B otherwise
would not do through some kind of coercion.
However, the definition as it stands allows for the
possibility that A persuades B to do something B
would not otherwise do, and persuasion is not
necessarily coercive. Agent A might provide some
information for B that leads B to want to do something for B’s own interests, or for the interests of
everyone including A. Indeed Agent A might give
B a reason for doing something by making it
advantageous for B to take that action. In other
words, Agent A might pay B to take that action,
or reward B in some other way. Agents might have
powers simply because they are rich and can pay
people to do things for them. The problem for
consideration of coercion in this regard is distinguishing coercion from market exchange or persuasion. We shall examine this problem first
before widening the discussion to other areas of
coercive activity and the relations between coercion, power, and other social concepts.
112
Coercion and Power
Incentive Structures
Generally speaking, we can say that one agent,
agent A, can get another, agent B, to do something
that B would not otherwise do by changing B’s
incentive structure. Thus, the power, or social
power, of one agent A over another agent B is the
ability of A to deliberately alter the incentive structure of B. We say deliberately because A might
alter the incentive structure of B without intending
to do so. Indeed, to a minor extent we can do all
sorts of things that change the incentive structures
of others without intending to. Buying the last
cake in a shop means the next person has to buy
something else instead, but we do not ordinarily
consider such market activity to be acts of power,
let alone coercion.
Incentive structures can be altered in four main
ways. First, persuasion: agent A might persuade B
that an option in B’s opportunity set is not what it
might appear, so raising or lowering it in B’s estimation. Second, A might make a side payment to
B, thus making one alternative more valuable
because it also comes with an extra reward. In the
literature, this is usually called an offer. Third, A
might make a negative side payment to B, thus
lowering an alternative in the estimation of B.
Here, A will ensure that if B makes a particular
choice B must also suffer a cost. In the literature,
this is usually called a threat. Finally, agent A
might combine an offer with a threat, simultaneously lowering one alternative and raising another
alternative. In the literature, this fourth possibility
is usually called a throffer—a combination of a
threat and an offer. We can see how these work by
considering B’s opportunity set, represented here
as three alternatives within a set {N}.
First, consider that B’s opportunity set is {x y z} (where the symbol “” is read as “prefers
to”). Persuasion simply means that at least one of
the items has changed places with another, thus if
agent A persuades B that x is in fact a poor option,
then it might sink to the bottom of order, thus {y
z x}. This might come about because of information given about x or about any of the two
other items. However, we can also represent this
change in the preference ordering in the opportunity set by breaking down the alternatives into
their component parts. If we take the original
ordering and suggest that new information leads
us to, say, believe there are other consequences of
choosing the preferred alternative, we can leave
the original ordering intact, but new alternatives
come into play because of that new information.
Thus information about item x might move it
down the order because it is associated with some
other consequence: {x y z} becomes (x y z x }, and because we now believe that x
must come with then the choice becomes y, as
we saw earlier. Similarly, if agent B is persuaded
that y is a better option because it comes with
addition , then y becomes the preferred option
because it is y : {y x y z); or we
could combine both types of persuasion to give us
{y x y z x }. This might appear
an odd way of representing the changed ordering
of alternatives within an opportunity set, rather
than simply switching the order originally shown.
However, it demonstrates the problem of distinguishing coercion from other ways of changing
opportunity sets. Consider the following three
ways of representing the changing of the ordering
of B’s preferences from the original {x y z}.
Threat: (x y z x }
Offer: {y x y z)
Throffer: {y x y z x }.
We can see here that the representation of
threats, offers, and throffers simply looks like different sorts of persuasion; normally, however, we
would think there is an important difference. In
terms of persuasion, agent A would simply be
pointing out the consequences of choosing item x
or item y (with associated costs or rewards ); in
the case of threats, offers, and throffers, we would
think that these associated costs and benefits are
brought about by agent A because of the choice of
agent B. In other words, persuasion is a prediction
about consequences that convinces agent B, but
threats, offers, and throffers are more than mere
predictions, they are consequences that agent A will
causally bring about contingent on the choice of B.
To be able to convince B to choose differently,
agent A must provide convincing evidence of the
consequences of the potential choices. Similarly,
Agent A’s threats and offers must credible. Credibility places constraints on how good offers can be
or how dire threats can be. If agent B simply does
not believe that A will do what he or she says—the
Coercion and Power
reward is too costly for A, or the threat unrealistically dire, then B will not be persuaded to act
differently.
Offers Versus Threats
There is an important asymmetry between threats
and offers. Offers cost more when they succeed—
agent A must pay B when B complies with what A
wants; threats cost more when they fail—agent A
only needs to carry out his threat when B fails to
comply with what A wants. Again, this points up
the importance of making threats and offers credible. If this were not the case, there would always
be the incentive to make them as high as possible;
there would be no limit on the cost of reward or
threat.
We can illustrate the credibility of threats with
the example of punishment in modern states. We
might think that the strongest incentives for citizens to obey the law would be to make the punishment for breaking the law as severe as possible.
However, if the penalties are too great, then juries
might be reluctant to find guilty those charged
with crimes. This proved the case in the 19th century where juries were reluctant to find guilty
defendants charged with minor crimes such as
stealing apples because the penalties were so high.
The asymmetry between threats and offers has
certain behavioral consequences. If the cost of a
threat or an offer to A is the same, then which is
made depends on the likelihood of compliance.
The higher the probability that B will comply with
the incentive, the more likely it will be in form of
a threat. The higher the likelihood is that B will
not comply, the more likely the incentive will be in
form of an offer. This is so because if A’s threat is
successful, A will not actually bear any further
costs, whereas A must pay if an offer is accepted.
Thus, it is always in B’s interests to indicate that he
or she will not back down to threats but will comply with offers of much lower cost to A. In that
sense, it can be rational to be stubborn, even when
threats of noncompliance seem to bear high costs
for B—as long as those costs are also high for A.
The Coercive Offer
Some claim that capitalism is a power system that
consists of coercive offers. The idea is that under
113
capitalism workers are offered contracts through
which they sell their labor power. Here employers
get workers to do something they would not otherwise do, namely work for the employers, by
making an offer, namely a wage or salary. However, Karl Marx suggested that workers are
exploited wage slaves and the offers they receive in
compensation for working are really a form of
coercion. How can this be? We can approach the
idea by thinking of the notion contained in The
Godfather where Don Corleone says, “Make him
an offer he can’t refuse.” The amusing irony of the
phrase is precisely that offers are, by their very
nature, things that one can refuse. Slavery is a condition that an agent cannot get out of (except through
death): the slave has no freedom. Wage slavery is an
extension, in that although one might refuse any
simple offer of a job, one cannot refuse all offers
(unless one accepts death through starvation). So
any offer of a wage might be refused with regard to
other offers, but wage offers overall are coercive.
A wage offer is coercive if and only if (a) an
alternative “pre-proposal” state of affairs that the
worker would prefer to the actual one in which
the employer has made the offer is feasible, and
(b) the employer (together with others) prevents
this feasible pre-proposal state of affairs from
obtaining. In other words, capitalists maintain
capitalism, high profits, and great inequality by
ensuring that the situation where workers could be
paid more and profits kept reasonable is not
allowed to occur. Two elements of this analysis are
important: first, that there is a feasible alternative
and second, that the feasible alternative is being
blocked by capitalists. One might think that the
coercion involved in a coercive offer, as described
here, is being coerced into the situation of having
to accept at least one job offer. We can compare
this to the slave, who might be offered the choice
of jobs by his master, but still has to perform some
task. The slave cannot walk away from the master
nor can the worker avoid ever having to work. The
important element in both cases is that it is the
slave-master—or capitalists—that ensure it is
impossible for the agent (the slave or the worker)
to alter the situation.
Some argue that coercive offers cannot exist.
They cannot exist precisely because the idea of an
offer one cannot refuse is ironic. The meaning of
an offer is something that one can turn down.
114
Coercion and Power
Coercion is being forced into something. This
leads us to an important aspect of coercion—its
relationship to liberty. Jeremy Bentham defined
liberty as the absence of coercion, defining the
latter as being compelled or constrained in one’s
actions. One is free to the extent that one is not
coerced. A coercive offer—if “offer” does indeed
entail that one has a choice whether or not to
accept is meaningless in the same sense as “being
forced to be free”—is meaningless. Importantly,
some people deny the meaninglessness of both
phrases.
We can approach this issue by considering a paradigm example of coercion much discussed in the
literature: the highwayman demanding “your money
or your life.” Is this demand an offer or a threat?
When the highwayman says “your money or your
life,” is the highwayman altering one of the alternatives in your opportunity set or adding to them?
Some would say the highwayman has altered them.
Before the highwayman, you can keep your money
and live; after the highwayman has uttered his cry,
you have two alternatives: either hand over the
money and live or keep the money and die. In other
words, one highly valued alternative has been
replaced by two low-value ones. Now one is coerced
into handing over one’s money to survive. One has
lost the freedom to keep the money and live. Others
offer a different analysis. Assuming one can give
away one’s money (that is what owning it means)
and one could commit suicide, the person has,
before the highwayman intervention, the alternatives of keeping-your-money-and-your-life; notkeeping-your-money-and-keeping-your-life; keeping-your-money-and-not-keeping-your-life; and notkeeping-your-money-and-not-keeping-your-life. The
highwayman’s arrival on the scene, according to this
second analysis, causes the first alternative to disappear, while the others remain.
Dominant Strategies and Coercion
Actually, both the standard analyses are misleading. The reality of the highwayman situation is you
have “no choice,” in the sense that you have a
dominant strategy of handing over your money. A
dominant strategy in game theory is defined as any
strategy that is preferable to all other strategies. If
you do not hand over your money on his demand,
the highwayman takes it after killing you. In other
words, all the alternatives where you keep your
money disappear after his intervention. Hence,
you do have only two alternatives: “hand over
your money” or “not hand over your money”—
which is equivalent to “not die” or “die” because
they are conjunctives. Handing over your money
dominates not handing it over because you lose
it anyway; by handing it over, you get to keep
your life (which we assume is preferable to
dying). The dominant strategy determines coercion. We might say that in any threatening situation a person could stand up to the threats, but
if one has a dominant strategy forced on one
then one is coerced. So we define coercion as
occurring in any situation created by the coercer,
where the coerced agent has a dominant strategy
that is to the advantage of the coercer but to the
coerced agent’s disadvantage relative to the status quo ante.
This way of thinking about coercion as being in
a situation where one has a dominant strategy to
do as the coercer wishes, and where that situation
has been created by the coercer, fits with modern
republican ideas about the nature of freedom as
being non-domination. The slave example is key
for republicans. A slave might have a great deal of
personal freedom allowed to him or her by the
slave’s master. However, that freedom only exists
because of the latter’s grace and whim and can be
arbitrarily removed at any time. In that sense,
doing what the master wishes is a dominant strategy for the slave because not obeying has dire
consequences. When the master is indifferent to
what the slave does, the slave does then have a
freedom, within the constraints of the master’s
indifference. But all this freedom means is that the
slave’s dominant strategy gives the slave a great
deal of leeway. And this leeway exists only through
the grace and whim of the master.
There are many means by which coercion might
be obtained. We have mostly been considering
physical coercion, such as the highwayman forcing
one to hand over one’s money at gunpoint, or
where the state has a monopoly of legitimate force
to ensure people pay taxes, abide by the laws, and
so on. Here, the state creates a situation where the
dominant strategy (for most people most of the
time) is to obey the law. Coercion might be psychological, however. Blackmail plays on the fears
of the person being blackmailed and “emotional
Coercion and Power
blackmail” plays on people’s fears of being rejected
by others. This might occur in friendships or emotional relationships where one person threatens to
withdraw his or her love, kindness, or friendship
unless the other person accedes to the first person’s
demands. The threat of disapproval from one’s
compatriots or close companions, as in denouncing people as traitors, is also a form of emotional
blackmail. States can create such coercion through
propaganda, most obviously seen in the Soviet
Union and China. The Soviet Union held show trials where psychological pressures were placed on
(often high-ranking) communist officials to admit
to crimes; in China during the “Thought Reform”
campaign (1951–1952) and the “Cultural Revolution” (1966) people were denounced by others,
often children, to make them think in terms of
communist strategy. In the latter case, this might
be thought to be ideological coercion, and in that
the situation was deliberately set up by the authorities, it does seem to deserve the title of coercion.
However, ideological coercion is often used in
contexts where it is not clear there is a coercer.
Marx described religion as the opium of the
people. The idea is that by concentrating on
rewards in heaven people accept hell on earth. We
accept the conditions of capitalism and wage slavery because we accept that there is no alternative.
We live by an ideology that colors our thoughts
and leads us not to recognize that we are being
coerced. However, as we saw in the discussion of
coercive wage offers, unless there are clearly agents
who set up the situation that leads to an ideology
that causes our dominant strategies to be to obey
the rules of capitalism, it is not clear that the situation is coercive. A similar analysis can be offered
of “cultural coercion” where people try to conform
to their identity group—dressing and behaving in
prescribed ways become dominant strategies.
However, if I choose to dress like others, am I
really coerced? Probably the most conformist
humans are teenagers in Western societies (despite
their reputation for being rebels): they tend to
dress, talk, and behave similarly to those in their
peer group. And if teenagers move from one area
to another, they usually mix with those whom they
resemble or soon take on the mores and conventions of the group they join. Is this coercion? It is
not clear how coercive cultural coercion really is.
Without an agent—the coercer—who sets up the
115
coercive situation, can we really speak of these
situations as coercive ones? We might see teenagers
as having dominant strategies to dress alike, but
there is no particular person who has forced the
situation they are in. Without such a person, there
is no coercion. In that sense, ideological, cultural,
and even economic coercion should be seen as no
more than metaphors and not a correct analytic
reading of the situation.
Seen as the opposite of liberty, coercion is
almost universally regarded as normatively bad.
However, the coercive nature of the state is not
necessarily seen as bad. In that sense, coercion is
not intrinsically wrongful. One way of considering
the matter is whether coercion is a violation of
someone’s rights. The coercive powers of the state
would not be wrongful if they do not abrogate
citizen’s rights; indeed quite the reverse is true, as
the justification of the state having a monopoly on
legitimate violence, or coercion, is to protect
rights. To the extent that laws are backed by the
coercive forces of the state, and to the extent those
laws are designed to protect individual rights to
liberty, property, and the person, then the coercive
force of the state is not wrongful. We might extend
this analysis of coercion to other legitimate uses.
Parents might use threats of loss of privileges, even
some emotional blackmail, in the interests of their
children. Such coercive practices might be considered legitimate. To be sure, one might argue it
would be better if parents use not coercive force
but other means to encourage their children to act
in their best interest, but most parents would recognize that some degree of threats and coercion,
however mild, is often required. In other relationships too, coercion might be justified on the
grounds of the well-being and interests of the person being coerced. Again, we might recognize that
coercion does involve a loss of liberty, but liberty
is only one good among others and sometime a
loss of liberty might be justified by another gain in
well-being or interests.
Conclusion
Coercion occurs at many different levels. Seeing it as
the obverse of liberty, we can see it anywhere we see
lack of liberty: we can see it in coercive personal relationships; and we can see it in social and economic
relationships within the state and at the international
116
Coleman, James S.
level. Threats such as those posed by terrorism or by
one state threatening another are more obvious
examples of coercion, but coercion can be seen in a
more diffuse and dispersed manner through all
types of relationship. It is best seen in terms of the
deliberate creating of a situation by one agent to
ensure another has a dominant strategy to do as the
first wishes. Thus, the highwayman example (as
explained here rather than as is usually discussed)
provides the paradigm situation of coercion.
Keith Dowding
See also Blackmail; Coercion, Analytic; Domination;
Exploitation; Freedom; Subjugation; Threats; Throffers
Further Readings
Dowding, K. (1991). Rational choice and political power.
Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar
Wertheimer, A. (2004). Coercion. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Zimmerman, D. (1981). Coercive wage offers.
Philosophy and Public Affairs, 10(2), 121–145.
COLEMAN, JAMES S. (1926–1995)
James Coleman is widely acknowledged as one of
the greatest empirical sociologists of the 20th century. His great work was Foundations of Sociological Theory (1990), but his work on education
was very influential, if controversial. He pioneered
the use of formal theorizing in sociology, publishing An Introduction to Mathematical Sociology
(1964) and Mathematics of Collective Action
(1973), formed the Rational Actor group within
the International Sociological Association, and
founded the associated journal Rationality and
Society in 1988.
Coleman’s work intersects with the concept of
power in a number of interrelated ways. As well as
a formal approach to power with the index named
after him, he recognized that power was a concept
of immense social importance. His first book,
Community Conflict (1957), is a series of case
studies examining conflict at the local level. He
saw that crosscutting cleavages within the social
structure help ameliorate conflict, a process that is
also aided by stable social structures and organizations. In a sense, he was a traditional normative
pluralist, believing that multiple centers of power
enable efficiency. He also saw structured competition within markets, governments, and the state as
promoting efficiency.
He believed competition within education was a
good thing, though he strongly believed in equality
of opportunity in education. He was commissioned to write a report on educational equality in
the United States, which was published in 700
pages in 1966. He argued that educational attainment had more to do with the socioeconomic status of children than with the differences in school
funding then existing. This led the statistically
incompetent to misunderstand his argument that
differences in school do not matter to educational
attainment—hence the controversy. He also argued
that black students would benefit from racially
mixed schooling, which led to bussing, though he
later controversially argued that bussing had failed
because white parents removed their children from
schools where blacks were sent. Coleman’s other
early work included an important study on medical diffusion. A central plank of his pluralism was
that efficiency requires multiple sources of information. He found that doctors who were well connected into local medical networks adopted new
drugs more swiftly than did those who were not.
The idea of diffusion here has been enormously
influential in later network studies, globalization,
and organizational analysis.
Coleman was interested in the unintended consequences of social policy, such as the white flight
caused by bussing. He used formal mathematics in
his social theorizing (he had been trained in chemical
engineering). His formal work led him to considering the cooperative game-theoretic ways of measuring power, and he created the Coleman Index for
measuring the power of coalitions. His later work
was informed by rational choice theory and the
methodology of microeconomics. He saw collective
action as the key problem for social theory, perceiving that people working together can achieve more
than can those working alone. Thus, he had an
interest in measuring the power of individuals as
collectives or coalitions. In both Introduction to
Mathematical Sociology and The Mathematics of
Collective Action, he uses mathematical models to
theorize about attitude change, diffusion, voting
Coleman Index
behavior, group contagion, and other social processes. The ways in which social structures affect
human behavior led him to use rational choice methods of interpreting human behavior under constraint.
His Foundations of Sociological Theory applies
rational choice theory to social behavior, demonstrating how individual choices create social outcomes and how those choices are affected by social
norms and the pressures of interpersonal relationships. He first models social exchanges where individuals interact in ways that resemble contracting
for personal gain. So, for example, he sees norms as
a form of rights allocation where the norm-induced
behavior of one actor is controlled by others. Here,
the norms benefit those other than the actor himself or herself (though overall the actor may gain as
well), the norm-controlled behavior cannot be governed by contractual social exchange, and a system
of sanctions exists to keep norms in place. In that
way, norm-induced behavior is rationalized. Coleman sees trust as a form of social credit that exists
especially when mutual rewards are high and is
kept in place when there is a strong third-party
“guarantor” in place. His work has been extended
by network analysis and game theory.
Coleman is perhaps best known for his insights
on social capital, though somewhat ironically
given its use because Coleman believes social capital is only a metaphor that covers various other
processes analyzed in Foundations. He defines
social capital by its function of facilitating individual action within the social structure. Like
other forms of capital, social capital is something
that makes other things unachievable without it.
Unlike capital, social capital inheres in the structure of relations between persons and among persons and is not fungible. Coleman first used the
concept in his work on education. His emphasis on
the significance of social background led him to
suggest that social capital was an important
resource. For Coleman, social capital is the networks of relationships that people have, bringing
benefits in helping people overcome barriers to
action. The great advantage that the higher social
classes have is simply the networks they have as a
class. But ethnic and other groups can develop
social capital as they help each other. A poor urban
black will have greater social capital within his or
her community than will a richer white person
who found himself or herself in the neighborhood.
117
Coleman saw that the collective action problem
was the key problem for society and the key issue
in understanding lack of personal powers. Many
elements go into overcoming collective action problems, including information, network resources,
and reciprocal bargaining contracts.
Keith Dowding
See also Bargaining; Capital, Neoclassical; Coalition
Theory; Coleman Index; Collective Action Problem;
Coordination; Exchange Theory; Power Indices; Social
Capital; Unintended Consequences
Further Readings
Coleman, J. S. (1990). Foundations of sociological theory.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Marsden, P. V. (2005). The sociology of James S.
Coleman. Annual Reviews of Sociology, 31, 1–24.
COLEMAN INDEX
In 1971, three indices of a priori voting power
were introduced by James S. Coleman: the Prevent
Action index (g ), the Initiate Action index (g ),
and the Index of Collectivity to Act (A). The first
two indices, suitably normalized, coincide with
both the normalized Banzhaf index and the normalized Penrose index (see Banzhaf Voting Power
Measure, Penrose Voting Power Measure). However, the Coleman indices have a greater conceptual value because they measure different aspects
of the power to make decisions and to veto.
The definitions of the three Coleman indices (in
absolute and normalized versions) are presented
here and illustrate the links between the other previously mentioned indices. An example follows.
The Index of Collectivity to Act (A) measures
the ability of a given collectivity to make decisions,
that is, the potentiality that an act or bill has of
being passed. In the collectivity of n members,
there are 2n possible coalitions. The Index of
Collectivity to Act is the quotient between the number of winning coalitions (i.e., the number of
voting outcomes that lead to a decision) and 2n:
v
A5 n .
2
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Coleman Index
The essential element in the construction of the
other two indices is the concept of “swing.” A
swing for the i-th member of the collectivity is a
pair of coalitions ðS; S\figÞ such that S is a winning
coalition and S\fig is losing. The number of
swings of each member i is denoted by ci.
The Prevent Action index (g ) is a measure of the
blocking power of each member in the given collectivity. For each member i, the Prevent Action
Index g i is the quotient between the number of the
member’s swings ci and the number of the winning coalitions of the collectivity:
ci
gi5 .
v
The Initiate Action index (g ) is a measure of
the power of each member to have his proposals
accepted by the collectivity.
For each member I, the
Initiate Action index gi is the quotient between the
number of the member’s swings ci and the number
n
l52 2v of the losing coalitions of the collectivity,
that is, of the outcomes that do not produce a
decision:
ci
gi 5 .
l
The absolute Banzhaf index coincides with
the Penrose index r. Both the prevent action and
the initiate action indices can be regarded as rescalings of (and then of r). In fact,
0
gi 5
gi 5
b i ri ,
5
2A A
indices of Banzhaf and Penrose, in the group of the
I-power indices (power as influence).
For both
g and g , the
sum extended to all the n
members
S gj ; S gj
j2N
j2N
one. Then the normalized indices are considered
g i , gi .
S gj S gj
j2N
j2N
The normalized indices coincide with one
another and with the normalized Banzhaf (–Penrose) index. However, the absolute indices offer
more information than normalized ones do because
the latter are leveled, much as is a drawing compared with a three-dimensional form.
An Example
Assume a parliament is composed of three parties
(labeled 1, 2, 3), which have neither prejudice
against forming, nor inclination to form, a coalition
between them. Let (2, 1, 1) be the respective seats.
Suppose that an act can be approved only if the
favorable votes are equal to or greater than 3 (simple
majority). In this case, the winning coalitions are {1,
2}, {1, 3} and {1, 2, 3}, so v53 . Party 1 is decisive
for all winning coalitions (without party 1, all these
coalitions become losing) so it has three swings. Parties 2 and 3 are decisive only for one coalition ({1, 2}
and {1, 3}), respectively, so they have only one swing
each. Thus c1 53 , c2 51, c3 51, and
0
bi
ri .
5
2ð12AÞ ð12AÞ
A¼
3
3,
3 ¼
8
2
g1 51 , g2 5g3 51=3 ,
In particular, both g and g coincide with
(and then with r) if the number of winning coalitions is equal to the number of the loosing coalitions (i.e., v5l52n21 ) because in this case there is
no difference between the power to prevent action
and the power to initiate action.
Moreover, the absolute Banzhaf index (and
then r)
coincides with the harmonic mean of g
and g :
1
1 1 .
0
bi 52ri 5
1 2 .
gi gi
in general is greater than
g1 5
1
1
3
3 5 .
5 , g2 5g3 5 3
2
3 5
2 3 5
3
Cesarino Bertini and Izabella Stach
See also Banzhaf Value; Coleman, James S.; I-Power;
Power Indices; Power to Initiate Action and Power to
Prevent Action; P-Power; Voting Paradoxes; Voting
Power; Weighted Majority Game
Further Readings
Dan S. Felsenthal
and Moshé Machover classi
fied A, g , and g as well as the (not normalized)
Banzhaf, J. F. (1965). Weighted voting doesn’t work: A
mathematical analysis. Rutgers Law Review, 19, 317–343.
Collective Action Problem
Coleman, J. S. (1971). Control of collectivities and the
power of collectivity to act. In B. Lieberman (Ed.),
Social choice (pp. 269–300). New York: Gordon and
Breach.
Felsenthal, D., & Machover, M. (1998). The
measurement of voting power: Theory and practice,
problems and paradoxes. Cheltenham, UK: Edward
Elgar.
Felsenthal, D. S., & Machover, M. (2005). Voting power
measurement: A story of misreinvention. Social Choice
and Welfare, 25(2–3), 485–506.
Penrose, L. S. (1946). The elementary statistics of
majority voting. Journal of the Royal Statistical
Society, 109, 53–57.
COLLECTIVE ACTION PROBLEM
To further their interests, individuals must sometimes act collectively. It is easy to assume that
individuals with shared—that is, collective—interests will jointly pursue those interests: that workers will form unions and lobby for higher wages,
that states will agree to cut carbon dioxide emissions to preserve the environment, and that commuters will use public transport to reduce traffic
congestion. Yet as each of these examples shows,
collective action can actually be quite problematic. Workers do form unions and states do sometimes sign environmental treaties, but it cannot
simply be assumed that collective action will
occur.
Free riding is one particular problem that can
stymie collective action. In situations where the
benefits of collective action accrue to all the members of the group regardless of who contributed to
its provision, individuals may reason that they are
better off not contributing to the collective cause
and instead free riding on the efforts of others. The
problem is that if everyone in a group reasons in
this way, then no collective action will occur, and
all the members of the group may end up worse off
relative to when they share the costs of collective
action. The collective action problem was clearly
stated by Mancur Olson in The Logic of Collective
Action:
Any group or organization, large or small, works
for some collective benefit that by its very nature
will benefit all the members of that group in
question. Though all the members of a group
119
therefore have a common interest in obtaining
this collective benefit, they have no common
interest in paying the cost of providing that collective good. Each would prefer that the others
pay the entire cost, and ordinarily would get any
benefit provided whether he had borne part of
the cost or not. (Olson, 1965, p. 21)
Free riding is a particularly important source of
collective action problems. There are, however,
other reasons why collective action might or
might not occur. Just a few will be mentioned
here:
Recognition of Interests. Groups will fail to act collectively if, for whatever reason, they fail to recognize that they have a shared set of interests that
require collective action.
Group Homogeneity. The more homogeneous a
group is, the more likely it is that the members of the
group will recognize any shared interests and overcome disputes about how to distribute the costs of
collective action.
Group Interactiveness. If the members of a group
already interact frequently, it will be easier to monitor and so punish free riding. The members of a
group who interact frequently may also already
trust each other to act fairly in the absence of any
monitoring.
Opposition. The existence of a rival group can
sometimes spur a group to act collectively. Alternatively, an opposition group may be able to undermine attempts at collective action.
Collective Action, Power, and Luck
Power is often defined as the ability to overcome
resistance. Explicit collective action is not always
required for an individual to exercise power and
secure his or her goals. The owner of a large corporation who is considering whether to invest in a
country may, for example, be able to secure,
through direct negotiations with the government, a
series of favorable tax concessions without having
to form any explicit coalitions. However, such
actions are a form of coalition with the government. Often, however, individuals can only acquire
power by acting in explicit coalitions. Individually,
farmers do not have any great power. Yet collectively, they have often been able to extract from
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Collective Action Problem
governments a range of economic privileges including subsidies, export credits, import restrictions,
and price controls. There may well have been a
time when governments supported farmers because
the government wanted to reduce the country’s
dependence on imports. Yet, more recently, it is
perhaps the ability of farmers to operate collectively through such well-connected and lavishly
funded groups as the National Farmers Union in
the United Kingdom, the American Farm Bureau
Federation, and the Fédération nationale des syndicats d’exploitants agricoles (FNSEA) in France
that best explains their success.
Finally, there are individuals whose powerlessness might be explained in terms of their failure
to overcome collective action problems. Consider
the situation of those living under a dictatorship.
As successful revolutions in the Philippines
(1986), Eastern Europe (1989), Serbia (2000),
and Ukraine (2004–2005) have shown, only a
small fraction of a country’s population needs to
act collectively to topple a government. Yet,
many dictatorships survive. One reason why they
do so is the existence of the collective action
problem.
It is, as already noted, easy to assume that individuals with shared interests will act collectively in
pursuit of those interests. It is also easy to assume
that if a group of individuals is powerless that the
group is powerless because powerful people are
thwarting the group. In questioning this “blame
fallacy,” Keith Dowding suggests that the powerless may sometimes be powerless because they are
unlucky and that they may be unlucky because to
achieve their goals they need to but are unable to
act collectively. At the same time, however, one
way in which people can both exercise and maintain their power is by undermining the efforts of
others to act collectively. It is, in other words, an
open empirical question whether the powerless are
powerless because they are unlucky or whether
they are powerless because powerful people are
thwarting them.
To see how the powerful might undermine
attempts at collective action, consider, once again,
the example of a dictatorship:
Free Riding. Dictators can exacerbate an existing
collective action problem by making it clear that they
will punish those who attempt to act collectively and
that they will reward those who betray the plans of
others.
Recognition of Interests. A dictator may also try to
prevent people from recognizing that they share a
collective interest in toppling the government. One
way in which dictators can do so is by pursuing a
policy of “divide and rule” in which the dictators
use their control of the media to encourage individuals to believe that their interests are threatened by
those living in different parts of the country or those
who practice a different religion.
Group Interactiveness. Groups that interact frequently with each other are more likely to be able to
overcome a collective action problem. By either
closely regulating or even dissolving institutions and
spaces in which people are likely to come together—
churches, sports associations, or even the family—
dictators can therefore make it harder for a group to
act collectively.
Opposition. Finally, and most obviously, dictators
can bolster their position by destroying any groups
that do form. As the purges conducted by Joseph
Stalin in the 1930s and Saddam Hussein in the
1980s also showed, dictators can strengthen their
reputation for ruthlessness by persecuting loyal government supporters.
Acting Collectively by Creating Power
One way in which individuals can overcome
collective action problems is by either creating or
giving to an existing third party the power to punish free riding. Writing in the 17th century, during
the midst of the constitutional upheavals wrought
by the English Civil War, Thomas Hobbes famously
argued that, when caught in a state of nature,
every person would be better off if each respected
each other’s property, but that everyone would be
tempted to renege on any agreements reached. As
a result of what we could now describe as this collective action problem, the life of a person, Hobbes
concluded, would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish
and short.”
Hobbes argued that people could eventually
escape this dystopia by agreeing to establish a sovereign political authority, the Leviathan, with sufficient power to force individuals to respect each
other’s property and lives. By forfeiting some of
their own freedoms, or powers, and creating a
Collective Action Problem
body that could exercise a monopoly on the exercise of legitimate violence, individuals would be
better able to achieve their interests. It is not hard
to see why many people continue to proclaim the
relevance of Hobbes’s analysis. In many states—
Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo
being, perhaps, the most obvious examples—the
absence of a government that can command a
monopoly on the use of violence has been associated with civil wars that have led to the deaths of
hundreds of thousands of people. Yet it is worth
briefly noting that actors other than the state can
sometimes use their power to solve collective
action problems.
Diego Gambetta argues that weakness of the
state in southern Italy during the 19th and early
20th centuries allowed the Mafia and other organized crime groups to acquire a great deal of
power. This is, in one sense, obvious. The weakness of the state meant that the police and judiciary
lacked the resources necessary to crush these
groups. Yet there is more to Gambetta’s argument
than this. The absence of a strong state in Italy was
economically damaging because it raised the
“transaction costs” of exchange. Because the state
could not be relied on to enforce the terms of any
deals, markets were paralyzed. In these circumstances, the Mafia fulfilled an important economic
function by guaranteeing market trades in return
for a share of the resulting profits.
Collective Action and
the Exploitation of the Powerful
There are some groups that Olson calls “privileged,” in which one member of the group so values
the collective good in which the group has a shared
interest that that member is prepared to bear the
entire costs of providing it himself or herself. Consider the example of a shared student apartment.
Keeping the apartment clean or at least tolerably
hygienic poses a potential collective action problem
in that each resident has an incentive to free ride on
any cleaning efforts. But if one student has a pathological hatred of squalor, that student may be willing to clean the apartment without any help from
the others.
The theory of hegemonic stability developed by
international relations theorists in the 1980s provides a more substantive example of this basic idea
121
and allows us to link the existence of a privileged
group to power. Proponents of this theory argue
that a secure and prosperous international order
requires the provision of collective goods such as a
free-trading regime, a stable international currency, and a sense of security from invasion. In an
anarchic international system in which there is no
Leviathan to enforce order, the provision of these
goods provides a serious collective action problem.
Historically, this problem has often been resolved
when a hegemonic power—once Britain but now
the United States—so benefits from the existence
of a stable international order that the power is
prepared to bear the costs of enforcing free trade
agreements, maintaining an international currency,
and protecting state boundaries.
The theory of hegemonic stability is, it almost
goes without saying, a controversial one. Many
would argue that far from providing a set of collective goods, Britain and the United States used
their power to exploit the international system for
their own advantage. In the context of this discussion of the relationship between collective action
and power, the argument for hegemonic stability
does, however, have some particularly interesting
implications. First, it suggests that all the members
of a group—in this case, the states in the international system—might benefit from the presence of
an extremely powerful, hegemonic, state. Second,
the theory suggests that, in at least this one
respect, the powerless might be able to exploit the
powerful by making the powerful bear most, if
not all, of the costs of providing collective goods.
Collective Action and Empowerment
In studying collective action, political scientists
are likely to focus on the circumstances in which
collective action takes place and the extent to
which the existence of the collective action problem
disadvantages particular groups. Psychologists are
more likely to focus on the distinctive personality
traits exhibited by those engaged in high-intensity
collective action and the effects participation has
on them. One recent line of argument here is that
collective action is, for many people, an empowering experience. In acting collectively, and, crucially,
in acting against some other group, individuals
achieve a greater sense of social identity, become
more aware of the existence of other people who
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Community Power Debate
share that identity, and come to believe that they
can, in however small a way, make a political difference. Consider, for example, the following statement made by a participant in the Reclaim the
Streets demonstration, talking here about how the
group overcame police resistance:
That felt really brilliant, cos it was just . . . I don’t
know, there’s something about overcoming opposition. Like if we’d just walked out of the tube
station and walked straight onto the road, it
wouldn’t have been as good, as having to have
got round the police lines first. So it was that
kind of, you know, makes you feel more like
you’ve achieved something . . . if you’re left completely free to do whatever you want, it doesn’t
feel as way-hey! Exciting as, the whole crowd,
pulling together against some opposition and
then achieving what it wants, cos you all feel this
sense of unity, and purpose. (Drury, Cocking,
Beale, Hanson, & Rapley, 2005, p. 316)
Because those who act collectively are more
likely to achieve a sense of empowerment and
because those who feel empowered are more likely
to engage in collective action, there is a potentially
virtuous circle here. The sense of empowerment
described by psychologists is, however, only likely
to arise in situations where the collective action is
considered by the participants themselves to have
been successful.
Andrew Hindmoor
See also Chicken Games; Cooperation; Coordination;
Dowding, Keith; Luck; Networks, Power in; Pluralism;
Public Goods; Systematic Luck
Further Readings
Dowding, K. (1996). Power. Buckingham, UK: Open
University Press.
Drury, J., Cocking, C., Beale, J., Hanson, C., & Rapley,
F. (2005). The phenomenology of empowerment in
collective action. British Journal of Social Psychology,
44, 309–328.
Gambetta, D. (1993). The Sicilian Mafia: The business of
private protection. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Kindleberger, C. (1981). Dominance and leadership in the
international economy: Exploitation, public goods and
free rides. International Studies Quarterly, 25,
242–254.
Olson, M. (1965). The logic of collective action.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
COLLECTIVE GOODS
See Public Goods
COMMUNITY POWER DEBATE
The community power debate set the scene for
several generations of scholarly research around
the nature of power in society. In many ways, all
of the central issues that continue to be discussed
and debated in mainstream analyses of power
were first set by the community power debate.
That debate was probably first labeled as such
toward the end of its first phase, in the early
1970s.
First Phase
In the interwar period, a number of sociological
studies of small-town life in the United States were
conducted. They did not, however, address questions of power directly; nevertheless, they usually
identified key figures in communities, often bankers and leading businesspeople around whom
much of the social and political life of communities
revolved. The book that might be thought to have
started the community power debate is Floyd
Hunter’s Community Power Structure, published
in 1953. Using a reputational method, he argued
that there was a clear power elite in Atlanta (which
he called “Regional City”). He argued that members of this relatively small power elite were
socially and economically linked and included
important businesspeople, corporate lawyers, and
politicians. He viewed power as a set of interlinked power pyramids; although the same people
dominated within different pyramids or issueareas, different people might be found at the head
of each pyramid. At about the same time
C. Wright Mills published The Power Elite (1956),
arguing that the United States was dominated by a
Community Power Debate
political–industrial–military complex whose membership all came from the same social (and often
also family) backgrounds, having attended the
same schools and universities and belonging to the
same clubs. Together, these two books created
“elite theory” and provided the first side in the
community power debate.
The second side emerged through the work of
Robert Dahl, whose book Who Governs?, published in 1961, examined the power structure of
Dahl’s home university town of New Haven, Connecticut. Dahl and his researchers had a number of
criticisms of Floyd Hunter’s methods and conclusions. The critique was that reputational methods
were bound to produce lists of power elites and
people who view some actors as more important
than others; selecting people from those lists
would simply reinforce the assumption that their
colleagues and acquaintances were also powerful.
Instead, Dahl chose a set of issues to study from
what was being reported in the local newspapers
and interviewed sets of people at all levels within
those issue areas. For all the heat of the subsequent
debate, Dahl’s conclusions were not that different
from Hunter’s, though the manner in which they
were expressed differed. Dahl also found that there
were important elites who figured in different issue
areas. However, he emphasized their differences
rather than the fact they came from similar backgrounds. He suggested that power diffused among
different competing elites in different issue areas.
His pluralist view, despite similar evidence, contrasted sharply with the elite views expressed by
Hunter, Mills, and others.
This first stage in the community power debate
differed both in methods—the reputational versus
the behavioral methods—and in their conclusions,
one emphasizing the elite domination and the
other the plurality of centers of power.
Second Phase
The second stage of the debate centered around
methods. Early critics of Dahl suggested that his
methods were bound to miss important aspects of
the power structure. Examining issues brought up in
the newspapers would ignore those issues that were
underground, off-message, or were, in E. E. Schattsneider’s phrase, “organized out” of political debate.
Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz suggested that
123
what they called the “decisional” method of Dahl
ignored “nondecisions.” These are decisions that
are taken behind closed doors out of the purview
of the media and public, ensuring that some interests are not represented. A second critique emerged
from the neo-Marxist writer William Domhoff,
who reanalyzed all the evidence collected and
maintained by Dahl. Domhoff argued that Dahl’s
team had identified elites who came from the same
social backgrounds, belonged to the same clubs,
and attended the same schools and universities;
Dahl simply had not reported his elite findings.
Dahl and his one-time research associates, Raymond Wolfinger and Nelson Polsby, responded by
defending their behavioral and decisionist methods. They renewed their attack on reputational
methods and suggested that we cannot study issues
for which there is no evidence. Dahl expressed
some surprise at the way his findings had been
interpreted. Some textbooks still assert that pluralists claimed that power was equally dispersed
among different groups of people. Dahl was clear
that power was unequally dispersed, clear that an
elite did exist, and that this elite included politicians around the mayor and businesspeople. However, he maintained that these elites were competitive and did not act as a single entity. He also
maintained that although an elite governed in the
interests of the majority of citizens, that the latter
were less powerful did not show there was anything wrong with democracy. Indeed, in a short
book After the Revolution? (1970), he poured
scorn on those who felt that power could somehow be equally dispersed.
Structural Accounts and
Theoretical Critiques
In the 1970s and 1980s, the power debate moved in
two contrary directions. There were those who continued Hunter’s elite and structuralist line, alongside
a more Marxist structural-functionalist account—
both of which maintained a firm empirical base—
and those who moved away from empirical studies
to more theoretical critiques that ultimately seem to
suggest that power cannot be studied empirically, at
least in part because it is an essentially contested
concept.
The structural accounts begin with Matthew
Crenson’s The Unpolitics of Air Pollution (1972),
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Community Power Debate
which demonstrates how structural factors affect
the nature of power within communities. Examining two steel towns, he shows how one enacted air
pollution ordinances earlier than others did because
vested interests had more bargaining power and
because the local population also had more invested
in the steel companies. Although everyone can see
the benefits of clean air, they were less keen on
enacting ordinances in one city because of the costs
of the ordinances, especially given the propaganda
and threats of the steel corporations.
In an award-winning book, Regime Politics
(1989), Clarence Stone returned to Hunter’s original site of study, Atlanta, to defend the structural
account of power—what he termed systemic
power—he identified in Hunter’s book. Stone suggested that city government is formed through
coalitions that take on governing principles that
dominate decision making even when new elites
take over. Thus, he argued that even when the
African American community managed to wrest
control of Atlanta’s governing structure, African
American leaders soon took on the interests of the
business elite (albeit with a black subsection) in
development issues. The underlying idea is that
within a democracy, politicians need reelection and
they improve their reelection chances by forming a
coalition with different groups. They need the support of local business for direct monetary support
for their campaigns and to ensure that capitalists
do not disinvest in their community. Part of the
bargain will involve allowing businesspeople to
create new development and ensuring that the
local economy runs smoothly. Thus, political elites
need to compromise their welfare objectives even
if these serve the interests of their core supporters.
Hunter also followed up his study of Atlanta with
another, in which he reaffirmed his original findings albeit with the addition of a new black elite.
The growth-machine model is a neo-Marxist
variant of this elite story. Here, the argument is
that developers want to maximize the exchange
value of the properties they build or improve.
Although this might bring some real value to a
community, much of this value will be invested or
spent in other communities. The local community
wants to maximize the use value of its property:
the use and exchange value do not always coincide. Hence, although development might be good
for a community, the nature of the (local) capitalist
state ensures that developers do not work in the
best interests of the community. This is called the
growth machine because local growth is created
for its own sake and not for the benefit of the community. Again, the mechanism underlying the
machine is that politicians need to support capital
to promote the local economy for their own reelection chances.
The second strand of the post-behavioralist
examination turned away from empirical community studies. A key book, at least in Europe, was
Steven Lukes’s Power: A Radical View, which suggested there were three faces or dimensions of
power. These constituted the behaviorialist/decisionist view of Dahl, the nondecisions of Bachrach
and Baratz, and a third dimension that recognized
the importance of objective interests.
One of the issues at the heart of the elite–pluralist
divide is whether elites rule in their own interests
or in the interests of the community as a whole.
Both pluralists and elitists recognize that there are
policy elites: the real question is to how far they
govern in their own interests and how far they
govern in the interests of the community as a
whole. To the extent that nondecisions are taken
out of the view of the media and the public, one
would think that elites are conspiring in their own
interests. However, simply because a given development brings great gains to the entrepreneur who
risked his money on the venture and the building
contractor and businesspeople who worked on it
does not show that it was not also in the interests
of the local community. Furthermore, we can
judge whether elites rule in the interests of the
many by how the many respond. In a democracy,
if we are not relatively satisfied with decisions
made in local government, then we can vote out
the politicians and bring in those who suggest
alternative courses of action. Thus, although elites
might not do exactly what we wish, we may judge
that generally they are ruling in the interests of the
many.
Contrary to this view, however, Lukes argues
that both sides ignore the essentially contested
view of what constitutes interests in the case. He
suggests that people have objective interests of
which they themselves might not be aware. Thus,
even if we do not overturn our rulers, we cannot
be sure they represent our interests because they
might fool us about what truly constitutes our real
Community Power Debate
interests. Taking Crenson’s example of the two
steel towns, Lukes suggests that people might
think that air pollution ordinances are not a good
idea because they will reduce profits for the company and put jobs at risk. However, it would be in
their objective interests for health reasons to
ensure all towns had similar ordinances so that
that competition remained fair and such ordinances would not threaten jobs. He suggests that
although we might think that development is in
our interests, unaware of our real or objective
interests, we can be wrong.
Of course, once one has rejected any empirical
process by which we judge the importance of
issues—such as Dahl’s surfacing of newspaper
reports or surveys asking people what is important
to them—in judging interests, all we are left with
is competing moral views. This lies at the heart of
claims that the concepts of interest, and therefore
power, are essentially contested. In the second edition of his book, Lukes goes even further and suggests that power is ubiquitous; following Michel
Foucault, Lukes depicts the structures and systems
of power ensuring a domination that does not
allow people to recognize their own interests but
ensures we are locked into a system of domination.
In a late essay, Lukes quotes dialogue from John
Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath where a farmer
being driven off his land is persuaded not to shoot
the tractor driver who is just doing his job, having
lost his own farm too. The farmer realizes that
there is no point shooting the guy who gave the
tractor driver the orders, nor in shooting the local
banker, because he took orders from the east. The
conclusion is that perhaps there is no one to shoot.
Like Foucault, we might conclude that everyone in
the machine of life, those at the top and the bottom, are all dominated by the power system. Such
conclusions lead some to suggest that we cannot
empirically study power; rather, its study is a normative exercise.
In Rational Choice and Political Power, Keith
Dowding argues that this view arises from a misunderstanding of the collective action problem. The
pluralists are wrong that we can read interests
separate from action because the collective action
problem shows that people might not act in their
own interests, even when they know what those
interests are. However, Lukes is wrong in thinking
that lack of action shows people do not understand
125
their own interests. Dowding recognizes that there
might be objective interests—in the sense that we
do not always recognize them—but argues that we
can model objective interests by exploring what is
good for the health and well-being of people and by
examining the ways in which people make poor
judgments between their needs and their desires.
He argues that we can model situations to make
empirical judgments about the relative powers of
different agents. He suggests that the best way of
measuring power is by examining relative resources
and how these can be used in bargaining situations.
Dowding argues against the idea of structural
or systemic power, suggesting that the term power
is best reserved for what agents can do. However,
he develops the idea of “systematic luck,” which is
very similar to that of Stone’s notion of systemic
power. Based on Brian Barry’s notion of luck,
which is getting what you want without trying, he
suggests that the difference between the power of
agents based on what they could achieve given
their situation and resources, and how much they
get of what they want, is a measure of their luck.
If one systematically shares preferences with more
powerful actors, then one gets a lot of what one
wants without actually being powerful. Thus, the
extent to which development takes place despite
the wishes of the local community and the extent
to which it is actually in the interests of the community is a measure of the luck of the community.
The extent to which developers share the interests
of politicians given that both want development—
the latter for reelection, the former for personal
gain—is the systematic luck of the developers. The
idea of systematic luck has proved highly controversial: writers such as Lukes and Barry believe it
downplays the extent to which capitalists and
developers hold sway over communities at local,
national, and international levels.
Conclusion
The community power debate has probably run its
course. All sides seem content that they have won
a victory and now show little enthusiasm to continue the debate. Key issues such as the nature of
interests, how best to measure power (if it can be
measured at all), and how far “power” is empirically demonstrable remain contested. Mainstream
political science and urban politics tend to avoid
126
Complex Equality (Walzer)
direct power study. One reason might be that
empirical research now examines models of specific situations and specific coalitions. Although
these are studies of power battles, they are not
studies of power in the broad sense. The power of
an actor, according to most definitions, is what the
actor could attain, not what he or she does attain.
Mainstream political science and urban studies
tend to examine what people have obtained, and
so concentrate on the actual narratives or the
potential ones. Mainstream power debates, as represented in the newly established Journal of Power,
concentrate more on theories of power and much
less on direct empirical studies of power. So in that
sense, too, the community power debate, which
began with specific empirical power studies, has
been left behind.
Keith Dowding
See also Bachrach, Peter, and Baratz, Morton; Collective
Action Problem; Dahl, Robert A.; Domhoff, G.
William; Dowding, Keith; Essentially Contested
Concept; Foucault, Michel; Growth Coalitions;
Hunter, Floyd; Interests; Lukes, Steven; Mills, C.
Wright; Mobilization of Bias; Pluralism; Regime
Theory in Urban Politics; Reputational Analysis;
Systematic Luck; Systemic Power; Third Face; Three
Faces of Power
Further Readings
Dahl, R. A. (1961). Who governs? Democracy and power
in an American city. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Dowding, K. (1991). Rational choice and political power.
Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar.
Hunter, F. (1953). Community power structure: A study
of decision makers. New York: Anchor Books.
Lukes, S. (2005). Power: A radical view (2nd ed.).
Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Stone, C. N. (1989). Regime politics: Governing Atlanta
1946–1988. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas.
COMPLEX EQUALITY (WALZER)
Michael Walzer in his book Spheres of Justice suggests that power and domination can be avoided if
a society promotes complex equality. His definition
of complex equality states: no social good x
should be distributed to men and to women who
possess some other good y merely because they
possess y and without regard to the meaning of x.
Complex equality does not mean that people have
the same holdings of any good, so people will not
have the same amount of money, status, position,
or political power. But their holdings in any one
social sphere should not give them advantage
regarding their holdings in another social sphere.
So, for example, a person holding some political
office should not because of that office have
greater access to some other social good such as
health care. This account of equality in social
goods is pluralistic. It has some affinities with
Robert A. Dahl’s argument that power is pluralist
when it is not concentrated into the hands of a
single power elite.
Walzer’s account of complex equality is much
more radical than is Dahl’s account of pluralism in
political power and influence. Underlying the idea
of complex equality is that different spheres of
life—the market, politics, the arts, and so on—have
different social meanings. The just distribution of
goods within each sphere will therefore use different principles of distribution. The principles of
distribution within one sphere, and the distribution
itself, should contaminate neither the principles nor
the distribution in another sphere. Walzer’s account,
if taken literally, means that people should not gain
better health care simply because they have gained
better education. Or, that someone should not
receive more social status simply because they have
more money. It is not clear, however, what this
entails for political and economic practice. The
unequal holding of monetary resources, for example, is bound to give greater access to many social
goods, unless they are not distributed by a market.
Greater education is almost bound to lead to
greater access to health care because the more educated are better able to articulate their health needs
and more confident in their dealings with doctors.
It is hard to see how to persuade people not to give
more respect to the leading lights of the arts world
than to accountants or dentists.
A less radical reading would be simply that
political power should not lead to greater access to
jobs or position. Such a reading is merely saying
that politicians and civil servants should not be
corrupt. Or that leading capitalists should not
Compliance (International)
have greater influence over politicians, or over
administrative decisions, or have access to other
resources provided by the state such as national
health care and state education. The less radical
reading makes more sense, but is simply part and
parcel of constitutional liberalism.
Keith Dowding
See also Dahl, Robert A.; Justice
Further Readings
Walzer, M. (1983). Spheres of justice: A defence of
pluralism and equality. Oxford, UK: Martin
Robertson.
COMPLIANCE (INTERNATIONAL)
Power is a key concept in international politics, not
only in realist thinking. Although power-based
theories of international relations stress the relevance of power in explaining war and stability in
the international system, institutionalist approaches
focus on the exercise of power in both the formation and maintenance of institutions, and through
institutions and within and among institutions.
Recently, the legalization literature has triggered a
debate about the extent to which international
institutions mitigate the influence of powerful
states.
Irrespective of their theoretical approach, most
scholars tend to treat power as a property focusing
on a particular type of power resource, such as gross
domestic product (GDP), demography, or military
force. Compliance, defined as rule-consistent behavior, by contrast, lends itself to a more relational
concept of power. Following Max Weber, power can
be understood as the probability of getting an actor
to comply against his or her resistance. Compliance
is then a manifestation of power. Conversely, power
becomes a major prerequisite to ensure compliance
with international institutions.
The so-called enforcement school in international compliance research assumes that states
violate international norms and rules because they
are not willing to bear the costs of compliance.
This is particularly the case if international norms
127
and rules are not compatible with national arrangements, as a result of which compliance requires
substantial changes at the domestic level. From this
rationalist perspective, noncompliance can only be
prevented by increasing the costs of noncompliance. Realist approaches point to hegemonic states,
which in the absence of an international monopoly
of legitimate force are the only actors with sufficient power to effectively sanction noncompliant
behavior. Institutionalist approaches, by contrast,
emphasize that international institutions can serve
as substitutes for the enforcement powers of hegemonic states. Noncompliance or free riding becomes
less attractive to states if they are likely to be caught
and punished. International institutions can then
provide mechanisms for monitoring compliance
and for coordinating sanctions against free riders.
Several studies have confirmed the importance
of enforcement power, both of states and thirdparty authorities, for ensuring compliance with
international institutions. At the same time, the
original power-based argument of the enforcement
school has been differentiated by various strands of
the international relations literature. First, liberal
theories draw attention to the domestic power of
states to legally ratify and enforce international
agreements. Domestic veto players can create problems of “involuntary defection” where states are
willing to comply but lack the power to overcome
domestic resistance against required legal and
political changes. For instance, the U.S. president
had signed the Kyoto Protocol but could not get
the required two-thirds majority in the U.S. Senate
to ratify it. Overall, however, compliance studies
have found little support for the relevance of institutional veto players in explaining compliance.
Second, powerful states do more than enforce
compliance; they may also be less sensitive to costs
imposed by sanctions and, hence, more resistant to
external enforcement pressures. This can be called
the power of recalcitrance. The United States is
simply more capable of coping with punitive tariffs
authorized by the dispute settlement procedure of
the World Trade Organization (WTO) than are
Kenya and Austria. The same applies to reputational costs caused by a loss of credibility (or social
sanctioning). Weak states can hardly afford to
exclude powerful states from international agreements, even if the latter have the reputation of
being unreliable partners.
128
Compliance (International)
Third, principal–agent theory draws attention
to the relation between noncompliant states and
those actors seeking enforcement. States (principals) delegate monitoring and sanctioning powers
to an enforcement authority (agent), which, however, remains dependent on the former because the
states can always renounce the power of the
enforcement authority. This asymmetrical relation
may induce the enforcement authority to act strategically and be reluctant to impose sanctions on
powerful states. The latter can use their economic
and political power to deter enforcement authorities but also use other states to sanction their
noncompliant behavior (power of deterrence).
Although the threat of financial penalties by the
European Union (EU) brought smaller states, such
as Portugal and the Netherlands, into compliance
with the EU Stability and Growth Pact, Germany
and France successfully prevented the adoption of
punitive measures in the council.
Fourth, negotiation theories point to a power
variant that increases rather than decreases the
propensity of powerful states to comply with international norms. Although some have argued that
(strong) states are unlikely to enter international
agreements that impose high compliance costs,
powerful states may be able to shape international
institutions according to their preferences. The
extent to which a state has managed to impose its
preferences during the decision-making process
determines the costs of compliance and, thereby,
the state’s willingness to comply with the decision
(power of assertiveness).
Studies on EU policy making confirm that some
states are more successful in shaping EU legal acts
than others are. However, shaping does not necessarily depend on the economic and political power
of a member state. Bureaucratic efficiency and
negotiation skills are more important both in the
shaping of and passing EU policies. Nor do powerful member states deter the Commission and the
European Court of Justice from prosecuting them
for violations of EU law. But they are more likely
to resist the enforcement pressure of the European
Commission (though not the European Court of
Justice). Other things being equal, member states
such as France, Italy, and Germany, which yield
greater (voting) power, violate European law more
frequently than do weak member states, such as
Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
Even highly legalized institutions, such as the EU
or the WTO, where monitoring and sanctioning
powers are delegated to third parties, do not fully
mitigate power differences between states.
Although power (of recalcitrance) is a key variable in explaining (non-)compliance with international institutions, it is by no means the only one.
First, strong states may be able to do what they
want. If they choose not to comply, there is little
other states and international enforcement authorities can do. However, the management school
reminds us that compliance is not necessarily a strategic choice. Even states that choose to comply may
be prevented from doing so if the very preconditions
that enable states to comply are absent. The literature has identified three sources of involuntary noncompliance: lacking or insufficient state capacities,
ambiguous definitions of norms, and inadequate
timetables during which compliance has to be
achieved. Empirical studies have found the lack of
administrative capacity or bureaucratic efficiency as
a particular source of noncompliance (see earlier).
This may explain why Greece and Portugal are as
poor compliers with EU law as France and Italy are.
Second, even if we conceive of compliance as a
strategic choice, how do we explain that some
powerful states are more compliant than others?
Germany and the United Kingdom comply much
better with EU law than do France and Italy. Likewise, powerful states choose to comply in some
cases but defect in others. Other factors than the
costs of compliance and the power to avoid them
also influence the choice of (powerful) states to
comply. Unlike the enforcement and the management schools, constructivist compliance approaches
stress that states follow a logic of appropriateness
rather than instrumental consequentialism. They
are socialized into the norms and rules of international institutions through processes of social
learning and persuasion. Consequently, states
comply because of a normative belief that a rule or
institution ought to be obeyed rather than because
it suits their instrumental self-interests. This sense
of moral obligation is a function of the legitimacy
of the rules themselves or their sources. Legitimacy
can be generated in several ways. The rule is
embedded in an underlying institution or a legal
system, which is generally characterized by a high
level of legitimacy (acceptance of the rule-setting
institution). Or, a critical number of states are
already complying with an international rule. As a
result, other states are “pulled” into compliance
Computer Algorithms for Power Indices
because they want to demonstrate that they conform to the group of states to which they want to
belong and whose esteem they care about. Some
refer to this form of peer pressure as normative or
discursive power. Finally, legitimacy can also result
from certain procedures that include those actors
in the rule making that are potentially affected and
who engage in processes of persuasion and mutual
learning (procedural legitimacy). Both procedural
legitimacy and peer pressure focus more on compliance with individual rules (exactly those that
result from “fair” decision-making processes or
those with which other states already comply). The
acceptance of the rule-setting institution, in turn, is
more country specific because voluntary compliance is generated by diffuse support for and general acceptance of the rule-setting institutions and
the constitutive principles of the law making and
standing (support for rule of law). Compliance
studies on the EU find that member states with a
strong rule-of-law legal culture are the best compliers, and the support for the EU appears to be
inversely related with compliance—the more antiEU a member state is, the better it complies with
EU law, irrespective of its power.
To conclude, power is key in explaining international compliance. However, its effect is mitigated
by other factors, such as capacity and legitimacy.
Empirical studies support explanations based on
power, capacity, and legitimacy. Likewise, the EU
and many international organizations use a combination of management, enforcement, and legitimacy
mechanisms to induce member state compliance.
Combining specific power-based explanations
with other theoretical approaches might prove
more fruitful than pitching the theories against
each other.
Tanja A. Börzel
See also Anarchy in International Relations; Coercion
and Power; Hegemony
Further Readings
Chayes, A., & Chayes, A. H. (1995). The new
sovereignty: Compliance with international regulatory
agreements. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press.
Franck, T. M. (1990). The power of legitimacy among
nations. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
129
Hurd, I. (1999). Legitimacy and authority in international
politics. International Organization, 53(2), 379–408.
Martin, L. L. (1992). Coercive cooperation: Explaining
multilateral economic sanctions. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Tallberg, J. (2003). European governance and
supranational institutions: Making states comply.
London: Routledge.
COMPUTER ALGORITHMS
FOR POWER INDICES
The calculation of power indices is a substantial
computational task because it requires that each
possible voting outcome be examined. For voting
bodies with a small number of members, indices
can be found with a computer by directly applying
the definitions. But when the number of voters is
larger, this is not feasible and another algorithm is
required. Approximation methods such as Monte
Carlo simulation and probabilistic voting assumptions work well and can be very accurate. For
voting systems in which the voting weights are
integers, the method of generating functions is an
almost ideal algorithm that is very fast and completely accurate. To develop these points requires
formal mathematical notation.
Notation and Definitions
A legislature that uses weighted voting and has n
members is represented by a set N {1, 2, . . . , n}
whose voting weights are w1, w2, . . . , wn . Members
vote for or against an action. The combined weight
of a subset of members voting “for,” and represented by the subset T (N), is denoted by
wðTÞ ¼ S wi. The decision rule is defined in terms
i2T
of a quota, q, by which T is winning if w(T)
q
and losing if w(T) q. The weights and the quota
are real numbers in general; although in most
applications they are integers, this is not essential
to the theory, but it is relevant to certain methods
of computation, particularly the method of generating functions.
Frequently a voting body is represented using the
notation {q; w1, w2, . . . , wn}. In this definition, there
is a single decision rule and one set of weights. In
some applications, it is necessary to generalize this:
130
Computer Algorithms for Power Indices
for example, the system of qualified majority
voting in the European Union (EU) Council is
formally a triple-majority rule in which three
conditions must be satisfied in weighted votes,
population, and number of member countries.
But allowing for multiple majority rules is a
minor complication that we can ignore for the
present purpose of discussing algorithms.
Each member has a power index measuring the
relative number of times that member can be the
“swing” member. Formally, a swing for member i
can be defined as a pair of subsets, (Ti, Ti {i}),
where Ti N {i}, such that Ti is losing, but Ti {i} is winning, that is, q wi w(Ti) q.
The Penrose–Banzhaf power index for member
i, i, is the number of swings, i, expressed as a
fraction of the total number of subsets of N, which
is equal to 2n–1. It measures the probability of i
being the swing voter assuming all swings Ti to be
equiprobable.
i i 2n–1
(1)
The normalized Banzhaf index, i uses the total
number of swings for all players as the denominator
to measure relative voting power among players,
i i i, i i
(2)
This is a trivial normalization, so it is necessary to
consider only the details of computing equation (1).
James S. Coleman’s power indices are related to
the Penrose–Banzhaf indices and require, in
addition, the number of voting outcomes that lead
to a positive decision, , that is, the number of
subsets S (S N) where w(S) q. This imposes an
extra computing requirement but enables us to
calculate the three indices:
v
n
2
Power of the voting
body to act:
A¼
Power of member
i to prevent action:
PPAi 5
Power of member i
to initiate action:
PIAi 5
(3)
hi
v
(4)
hi
n
2 v
(5)
Neither (4) nor (5) have meaningful normalized versions because they are both linear
transformations of i and therefore normalizing
would reduce them both to i.
The Shapley–Shubik index (SSI) is the probability that i is the swing member if all orderings of
players is equally likely. For a given swing, the
number of orderings of the members of the subset
Ti and its complement (apart from player i), N Ti {i}, is t!(n t 1)! where t is the number of
members of Ti and n is the total number of voters,
members of N. The index, i, is this number as a
proportion of the number of orderings of all players in N,
fi 5 +
Ti
t!ðn t 1Þ!
.
n!
(6)
The Method of Direct Enumeration
The simplest algorithm is direct enumeration, that
is, computing the indices directly from their
definitions. This requires the use of an algorithm
to find each subset of members, S N, exactly
once. Thus, for each (proper) subset of N, the
algorithm finds all swings and updates expressions
i, for I 1, 2, . . . , n, and w repeatedly; for the SSI,
the algorithm updates (6). Begin by setting i 0,
i 0 for all i, and 0.
Choose S. For each i 1, 2, . .. , n, the algorithm
tests for a swing and updates as follows:
If i 2 N S and q wi w(S) q then:
Set i i 1. (Alternatively I I 21–n.)
Set i i s!(n s 1)!/n! (for the SSI).
If w(S)
q then set 1.
Then move to the next subset S and repeat.
When all subsets have been searched, the indices
(1) to (6) are found.
The number of subsets of N that have to be
searched is 2n. Therefore, computation time doubles each time n increases by one member and the
algorithm becomes infeasible for large voting bodies. Despite this severe limitation, it is a practical
method to analyze qualified majority voting in the
European Council with about 27 members, though
it is too slow for legislatures much larger than that.
This method is not at all feasible, for example, for
a voting body as big as the States game in the U.S.
presidential Electoral College with 51 members, let
Computer Algorithms for Power Indices
alone the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or
World Bank with 184 members.
The advantages of direct enumeration are its
simplicity, its generality in that it can be used for
any problem, that its results are exact, and that it
does not require excessive storage of data in the
computer’s memory. The disadvantage is its exponential time complexity that severely limits its
application to voting bodies with small numbers of
voters.
These problems have been overcome in various
ways. One of the earliest alternatives to be proposed was Monte Carlo simulation, which does
not search all subsets of voters but instead selects
a large random sample of them. With modern
computing power, this method is capable of giving
results that are very accurate, although they are
still approximations.
The Method of Multilinear Extensions
A second approximation is based on the method of
multilinear extensions proposed by Guillermo
Owen. Although this approach involves formally
modeling the voting body as a cooperative game, the
essential idea behind the approximation reduces to
probabilistic voting and treating the power indices
as probabilities. For the Penrose–Banzhaf index,
each member is assumed to vote for or against with
equal probability. Hence, the mean and variance of
the total number of votes “for” an action are
known for any subset S. It is then a simple matter
to approximate the swing probabilities using the
normal distribution. This method does not involve
the calculation of the i s or directly. The generalization required to get the SSI is that the voting probabilities are different, say the probability
that member i votes “for” is equal to t and the
probability that i votes “against” is (1 t). The
means and variances of the total number of votes
“for” (hence, the swing probabilities) now depend
on t. The SSIs are obtained by integrating out t
from the swing probabilities, using numerical
quadrature.
The accuracy of Owen’s method depends on how
good an approximation the normal distribution is.
In some cases, this is a problem—for example,
where there is a voter (or voters) with a very large
weight relative to the others, so that the distribution
of the total vote “for” is quite “lumpy.” A modification to deal with this problem has been suggested by
131
Dennis Leech in the form of an algorithm that
achieves greater accuracy by combining direct enumeration with probabilistic voting: the normal
approximation is taken to apply only to the (large
number of) voters with relatively small weight, and
direct enumeration is used for the (manageably
small number of) voters with large weights. These
methods are feasible for computing resources and
can be applied to any voting body.
The Method of Generating Functions
In the event that the weights are integers, the
method of generating functions provides algorithms for computing power indices exactly. It is
extremely efficient in computing time and capable
of giving results almost instantaneously for voting
bodies with any number of members, although it
can be demanding of storage capacity if w(N) is
large. This is therefore an almost ideal algorithm.
It is also one of the oldest approaches, having been
first used for the SSI for the States game (with n 51) in a 1962 Rand Corporation working paper by
Irving Mann and Lloyd Shapley after a suggestion
by David G. Cantor, although it was little used
until recently.
Consider first how the approach can be used for
the Banzhaf and Coleman indices. We need the
number of swings for each member, i, and the
total number of winning votes, . This requires
first finding the number of subsets, S, for each possible size, w(S) 0, 1, 2, . . . , w(N).
These numbers can be found using the generating function:
n
Y
wj
f ðxÞ5
11x
(7)
j51
where x is a dummy variable that has no significance of its own in the sense of measuring something, but whose role is to define the coefficients,
which have an important meaning. Expanding the
product in equation (7) gives a polynomial of
degree w(N), in which the powers are the weights
of possible subsets.
The function ƒ(x) may be written in general as,
wðNÞ
j
f ðxÞ5Sj50 aj x :
(8)
Comparing (8) with (7), it is easily seen that
each of the coefficients aj gives us the number of
132
Computer Algorithms for Power Indices
subsets with a given weight. That is, aj is equal to
the number of subsets, S, such that wðSÞ5j , for
j 0, 1, 2, . . . , w(N). Because only the empty set
has zero weight, a0 1.
Now the question arises of how to evaluate the
coefficients in (8) from (7). Henceforth, we will use
the notation w to represent w(N) for brevity.
A simple rule can be found for numerically finding the coefficients aj by building up the generating
function (7) by successive multiplications.
n Y
Thus, (7), f ðxÞ5
1 1 xwj
j51
n Y
w
wj
5 ½11x 1 11x ,
j52
i
h
w1
w
w 1w
5 11x 1x 2 1x 1 2
n Y
w
11x j ; etc:
j53
Let the successive polynomials inside the square
brackets be denoted, in general,
ðrÞ
ðrÞ 2
at the rth stage, where r 1, 2, . . . , n. The final stage
of this process gives the required coefficients:
ðnÞ
aj 5aj for all j.
Analogously, f(x) can be built up recursively as
follows:
h
i
ð1Þ
ð1Þ w
ð1Þ
f ðxÞ5 11 a1 x1 a2 1 . . . 1aw x
n Y
w
11x j
j52
n h
i Y
ð2Þ
ð2Þ w
ð2Þ
11xwj
5 11a1 x1a2 . . . 1aw x
j53
ð0Þ
ð Þ
It can be seen that, letting a00 51 and aj 50
for all j 0 , and applying the rule:
ðr21Þ
ðr21Þ
1aj2wr
The coefficients aj can then be used to find the
number of swings for each member, i, which
depends also on the member’s weight, wi. This can
be obtained by finding, for each j, such that q –
wi j q, the number, cj, of subsets not containing i, then summing over j.
Coefficients cj can be obtained by dividing the
w
generating function (8) by the factor ð11x i Þ.
Thus, writing
v
wi
f ðxÞ 5 11c1 x1c2 x1 . . . 1cv x Þ 11x
511a1 x1 . . . aw xw ,
where v5w2wi , gives the rule:
(10)
where a coefficient with a negative subscript is
zero.
Then the number of swings for member i, i, is
q21
hi 5Sj5q2wi cj .
This process is then repeated for each member I,
and the indices are calculated in the usual way.
For the Shapley–Shubik index, we use the generating function,
n Y
wj
(11)
f ðxÞ5
11x y
with two dummy arguments, x and y, which can
be written in general as,
ðnÞ w
511a1 x1 . . . 1aw x .
ðrÞ
j$q
j51
...
aj 5aj
w
v5 S aj :
cj 5 aj 2 cj2wi for j 1, 2, . . . , v,
ðrÞ w
11a1 x1a2 x 1 . . . 1aw x
ðnÞ
gives the required coefficients, aj, equal to the
number of subsets with voting weight j.
The total number of winning votes, , is the
number of subsets of members with combined
weight equal to or greater than the quota. Thus,
(9)
for j wr, . . . , Sr, and aðj rÞ 5aðj r21Þ otherwise, where
sr 5wðf1; 2; 3; . . . ; rgÞ , after n iterations, this
w
n
j k
f ðx; yÞ5 S S djk x y ,
j50 k50
where djk is the number of k-member subsets with
combined voting weight j. The (w 1)(n 1) matrix
D is computed iteratively, as before, by the rule,
ðrÞ
ðr1Þ
djk 5djk
ðr1Þ
1djwr ;k21 :
Consensual Power, Theories of
The required matrix is D D(n).
The index for member i is found by calculating
the number of swings with k members with votes
equal to j, cjk, using the rule, derived in the same
way as before,
cjk 5djk 2cjwi ;k1.
(12)
Then the index (1) is obtained from the expression,
k!ðn212kÞ! q21
+ cjk :
n!
j5q2wi
k50
n21
fi 5 +
(13)
Then (12) and (13) are repeated for each member.
Dennis Leech
See also Power Indices
Further Readings
Leech, D. (n.d.) Computer algorithms for voting power
analysis. Retrieved from http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~ecaae
Owen, G. (1995). Game theory. San Diego, CA:
Academic Press.
CONSENSUAL POWER, THEORIES
OF
Contrary to the commonsense everyday view of
power, in which power is thought of in terms of
coercion or the threat of violence, most routine
political and social power is based on some level of
consent. To make sense of this consensual base, it
is necessary to analyze power both from a sociological empirical stance and a normative philosophical one.
The Concept
The literature on power is essentially scalar regarding consensus and conflict. At one end of the scale,
theorists such as Max Weber, Michael Mann, Robert Dahl, and Steven Lukes view power purely in
terms of conflict. At the other end, Hannah
Arendt, Talcott Parsons, and Barry Barnes represent the consensual end of the spectrum. Theorists
such as Anthony Giddens, Stewart Clegg, Keith
Dowding, Mark Haugaard, Peter Morriss, and
133
Michel Foucault encompass both consensual and
conflictual aspects of power.
In thinking about consensual power, two aspects
have to be clearly distinguished. First, consensus
can be defined in terms of outcomes or goals pursued, which gives a fairly narrow conceptualization of consensual power. In this case, any exercise
of consensual power is directed toward an objective that is shared by all involved. Thus conceived,
consensual power is a form of empowerment that
entails only power to. The typical manifestation of
this would be a group of like-minded people coming together to create an organization for a common purpose.
Second, consensual power can be seen in terms
of power over. Many exercises of power over others and acts of domination rest on some deep form
of consensus. This can take two forms: on the one
hand, conflict can be structured within a shared
framework of consensus, in which case, consensus
with regard to the rules of the game are a form of
constraint whereby power over is managed. In this
case, the consensus is not in itself part of a system
of relations of domination. On the other hand, the
other form of consensual power is where the consent is intrinsic to domination and thus considered
somehow normatively problematic. In the Marxist
tradition, hegemony, and in Foucault’s work,
epistemes or discourse, are considered forms of
domination that are built on the consent by less
powerful or subaltern actors.
To make sense of these more complex, compound forms of power, where a consensus and
conflict are combined, we should distinguish
between empirical sociological observations and
normative claims appropriate to political theory.
When there is de facto consent; in the Marxist,
Foucauldian, and feminist positions, it is thought
that there is potential, but as yet unmanifested,
conflict. However, this hypothesis can only be justified based on a normative evaluation to the effect
that weaker consenting social actors should not
consent. When we assert that a given class suffers
from “false consciousness” (three-dimensional
power) or is subservient to a “hegemonic” discourse, the less powerful actor B consents to the
power relations in question and the observing
social scientist or theorists thinks (possibly for good
reasons) that the actor should not be consenting,
thus designating the situation as one of conflict,
134
Consensual Power, Theories of
despite the empirical fact of consent. Here we have
sociological consent, which is labeled conflictual
for normative reasons. To justify such an evaluation, the observer/theorist must develop clear normative criteria for making such a judgment call.
Perspectives on Consensual Power
From a sociological perspective, the first serious
attempt to theorize the consensual base of power
was made by Parsons. Using a structural-functionalist paradigm, he proposed that power is a capacity for action, which is derived from consensus
with regard to system goals. Aside from the fact
that structural-functionalism is out of favor in
sociology, the problem with this theorization was
that the scope of power was unduly narrow,
excluding most forms of power over, thus avoiding
the interesting phenomenon of conflictual power
with a consensual base.
In The Nature of Power, Barry Barnes suggests
a more plausible basis than system goals as a consensual base for power. He proposes that power
relations are based on shared cognitions. Derived
from Thomas Kuhn’s concept of paradigms, Barnes
suggests that common interpretative frameworks
give actors a shared base for collective behavior.
Knowledge of the regularities of nature gives
humans natural power; similarly, knowledge of the
predictabilities of other actors facilitates shared
social projects, thus social power. Imagine a “target” as a social object: what makes a target a target
is not inherent in its shape (there are many circles
that are not targets) but that people throw darts at
it. All social objects are like targets in that what
makes them what they are is purely a reflection of
a shared socially constructed interpretative horizon
or culture—for instance, what makes a cup a cup?
The same applies to actors in authority, what
makes the “leader” of a group, the leader is that
others perceive the person to be a leader. Thus,
what distinguishes the actual Napoleon from the
“napoleons” in psychiatric institutions is how
others perceive them as meaning-given entities.
Although Barnes’s perspective is a substantial
improvement over Parsons’, in that it provides a
more plausible account of the consensual basis for
empowerment, power over is theorized within a
separate rational choice argument, which sidesteps
the phenomenon of power conflict based on consent.
The idea of cognitive consensus as the basis of
social order is also found in sociological theory that
is influenced by the phenomenological tradition. In
The Constitution of Society, Giddens argues that our
knowledge of social structures is based on “practical
consciousness” knowledge, which is tacit knowledge. We also have “discursive consciousness”
knowledge, which is knowledge that we readily
know how to put into words. For Giddens, practical
consciousness knowledge is the key to an actor’s
ability to reproduce social structure, which he views
as the basic ordering mechanism of social life,
including the microroutines of everyday interaction.
So, for instance, in an interaction between two
socially competent actors from the same culture,
they know how far apart to stand, when to interject,
and to take turns in a conversation, and in speaking
the same language, they share a structured system of
sounds. This knowledge is largely tacit knowledge,
which they do not reflect on discursively, although
they do have the capacity to do so. The use of practical consciousness knowledge for structural reproduction enables them to use their discursive knowledge to focus on the desired outcome of their interaction, which can either be a practical goal or some
kind of politeness aimed at mutual recognition of
the other as a social agent. Thus, practical consciousness knowledge is inherently empowering.
Every interaction that exhibits structured form
(which all social action does) gains its structuredness because both actors follow the norms of structuration. If, in everyday interaction, one of the
actors decides to disregard the norms of appropriate space (e.g., a relative stranger decides to hug
the other), turn taking (continual interruption),
and all grammatical norms (gibberish), no joint
goals could be realized. Thus, following the norms
of structuration enables these actors to do things
that they could not otherwise accomplish, and in
that sense, structural constraint is empowering.
Giddens argues that the basis of structuration is
a set of norms and rules that constrain social
actors. However, I would argue this is not entirely
correct. Although norms and rules are the only
means available to actors to discursively express
their disapproval of others who violate “normal”
structuration practice, these structures exist more
like cognitive categories that actors use to order the
world. These categories are not universal but are
particular to specific cultures that vary across time
Consensual Power, Theories of
and space. Following Foucault in The Order of
Things, they are the tacit interpretative horizon that
constitutes the particularities of a specific culture as
an interpretative framework that is used to make
sense of the world. Foucault used the terms episteme or discursive formation for this practical consciousness knowledge and argued that they are a
kind of historical a priori. It is “a priori” in the
sense that it constitutes a prerequisite for interpretation, and it is “historical” in that it is particular to
a specific society in historical time. Space should be
added to this to the extent to which cultures differ
geographically, which is the basis of anthropology.
This shared practical consciousness knowledge
exists as a deep consensus on which social order is
built. The shared internalization of this knowledge
is what makes collective endeavor possible as a
form of empowerment and constitutes the basis of
our ability to act “in concert.” Because this ability
is based on tacit knowledge, and it is central to the
social construction of who we are, it is so taken for
granted that theorists (including Foucault) usually
do not reflect on this relative miracle of mutual
empowerment. Because this knowledge is inextricably bound up with our ontology, or being-in-theworld, it is actually relatively stable, which is why
it is not usually experienced as constraint or as
norms and rules.
This massive consent is the basis of power to and
is the most effective basis (more effective than the
threat of violence) of managing power conflict, or
power over. This process can be paradigmatically
seen in the democratic process. When parties contest an election, they engage in conflict with regard
to outcomes or goals—both parties wish to win.
Yet, this contest is premised on a massively complex
epistemic system, with attendant norms that can be
mobilized in the instance of their breach. “Standing” for election as a “candidate” and “voting,” are
acts of structuration that are given meaning. Part of
the meaning is a prior acceptance that whichever
party, or coalition of parties, obtains the largest
number of those socially constructed entities that
we call votes (which are merely bits of paper with
an “x” on them or an electric pulse generated by
pressing a button, in the case of electronic voting)
“wins” the election. In other words, engaging in
“voting” entails a prior commitment to accepting
defeat based on shared interpretation of a “vote.”
Of course, there are instances when this consent
135
does not come automatically, if at all, as for
instance in the U.S. presidential election of 2000,
which is an exception that proves the rule. Similarly, in some instances, where democracy is unstable, coercion may be required as a substitute. The
point remains, however, that the routine functioning of power conflict within modern democracies is
based on a shared consent to structural reproduction, which is an extraordinary fact that is so taken
for granted (or so part of our practical consciousness) that most social scientists who write about
power ignore this phenomenon entirely.
In Foucault’s work, we find a distinction
between “deep conflict” and “shallow conflict.” A
shallow conflict presupposes the “rules of the
game,” whereas a deep conflict entails their contestation. In his genealogies of knowledge, Foucault describes how conflicts within systems of
thought act as a shared basis of consent, and how
social actors resist this taken-for-granted interpretative framework in deeper conflicts. Within this,
what may appear like a substantive conflict is
really based on consensus, and thus constitutes a
shallow conflict. For instance, the conflict between
Karl Marx and many of the bourgeois economists
was a shallow conflict because the parties involved
shared common perceptual categories, including
the labor theory of value. Shallow conflict is a way
of taming conflict. In several of his writings, Foucault refers to power as war by other means or as
re-inscription of the rules of war through politics—
which, within the present framework, means the
use of social structure to facilitate an ordered exercise of power over. In this imagery, war is like a
Hobbesian state of nature in which there are no
rules to constrain conflict, whereas politics constitutes a shared interpretative horizon that tames
conflict by making it predictable.
This use of Foucault subverts Foucault’s intent
in the sense that Foucault took for granted that
this continuation of war through power was normatively reprehensible. However, in the instance in
the democratic process or reasoned debate, these
constraints are actually desirable, thus normatively
unproblematic.
Normative Implication
In his critique, Foucault shares with Antonio
Gramsci and Lukes the implicit judgment that
136
Consensual Power, Theories of
certain social actors should not consent to the
structures that routinely constrain conflict, thus
creating power. In the case of Gramsci on hegemony, the proletariat has internalized a bourgeois
worldview that makes members of the proletariat
consent to capitalism in their routine social practices. In three-dimensional power, the actors consent because they do not know what their real
interests are and, in the case of Foucault, because
they mistakenly believe that their interpretative
horizon represents the “truth” and the “natural
order of things.” To be defensible, however, this
critique of consent requires a robust normative
theory to justify it. Otherwise, such a position is
inherently condescending toward the social subjects because it entails an implicit assertion to the
effect that they do not know what their real interests are or that they suffer from some kind of cognitive deficiency. However, most social theorists do
not confront this need for normative justification.
Rather, they give descriptive accounts of the creation of consent and use the reader to supply the
normative content. For instance, the critical edge
of Foucault’s analysis hinges on a two-stage move
in which he begins by demonstrating, through a
historical account of the differences between
epistemes, that our interpretative horizons are
essentially arbitrary social constructs particular to
specific historical periods. This is followed by an
account of how, in the modern period, this arbitrariness is disguised by a strategic use of truth to
reify our taken-for-granted episteme. Such a strategic use of truth violates the reader’s taken-forgranted norms concerning the use of truth in social
interaction. Thus, the normative base for Foucault’s critique is supplied, externally, by the reader.
Once we recognize that the consensual basis of
power conflict is not always normatively wrong or
unjust, we are confronted with a problematic that
neither Foucault nor those following Gramsci
were. The problem of power becomes how to distinguish consent to power that is just and fair from
consent that we disapprove of? This is particularly
thorny if we take the view that actors who are
empirically observed to give their consent to power
may be mistaken in doing so.
To give a comprehensive answer to this question
is outside the scope of this entry. However, in
broad outline, the answer entails two elements: it
includes a sociological account of the process
whereby consent is created and a normative theory
that demonstrates why the empirical process of
consent creation violates the norms of justice. Two
instances illustrate the point: three-dimensional
power and epistemes.
In three-dimensional power, as theorized by
Lukes, the actors suffer from “false consciousness,” which is theoretically unsatisfactory because
it presupposes that Lukes has “true consciousness.” However, let us redescribe this phenomenon
using some of the sociological vocabulary already
outlined. We have already observed that the consent involved in most power conflict is part of
practical consciousness knowledge. Practical consciousness knowledge and discursive consciousness
knowledge are not entirely separate entities. It is
possible to convert practical consciousness into
discursive consciousness and vice versa. When we
learn a language as a second language, we are
moving discursive consciousness into practical
consciousness knowledge. To reverse this, when,
for instance we read Foucault’s description of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, in Discipline and Punish, we recognize our old school or current place of
employment and, in so doing, convert practical
consciousness knowledge into discursive consciousness. If we look at the normative tradition of
social contract, it can be argued that a “tacit”
contract is not the same as a discursive contract.
So, if instead of thinking in terms of true and false
consciousness, we think in terms of a process of
consciousness raising whereby the social critic
(whether Marxist, feminist, or Foucauldian) is
making practical consciousness into discursive
knowledge, one could argue that three-dimensional power is a case in which actors give tacit
consent to social contract, which is not a valid
normative consent unless it also holds when it is
made discursive.
With regard to epistemes, Foucault in essence
argues that epistemes are arbitrary ways of ordering the world that are made to appear other than
arbitrary through the use of truth to reify the
world. Truth is effective in this task because it is
considered to be beyond convention. If something
is “true,” then it is no longer considered a reflection
of convention. So truth is used to make something
appear other than it is (reification), which implies
some level of deceit. Using a normative theory (e.g.,
Jürgen Habermas’s theory of “communicative
Consent
action”), one can show that when such a strategic
use of truth takes place the consent that results is
not a sound basis for justice.
Contra Foucault, not all taming of war, and its
institutionalization in a regime of politics, is inherently wrong. In this case, the use of truth is only
reprehensible if it can be demonstrated that it is
strategic and obscuring a deeper truth, which is
that our interpretative horizons are social constructs. Indeed, this recognition is necessary to
protect Foucauldian analysis from the accusation
that it is inherently self-refuting—if all truth is
domination, then Foucault’s critique is just another
mode of domination.
In conclusion, consent is central to power relations. At one end of the spectrum, we have pure
consent where the structures and outcomes are
agreed. Then we have conflict, which is managed
through consent. This is central to ordered politics
and is not inherently normatively reprehensible—
routine democratic politics works this way. At the
more conflictual level, there is also empirical sociological consent, which, as social critics, we consider
morally reprehensible. To justify such a claim,
however, the theorist in question must have both a
clear sociological account of consent creation and
a normative theory for critiquing this process.
Mark Haugaard
See also Arendt, Hannah; Clegg, Stewart; Dahl, Robert
A.; Discourse; Dowding, Keith; Foucault, Michel;
Giddens, Anthony; Haugaard, Mark; Hegemony;
Legitimation; Lukes, Steven; Mann, Michael; Morriss,
Peter; Power To and Power Over; Structuration;
Weber, Max
Further Readings
Barnes, B. (1988). The nature of power. Cambridge, UK:
Polity Press.
Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: Selected
interviews and other writings 1972–1977
(C. Gordon, Ed.). Brighton, UK: Harvester Press.
Foucault, M. (2003). Society must be defended. London:
Penguin.
Giddens, A. (1984). The constitution of society.
Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Haugaard, M. (2003). Reflections on seven ways of
creating power. European Journal of Social Theory, 6,
78–114.
137
CONSENT
When one is affected by the actions of others that
one might either approve or disapprove of, what
is sometimes more important is whether one has
agreed to be subject to the actions of others. If one
has so agreed, then one has consented. Consent is
important in a society because often events occur
that disadvantage us. Whether we are entitled to
compensation depends on the degree of consent.
One might agree to medical procedures that are
designed to make life easier but pose risks of a
poorer quality of life, or even death. However, in
agreeing to those procedures, one is consenting to
the risk of those actions.
Consent need not be explicitly expressed but can
be implied. Many sports activities carry risks of
injury as do fairgrounds, children’s playgrounds,
and so on. As long as the authorities running these
activities are judged to have taken reasonable care
and have not broken explicit health and safety
regulations, then using facilities or taking part in
activities is considered consent. At times, people
who are considered not competent to understand
the implications of their actions are considered not
to be able to give informed consent—that is, they
are not capable of consenting to the activity because
they are not capable of understanding the risks. In
different legal systems, understandings of informed
consent vary. In the United Kingdom, for example,
as long as a medical practitioner can demonstrate a
recognized standard of care, then it is understood
that the patient has had sufficient or informed consent to the procedure. In the United States or
Australia, for example, the medical practitioner has
to demonstrate that he or she has specified the risks
involved to the patient so that the law can judge
whether the patient has given informed consent.
The two different interpretations underlie different
views of informed consent. One is more paternalistic and suggests that although due care has been
taken according to professionally agreed practices,
the subjects can be considered to have given consent because when they go to a doctor what they
desire is the best treatment as suggested by that
authority. The second view is more libertarian and
suggests that people need to be given sufficient
information so they can make their own judgments
rather than leave this up to their agents.
138
Constructivist View of Power in International Relations
Contractual theories of the state assume that
citizens have given implicit consent to the law and
governing authorities because they have not explicitly dissented through revolt or, in democracies,
through the democratic process. Contract theories
of the state are subject to the same interpretations
as is informed consent in the medical case. More
paternalistic analysts are content to accept that
people can be considered to have consented to the
authority of the state as long as it behaves reasonably. Libertarians give less authority to the state
and demand that state actions have actual and not
just tacit content. In that sense, the two sides are
more or less demanding the discretion that should
be allowed to the state in making laws without
explicitly inquiring of the people. James Buchanan
and Gordon Tullock’s The Calculus of Consent
specifies this libertarian doctrine by requiring the
contract to aspire to universal consent that can
only be assumed when a state of affairs is Paretopreferred to all others—that is, when there is no
state of affairs that would be chosen by one
person to the actual one.
Keith Dowding
See also Authority; Hobbes, Thomas; Legitimation;
Paternalism
Further Readings
Buchanan, J. R., & Tullock, G. (1982). The calculus of
consent. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
CONSTRUCTIVIST VIEW OF POWER
IN INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
In the 1980s, constructivism appeared as a new
turn in the theorizing of international relations
(IR). Its success was helped by the unexpected end
of the cold war. Although the Soviet Union was
militarily not less powerful than before—including
even the early post-1945 period until the 1960s—
it decided to peacefully retrench from its positions
in Eastern Europe. If the balance of power was to
be the main theory of IR, it met an anomaly here,
not because IR theories did not predict the event,
but because, according to their tenets, such an
event was not going to happen in the first place.
For constructivists, the end of the cold war
shows that a materialist understanding of
power, and balance of power theories that are
part of it, are woefully insufficient, because outcomes in international politics could not be
explained by shifting balances of capabilities.
By criticizing the explanatory role of power,
constructivism aimed at the core of established
IR theories
To more precisely establish the constructivist
view of power, it is necessary first to introduce
constructivism and develop its implications for
understanding and conceptualizing power.
Constructivism
Constructivism can be understood as a meta-theoretical commitment that is based on three characteristics. First, it makes the epistemological claim
that meaning, and hence knowledge, is socially
constructed. It is constructed because concepts are
the condition for the possibility of knowledge. Our
senses are not passive receptors of “given” facts.
The very identification of facts out of the ongoing
noise depends on preexisting notions that guide
our view of the world. This knowledge is moreover
socially or intersubjectively constructed. Concepts
are part of language. Language is not reducible to
something entirely subjective or objective. Language is not subjective because it exists independently of us to the extent that language is always
more than its individual usages and before them.
Language is not objective because it does not exist
independently of our minds and our usage (language exists and changes through our use). Language is intersubjective.
Second, constructivism makes the ontological
claim that the social world is constructed. As in
John Searle’s famous example about a money bill,
this piece of paper is “money” only because of our
shared beliefs. As all people who have had to go
through periods of hyperinflation recognize, the
moment that this shared belief ceases to exist, the
bill is literally no more than a piece of paper. This
assumption does not entail that everything is constructed, but it covers that part of reality in which
the social sciences are usually interested. Hence,
the physical type of support for money (paper,
plastic, etc.) is usually not the most relevant for
Constructivist View of Power in International Relations
social analysis. What is most relevant is the social
or institutional fact—the ontological result of “our
making.”
Third, since constructivism clearly distinguishes
and problematizes the relationship between the
levels of observation and action, it is finally
defined by stressing the reflexive relationship
between the social construction of knowledge and
the construction of social reality. In other words, it
focuses on reflexivity. On the microlevel, reflexivity has to do with what Ian Hacking calls the looping effect. Categories we use for classifying/naming
people interact with the self-conception of those
people. Whereas it makes no difference to stones
how we classify them, it can make a difference to
people and affect their self-understanding and
behavior: identity thus becomes a crucial term for
constructivism. On the macrolevel, reflexivity
refers to self-fulfilling prophecies. The concern in
the response to Samuel Huntington’s clash of civilization thesis had much to do with this reflexive
relationship between knowledge and the social
world. Whether the main fault lines of conflict
really have to be thought in this way, if all people
assume they do, and act accordingly, the world
would indeed become one of inevitable clashes of
civilizations. Assuming the claim to be true, our
actions would tend to produce the very reality the
claim was only supposed to describe. But the relationship between social reality and the social construction of knowledge also works from social
facts to knowledge, a component perhaps less
touched on in constructivist writings.
Constructivist Conceptualizations of Power
This metatheoretical commitment has implications for the type of social theories that would be
compatible with constructivism. And those theories, in turn, have implications for the types of
power that can be conceived therein.
Constructivism is part of the interpretivist family of social theories. As such, it cannot conceive of
power in terms of resources alone. People act
toward objects based on the meaning people give
these objects: objects themselves do not determine
their meaning. Nuclear missiles might be mighty
weapons; small Luxemburg does not fear its huge
French neighbor because of them. Thus, constructivism is not prone to repeat what Robert Dahl
139
once called the lump fallacy of power, where all
possible power resources would be mixed and
added. Such an aggregate power (resource) assessment, independent of the actor’s understandings
and the contingent situational setting, would be
wrong, and conceptually impossible.
This makes constructivism more receptive to a
relational understanding of power. Often confused
with a relative understanding of power—one’s
power resources are always to be seen in relation to
the other’s power resources—such an understanding sees power defined by the specific relation
between actors. Here, power lies not with given
(re)sources, but can be established only once we
know the precise scope and domain of the relation—
that is, one must state who is being influenced and
in what way. Hence, it includes an interaction and
person-specific component. If, for instance, power is
defined as the capacity to get B to do something he
or she had not planned to do, then this implies
knowing the specific plans of B before being able to
assess whether A’s action had any effect.
Yet, constructivist theorizing would give a
communicative twist to this, insisting on the role
of open or tacit recognition, which, in turn, relies
on a wider social or cultural context. Such recognition is typically based on conventions because,
as mentioned earlier, resources are given weight
not by themselves, but by shared understandings
in social relations and because the recognition of
a general power status is social. Just as individual
communications are part of and make sense
within the context of a language at large, the relational aspect of power is conceived in this wider
manner to allow social norms to become visible
in their role for the assessment of power as
authority.
As a corollary of the interpretivist and communicative setting, constructivists will not use power
as an efficient cause. Power is part of constitutive
relations and effects (see also later): a master does
not “cause” a slave, but both, and their respective
powers, are constituted through master–slave relations. For the same reason, constructivism will
view power in an often impersonal and, hence, not
necessarily intentional way. Invoking certain
metaphors or historical analogies can be very influential, whether intended or not, because they
mobilize a pre-given understanding. The particular
way issues are framed empowers certain arguments
140
Constructivist View of Power in International Relations
and actors at the expense of others. If a situation is
understood in terms of the lessons of Munich,
pleading for negotiations becomes an indefensible
act of appeasement; an understanding in terms of
the lessons of World War I would make negotiations an act of prudence to preempt a further escalation nobody wanted. This power of existing
biases is impersonal to the extent that it is done
through a set of common understandings or discourses, rather than reducible to the interpretation
of one person; it is intersubjective rather than subjective. But, just as with language, power requires
persons mobilizing it to be effective.
Finally, constructivism is interested in the power
aspects of performativity, where constructivism
relies mainly on speech act theories and Foucauldian approaches. If the categories with which we
order the world are themselves part of, and can
significantly affect, the order in the (social!) world,
then they are a crucial element for understanding
power in any society. So does, for instance, the
category failed states interact with some states in
their self-understanding and subjectivity and therefore describes the social world and changes it? Our
categories and ways of understanding the world
also prompt and legitimate certain actions, which
would not have been legitimated by other categorizations, such as international interventions that
overrule the otherwise fundamental norm of sovereignty. Applied to the concept of power itself, such
a performative analysis can also look at the way
the analysis of power affects power: the “power
politics of power analysis.”
Constructivism-Inspired Analyses of
Power in IR
Constructivism redefines power at the systemic and
at the agent level in IR. Constructivists’ systemic
analysis of power often looks at the origins of consent in terms of power relations—that is, at issues
of tacit legitimacy. It is therefore close to power
concepts of the family of authority. But rather than
looking at formal or institutional authority, constructivism is interested in the intersubjective practices of power—not in the position of authority,
but rather in what “authorizes,” “legitimates,” or
“empowers.” Moreover, constructivists do not necessarily look at intentional or agent power, but
rather at the impersonal effects of discourses or
habits for the production and reproduction of
order—particularly where they seem natural or go
without notice. These discourses perhaps constitute
the most effective power relations.
At the actor level, such a view implies an
emphasis on the process of interest formation as a
primary locus for power relations. Constructivism
insists in making this interest formation part of the
analysis—and not just simply assumed—something that cannot be derived outside of the specific
interaction and the wider culture or shared understandings within which it takes place (from relational to communicative, see earlier). And for
constructivists, interests cannot be understood
outside of such cultures in terms of shared constitutive norms, of shared knowledge and understandings, and through the effects practices have
on self-understandings or identity. For constructivists, what we want follows from who we are.
Such a view informs constructivists’ views of
power, although they may not always be openly
framed as power analyses. One larger research
agenda is about the background knowledge or
constitutive rules of the game that define the competent player and the effective moves. This has
been applied both to the world of diplomats and to
the world of experts. Richard Ashley in particular
has analyzed how the “authorized” expertise most
often defined through tenets of the realist school in
IR systematically enacts conceptual blackmails and
biases that marginalize other practices. Anna
Leander has analyzed the “epistemic power” of
private military companies when they shape the
understanding of security and the self-understanding
of their actors, as well as their structural power in
reproducing a field of security characterized by
experts that authorize an increasingly technical and
military understanding of the field—just when the
security sector had started to be demilitarized—and
are, in turn, authorized through it.
With regard to their focus on identity, constructivist scholars have looked at the impersonal effect
of discourses or practices on self-understandings
and on the power politics of identity. If identity is
crucial for interest formation, then it is only a
small step to analyze how diplomatic practices,
sometimes intended, can try to blackmail actors
by taking profit from contradictions in another
actor’s self-understandings or between its action
and self-representation. Janice Bially Mattern calls
Control
this process one of representational force. As her
study on U.S.–U.K. relations during the Suez crisis
in 1956 shows, the United States could exploit
such tensions to make the British government
change its behavior to conform to a certain selfunderstanding of what it stood for.
Finally, performative or reflexive analyses of
power study the conventions of power definitions,
the definitional struggles, and their effects on the
social world. As mentioned earlier, constructivists
would reject any power index based on some
resource aggregate as basically meaningless.
Because different types of power resources are not
commensurable and depend for their actual value
on the meanings attached to them, their ranking
and measure is but the effect of a shared convention that establishes their efficacy, their status, and
the status of actors. This convention informs the
type of interests and, hence, most rational policies.
Before diplomats can start counting, they must
first agree on what counts. If all diplomatic actors
agree that the authority given by cultural attraction, but not by military resources, weighs much in
our times of globalization, this shared idea will
strongly influence the status and privileges of particular actors in world affairs. Less ambitiously
and applied to one country only: if a certain understanding of power becomes predominant in one
country, it redirects the foreign policy of that country, as can be seen in definitions that stress “soft
power” (thus demilitarizing foreign policy) and
other attempts to resist it. Given their conventional
status, there is a power politics of power analysis.
As a result, some of the constructivist research
agendas converge with Foucauldian approaches in
their understanding of order as diffused practices
of rule, rather than as clear or formal hierarchies.
Such convergence can be seen, for instance, in the
analysis of how international standards, invented
often by private actors, are practices of rule once
they become accepted convention and interact
with the actors and issues they were supposedly
only neutrally measuring (e.g., credit rating). Similarly, to give a last example, Ole Jakob Sending
and Iver Neumann analyze the role of nonstate
actors not that much in opposition to the political
power of states, but as part of a decentralized and
self-disciplining logic of global order.
Stefano Guzzini
141
See also Balance of Power; Bourdieu, Pierre; Consensual
Power, Theories of; Diplomacy; Foucault, Michel;
Fungibility of Power Resources; Governmentality;
Knowledge and Power; Language and Power;
Legitimation
Further Readings
Barnett, M., & Duvall, R. (Eds.). (2005). Power in global
governance. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
Bially Mattern, J. (2005). Ordering international politics:
Identity, crisis, and representational force. New York:
Routledge.
Guzzini, S. (2000). A reconstruction of constructivism in
international relations. European Journal of
International Relations, 6(2), 147–182.
Guzzini, S. (2005). The concept of power: A
constructivist analysis. Millennium: Journal of
International Studies, 33(3), 495–522.
Leander, A. (2005). The power to construct international
security: On the significance of private military
companies. Millennium: Journal of International
Studies, 33(3), 803–826.
Onuf, N. G. (1989). World of our making: Rules and rule
in social theory and international relations. Columbia:
University of South Carolina Press.
CONTROL
If one is in complete control of some object or
state of being, then one can be said to have complete power over that object or state of being. In
some sense, therefore, control and power could be
thought to be synonyms. However, often when we
think of ourselves as in control of something, we
do not have complete power with regard to that
thing. Thus, although I can be legally considered
to be in complete control of my car when driving
down the road, I am not completely powerful
with regard to the car. For example, I must rely on
the car engine working properly for it to continue
under my control.
Being in control is also closely associated with
freedom. One might be considered to be free to the
extent that one is in control of one’s actions. Freedom as control can be reduced either internally, a
loss of autonomy leading to a loss of control, or
142
Conventional Deterrence
externally through outside constraints. Thus, if
one loses control of bodily limbs through injury
then one has lost some freedom of movement. If
psychological problems lead one to be unable to
control one’s temper or desires, then one might be
thought to lose freedom. Addiction can lead one to
carry out actions one does not, in some sense, wish
to perform, the craving leading to actions one
regrets. Thus, drug and other addictions can lead
to a loss of control and thereby freedom. External
constraints mean that one cannot control events
around one. Physical constraints mean that one
cannot affect the world in the way one would
desire. The extent to which events occur outside of
one’s control can be thought to lead to a loss of
freedom. In surveys, the degree to which people
say they are free is largely determined by how
much they feel they are in control of their lives and
the world around them, demonstrating that freedom and control seem to be directly linked in
people’s minds.
Some writers, such as Amartya Sen, have denied
the link between freedom and control. While recognizing the psychological link, Sen argues that
freedom goes beyond personal control. He suggests that state action, such as enforcing vaccination, can reduce the incidence of disease. Thus, we
are made free of disease, even though that freedom
is outside of our control. He calls such freedom
well-being freedom, and it is an aspect of his capability approach. A person’s capability is the degree
to which the person is able to carry out his or her
desires, and these abilities are enhanced by state
actions that enable us. Some writers, such as Peter
Morriss, have argued that Sen’s capability approach
is simple power as ability. We can see, therefore,
that control, power, freedom, and capability are
four very closely linked concepts.
Keith Dowding
See also Ability; Capability; Freedom; Morriss, Peter
Further Readings
Dowding, K. (2006). Can capabilities reconcile freedom
and equality? Journal of Political Philosophy, 14,
323–336.
Sen, A. (1982). Liberty as control: An appraisal. Midwest
Studies in Philosophy, 7, 207–221.
CONVENTIONAL DETERRENCE
Deterrence is a strategy by which one actor, such
as a government or state, attempts to prevent
another actor from taking a particular course of
action. Deterrence has been most closely associated with so-called weapons of mass destruction:
one state has threatened another state to deter
that state from taking a particular course of action
by threatening to inflict great damage as a consequence. This was most clearly demonstrated in the
cold war with the adoption of mutually assured
destruction (MAD) where both sides developed a
sufficiently large nuclear arsenal to prevent them
from going into direct conflict with one another.
However, deterrence is a far older concept and is
not solely the preserve of weapons of mass
destruction or, indeed, the preserve of states and
their governments. States can develop deterrent
relationships with nonstate actors, and such actors
can also develop deterrent relationships with one
another, thus resulting in the emergence of a code
of conduct and a ceiling on the level of violence
between them.
Conventional deterrence covers the various
forms of deterrence using conventional weapons.
Here, conventional weapons are deemed to be
those that exclude weapons of mass destruction—that is, not nuclear, chemical, biological, or
radiological weapons. Like forms of deterrence
involving weapons of mass destruction, conventional deterrence can be subdivided into two
forms: deterrence by punishment and deterrence
by denial. Deterrence by punishment threatens an
opponent that if that opponent embarks on a
particular course of action, the opponent will suffer from some form of attack that will lead to damage being inflicted on the opponent or its interests.
Thus, the targeting focuses on the opponent and
what level of pain needs to be threatened to prevent the opponent from taking a particular course
of action. Deterrence by denial involves threatening the gain from a particular course of action: in
other words, preventing the opponent from taking
control of the very thing they want.
Success is measured by an opponent’s deciding
not to embark on the opponent’s intended course
of action—that is, nothing happening, rather than
by some form of gain. For example, a state may
Cooperation
create its own air defense capability that threatens
any incursion of its air space by another. Success
would be evidenced by a lack of incursions, not by
the number of aircraft shot down while infringing
the air space.
For deterrence to successfully work, a number
of factors need to be in play. First, there need to be
two parties who acknowledge that they are in a
deterrent relationship—a deterrer and a deterree.
Failure to appreciate that there is a deterrent relationship will ensure that deterrence will fail. Thus,
when asked why Britain failed to deter the Argentinean military from invading the Falklands in
1982, Britain’s Defense Secretary John Nott stated
that he was unaware such a relationship existed.
There needs to be a clear objective—the deterrer
wants to stop the deterree from taking a particular
course of action. There then needs to be some form
of mechanism to persuade a deterree from taking
the proposed course of action, such as a threat or
series of threats.
To undertake a deterrent relationship, there first
needs to be some form of communication between
the two parties so that each is aware that there
may be consequences if a particular course of
action is taken. The degree to which this needs to
be opaque is debated, with some scholars arguing
that a lack of clarity can add to the value of the
threat. Second, both deterrer and deterree need to
be able to conduct some form of cost-benefit
analysis to evaluate the relative pros and cons of
taking the proposed course of action. Third, deterrence in general assumes rationality—that in making this calculation the relevant decision makers
will make a rational decision and that they define
rationality along similar lines.
Not surprisingly, deterrence theory has been
criticized for its assumptions about rationality on
three bases. First, it has been argued that suicidal
or psychotic opponents may not be deterred by
either form of deterrence. More generally, if rationality defined by cultural norms and practice is
sufficiently different between the two parties,
deterrence may easily fail. Second, there is plenty
of scope for misunderstanding. The role of diplomacy is important here but can lead to errors.
Third, the most logical way to undermine deterrence is to be irrational and become unpredictable.
The results of such errors can be an escalation
of mutual perceptions of threat leading to an arms
143
race, thus increasing the risk of actual war. Moreover, there is no agreement that such relationships
should remain at the conventional level, and thus,
a failure in conventional deterrence may lead to an
escalation toward weapons of mass destruction. In
fact, during the cold war NATO adopted the policy of flexible response, which began with conventional deterrence and proposed to escalate to strategic nuclear deterrence.
Andrew M. Dorman
See also Appeasement; Coercion and Power; Deterrent
Threats; Diplomacy; Legitimation; Offense/Defense
Dominance; Realism in International Relations;
Strategic Power Index
Further Readings
Freedman, L. (2004). Deterrence. Cambridge, UK: Polity
Press.
Morgan, P. M. (1983). Deterrence: A conceptual analysis.
Beverly Hills, CA: Sage.
COOPERATION
At least since Mancur Olson’s The Logic of Collective Action (published in 1965), cooperation
between human agents has generated an enormous academic literature, almost an industry in
itself. In a famous phrase, Olson said that unless a
group is small or there is some other coercive
mechanism, self-interested people will not act to
achieve their common or group interests. This
particular problem of cooperation to which Olson
refers has become known as the collective action
or free-rider problem.
The problem of cooperation had been recognized by others, of course. David Hume suggested
that although two farmers might agree to dig a
drainage channel between two fields and would be
confident that each would turn up on the allotted
day to help dig the channel, 100 people would not
turn up to drain a field. Although it is in everyone’s
interests to have the field drained, it is also in
everyone’s interest not to contribute. Where many
people are involved, each person can figure that if
he or she does not turn up (a) no one will notice,
144
Cooperation
and (b) there will still be enough others to successfully carry out the collective act. However, if everyone thinks like that, no one will turn up, and then
everyone will be worse off. When there are only a
few people involved, neither condition will hold
and cooperation can occur.
Of course, cooperation does occur between
large numbers of people, and this “puzzle” has
generated the large literature. First, we note that
Olson makes clear that the problem occurs for selfinterested people; other-oriented people might still
turn up (we consider that below), but first let us
see how cooperation might occur even if people
are fully self-interested.
The Collective Action Problem
The collective action problem is a problem, but not
an insurmountable one. Olson himself provides
solutions. Selective incentives can be offered to
self-interested people. These might be side payments given to those who turn up, or they might
consist of nonmaterial benefits, such as reciprocal
friendliness. The degree of interaction between
group members is also as important as small size.
Although smaller numbers of people find it easier
to cooperate than do large numbers, large groups
can consist of smaller groups. Often in collective
enterprises, groups of friends agree to meet and go
along to the event together. Collective organizations are created with subgroups; armies consist of
regiments, broken down into units or platoons. It
is often said that soldiers do not fight for their
country but for their comrades, and armies try to
instill a sense of mission and loyalty within their
constituent units for precisely that reason. Hence,
interaction is more important than group size in
itself. Face-to-face interaction among a small
group of people may lead to subgroup mobilization no matter how large the wider group, thus
overcoming the perceptibility problem mentioned
earlier.
Often, coordinating activities is a key issue. To
overcome coordination difficulties, some actor or
set of actors may need to step in. These coordinators provide a key role in ensuring both that individuals work together and that subunits within
larger groups also cooperate. It is often easier to
get people to work together to provide a one-off or
so-called step public good because all can work
toward a specific aim—such as digging a drainage
ditch. But often tasks are ongoing—the field might
need constant work to keep it drained—and getting people to cooperate in the long run is harder.
Here, reciprocity is the key. If I act to help you, and
then you act to help me, I am more likely to reciprocate next time round. For long-term tasks, people often create rosters so that each person knows
when he or she is expected to contribute, each
person can see that everyone else is doing their
turn, and there are no free riders. In that way,
cooperation is ensured.
These sorts of processes help cooperation in
face-to-face interaction with people one knows
and can interact with in the future. But what about
cooperation in societies with large numbers of
people that we do not know and may not expect
to interact with again? Car drivers know the problems of moving into heavy traffic, where one needs
someone to slow slightly to let one in. In most
societies, drivers do allow other drivers to join
slow-moving heavy traffic. Here conventions
emerge. Where two lanes of traffic merge into one,
the convention is often for one car in the left lane
to proceed followed by one car from the right lane,
so that some form of equity exists between the two
lanes of traffic. If one driver tries to cheat and get
into line out of turn or an excessively generous
driver lets several cars in, other drivers get annoyed
because the convention they accept is broken.
Standing in lines or queues is also conventional
and can cause problems across cultures if the convention varies. In many Western cultures, the convention is to queue in turn as one arrives, but
elsewhere men may take precedence over women
or the old over the young, and so on. If people
from different cultures have different understandings of the convention then cooperation breaks
down, and anarchy can occur.
Jon Elster has called such conventions the
cement of society. The idea is that we need a point
or understanding on which we can all focus so we
cooperate smoothly when such collective action
problems arise. In game-theoretic terms, these conventions are equilibriums of games. The equilibrium strategy is such that although all others play
that strategy, each person has an incentive to abide
by that strategy. (In practice, as in the previous
examples, people can have incentives to depart,
especially when there is no direct face-to-face
Cooperation
interaction as in the car examples.) However, complex games have multiple equilibriums (the different queuing conventions in different cultures, for
example) and the convention adopted might not be
the optimal one. In the example of two lanes of
cars merging into one, for example, the optimal
strategy for both lanes would be to drive right to
the end of the lane and then join. In that way, new
cars joining the two queues could see which lane
was shorter and join that for efficiency and equity.
However, car drivers tend to move into one lane
long before the other gives out. They might join it
at different points, confusing the equitable convention and making it hard for the late-coming cars to
judge which lane to join. Changing from suboptimal to optimal conventions can be problematic.
Many of the conventions and ways of behaving
that we adopt cannot really be sustained by fully
self-interested people. There are too many ways in
which we could cheat without being detected, but
we tend not to. However, that is not to say there
are not mechanisms that lead us to cooperate
where we could cheat. The most obvious one is the
internal feelings of guilt and shame that we have if
we were to cheat. These feelings seem to be an
evolutionary response to the problem of selfinterested behavior.
Natural Selection and Selfish Genes
In his book The Selfish Gene, Richard Dawkins
first suggested that we can view our genes as selfish, which can help explain why we are not. Natural selection is the evolutionary process by which
genes are replicated. The “selfish” aspect of the
gene is the metaphor that it exists to self-replicate.
Associated with genes are phenotypes, body
shapes, and behaviors that enable the gene
vehicle—plants and animals—to reproduce themselves and, hence, the genes themselves. In extended
phenotypes, the genes manipulate the behavior of
other vehicles to enhance the ability of their vehicle
to thrive and survive and pass on its genes through
sexual reproduction. Genes can be thought of as
adopting game-theoretic strategies that will
increase their chances of being reproduced; in that
sense, genes can be thought of as equilibrium selection devices. They will select reciprocal cooperation when playing with another vehicle if that is in
the interests of both. In some circumstances, gene
145
vehicles will cooperate altruistically, especially with
kin, because those vehicles will also contain genes
hosted by their own vehicle. William Hamilton
produced the idea of kin selection where some
behavior will be replicated more often if it considers the reproductive opportunities that behavior
provides for its own vehicle and the extra reproductive opportunities it provides for other vehicles
that are related. Illustrating this, J. B. S. Haldane,
asked if he would give his life for another, joked
that he would if he saved two brothers or eight
cousins. In our cultural heritage, we often lived in
small kin-related groups. Many of our reactions in
cooperative situations that lead us to behave altruistically are based on internal incentives to cooperate derived from the reciprocity we expect from
small groups and kinship. Cooperative behavior in
animals has been documented in thousands of case
studies that show that the degree of cooperation
between different types and groups of animals is
highly related to their degree of kinship. The complete social behavior of hymenoptera such as ants
and bees, who share (almost) completely the same
genetic structure is the most stark example.
The genetic story can help tell us why we are
not completely self-interested and how aspects of
our individual makeup are social in character.
However, it would be wrong to immediately conclude that humans are simply stimulus–response
gene-vehicles. People do have beliefs and desires
and do consciously strategize, sometimes for their
own benefit and sometimes for the benefit of others to whom they are neither kin-related nor reciprocally interacting. Many of our beliefs about how
to behave cooperatively with others are taught to
us by our parents, teachers, and clergy. We also
learn the conventions of our society unconsciously
by watching and interacting with others. We are
natural imitators (indeed the neural mechanisms
that led to imitation have been identified). We
learn our cooperative behaviors, and sometimes
have to learn them anew when we move from one
community to another with different conventions.
As part of this cooperative enterprise, our own
beliefs about cooperation can become important,
whether they be “looking after Number One” or
“do unto others as you would be done by.” These
beliefs are learned, in part through the conventions
and general morality of our own society, but then
become enforced through behavior. Some of these
146
Coordination
behaviors are acquired from a very early age. It has
been suggested that the amount of trust displayed
by people is related to how quickly they were
attended to when crying as babies and that children whose families are highly geographically
mobile are less trusting than are those who have
always lived in the same community. But certainly
adults can learn to become more or less trusting
through the experiences they have as adults. A
single traumatic event can cause someone to be less
trusting and cooperative.
Conventions might be the cement of society, but
cooperation beyond conventions and norms
ensures that people have much greater powers to
gain more of what they want than they could
attain on their own. Our evolutionary heritage has
ensured that we can cooperate, but we also learn
to cooperate through interacting with others
around us, and because we can recognize that
cooperation is good for us all in the long run. It is
important that people are not too trusting, or they
can be exploited, but cooperation is best attained
through reciprocal action both directly and indirectly through learned norms.
free-rider problem exists. In situations of pure
coordination, there is no free-rider problem but,
rather, a problem of agreeing on the mutually beneficial strategies.
A simple coordination game is the decision
about which side of the road to drive on. Two
drivers meeting on a two-lane highway would
sooner both drive on the left or both drive on the
right so they can pass each other without problem. We can represent this as a simple two-by-two
normal form game, shown below. Here, we can
see there are two equilibriums, Left-Left and
Right-Right. The coordination problem is for
each to agree which of the equilibrium strategies
to choose. Once one of the strategies is chosen,
there is no problem in each maintaining that equilibrium strategy because neither has any incentive
to depart from them.
1,1
0,0
0,0
1,1
Keith Dowding
See also Alliances; Collective Action Problem;
Coordination; Game-Theoretical Approaches to
Power; Noncooperative Games; Public Goods
Further Readings
Axelrod, R. (1984). The evolution of cooperation. New
York: Basic Books.
Dawkins, R. (1978). The selfish gene. Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press.
Elster, J. (1989). The cement of society: A study of social
order. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Hamilton, W. (1963). The evolution of altruistic behavior.
American Naturalist, 97, 354–356.
COORDINATION
Where each agent can realize mutual gains through
making mutually consistent decisions, the problem is one of coordination—a simpler problem to
solve than a collective action problem where the
Often there might be no reason why we choose
particular solutions to coordination problems, or
the reasons are lost in history. It has been suggested that driving on the left-hand side in the
United Kingdom was based on a convention that
knights would pass each other with the sword
hand (right-handedness being dominant) on the
side toward the other, but this claim might be
apocryphal (and does not explain the opposite
convention in other countries). Thomas Schelling
introduced the notion of a focal point that many
people would regard as a good coordinating
device, such as Times Square if they were meeting
in New York but had not agreed a meeting place.
When faced with this matrix, for example, most
subjects in experiments opt for the top left-hand
box rather than the lower right, suggesting that
somehow that is the focal point where people can
coordinate their actions.
Keith Dowding
See also Collective Action Problem; Cooperation
Core Parties
Further Readings
Cooper, R. W. (1998). Coordination games. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.
Schelling, T. C. (1960). The strategy of conflict.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
CORE
OF A
GAME
The core of a game is a central concept in cooperative game theory. Core of a game refers to situations in which individuals can gain from cooperating in groups, but there is conflict over the
allocation of the gains from cooperation. An
allocation is in the core if no subgroup of individuals can unilaterally improve the position of all
its members. An allocation in the core is presumably stable: once achieved, there is no incentive to
move away from it. It is also efficient in the sense
that no other allocation makes all individuals better off. The power of an individual can be measured by how favorably the individual is treated
by the allocations in the core in comparison with
other feasible allocations.
Allocations in the core can be very extreme. For
example, suppose a group of three voters must
decide on the division of a resource. Three votes
are needed to pass a proposal, with one voter controlling two votes and two voters controlling one
vote each. The first voter has veto power because
no proposal can be passed without that person’s
votes. The core allocates the entire resource to the
veto voter. Given any other allocation (say, one
that gives a positive share to the second voter), the
first and third voter together can pass a proposal
that divides the second voter’s share between them.
The core does not consider the possibility of
forming voting blocs. In this example, the two
nonveto voters together have as many votes as the
veto voter. If these two voters are able to act
together as a single unit, there is no compelling
reason why the veto voter must obtain the whole
resource.
There may be more than one outcome in the
core. If there are two voters that must agree on
the division of a resource, any division that
exhausts the resource is in the core because no
voter can change the division unilaterally and it is
not possible to make both voters better off.
147
The core may also be empty. Suppose a voting
body with three voters must divide a resource by
simple majority. Given any allocation, there are
always two voters that would do better by dividing
the third voter’s share between them. If the core is
empty, the situation is potentially unstable because
given any outcome, there is a subgroup that has
the ability and motivation to enforce a different
one.
More generally, assuming that voters decide on
the division of a fixed resource, the core is either
empty (in the absence of veto voters) or distributes
everything between the veto voters. Thus, the veto
voters have all the power in the group according to
the core. When voters are voting over a choice of
policy or any other issue, the core is defined in the
same way: a policy is in the core if no group of
voters prefers another policy and can enforce it. If
policies can be unambiguously ranked along some
dimension, the core corresponds to the outcome
preferred by the median voter.
The core has been criticized as being a myopic
stability concept: the existence of a profitable
deviation automatically disqualifies an outcome as
stable. However, even if a profitable deviation
exists, individuals may abstain from deviating,
fearing that whatever improvement they agree on
may itself be overturned by subsequent deviations
by other subgroups, with the ultimate result of
making some of them worse off than they originally were.
Maria Montero
See also Coalition Theory; Shapley Value; Veto Players;
Weighted Majority Game
Further Readings
Kahan, J. P., & Rapoport, A. (1984). Theories of
coalition formation. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Myerson, R. B. (1991). Game theory: Analysis of
conflict. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
CORE PARTIES
In spatial voting games, the Condorcet winner
is any policy or candidate that defeats all other
148
Corporatism
policies or candidates in pairwise votes. However,
what can we say about potential outcomes if there
is no Condorcet winner? Let us define a set X as
the set of feasible outcomes corresponding to vectors that denote the utility u of each player (ui, u2,
u3,) to be a specific vector (i.e., point) in X.
Assume that a coalition C prefers u to u if and
only if ui u’I for all individuals I in C. Define the
coalition of individuals C to be effective for u in X
if the members of C can coordinate their actions
sufficiently to ensure that each member i of C
receives a payoff of at least ui. Let v(C) denote the
set of all utility n-tuples for which C is effective.
Now we say that u dominates u if there exists at
least one coalition that is effective for u and that
prefers u to u. A cooperative game’s core is then
defined as the set of undominated elements of X.
A core party is then defined as any party that
in a voting game occupies the core of the game. In
coalition theory, core parties will always form the
government or be an element in a coalition government. Formal coalition theory has demonstrated that majority voting rules always generate
a core in one-dimensional policy space, which
means that there will always be a core party
where politics is dominated by one dimension—
such as a left–right ideological dimension. However, if we assume that the preferences of players
are randomly assigned, then a core is generated
only unusually in two dimensions and rarely if
ever in three or more dimensions. It is usually
assumed that under such circumstances voting
cycles will be generated. However, if the public’s
preferences are not randomly generated, but
rather are socially determined to bunch together
in policy space, then a core is more likely to form,
and so will core parties. Empirically, in many
systems, some parties are usually members of
coalition governments, and such parties are core
parties within those systems.
Keith Dowding
See also Coalition Theory; Core of a Game; Dominant
Parties; Grand Coalition
Further Readings
Laver, M., & Schofield, N. (1990). Multiparty
government. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
CORPORATISM
The core meaning of corporatism is an institutional relationship between governing authorities
and the representation of interests, notably capital
and labor, with the central organs of the state. In
this sense, corporatism is closely associated with
fascist ideology, notably in Italy and Germany,
which promoted capitalist enterprise but directed
it into specific works and, with strong links to
labor movements, ensured a harmony of control
between the major interest groups in society. After
World War II, sometimes with the prefix neo-, corporatism became associated with a dominant state
that mediated, usually through formal tripartite
agreements, macroeconomic conditions between
employers and labor unions. During the late
1970s and 1980s, corporatism or neocorporatism
was lauded by many academics as providing a
high level of macroeconomic performance, both
controlling inflation and maintaining relatively
low levels of unemployment. At that time, corporatism was associated with Keynesianism. However, the precise form of corporatism and its
relationship to state power structures has been
much debated.
Interest in corporatism revived among political
scientists in the 1970s with Philippe Schmitter’s
1974 Review of Politics article, “Still the Century
of Corporatism?” He contrasted corporatism (or
neocorporatism) as a form of interest representation that differed from other state forms such as
pluralism, statism, and syndicalism. He saw it as a
distinct system of political power relations that
affected macroeconomic and social forces within
states. Within the literature were those who concentrated on corporatism as an institutional form
through which interests are represented and by
which contestation between different sides of the
capital divide was contained and those who saw it
more as a form of policy making that did not necessarily include specific institutional structures. In
the first, specific formal institutional structures
included social pacts made between government
and the overarching capital and labor organizations, peak organizations that represented employers and workers within those pacts, tripartite
negotiations led by government, and regulatory
functions accorded to nonstate organizations such
Corporatism
as employers’ groups or major trade unions.
Within the second, it was recognized that not all
(or even any) of these formal institutional structures were necessary for corporatism to hold at
least at times within a country. All that was needed
was coordination by the state to guide agreements
between different interests with a degree of integration into the state of organized groups. Within
these structures, a host of types of corporatism
were identified, such as mesocorporatism, which
concerned clusters of groups around specific interests such as industrial or professional sectors, or
private interest government concerning the selfregulation of professional groups.
The central theoretical concern was how corporate states handled issues of public goods, statelevel collective action problems, and the national
economy. In the 1970s, states were recovering from
oil price rises, raging inflation, and higher unemployment, which were challenging the Keynesian
orthodoxy of the postwar period. Many writers
argued that corporatist states fared better than did
more free market or pluralist ones. Under pluralism, the forces of capital and labor were ranged
against each other as unions strived to bring about
inflation-proof wage rises and resisted new work
practices to maintain employment levels while
firms struggled to contain labor unrest. The mix
was not conducive to controlling inflation or
enabling growth through capital investment. However, tripartite corporatist arrangements were
thought to help overcome these problems. Through
the facilitation of government, peak-level organizations on both the employer and labor sides could
negotiate to ensure longer-term strategies over
wages and work conditions, allowing government
to manage the economy in Keynesian fashion,
enabling growth to promote future profit, wages
rises, and job security. Various comparative analyses of economies suggested that on issues such as
inflation, employment, and investment, the nations
that seemed more corporatist were doing better
than were those that were more pluralist. It would
seem that corporatist arrangements did enable the
state to overcome state-level collective action problems to promote the public goods of low inflation,
high employment, and economic growth, making
everyone better off.
Both the models of corporatism and the politicaleconomic analyses were not uncontroversial, not
149
least because identifying which countries were
most corporatist was not straightforward, and
how well countries were doing over a range of
indicators was subject to the time frames of the
econometric analyses that were conducted. Furthermore, by the end of the 1980s and into the
1990s, countries that were pluralist were perceived
to be doing better, especially where the more informal corporatist relationships were replaced. Many
of the formal corporatist nations such as Austria
and Finland were not doing so well on the macroeconomic indicators in comparison with some
pluralist nations such as the United States and
United Kingdom. Analysts suggested that corporatism was not suited to the changing nature of
capitalism, with the demise of heavy industry and
manufacturing and the rise of the service industry
(post-Fordism) in the developed world. New
technology required faster reorganization and
entrepreneurial activity flourished better in less
regulated societies. Keynesianism was going out
of fashion and the ability of countries to protect
their economies from worldwide market forces
reduced as globalization took off. Even in the
heartland of corporatism, Sweden, centralized
wage bargaining ended in the late 1980s. This
seemed to be the death knell of corporatism
as a distinct form of state organization, both
empirically as a description of some states, and
normatively as more pluralist states did better economically, suggesting that corporatism was also
bankrupt as an ideal form of interest mediation
able to supply important social and public goods.
Some have argued that corporatism did not
disappear but rather evolved into new forms of
political exchange. To be sure, interest mediation
involving the state still exists in many countries,
albeit at more local rather than overarching national
levels. Also the recognition of new social movements that represent interests outside of the capital–
labor divide, such as environmental, feminist, and
others, entered into the realm of interest mediation.
However, these claims about corporatism becoming a state form where the central state authorities
accept a role for interest groups as social partners
in social, political, and economic exchange can
hardly be termed a new form of corporatism
because such a specification does not differ from
the pluralism that corporatism or neocorporatism
was supposed to rival. Corporatist arrangements
150
Corruption
might once more come into fashion as states start
to reregulate after the global financial crisis at the
end of the first decade of the 21st century. Furthermore, the state-directed capitalist arrangement of
Asian states such as South Korea and China has
elements of corporatism contained within it. These
states have managed to sustain growth and growing employment as capitalism takes off. In such
semi-democratic and nondemocratic countries,
especially in post-communist China, corporatism
looks more like its original prewar form in Europe
and might herald a more corporatist organization
in developed democratic countries.
Keith Dowding
See also Collective Action Problem; Fascism;
Globalization; Post-Fordism; Public Goods
Further Readings
Iverson, T. (1999). Contested economic institutions: The
politics of macroeconomics and wage bargaining.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Schmitter, P. (1974). Still the century of corporatism?
Review of Politics, 36, 85–131.
Williamson, P. (1985). Varieties of corporatism: Theory
and practice. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
CORRUPTION
The general understanding of corruption involves
the corrupt actor occupying a position that vests
in him or her power, authority, or trust within a
public institution or office. When the actor engages
in an act that abuses this power, authority, or
trust, the act is said to be corrupt. In some jurisdictions, the abuse of office is itself a criminal act.
However, the act itself need not be criminal to be
classified as corrupt. Thus, an employee of a
private company who engages in embezzlement is
guilty of fraud but does not, in the general understanding of the term, engage in corruption.
However, if the organization were a government
organization, the fraud may be considered corruption. Conversely, where a senior bureaucrat in a
private firm uses his or her authority to sway
potential voters, the act would be unlikely to be
criminal in itself. If the firm were public, however,
the act may be considered corrupt and, in certain
jurisdictions, attract criminal sanctions.
The difficulty of distinguishing between the
legal and conceptual definition of corruption has
led some theorists to define corruption as a purely
legal issue. In this account, a corrupt act only
occurs where formal laws or guidelines are
breached. The rationale for this is that such formal
definitions are stable and precise. One of the most
prominent examples of this kind of definitions is
that from J. S. Nye, who defines corruption as
“behaviour which deviates from the formal duties
of a public role because of private regarding (personal, close family, private clique) pecuniary or
status gains); or violates rules against the exercise
of certain types of private-regarding influence”
(1967, p. 418).
This type of narrow definition has been contested. Michael Johnston, for example, rejects the
idea that corruption must be defined in formal
terms. He also rejects the idea that corruption can
only take place in the context of public office but
does say that it generally involves “public power”
or public resources. Johnston holds that corruption is the abuse of public roles or resources for
private benefit where public, private, and benefit
are contentions and ambiguous. This definition
makes it difficult to classify any particular action
as corrupt, so Johnston takes a view that systemic
corruption problems are the proper subject of
study rather than the attempt to forensically define
the concept of corruption. The idea is that systemic
corruption exists where wealth and power are used
to weaken, prevent, or delay the development of
participative economic or political institutions. As
Johnston points out, this definition of corruption
can include actions that are legal and therefore
opens the way for a conceptualization that takes
far more account of the cultural context than the
strictly legal approach does. In this vein, Georg
Cremer points out that the concept of corruption
can only apply when the behavior of an official
contradicts the norms of his or her society. Similarly, Carl Friedrich and Philip Jos hold that laws
and codes of conduct are not nearly as important
for the definition of corruption as is the extent to
which an actor in a public role violates standards
and expectations associated with that role.
Coup d’État
The notion that corruption entails the abuse of
power has been challenged by some who downplay the perceived negative aspects of corruption
in favor of the positive ability of corruption to
“grease the wheels” of an inefficient bureaucratic
system. For example, Cremer points out that bribery of public officials may be a way of circumventing highly intrusive bureaucratic practices as well
as enabling competition where the government has
attempted to restrict competition. Bribery has also
been seen as an efficient means of speeding up
bureaucratic decision making, particularly where
public officials can threaten those waiting on their
decisions with delays unless a bribe is paid. Detractors of this view point out that the empirical evidence indicates that higher levels of corruption are
associated with lower levels of economic performance. Although this may be true for corruption
in aggregate, there seems to be a curvilinear relationship between corruption and economic performance. Thus, at certain levels of corruption, high
levels of economic growth are possible. Oskar
Kurer gives the example of Thailand and Italy to
illustrate such a situation and contrasts these countries with those of sub-Saharan Africa in which
corruption has exceeded the “critical” level and
has resulted in a collapse in public infrastructure.
In the latter cases, the putative power of the briber
to offer a bribe has been subverted by the power of
the official to demand a bribe.
Critics of the curvilinear account of corruption
point out that there are actually very few countries
that prosper with high levels of corruption and conclude that there is an alternative explanation for
their success. Mushtaq H. Khan, for example, holds
that economically successful countries with high
levels of corruption prosper because they use “patrimonial” rather than “clientelist” networks as
media for the flow of influence. The idea here is that
the phenomenon of corruption depends on semiformal patron–client networks. There are two broad
categories of such networks. Patrimonial networks
enable state-based agents to protect their access to
gains from corruption. These are usually extant in
countries that have a long history of the division of
access to property “rights” (as, for example, in
Thailand, Italy, and South Korea). In such countries,
the state has more power than any other individual
interested party and can therefore allocate rights on
the basis of economic considerations as the political
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questions are largely determined. In contrast,
clientelist networks are characterized by weakly
defined access to gains and require state and
nonstate parties to compete. These are the norm
in developing countries because they tend to occur
in countries without a long history of defined
allocations of rights. Developing countries tend
to have underdeveloped civic institutions supporting them, so it is therefore difficult for state officials to monopolize rents from newly emerging
resources. Significant efficiency costs are incurred
in the clientelist network because state officials are
likely to award rights to resources more on the
basis of political concerns than on prospects for
value adding.
Michael Dalvean
See also Blackmail; Bribe Index; Fungibility of Power
Resources
Further Readings
Cremer, G. (2008). Corruption and development aid.
Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner.
Johnston, M. (2005). Syndromes of corruption.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Khan, M. H. (1996). The efficiency implications of
corruption. Journal of International Development,
8(5), 683–696.
Kurer, O. (2001). Why do voters support corrupt
politicians? In A. K. Jain (Ed.), The political economy
of corruption. London: Routledge.
Nye, J. S. (1967). Corruption and political development:
A cost-benefit analysis. American Political Science
Review, 61(2), 417–427.
COUP D’ÉTAT
A coup d’état is an illegal change of government
speedily effected by a group based within the
machinery of state through the threat or actual
use of violence. Coups d’état are important to the
study of power in three ways. In being a means for
overthrowing governments, they highlight the
critical point of regime change and the implications that follow for the transfer of power under
conditions of illegality. In using the threat or
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Coup d’État
actual use of violence, coups also direct interest to
the debates about power and force as separate
concepts. In being carried out by a group from
within the state, coups also draw attention to the
locus of power beyond the formal holders
of political office. As a particular means for
overthrowing government, coups feature similar
techniques and the military is usually involved.
Explanations for coups d’état vary, essentially
depending on whether reasons for the military to
intervene are sought or their general underlying
causes are investigated.
The Nature of Coups
The ideal coup d’état is swift, impeccably planned,
and perfectly executed. To avoid detection at the
planning stage conspiracy is essential. By virtue of
the similarities between the institutions of governments, the techniques employed usually include
the capturing of the telecommunications center
and other key points, such as police and military
headquarters and the presidential palace and, of
course, the arrest of the most powerful state personnel. Given the state’s monopoly of coercion, the
active or passive support of at least some of the
armed forces would also be sought at the planning
stage. Because of the military’s particularly advantageous qualifications for staging coups—being
within the state apparatus and possessing the
means for threatening violence—the military is
normally involved. Coups can be staged entirely by
the military, though the involvement of both military and civilian personnel is more usually the case
and sometimes entirely civilian governments are
installed.
Explaining Coups
A number of explanations have been offered for
why coups occur, including some concentrating on
personal or military grievances. Following the
spate of coups in the new nations of Africa and
Asia in the 1960s, coups came to be seen as the
agents of economic and political development with
the military viewed as a modernizing force intent,
eventually, on handing back power to democratically elected government. This does sometimes
happen, and in more recent years, coups have
become less frequent and democratic institutions,
such as elections, have been more commonly used.
By the 1970s, however, it became clear that coups
could also result in repressive dictatorships. The
growing numbers of subsequent coups within new
nations also undermined the view of coups as
agents of modernization. These also showed that
the military could be in conflict within itself, a
finding in line with the longer history of coups in
Latin America and coups that occurred in Greece
in 1967 and 1973 and in Portugal in 1974. More
compatible with repeat coups, an alternative explanation focused on the effects of colonialism in
creating ethnic and social cleavages through the
drawing of artificial state boundaries and establishing economies to serve capitalist world markets. In this line of argument, attention has also
been drawn to the role of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in assisting coups that protect
capitalist markets against left-leaning governments. Class analysis, too, has been employed—
with the high-ranking members of the military
viewed as the sons of the middle class and the taking of political power interpreted as the means to
acquire economic power.
Although the reasons why coups are staged may
vary, some general underlying conditions can be
identified. This is helped by their frequency: more
than half of third world countries have had one or
more coups d’état. Their general underlying conditions follow from the importance of the economy
to government’s responsibilities: the types of economies that are especially vulnerable to economic
instability and general uncertainty are likely, therefore, to lead to accusations of incompetence and
corruption of even the most competent and least
corrupt governments. These economic conditions
are typical of countries whose economic sector is
producing primary goods for export, trading them
on the world market, with the government highly
dependent on the revenues from these exports. Primary goods—coffee, bananas, copper, and the
like—are highly susceptible to large fluctuations in
their world market prices and vulnerable to variations in production. Of such countries, the most
vulnerable to coups are those that are specialized in
their exports: for where a single major export
forms a large percentage of all exports, fluctuations
in prices, production, and government revenues are
especially likely to generate economic instability.
Because of a lack of resources to alleviate the social
Cox, Robert W.
and economic repercussions, poorer such countries
have an added vulnerability to coups.
A coup is most likely to be staged at the height
of the government’s loss of support, the culmination of export-induced economic instability, but in
the conspirators’ calculations of success, other factors should be considered. The presence of foreign
troops is one factor: they may intervene to reverse
a coup attempt. Governments may be given some
time in office before being apportioned blame for
incompetence or corruption in managing the
economy, and the conspirators are more likely to
be apprehensive about staging the first coup. As a
strategy based on careful planning in which conspiracy is of the essence, mistakes may also be
made. A coup attempt offers no guarantee of success, but the presence of underlying conditions
ensures that further opportunities will arise. It also
follows from those conditions generating economic instability largely out of government control, that new governments installed by coups, too,
will face the same accusations of incompetence
and corruption. It follows also, therefore, that
once a country has had a coup d’état, further
coups are likely.
Rosemary H. T. O’Kane
See also Dictatorship; Legitimation; Military in
Government; Right-Wing Authoritarianism; Terror
Regimes
Further Readings
Jackman, R. W. (1978). The predictability of coups
d’état. American Political Science Review, 72,
1262–1275.
Luttwak, E. (1969). Coup d’état: A practical handbook.
Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
O’Kane, R. H. T. (1987). The likelihood of coups.
Aldershot, UK: Gower.
O’Kane, R. H. T. (1993). Coups d’état in Africa. Journal
of Peace Research, 30, 251–270.
COX, ROBERT W. (1926– )
Robert W. Cox was born in Canada in 1926 and
was educated at McGill University where he
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completed a BA (1946) and an MA (1948) in history. Before embarking on an academic career,
Cox spent 25 years at the International Labour
Organization (ILO) from which he retired in
August 1972 after serving as executive assistant
to the director general, chief of the Research
and Planning Department, and director of the
International Institute for Labour Studies. After
leaving the UN system, he held various professorial positions at the Graduate Institute of International Studies; Columbia University; University of
Toronto; Yale University; and the Australian
National University. Currently, he is emeritus professor of political science at York University,
Toronto.
Cox’s earlier scholarly contribution primarily
reflected an interest in the study of the processes of
international organization grounded in utopian
functionalism and in a desire to contribute to the
development of methods and approaches that
would generate more scientific and nonnormative
perspectives. However, the contributions for which
Cox is best known are those that he develops influenced by Giambattista Vico, Antonio Gramsci,
and Fernand Braudel and that form the basis of the
neo-Gramscian perspective in international relations. Since the 1980s, unlike his prior scholarly
contributions, Cox’s work detaches itself from
positivism to embrace the method of historical
structures or critical historicisms, namely a postpositivist approach primarily concerned with
understanding the emergence of world orders
within which dominant norms, institutions, and
practices become established. Critical historicism,
however, is not simply a theory of history concerned with the past but is also an “emancipatory”
approach intending to identify which social forces
could challenge the prevailing distribution of
power at any given time.
Cox’s method of historical structures is conceived as an interdependent and dialectical configuration of changing forces—material capabilities, ideas, and institutions—that create opportunities and impose constraints on human activity and
social practices. This configuration of forces is said
by Cox to create pressure across three interrelated
levels, namely the basic level of production, state–
civil society complexes, and world orders. Cox’s
complex ontology serves the purpose of explaining
relative stability (as opposed to equilibrium) within
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a historical juncture or world order; stability is
equated to the concepts of hegemonic and nonhegemonic historical structures that underpin
Cox’s conceptualizations of power in international
affairs. Unlike neorealists, Cox argues that relationships of dominance and control cannot rest on
the preponderance of military and economic capabilities of a single state but ought to be understood
as a configuration of material power, prevalent
images of world order, and a set of institutions that
administer that order; this particular kind of dominance would need to be based on a broad measure
of consent while offering some prospects of satisfaction to the less powerful. Hence, this conceptualization presupposes that power emerges from
social processes rather than being located within
the result of relations of production; accordingly,
at particular historical junctures, changing social
relations of production give rise to particular
social forces, leading states or social classes that
become the base of power and can engender transformation within and across states and within a
specific world order.
As Timothy Sinclair and Michael Schechter
illustrate, Cox’s approach has invariably been
criticized for his ontological and epistemological
eclecticism; the neglect of issues of importance
such as security, gender, and ecology; and his shifting pessimism and utopianism. Nonetheless, he is
generally recognized, even by his critics, as the first
major scholar to use critical theory in international
relations.
Catia Gregoratti
See also Gramsci, Antonio; Neorealism; Postmodernist
View of Power in International Relations
Further Readings
Cox, R. W. (1969). International organisation: World
politics. London: Macmillan.
Cox, R. W., & Jacobson, H. (1973). The anatomy of
influence: Decision making in international
organization. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Cox, R. W., & Schechter, M. G. (2002). The political
economy of a plural world: Critical reflections on
power, morals and civilization. London: Routledge.
Cox, R. W., & Sinclair, T. J. (1996). Approaches to
world order. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
CRITICAL THEORY
A critical theory is a theory of society that aims to
emancipate those subjected to relations of domination or power. In contrast to the contemplative
model of knowledge implicit in the Greek etymology of theory—which comes from the word
theǀros or “a spectator”—critical theory regards
the pursuit of knowledge as a politically engaged
activity. In part, this is because social power
involves more than just manipulative resources or
force. Relations of power and domination also
depend on particular attitudes and beliefs, or purported knowledge. It follows that by confirming
or refuting beliefs or attitudes, theory has implications for corresponding patterns of domination.
Whether explicitly or implicitly, knowingly or
unknowingly, theory always “takes sides,” whether
in defense or in defiance of power. For critical
theory, this political commitment is explicit and
self-conscious.
The Frankfurt School
Critical theory in this sense is associated primarily
with the influential branch of Western Marxism
known as the Frankfurt School. This name derives
from its association with the Frankfurt Institute of
Social Research, which was founded in 1923 at the
University of Frankfurt. The institute’s associates
have included Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno,
Herbert Marcuse, Carl Grünberg, Erich Fromm,
Otto Kirchheimer, Friedrich Pollock, Henryk
Grossmann, and Walter Benjamin. It was originally set up for the pursuit of Marxist studies with
the support of the wealthy philanthropist Felix
Weil. However, under the leadership of its second
director, Max Horkheimer, the institute’s most
prominent members increasingly moved away
from Marxist orthodoxy.
Frankfurt theorists were disillusioned by the
increasingly authoritarian course of the Russian
Revolution after 1917. In the West, sporadic communist uprisings in Germany, following its defeat
in World War I and the abdication of the kaiser,
were short-lived. Later events only confirmed the
need to rethink Marxist orthodoxy. Marxist revolutionary parties either drifted toward reformist
social democracy or maintained a theoretically
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pure but practically ineffectual isolation. The prospects for genuine socialist revolution declined further with the cataclysm of German fascism and the
Holocaust. After World War II, an affluent consumer society in the West ensured a mostly quiescent working class. By the end of the 20th century,
communist regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe
had collapsed and China was reverting to an
authoritarian variant of capitalism. “Revisionist”
social democracy, which originally promised a
gradual advance toward socialism, had abandoned
the socialist ideal altogether.
Despite such gloomy historical prospects for
socialism, the writings of Karl Marx remained an
inspiring beacon of rigorous intellectual activity,
pursued on behalf of the exploited masses of capitalism. Frankfurt theorists followed the lead of the
Hungarian communist intellectual, Georg Lukács
who, in “What Is Orthodox Marxism,” sets out to
rescue the critical method embodied in Marx’s
writings from what had become the unquestionable dogmas of the Third International. The valuable kernel of Marx’s method should not be sought
in his detailed economic and sociological predictions, which had proved eminently fallible, but
rather in his revolutionary understanding of the
dialectical relationship between theory and practice, between philosophy and political action. In
the famous words of Marx’s 11th “Thesis on
Feuerbach,” until now “The philosophers have
only interpreted the world, in various ways; the
point is to change it.”
A concrete example of Marx’s ideal of an engaged
and activist philosophy is his “critique of political
economy.” Marx became convinced that the ultimate basis of human alienation and oppression—
most visible in the impoverished working classes
but everywhere in evidence in 19th-century industrial society—was capitalism. His extensive studies
of Adam Smith, David Ricardo, and other political
economists convinced him, however, that “bourgeois” political economy would never penetrate
beneath the surface of capitalism because it failed
to recognize the historical contingency and exploitative nature of the capitalist mode of production.
The political economists could not see either that
the industrial proletariat would eventually become
capitalism’s “grave digger.” Worse, by obscuring
the exploitative reality and revolutionary possibilities of capitalism, the supposedly eternal and
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objective truths of political economy—the prototype of contemporary economic science—only
perpetuated this exploitative system.
Bourgeois political economy, in other words, is
not science but ideology. An ideology in Marx’s
sense is a body of ideas masquerading as neutral
and objective theory but, in effect if not intentionally, serving as the “ruling ideas” of the ruling
class. Marx’s critique of ideology, conversely,
uncovers concealed relations of power and so
makes it possible to transform them. Marx reveals
an otherwise hidden path of social development—
the revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and the
construction of communism—and corresponding
political choices. In that sense, following Jürgen
Habermas, we can see the critique identifying a
“crisis” (krisis) in its original Greek sense of “judgment” or “decision.”
The Frankfurt School’s further pursuit of critical theory has two major dimensions. In the first
place, these researchers draw from Marx’s method
a philosophical critique of traditional” (as opposed
to critical) theory. What they often refer to as
positivism derives from the term used by Auguste
Comte in the 1830s to describe the final stage of
modern, scientific civilization. After stages dominated by religious and metaphysical thinking,
humanity finally attains to genuine science, which
is based only on the observation of positive facts.
The extension of the methods of natural science to
the behavioral and social sciences, however, constitutes positivism in the Frankfurt School sense.
Already in the 18th century, David Hume had
proposed that the empirical method so successfully
applied in natural sciences such as physics and
astronomy should be applied to the “sciences of
man.” But according to Frankfurt theorists, the
positivist social sciences of the 20th century, like
the bourgeois political economy criticized by
Marx, are implicitly ideological. By representing
society as a quasi-natural system whose patterns
and regularities can be observed and predicted,
these theorists obscure the possibility of transformative political action.
Although the Frankfurt School’s critique of
positivism ultimately derives from Marx, it can
also be applied to the renewal of Marxism. This is
because, after Marx’s death, the communist movement was itself drawn into the orbit of positivism,
largely under the influence of Marx’s long-time
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collaborator Friedrich Engels. The systematization
of “scientific socialism” was, according to Frankfurt theorists, a retreat from genuinely critical
philosophy with dire consequences for the socialist
project. “Iron laws” guarantee that communism is
the foreseeable goal or telos of history. It was correspondingly easier for Bolsheviks and Stalinists to
dismiss merely “bourgeois” moral scruples because
morally dubious means could never threaten
the utopian outcome guaranteed by “science.”
Assumptions about the inevitable course of historical development sit uneasily with V. I. Lenin’s
“voluntarist” insistence on the essential role of
political will. Revolution will only occur through
the decisive and timely intervention of a militant
party, whose authority is ultimately based on
Marxism’s scientific knowledge of capitalism.
Positivism, in other words, deforms the socialist
project at the same time as it insulates capitalist
power relations from renewed critique.
The second, more constructive dimension of the
Frankfurt School’s project involves members’ own
contributions to the renewal of critical theory
under the changed conditions of 20th-century,
“advanced” capitalism. They also take advantage
of intellectual developments since Marx’s time,
including the iconoclastic writings of Friedrich
Nietzsche. Nietzsche had shaken complacent 19thcentury convictions: belief in God and the “lies” of
idealist metaphysics, as well as Hegelian and
Marxist assumptions about the advancing dialectic
of history. Under the influence of both Nietzsche
and the sociologist Max Weber—who was himself
influenced by Nietzsche—Adorno and Horkheimer
sketched the history of the West’s “overcoming of
myth and superstition” as a contradictory and
ultimately destructive “dialectic of Enlightenment.” A later product of rationalization of Western society is the positivist faith in instrumental
rationality. Instrumental rationality is confined to
the calculation of efficient means to given ends,
but is indifferent to the intrinsic moral worth of
the ends in question. According to Adorno and
Horkheimer, this limited conception of rationality
is implicated in the Marquis de Sade’s cruel and
calculating fantasies as well as in the ruthless efficiency of Nazi Germany’s genocidal bureaucracy.
Another important influence was Sigmund
Freud’s psychoanalysis, which had unsettled the
West’s self-confident rationalism in a different way,
even though Freud tended to see his own psychoanalytic insights in conventional scientific terms.
Freud drew examples from art and literature and
based his theories on individual case histories,
dreams, and slips of the tongue rather than any
systematic empirical observation. His theory of the
unconscious mind, with its defense mechanisms
and self-deceiving rationalizations, dispelled any
illusions—prevalent at least since René Descartes—
of the self’s rationality and transparency. The
emphasis on the unconscious and often irrational
roots of belief and action helped explain popular
support for National Socialism, Stalinism, and
other oppressive regimes. Other studies suggested—for example, the work of Marcuse—that
liberal values of autonomy, self-reliance, and
responsibility were under threat from the social
conformity and “organization” mentality of
advanced capitalism.
The condition of art and culture is a further factor, identified by Frankfurt theorists, crucial for
the fate of relations of domination in contemporary society. Frankfurt theorists were dismissive of
crudely determinist applications of Marx’s materialist approach, which saw art and literature as
merely “superstructural” results of developments
in the economic “base.” By implication, bourgeois
art was dismissed as little more than a passive
reflection of the realities of capitalist exploitation.
In the Soviet Union, artists and writers were forced
to abandon the “elitist” aspirations of artistic
modernism for the sake of the more accessible and
proletarian aesthetics of socialist realism.
Adorno and other Frankfurt theorists insisted
instead on the critical potential of genuine art and
its at least relative autonomy from prevailing social
conditions. Even bourgeois works of art could
challenge the alienated social conditions of capitalism, albeit implicitly and indirectly. Marx himself
was an enthusiastic reader of Homer and Shakespeare. He also appreciated such writers as Charles
Dickens and Honoré Balzac who, though they
frequently betrayed their middle-class origins,
nonetheless gave acute and insightful accounts of
commercial society. Trained as a musicologist,
Adorno praised the demanding but rigorous musical compositions of Gustav Mahler, Arnold Franz
Walter Schoenberg, and Alban Berg, which
expressed the alienated condition of modern existence more effectively than the self-consciously
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political art of the communist movement. In a different way, the beauty of classical art—for example,
the music of Franz Joseph Haydn or Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart—intimates a sense of harmony
and freedom that makes us more aware of the drabness and aesthetic poverty of contemporary life.
But the critical potential of genuine art is threatened by the emergence in the 20th century of what
Adorno and Horkheimer term the culture industry—
the systematic application of the capitalist profit
motive and industrial techniques to the products of
intellectual culture. Mass-market books, recorded
popular music, Hollywood films, and later television are all products designed specifically to appeal
to a mass of consumers. Ignoring the aesthetic
standards of the cultural tradition, works of entertainment and escapism make few demands on
workers who are exhausted by their daily toil.
Genuinely free time is gradually eliminated, as the
culture industry organizes our leisure to ensure a
contented, productive, and, above all, uncritical
labor-force. Such effects are reinforced by industrial techniques providing fatalistic messages or
easily assimilated images of rebellion in standardized and saleable formats.
In these ways, critical theory provides a sophisticated analysis of the obstacles facing the socialist
project—not just the power of the capitalist class
but also philosophical assumptions and psychological, sociological, and cultural factors. But its very
success in depicting these obstacles presents a problem for critical theory. Its ability to account for the
longevity of capitalism tends, paradoxically, to
reinforce political pessimism and withdrawn quietism rather than engaged action to transform society.
The relentlessly negative, critical, and often abstruse
nature of these theorists’ writings has also led to
accusations of elitism. For those closer to orthodox
Marxism, elitism and quietism are the result of the
Frankfurt School’s distance from Marxist political
economy, communist militancy, and the working
class (Marcuse is a partial exception who, at least in
more optimistic moods during the 1960s and
1970s, recognized the radical potential from a variety of sources beyond the working class).
Second-Generation Theorists
More recently, a second generation of theorists,
including such figures as Albrecht Wellmer and
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Axel Honneth, has sought to renew the Frankfurt
School’s approach to critical theory. Most influential, however, is the work of Jürgen Habermas
who, in contrast to the aphoristic style and exclusively critical emphasis of some earlier figures,
provides a highly systematic and constructive
account of critical theory. Although Habermas’s
position has evolved, his early attempt to define a
secure epistemological position for critical theory
reflects his enduring concern, characteristic of
pragmatism, with the grounding of human experience, knowledge, and values in distinct modes of
action and interaction.
Our attempts to control external reality are formalized and refined within empirical-analytical
natural sciences such as chemistry, physics, or engineering. Although for Habermas this essentially
instrumental relationship to the physical world is
legitimate, positivism theorists make the mistake of
extending this model to relationships between
human subjects. Human interaction or communicative action demands a different approach, which
is reflected in the emphasis of so-called hermeneutic disciplines such as history, literature, and art
criticism on the interpretation of meanings rather
than on causal explanation and prediction. However, despite Hans-Georg Gadamer’s claims for the
universality of hermeneutic understanding, even
this approach has only limited validity. An exclusively hermeneutic approach cannot grasp the
ways in which social meanings and traditions are
distorted by relations of power. A hermeneutic
approach is unable, in other words, to detect ideological beliefs, attitudes, and values. A genuinely
critical theory must combine causal analysis of the
mechanisms of social power with hermeneutic
understanding of their ideological effects. Prominent examples of critical theory are, once again,
Freud’s psychoanalytic investigation of mental disorders and Marx’s critique of political economy.
Critical theory is all the more important because,
in common with earlier Frankfurt theorists, Habermas rejects Marxist historical materialism’s positivist tendency to posit deterministic laws of history.
In particular, it was a mistake to assume that technological development of the forces of production
would result in a revolutionary transformation of
society’s relations of production. Habermas insists
on the independent (if not completely autonomous)
developmental logic of the superstructural level of
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legal, moral, and social relations or, in other
words, at the level of “interaction” or “communication.” The independence logic of communicative
action accounts for the failure of historical materialism’s predictions of revolution and for the onesided modernization of Western societies. The
rapid growth of our technological ability to control natural processes does not necessarily lead to
greater rationalization of our social relationships—
our moral, cultural, and political life. It may, in the
absence of a corresponding communicative rationalization of society, only reinforce existing relations of domination.
Any challenge to the one-sided rationality of
modernity requires, according to Habermas, normative standards grounded in a theory of communicative action. In the modern world, absolute
religious or metaphysical guarantees for moral
values are no longer convincing. Scientific or
instrumental rationality delivers technological
advances but is morally empty. We must rely
instead, Habermas maintains, on procedural
norms of discussion or discourse. Moral values are
ultimately grounded in the agreement or consensus
of human subjects. But as Marx’s critique of ideology has shown, belief systems, cultural values, and
traditions may be distorted by power. So it is essential that agreement is reached through processes of
communication that are undistorted by the power
of some participants. Participants in communicative action reach agreement subject only to legitimate forms of argument, or what Habermas refers
to as the “peculiarly constraint-free force of the
better argument.”
Habermas’s characterization of an “ideal speech
situation” undistorted by power relies on the claim
that particular moral values are presupposed in all
our acts of communication—a claim fleshed out in
his theory of universal pragmatics. Not surprisingly, the universalism of this account has been
subject to considerable skepticism. In addition,
because Habermas’s discourse ethics emphasizes
the importance of reaching a universal consensus,
he has been accused by Jean-François Lyotard of
an insensitivity to “difference” and “otherness.” In
this context, Habermas insists that nothing can
ever guarantee the validity of our existing beliefs. If
that were possible, it would indeed tend to encourage dogmatism. For Habermas, as for Karl Popper,
scientific theories are never more than provisional
hypotheses, always vulnerable to unanticipated
counterexamples. Our moral principles and values
are similarly vulnerable to the unexpected realization that they were imposed by power.
Habermas develops his account of the intersubjective basis of values and norms into a manyfaceted theory of discourse ethics, law, and
democracy. Of more direct political relevance,
however, is his diagnosis of the pathologies of
advanced capitalism. Modern society, according
to this account, is deformed by the incursions of
the bureaucratic state and capitalist economy into
the domain of moral and cultural meanings. What
Habermas describes as the “invasion of the lifeworld” by the systems of power and money substitutes instrumentally rationalized social subsystems
(i.e., the modern state and capitalism) for what
should be the communicative reproduction of
human social existence. But the disruption of
inherited cultural traditions also presents an opportunity for progressive reform according to the
norms of communicative rationality. For example,
the inherited tradition of patriarchy—a constellation of social meanings and values distorted by the
power of men—can now be recognized as an ideological formation. This is reflected in the emergence of new “potentials for protest” in the new
social movements of feminism, sexual liberation,
ecology, and environmentalism, which are potentially progressive responses “from the lifeworld”
to the invasive power of capitalism and the state
(Habermas, 1987, pp. 391 ff).
Radical Skepticism and the
Renewal of Critical Theory
In the last decades of the 20th century, the Frankfurt
School of critical theory was overshadowed by
more skeptical theorists espousing postmodernism
and poststructuralism—also sometimes, confusingly, described as critical theory. Crucially, however, these theorists’ radical critique of philosophical
notions of objectivity, universality, and truth implies
a corresponding denial of the objectivity of power
and power relations, removing them from the scope
of critical theory in the sense considered here.
Michel Foucault, for example, conceives relations
of power as omnipresent and inescapable. There is
no “outside” of power. The omnipresence of power
may correspond to an equivalent omnipresence of
Critical Theory
“resistance,” but resistance in Foucault’s sense
does not imply liberation (whether partial or complete) from relations of power.
The radically skeptical and seemingly apolitical
currents of poststructuralism and postmodernism
have, more recently, been challenged by theorists
who, though they diverge in significant respects,
are much closer in spirit to the Frankfurt School’s
brand of critical theory. With a renewed appreciation of Marx and the importance of capitalism as
well as a strong concern with fascism and other
varieties of authoritarian populism, theorists such
as Judith Butler, Ernesto Laclau, and Slavoj Žižek
share, in addition, the Frankfurt School’s positive
evaluation of Freudian psychoanalysis, albeit as
interpreted by the French psychoanalyst Jacques
Lacan. These theorists reject postmodernism’s
unqualified commitment to pluralism, “difference,” the “Other,” and the fragmentary struggles
of identity politics and multiculturalism. Maintaining an uneasy truce between postmodern difference
and Marxist universality, Laclau and Butler see the
striving for unity and universality—whether in
theory and ideology or in political organization
and practice—as an unavoidable but always unattainable goal (Butler, Laclau, and Žižek). Žižek is
most explicit in wishing to translate this relentlessly
paradoxical stance into something like a revival of
Marxist political economy and Leninist politics.
Whatever their ultimate merits, the sometimes
fascinating but theoretically strenuous writings of
Žižek, Laclau, and Butler cannot avoid one of the
perennial questions of critical theory, namely how
such difficult and frequently obscure texts are supposed to relate to widespread and effective political action for the transformation of society. The
self-conscious difficulty of Adorno’s work similarly provides endless scope for intellectual debate,
but little obvious or direct inspiration to political
action. For critical theory, which is defined by its
anticipated role in social transformation, this is
surely no trivial problem. A related concern is that
critical theory will only ever exert influence on an
intellectual elite and that, contrary to their best
intentions, critical theorists are, after all, just proponents of an ideology for intellectuals.
A further problem must also be resolved. A critical theory needs to diagnose and propose remedies
for the pathologies of contemporary society, but
it must also motivate political actors to undertake
159
difficult and sometimes dangerous actions. But
intellectual theory seems ill equipped to inspire the
kind of widespread political mobilization required
for a genuinely emancipatory transformation of
society. It is not obvious, for example, how the
calmly dispassionate rationality embodied in Habermas’s exhaustively systematic project might contribute to the motivation of political agents. Critical
theory in this style seems to assume an unlikely
degree of rationality in its readers. Marx’s vitriolic
outbursts against capitalism and Adorno’s passionate commitment to suffering humanity are perhaps
more likely to motivate action—even if Adorno’s
relationship to concrete political practice otherwise
seems remote, and revolutionary Marxism’s practical difficulties made critical theory necessary in the
first place.
Similarly unpromising are attempts to revise or
update Marxism’s identification of the industrial
proletariat as the designated grave digger of capitalism. Marcuse saw new agents of revolutionary
change in the “outcasts and outsiders” of Western
societies as well as in these societies’ colonial and
neocolonial victims in the developing world. Some
theories of new social movements in the 1970s and
1980s extended this approach to movements of
women, lesbian and gays, and greens and environmentalists, which were seen as the new agents of
global social transformation. But such approaches,
with their tendency to posit a foreseeable course of
social development and predictable cast of historical actors, sit uneasily with critical theory’s criticisms of positivist social science and deterministic
laws of historical development.
Critical theory’s best hope for further renewal
may lie in the more concrete and discrete critical
discourses that emerged in association with the
liberation politics and social movements of the
late 20th century. Like critical theory, discourses
of ecology, feminism, anti-racism, postcolonial
studies, and queer theory combine factual claims
with normative ideals and political proposals. But
all of these are less systematic and less totalizing
than is critical theory in classic mode. They rely
not on some overarching philosophy of history or
what Lyotard calls a “grand meta-narrative,” but
on looser assemblages of historical and empirical
findings, moral ideals, and practical recommendations. In that sense, they are closer in spirit to
Nietzsche, Adorno, and Foucault than to either
160
Cuban Missile Crisis
Marx or Habermas. They do resemble Marxism,
however, insofar as they have emerged in the
context of already engaged social movements
that, like the 19th-century working class, have
gone on to achieve substantial social and political change.
Like workers’ movements, too, these movements and discourses have inaugurated new and
distinctive modes of political action. Anti-racist,
gay, and feminist practices of consciousness raising and identity politics testify to a direct and
fruitful intersection of “theory” and “practice.”
Culture, symbolism, and imagery have proved to
be equally effective—and often less counterproductive—than are the sometimes intimidatory and
coercive (let alone violent) political tactics of
socialist politics. The role of critical theory, in
these terms, is more akin to that of a political
toolbox than to an architectural master plan,
providing specific conceptual tools for particular
political purposes. Indeed, it would be a misunderstanding to expect any critical theory to be
resolved, or to resolve itself into a stable and selfsufficient discursive domain. The origins of critical
theory lie, precisely, in the recognition that the
permanence and stability of theoretical knowledge
is achieved only at the cost of perpetuating existing relations of power.
David West
See also Adorno, Theodor; Foucault, Michel; Habermas,
Jürgen; Knowledge and Power; Lukes, Steven
Further Readings
Bottomore, T. (2002). The Frankfurt School and its critics
(Rev. ed.). London: Routledge.
Geuss, R. (1981). The idea of a critical theory: Habermas
and the Frankfurt School. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Habermas, J. (1987). The theory of communicative
action: Vol. 2. The critique of functionalist reason (T.
McCarthy, Trans.). Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Holub, R. C. (1991). Jürgen Habermas: Critic in the
public sphere. London: Routledge.
Honneth, A. (1991). The critique of power: Reflective
stages in a critical social theory (K. Baynes, Trans.).
Cambridge: MIT Press.
West, D. (1987). Power and formation. Inquiry, 30(1),
137–154.
CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS
The events of October 1962 are commonly
regarded as the most dangerous moment in human
history when, had all-out nuclear war occurred,
hundreds of millions of people would have been
killed. Indeed, the environmental and climatic
consequences could have led to the extinction of
human life in the northern hemisphere. Yet the
crisis is also commonly seen as a turning point in
the cold war that helped bring detente between
the superpowers, cooperation in arms control,
and reduction in the risk of nuclear war. Over
many decades, a vast amount of historical research
has been undertaken into the crisis. Yet debate
remains about the interpretation of events and the
implications for understanding the role and power
of nuclear weapons in international politics.
The crisis began on October 16, 1962, after
U.S. spy planes discovered the construction of
Soviet nuclear missile bases in Cuba. The Soviet
leader, Nikita Khrushchev, had promised U.S.
President John F. Kennedy that the Soviets would
not place offensive weapons on the island. After a
week’s deliberation, on October 22, Kennedy
announced the imposition of a partial naval blockade and threatened a “full retaliatory response”
against the Soviet Union (USSR) if missiles were
fired from Cuba. On the morning of October 24,
U.S. warships stood ready to intercept Soviet ships.
When these stopped or turned around, Secretary
of State Dean Rusk quipped, “We’re eyeball to
eyeball and I guess the other fella just blinked.”
The crisis reached its climax on the weekend of
October 26, when both leaders maneuvered to
reach a diplomatic settlement. A framework was
agreed in which the United States would not invade
Cuba if the Soviets removed their missiles. Kennedy also provided a secret assurance that he
would withdraw U.S. nuclear missiles from Turkey
and Italy. By then, however, Khrushchev had
already decided to take the missiles out of Cuba,
and on the morning of October 28, Moscow Radio
broadcast the news. Final agreement was not
reached until November 20 as the Cuban leader,
Fidel Castro, was not consulted by Khrushchev
and objected that Cuban interests were ignored.
The reasons why Khrushchev deployed missiles
in Cuba and why he withdrew them have attracted
Cuban Missile Crisis
much debate over many decades. In 1962, the
United States enjoyed massive nuclear superiority
over the Soviet Union. Missiles in Cuba would
have reduced but not fundamentally altered U.S.
nuclear superiority. Putting missiles into Cuba was
also intended to deter a U.S. attack, though instead
it provoked the United States into preparations for
an invasion.
During the last few decades, various incidents
and circumstances have become known that suggest the risk of nuclear war was greater than recognized. These include near-accidents and failures
of U.S. command and control, the revelation that
the Soviets had deployed tactical nuclear weapons
in Cuba unbeknownst to Washington, evidence
that U.S. fighters sent to support a U.S. aircraft
straying into Soviet airspace were armed with
nuclear ordnance, and details of encounters
between nuclear-armed Soviet submarines and the
161
U.S. Navy. As the crisis reached its climax, political
leaders were increasingly determined to avoid conflict. Yet the risk of inadvertent nuclear war may
well have been very real.
Len Scott
See also Chicken Games; Mutually Assured Destruction;
War
Further Readings
Fursenko, A., & Naftali, T. (1997). “One hell of a
gamble”: Khrushchev, Castro, Kennedy and the
Cuban missile crisis 1958–1964. London: John
Murray.
May, E., & Zelikow, P. (Eds.). (1997). The Kennedy
tapes: Inside the White House during the Cuban
missile crisis. Cambridge, MA: Belknap.
D
between agents, whether these agents are individuals, groups, governments, or nation-states. Dahl
suggests any complete understanding of A’s power
over B must include references to the base from
which A’s power emanates, the means by which A
exerts this power, and the scope and amount of A’s
power. A power base is an inert cache of resources
held by A that may include, for example, a country’s ability to wage war or a politician’s capacity
to bestow patronage, veto legislation, or gain
media attention. Means mediate between A’s
power base and B’s response and include threats
and promises by A to marshal base resources for
or against B. Scope pertains to whether A’s power
extends to all, many, or a few spheres of influence
within the domain in which A operates. Finally,
Dahl calculates A’s amount of power as the difference between the probability of an event occurring
given a certain action by A, and the probability of
the given event given no such action by A. Thus, A
has power over B to the extent that A can engage
a particular tactic to increase the probability that
B will do what A wants. This reference to the
amount of power and probability is most critical
to understanding Dahl’s take on power relations.
Dahl consistently backs his theories with empirical research. Following his definitional discussions
of power, Dahl moved to empirical power assessments. This empirical work began as a critique of
the work of community power theorists such as
Floyd Hunter, whose reputational studies of local
notables concludes power is unequally distributed
in Atlanta, and C. Wright Mills, whose 1956 book
The Power Elite posits all decisions of national
DAHL, ROBERT A. (1915– )
After almost 70 years of publishing, Robert Dahl
is one of the most venerable and influential modern political scholars. Born in 1915, Dahl is the
Sterling Professor Emeritus of Political Science at
Yale University and former president of the American Political Science Association. Dahl published
his first article in 1940, and is widely credited with
initiating the modern theoretical debate about
power and undertaking one of the most thorough
early empirical investigations of the topic with his
1961 book Who Governs? Integrally connected to
his notion of power, Dahl’s theoretical and empirical work on democracy is also widely cited,
including his 1989 book Democracy and Its Critics and On Political Equality, published in 2006.
Dahl’s first major contribution to discussions of
power appears in his 1957 Behavioral Science
article “The Concept of Power,” in which he builds
and operationalizes a definition of power that
forms the basis of his later empirical studies.
Though criticized, Dahl’s concept of power is still
frequently cited as a relevant starting point from
which to understand power. For example, in a
2008 review of Dahl’s 1957 work, Philip Pettit
states Dahl’s work is still an effective and valuable
tool by which to understand other concepts such
as freedom, albeit with some minor adjustments.
In “The Concept of Power,” Dahl famously
states, “A has power over B to the extent that he
can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do.” Thus, Dahl understands power as relation
163
164
Decentering (of Subject, of Structure)
consequence in the United States are controlled by
a small group of 400 people sharing a common
culture. Built on his earlier developed concept of
power, Dahl’s 1958 article “A Critique of the Ruling Elite Model” highlights what he sees as methodological flaws in Mills’s and Hunter’s studies
and elaborates on these flaws to discredit their
conclusions.
Following his criticism of elite theorists, Dahl
then produced arguably the most comprehensive
empirical community power study ever undertaken. In Who Governs? Dahl tests whether New
Haven, Connecticut, is run by a single elite group.
To do so, he longitudinally examines the role of
various local actors in areas where important public decisions are made, including nominations in
two local political parties, urban redevelopment,
and public education. Although he finds an unequal
distribution of resources in the city, his data suggest no single elite group dominates local policy
making, with only the democratically elected
mayor having influence in all three issue areas.
Thus, Dahl argues that power in New Haven is
pluralistic in that it is dispersed among a number
of different and competing groups rather than
exclusively commanded by one elite group.
With Who Governs?, Dahl became the de facto
champion of pluralism, a position that has brought
considerable criticism from authors such as Peter
Bacharach and Morton Baratz, Steven Lukes, and
G. William Domhoff. Despite criticisms from these
elite and Marxist theorists, Dahl steadfastly
defends his claim that the United States is a pluralist state and that power is dispersed rather than
concentrated in the hands of a few elite members
of society. This is not to say that Dahl is not critical
of pluralism. In his later works, such as “Pluralism
Revisited,” Dahl acknowledges that inequality of
resources and political knowledge and strong differences in personal motivations sometimes enable
some groups to more frequently dominate group
decision making—a concession that underlines the
work of modern neopluralist writers. For Dahl,
however, these inequalities still do not refute pluralism: although pluralist states might demonstrate
inequality, unequal states are not necessarily elitist.
Kennedy Stewart
See also Bachrach, Peter, and Baratz, Morton; Elite
Theories; Lukes, Steven; Pluralism
Further Readings
Dahl, R. A. (1957). The concept of power. Behavioral
Science, 2(3), 201–215.
Dahl, R. A. (1958). A critique of the ruling elite model.
The American Political Science Review, 52(2),
463–469.
Dahl, R. A. (1961). Who governs?: Democracy and
power in an American city. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Dahl, R. A. (1978). Pluralism revisited. Comparative
Politics, 10(2), 191–203.
Lukes, S. (1974). Power: A radical view. London:
Macmillan.
Pettit, P. (2008). Dahl’s power and republican freedom.
Journal of Power, 1(1), 67–74.
DECENTERING (OF SUBJECT,
OF STRUCTURE)
Postmodernist or poststructuralist writers in general argue that political theory and other discourses have reified people as particular types of
monads: rational, instrumental, self-centered, and
autonomous agents. In the Enlightenment discourse, these rational instrumental beings choose
their actions given the environments in which they
find themselves. These rational beings are the
agents fashioning the world around them and
reacting to that environment in terms of their
objects and desires. The agents are the subjects of
history and explanation revolves around them.
Decentering the subject is a process of recognition that what separates the physical form of a
person and that person as a subject of inquiry is
the linguistic cover that constitutes discourse. Different discourses about people constitute them as
different subjects. People define their own beings
within these different discourses, as mothers, as
consumers, as workers, as political activists. There
is no reason to suppose that these different discourses are complementary; they may contain
many contradictions belying the person as a rational coherent agent. Rather, agents are fashioned by
the dominant discourses in different domains.
Predicating power to individual agents is an example of the centering of people as subjects: we need
to decenter the subject to see the way in which
discourses dominate human lives.
Defensive Realism
Decentering does not have to be applied to subjects, however. Rationalist approaches recognize
that there is an interrelationship between agents as
subjects and the structures around them. Structuralists make the opposite error of centering attention
on structure and reifying that to give it rationality
and coherence. In the same way that we must
understand agents as subjects of discourse, so we
must understand structures. The way in which we
see environments, social processes, and interactions as constraints on the actions of rational
beings can also be subject to decentering. Seeing
social structure in terms of class relationships, networks of families or work colleagues, or institutions as conventions and norms are all also specific
discourses, and we can decenter structures to recognize that these processes are themselves contradictory and self-defeating. In that sense, we should
not see power in a structural manner, but rather as
a process of discourse that leads us and the world
into ways of behaving that have no center or focal
point of rationality.
Keith Dowding
See also Discourse; Foucault, Michel
Further Readings
Nicholson, L. (1995). Social postmodernism. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press.
DEFENSIVE REALISM
Defensive realism follows the basic neorealist
assumptions that the anarchic nature of the international system compels states to seek self-help
for survival. The impulse to survive is thus the
primary factor that conditions state behavior. This
line of thought is consistent with Kenneth Waltz’s
theory of international politics, which posits the
dominance of the “third image” (international
system) in explaining the behavior between and
among states. Anarchy and survival are thus the
animating factors that privilege security over
power. Unlike classical realism in which international politics is a struggle for power, in neorealism, power is just a means to an end, and thus the
165
ultimate objective is to maximize security to
enhance survival.
To highlight the central features of defensive
realism, it is important to distinguish the differences between the more traditional (defensive)
orientation and offensive realism. Although both
variants maintain the central objective of states
seeking security for survival, the debate between
relative gain and relative loss and the appropriate
strategies reveals fundamental differences in how
states pursue their goals in conditions of anarchy.
Defensive realism is driven by human behavioral assumptions that preventing loss takes precedence over pursuing gains and the risks associated
with it. By constantly guarding their positions in
the international system, states could pursue a
cost-effective security strategy. Hence, it is a status
quo–oriented theory predicated on maintaining
an international equilibrium conducive for states
to pursue minimal security strategies for maximum survival. Why would states want to challenge their positions in the international system
when doing so would trigger a counterbalancing
coalition, thus compelling the challengers to
expend more on security while intensifying the
security dilemma that may in effect reduce survival? Thus, pursuing a minimal security strategy
precludes any ambition of improving its international standing until the basics are ensured—
mainly staying alive in an anarchic world. There
are rare opportunities for expansion because the
hope of improving security through such provocative strategies may actually result in the opposite—endangering a state’s survivability.
Although defensive realists envision a world in
which security is abundant, offensive realists posit
that security, like any other resource, is subject to
competition. The competitive nature of international politics tends to intensify the security
dilemma, thereby precluding the possibility for
cooperation and drastically reducing the ability for
states to maintain their positions. Offensive realism
is thus a theory predicated on international political change in which the central goal is to maximize
offensive capabilities to pursue relative gains. Survival is never certain until a state achieves regional
hegemonic status, and therefore it is necessary to
contain the aspirations of peer competitors, possibly resorting to preemptive war, to prevent the
hegemon from being dethroned.
166
Deflected Wants
Defensive realism promotes a more optimistic outlook on international relations. If all states maintain
their positions and achieve a consensual cost-effective
security strategy, then cooperation is possible. However, anarchy also exacerbates the ever-present security dilemma, increasing the likelihood of conflicts
and misperceptions, questioning the prudence of
international cooperation, and strengthening the
concept of self-reliance in seeking security. The
criticism of defensive realism is that the bias toward
the status-quo deviates from international reality. If
states are so well behaved and maintain their
respective positions, why do states feel threatened,
and why is it so difficult to mitigate the security
dilemma? The sense of insecurity and the everpresent danger of military conflicts compel states to
seek international political change to enhance survival. The rise and fall of great powers continues to
capture the essence of international politics. The
intra-neorealist debate therefore underscores the
variety of strategies states pursues to maximize survival in an anarchic international system.
Johnson Y. K. Louie
See also Hegemony; Neorealism; Realism in International
Relations; Security Dilemma; Waltz, Kenneth
Further Readings
Taliaferro, J. W. (2000/2001). Security seeking under
anarchy: Defensive realism revisited. International
Security, 25(3), 128–161.
Waltz, K. N. (1979). Theory of international politics.
Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
DEFLECTED WANTS
Deflected wants may be described as the things
such as fame, success, happiness, or power that a
person wants for him- or herself, but the path
toward achieving them has changed course. History is full of examples. Quite possibly the most
famous illustration during the 20th century was
Adolf Hitler. He was, without doubt, a troubled
individual, but his desire to be an artist, starting as
a young boy in Austria, stayed with him until the
moment he committed suicide in his underground
bunker in Berlin, as the victorious Russian troops
approached. He himself said that anyone who
wanted to understand him should realize that he
was an artist, first and foremost, and that being
chancellor of Germany took him away from his
true desire—painting. Hitler’s wants and desires
to be an artist were deflected onto politics and in
his crazed manner of thinking, his actions as “Der
Führer,” were indicative of his artistic nature,
such as the plans for the building of Germania and
his mania to rid Germany of all modern art (Cubism, Dadaism, etc.).
A contemporary of Hitler, and his arch nemesis,
was Winston Churchill. As a child, he strove
greatly to win his father’s love, but in vain as the
elder Churchill (Randolph, the chancellor of the
Exchequer at the time) openly disliked his son and
found him a great disappointment. Winston wrote
numerous letters, begging his father to visit, but
Randolph usually ignored the requests. Churchill
was incredibly lonely, a feeling that stayed with
him the rest of his life; likewise, the heartfelt wish
to earn his father’s love never left.
His desire for a loving relationship with his
father was deflected onto politics, where he cultivated the image of ultramasculinity (smoking up to
nine cigars throughout the day, his frequent imbibing of Johnny Walker Red whisky, etc.) in the hope
that he was the type of man his father would
admire. During his first few years as a politician,
and again during the 1920s, Churchill used the
phrase first coined by his father, “Tory Democracy,” as a means of describing his political beliefs.
Significantly, many of his colleagues saw young
Winston as being obsessed with his father and were
amazed at his drive to further his father’s legacy.
Another example concerns quite possibly the
greatest artist, as well as one of the preeminent
thinkers, produced by Western civilization—Leonardo da Vinci. According to Sigmund Freud, Leonardo’s wants and desires for homosexual contact
were deflected first to his art, and second to his
intellectual investigations. The key to understanding Leonardo (and other homosexuals), Freud
wrote, was the relationship Leonardo had with his
mother. Because of his mother’s doting and his
father’s neglect, Leonardo experienced a powerful
Oedipal conflict and saw women as dominant,
Deliberation
“causing” him to become homosexual. In essence,
Leonardo’s strong desire for men was deflected
and turned toward art and science. It has been
argued that the personal power and determination
of such individuals in their new fields develops
from the strength of the their deflected wants.
Cary Stacy Smith and Li-Ching Hung
See also False Consciousness; Interests; Symbolic Power
and Violence
Further Readings
Fest, J. (1974). Hitler. New York: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich.
Freud, S. (1989). Leonardo da Vinci and a memory of his
childhood. New York: W. W. Norton.
Manchester, W. (1983). The last lion: Winston Spencer
Churchill—Vision of glory 1874–1932. Boston: Little,
Brown.
DELIBERATION
Deliberation refers to a process of reflection
undertaken by individuals or groups to reach reasoned and considered decisions. Deliberation has
an epistemic function to improve decisions and
uncover the best argument. It is often assumed
that because of deliberation, individuals’ beliefs
and judgments are transformed as they consider
new facts, arguments, and points of view. In individual deliberation, the deliberator weighs and
evaluates each possible solution and then arrives
at a decision. Group deliberation consists of reasoned discussion. When groups deliberate, the
process acquires a dimension of power.
Deliberation can be either formal or informal.
Examples of formalized deliberating groups are
juries or legislatures. An example of informal
deliberation is the ongoing discussion between different groups in civil society, but discussions
within families and civic organizations are also
examples of informal deliberation.
Group deliberation is characterized by communication aimed at persuasion. Ideal deliberative
processes should be reasoned, equal, and open
167
discussions where participants are prepared to
change their views as a result of the arguments
presented. In reality, deliberation does not live up
to such a high standard. Some members of the
group will be more powerful than others, and
some arguments will be more persuasive than others, regardless of their merits. Although deliberation could ideally be aimed at reaching a common
good for the group, in practice, the private interests of group members will be powerful forces.
Inequality within the group leads to differences
in the power each group member possesses. The
socioeconomic background of participants can
define their roles in the discussion. As an example,
jury deliberations tend to be dominated by welleducated white males. Actors who are powerful
outside of deliberation will be powerful in deliberative settings as well. In deliberations between states,
the most powerful nation will wield more power.
Inequalities also exist with regard to the ability
of deliberators. Good orators are more likely to
convince others, regardless of the merit of their
arguments. There is a danger that intelligent and
persuasive individuals could manipulate deliberation to serve their own interests. Other resources,
such as time, information, or the respect of other
members of the community, will also make some
deliberators more influential than others.
Arguments themselves will have different power.
Although some place hope in the power of the best
argument to defeat all others, this is not necessarily
the argument that will resonate most with deliberators. Arguments that appeal to strong background beliefs and feelings will be more powerful.
Arguments that support the views deliberators
already hold will also be more persuasive.
Deliberation is seen as a good way of increasing
citizen involvement and participation in politics. In
political theory, deliberative democracy has engendered a new interest in increasing deliberation in
politics, as current democratic systems focus more
on elections than on decision making through reasoned debate. Deliberative experiments and meetings are organized to increase citizen involvement
in public policy making.
Zsuzsanna Chappell
See also Argument, Power of; Deliberative Democracy;
Persuasion
168
Deliberative Democracy
Further Readings
Dryzek, J. S. (2000). Deliberative democracy and beyond:
Liberals, critics, contestations. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
DELIBERATIVE DEMOCRACY
During the last 20 years, democratic theory has
taken a deliberative turn. An increasing number of
political philosophers are arguing for deliberative
democracy, a political process where decisions are
reached through reasoned debate. This is usually
contrasted with aggregative democracy, where
decisions are reached through voting. Definitions
of deliberative democracy vary considerably
across the literature, but they do share some common characteristics.
One of the aims of the deliberative project is to
empower both individuals and arguments by providing a forum that facilitates equal respect. According to different authors, deliberative democracy can
promote equal respect, empower underprivileged
groups, and give power to the best argument. Some
authors consider the problems that power inequalities pose for deliberation. Deliberation is also
meant to yield other benefits, such as increased
legitimacy or epistemically better outcomes.
Democracy as Dialogue
Deliberative democracy is based on open and
uncoerced dialogue characterized by reason giving.
Joshua Cohen defines its characteristics as free,
reasoned, equal, and aiming for a consensus.
Deliberators present arguments that justify their
judgments and preferences. Others are expected to
listen to these arguments and adjust their beliefs,
judgments, and preferences as a result. This reciprocity of justifying arguments and listening to the
arguments of others is a key feature of deliberative
democracy. Deliberation is democratic if it is equal
in that each individual has equal opportunity to
speak and each point of view and argument has an
equal opportunity to be put forward.
Deliberative democracy is a theory of democracy that gives power to arguments through the
introduction of a number of different viewpoints
and beliefs. Thus, it is not brute numbers, but
well-argued cases that lead to the selection of policies. If participants scrutinize the reasons for judgments and preferences, then it is more likely that
genuinely good policies will be adopted. Proponents of deliberative democracy believe that because
of the transformative power of deliberation, deliberators will be convinced by good arguments and
eventually the majority of citizens will come to
believe in them. Deliberation also empowers all
citizens to advance their arguments as equals in the
political forum. In the ideal form of deliberation,
each deliberator has equal opportunity and power
to advance his or her argument and influence the
beliefs, judgments, and preferences of others.
Deliberative democracy is assumed to give more
weight to other-regarding than to selfish arguments. The reason for this is that deliberators will
have to convince others to adopt their position and
this is more difficult to achieve if arguments are
put in terms of what would benefit them, rather
than what would benefit everyone. In the long run,
this is assumed to lead to a genuine orientation
toward the common good.
To exclude discriminatory or otherwise offensive
arguments from deliberation, it is required that
deliberators launder their preferences. This means
that deliberators use generally other-regarding arguments and that they would cease using arguments
that discriminate against others. In practice, who
would block such arguments and how this would
be achieved is problematic. Thus, it is possible that
arguments that discriminate against some group in
society would become dominant through deliberation. Alternatively, some reasonable arguments may
be laundered out through such a process.
Deliberative democracy and aggregative democracy can be located on a continuum. Purely aggregative democracy would consist solely of citizens
voting in isolation, whereas purely deliberative
democracy would arrive at decisions purely
through deliberation. Current liberal representative democracies fall somewhere between these
two extremes. Actually, all empirically feasible
democratic systems would be located somewhere
among these extremes.
Habermas’s Model
One of the earliest and most important philosophers to endorse deliberative democracy was
Deliberative Democracy
Jürgen Habermas. His discourse ethics had a great
impact on the literature, and many authors refer to
his ideas of deliberation and communicative rationality to support their own arguments. Thus, the
deliberative model has some of its roots in critical
theory’s challenge to existing power structures.
Habermas sets out his model of deliberative democracy most clearly in Between Facts and Norms. For
him, ideal deliberation takes place in an ideal
speech situation and is governed by communicative
rationality. This consists of communicative action
that is aimed at developing understanding between
individuals. According to his model, informal deliberation takes place in the public sphere, which is
followed by an election and leads to further deliberation between legislators. This leads to the implementation of laws that give deliberative decisions
legal power. Habermas’s theory of deliberation is
highly normative and addresses the way in which
deliberation could increase legitimacy and communicative rationality in political decision-making.
Contemporary Democratic Theorists
The current literature on deliberative democracy
encompasses a wide range of authors, some of
whom emphasize the role of deliberative democracy to empower minorities and challenge existing
power structures. Some democratic theorists who
advocate deliberate democracy, often called difference democrats, argue that the deliberative processes described by much of the literature are too
exclusive and that they tend to favor dispassionate,
logical argumentation as it is practiced by educated
white men. This leads to power inequalities between
different deliberators, where women and minorities are not fully included. These ideas are strongly
influenced by feminist theory and critical theory.
This argument is set out most clearly in Iris
Marion Young’s Democracy and Inclusion. According to her, deliberative theories are based on logical
reasoning that leaves little space for emotions and
is not sympathetic toward the norms of other cultures. For participants to become truly equal in
deliberation, the arguments of women, minorities,
and those with relatively little education should be
given a voice as well. This could be achieved
through including emotional talk, narratives, rhetoric, and other nonargumentative utterances, such
as greetings in deliberative discourse. Young argues
169
that deliberation cannot always be calm and dispassionate, but should also be a forum where
political protest can be expressed.
Thus, deliberation should increase the legitimacy of democratic decisions and lead to better
choices through requiring reasoned arguments and
justifications for judgments, and it should serve as
a tool to empower minorities through giving them
more voice and influence in the policy-making
process. Deliberation could allow the perspectives
and narratives of hitherto less privileged groups to
enter the political forum and, as a result, would
make democracy more inclusive and equal. These
theories also had considerable effect on the way in
which the success of local level deliberative reforms
is evaluated.
Deliberative democracy is often portrayed as a
normative or ideal theory of democracy. It describes
an ideal decision-making procedure. But recent
research is moving deliberative democracy out of
the realm of the purely theoretical. There are an
increasing number of empirical studies and quasiexperiments. Real-world deliberation will need to
sacrifice some of the characteristics, benefits, and
advantages of ideal deliberation, but is still seen as
a goal worth aspiring to. The most obvious deliberative forums in current liberal democracies are
legislatures. As the form of debate practiced here
often falls short of the ideals of deliberative
democracy, the primary focus of the literature is on
new deliberative institutions.
Practice and Problems
There are two broad ways of imagining deliberative democracy in practice. The first is face-to-face
deliberation between a defined set of participants,
based roughly on the model of a town hall meeting.
The second is deliberation diffused among a wider
public sphere, as it is portrayed by Habermas. This
is the ongoing informal deliberation that takes
place between citizens, in the media, and in civil
society. Face-to-face deliberation that follows the
town hall format is more formalized, and the number of people taking part and the issues to be
debated are well defined. Many deliberative projects emphasize that the deliberative group should
be representative of the wider population.
There are a number of ideas for larger-scale
deliberative reform in the literature. One of the
170
Deliberative Democracy
most well-known and ambitious is the concept of
deliberation day, developed by Bruce Ackermann
and James Fishkin. Deliberation day would be held
a few weeks before presidential elections and
would require U.S. citizens to come together to
deliberate on candidates and issues. This would
allow them to make more informed decisions on
the day of the election, as well as encouraging
day-to-day informal deliberation. This model is
significant because large-scale deliberative quasiexperiments called deliberative polls have been
based on it all around the world, from the United
States to China. These experiments provide a rich
source of data for empirical analysis. During these
deliberative polls, participants often change their
preferences in the way in which the model predicts.
Other practical models of deliberation include
citizen juries, which are groups of citizens getting
together over time to reach a judgment on an issue,
or deliberative juries, which serve the same role for
policies that traditional juries do for legal cases.
Participatory budgeting is one of the major reallife examples of deliberation in practice. It was
first adopted in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and other cities have followed suit in that country. Traditional
town hall meetings and online deliberation are also
discussed in the literature. These mechanisms
could also encourage informal deliberation within
the public sphere in the form of increased participation by citizens in reasoned political discussions.
Many of these deliberative policy-making mechanisms can empower underprivileged groups that
would normally have only limited access to the
policy-making process. In Porto Alegre, residents
from poorer districts gained a voice in municipal
matters through a system of participatory budgeting. In Chicago, local schools and police departments involved residents in deciding priorities and
policies. These policies were intended to improve
education and policing, especially in poorer areas.
But even in well-off localities, this form of deliberative participation transfers power from local or
central government to citizens.
Research on real-life deliberative meetings
reports mixed results. There are cases of success
where deliberators appear to change their mind as
a result of the arguments put forward during
debate. There is, however, relatively little research
about the effect of power and inequality on the
results of deliberation.
Deliberative democracy can suffer from a number of problems or pathologies. It is unlikely that
deliberators will be genuinely equal. It is more
likely that the deliberative group will be made up
of individuals of differing abilities and backgrounds. Those who are more powerful outside of
the deliberative process are likely to be more powerful in deliberation as well. Individuals also have
differing natural abilities to express themselves
and convince others. This gives those with better
abilities to reason coherently and convincingly
more power.
Thus, it is not guaranteed that deliberative
democracy will give power to the best argument
because the best argument may not be the most
persuasive argument. It is also argued that deliberation could favor vivid theories that are easy to
understand and where the role of individuals is
easily identifiable, rather than more complex theories using invisible hand explanations.
Cass Sunstein identifies two mechanisms that
lead to problems in deliberation. First, deliberative
groups can become polarized. Within-group polarization means that if similar arguments are
advanced most of the time, those arguments reinforce each other and the position of the group as a
whole becomes more extreme. Second, informational cascades can develop that lead large groups
of people to assume something is true simply
because everyone else seems to think it is true.
Although these mechanisms will not always be
necessarily present during deliberation, they could
lead to the adoption of suboptimal policies.
Conclusion
Deliberation is a time- and resource-consuming
activity that not everyone will find enjoyable, so
we cannot assume that all will participate on equal
terms. Those with less time and opportunities to
participate will be at a disadvantage. Even if deliberation becomes a dominant mode of decision
making in politics, many are unlikely to participate
because of a lack of motivation, just as many citizens are not motivated to turn out to vote. The
problem is likely to be larger than in the case of
voting, because genuine deliberation is very
resource-intensive, regarding both acquiring information and the actual process of deliberation. This
will lead to a bias regarding who participates in
Democracy
deliberation. Those who do not participate in
politics will have less power than those who do.
This bias might also reduce the legitimacy of any
decisions reached through deliberation.
Deliberative democracy gives individuals the
power to voice their arguments and can possibly
empower underprivileged groups. Some also argue
that it gives power to the best argument by requiring clear justifications for beliefs and reasoned
arguments. However, it will be difficult to keep
existing power relationships out of deliberation,
which can make the process less equal. This could
potentially undermine the legitimacy of decisions
made through deliberative procedures. Despite
these potential problems, deliberative democracy
continues to be one of the most influential theories
of democracy because it offers an attractive theory
of democratic decision making.
Zsuzsanna Chappell
See also Argument, Power of; Critical Theory;
Deliberation; Democracy
Further Readings
Ackermann, B. A., & Fishkin, J. S. (2004). Deliberation
day. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Cohen, J. (1997). Deliberation and democratic legitimacy.
In J. Bohman & W. Rehg (Eds.), Deliberative politics:
Essays on reason and politics. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Dryzek, J. S. (2000). Deliberative democracy and beyond:
Liberals, critics, contestations. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
Sunstein, C. R. (2003). Why societies need dissent.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
DEMOCRACY
Democracy refers to (a) a political system, (b) a
political aspiration, and (c) a key term of political
rhetoric. As a name for a political system, it refers
to the fact that power to rule is invested in the
people themselves in some tangible or formal
sense (in the modern period, indirectly, through
elected representatives). As an aspiration, democracy stands for the desire to deepen and extend
the ideals of political equality and popular control, including in systems that are already regarded
171
as democracies. These two approaches are often
in tension. Contemporary representative democracy, for example, is sometimes criticized as
remote and bureaucratic, granting power only
minimally and episodically to ordinary citizens.
This criticism has given rise to aspirations for
forms of more direct citizen empowerment, or
more participatory institutions.
Democracy is also a term of political rhetoric. It
is a word that signifies, at the most general level, a
good, if not the best and most desirable, constitution and allocation of political power. Leaders,
writers, and people of varied political persuasions
will want to be classed as “democrats” by their
audiences.
The standard definition of democracy is “rule by
the people,” from the ancient Greek (demos kratia). Today, a people normally means citizens of a
nation-state or country. But in an age of globalization and the revival of local and secessionist movements, it has become evident that there is no obvious democratic way to decide who constitutes “a
people.” In what sense can the people rule? In an
influential account, Jack Lively set out a sliding scale
of possibilities. Rule by the people could mean that
all should be involved in deciding and administering
policy, or that all should be involved in crucial decisions. Perhaps democratic rule can involve only a
select minority, normally elected representatives, in
ruling? Is it enough if these representatives are chosen by, or accountable to, the people as a whole? If
rulers are chosen by the representatives of the ruled,
is that too distant from any substantial sense of the
people ruling to be classed properly as democratic?
There is wide scope for specifying democracy’s
meaning and requirements, and therefore too wide
a scope for scholarly and political debate about the
proper character and demands of democracy.
Some observers regard democracy as having
universal value, but just why it has value is a matter of some contestation. Is it because democracy
produces beneficial outcomes in stability and relative social peace? Is it because democracy embodies
intrinsic values, such as equality? Or is it because
democratic participation produces more educated
and confident citizens? It seems reasonably clear
that adequate answers will involve a range of these
and other concerns, and further, that the ways in
which democracy is defined and justified bear a
close link to each other.
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Dependency Theory in International Relations
Debates about democracy’s meaning and value
are often conducted as timeless philosophical
debates, but such debates draw on a long history
of institutional and theoretical innovation. Ancient
Greek democracy, most notably in Athens from
around 500 BCE, was practiced in city-states
rather than in nations or empires. This democracy
featured direct citizen participation in a face-toface assembly making decisions for the community, rather than representation (though there were
representative elements). However, women, slaves,
and resident foreigners were not “citizens” and so
were excluded from the public political life of the
city. Only a minority of male citizens actually took
part in the direct democratic assemblies and were
eligible to be chosen (by lot, or random selection)
for public offices.
Aspects of democratic practice were evident in
ancient Rome and in Renaissance Italian citystates. Several ideas, such as the separation of
powers between executive, legislature, and judiciary, which are evident in many of today’s democratic systems, grew out of the experiences of both.
But national and representative democracy as we
know it today awaited what Robert A. Dahl calls
democracy’s “second transformation” in Europe
around the mid-18th century. This second transformation involved a shift in the basic scale of
political organization from the city to the nation.
The increase in political scale created political
communities that were much more heavily populated, territorially large, and diverse than were
ancient or renaissance city-states. Most observers
at the time, and subsequently, understood that in
these circumstances direct participation was no
longer feasible and that it needed to be replaced by
representation.
Although historically democracy preceded liberalism, liberalism has preceded democracy for all
intents and purposes in the modern era. The idea
of the universal franchise, for example, emerged
fitfully throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, in
the West at least, on the back of developing liberal
ideas about individual responsibility, autonomy,
and freedom. Liberal ideas about protecting individual rights and limiting the scope of government
are not intrinsically democratic ideas, and what we
now call representative democracy emerged from
liberal ideas as much, if not more than, from specifically democratic ones. The idea and the practice
of representation arguably kept the apparatus of
government at some distance from the power of
the people themselves, thus creating an institutional space in which more timeless and universal
rights could be protected against populist and
democratic vagaries. Liberal values, not least the
inviolability of legitimate property rights, strongly
limits the scope for legitimate government intervention in society.
In the early 21st century, more than half of the
countries in the world can reasonably be classed as
democratic, in the sense of minimal electoral
democracy at least. This historically unprecedented
spread of popular government came about because
of the rapid (though often difficult and halting)
spread of democracy across Eastern Europe, Latin
America, and Africa toward the end of the 20th
century and the beginning of the 21st century. The
practice of democracy varies according to region,
culture, and degree of economic development.
In sum, democracy is a rich set of practices that
embody the idea that political power should be
held, and used, in a way that derives from the
ongoing consent of the governed, and with formal
accountability of the governors to the governed.
Michael Saward
See also Dahl, Robert A.; Deliberative Democracy;
Elections; Voting
Further Readings
Dahl, R. A. (1998). On democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale
University Press.
Saward, M. (2003). Democracy. Cambridge, UK: Policy
Press.
DEPENDENCY THEORY IN
INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
Dependency theory is a school of thought that
explains underdevelopment as the result of the
processes by which poor countries and regions are
incorporated into the capitalist world economy.
Emerging in Latin American writing during the
1960s as a response to concerns about inequalities
in economic power both between and within
Dependency Theory in International Relations
nations, dependency theory claims that features of the
global capitalist economy produce a metropolitanperiphery system of unequal relations between
developed and underdeveloped states. Theorists
also claim that such inequalities condition the
social formations and political processes internal
to underdeveloped states. According to this
account, the economic preponderance of metropolitan capitalist states creates structural asymmetries in power over peripheral societies, limits the
sovereignty of dependent states, and conditions
their social structures in line with global capitalist
imperatives.
Starting from the Marxian premise that capitalism is an expanding global system in which
national economies constitute subsystems, dependency writers emphasize the importance of the
process by which the developing world was
brought into this system by European capitalist
powers. In this process, colonial relations based on
economic extraction and penetration by foreign
capital established a set of metropole–periphery
relations. These relations are seen as creating a
pattern of dependency in the international system,
in which metropolitan predominance in processes
of technology, capital, and commerce ensures that
development of peripheral states is conditioned by,
and occurs as a reflection of, the development and
expansion of capitalist metropoles. Both development and underdevelopment are therefore seen as
processes simultaneously constituted by global
capitalism. This dependence is seen not merely as
an external economic condition, but as a political
phenomenon encompassing the entire institutional
framework embodied in the economic, social,
political, and cultural formations of the periphery.
The international economic relations produced
by global capitalism provide the structural cause
for power asymmetries in the dependency approach.
Impelled by the expansion of European capitalism
from the 17th century, penetration by metropolitan capitals in the colonial period saw the economies of peripheral societies reoriented toward the
needs of the metropole, through the production of
primary commodities in exchange for Western
manufactures. This is argued to lead to unequal
exchange in trade between low-value resources
and high-value manufactured exports, resulting
in a cross-border appropriation of value by
the metropole. “Dual economies” form in the
173
periphery as a result, where expanding export
sectors tied to the needs of the metropole exist
alongside stagnant traditional industries serving
local markets. Control of these industries by metropolitan capitals siphons off what economic surplus is produced in the foreign-dominated export
sectors, which Andre Gunder Frank labels the
development of underdevelopment by global capitalist relations of dependency. However, the specific forms of economic dependence are said to vary
according to the period in which parts of the
periphery were incorporated into the global capitalist system. Fernando Cardoso stresses the contrast
between a colonial form of economic dependence
based on the exchange of raw materials for manufactures under European imperialism that produces
“underdevelopment,” and a neocolonial system
based on the exchange of labor-intensive manufactures for technological and capital goods in the
postcolonial period, characterized as “dependent
development.”
However, the economic basis of dependency
relations extends to constitute an internal conditioning factor for the entirety of the dependent
society. Dominant groups in dependent societies
clustering around economic interchanges with
metropoles form transnational class alliances with
international capitalists. This produces a class
structure based on “comprador” capitalist domination of the state over local interests. Social formations also become fragmented between groups
associated with the respective dual economies, and
the political, legal, and cultural institutions of
dependent societies become strongly influenced by
those of the core through its influence over peripheral elites. A political structure of foreign rule
results, reinforced at the interstate level through
formal colonial relations during European imperialism and informally in the postcolonial period
through relations based on the dominance of an
internationally connected clientele bourgeoisie
whose interests correspond to those of the capitalist class in dominant nations. Today, this political
asymmetry manifests at the level of the international system as neocolonialism, where peripheral
states have formal sovereignty but remain structurally unequal and subject to control by capitalist
cores. Thus, dependency theorists argue that
underdevelopment in the periphery can only be
overcome by a qualitative change in both external
174
Determinacy
(economic) and internal (political) systems, leading
to national development autonomous from the
conditioning international capitalist structure.
In stressing an explanatory connection between
international capitalism and domestic social formations, dependency theorists critique state-centric analyses of international relations. The penetration of international class structures into
peripheral societies and the ensuing fragmentation
of social formations along class lines challenges
the notion that the state can be considered as
either a unitary actor, or the core unit of analysis
in international relations. Instead, the state is considered as an institution that articulates international class processes into domestic political settlements, with its form constituted externally by
global capitalist imperatives. Furthermore, the
presence of dependency relations questions concepts of state sovereignty and interdependence by
drawing attention to structural asymmetries in
power between states, owing to the economic and
political domination of the periphery by metropoles. This implies differentiated economic functions for states in the international system, and
redefines the concept of dependence from its traditional usage in international relations as reliance,
to instead entail the determination of the social
structures and development paths of peripheral
states by imperatives emanating from the capitalist
core. This position was later adopted and extended
in Immanuel Wallerstein’s world systems approach,
in which the expansion of capitalism was argued
to partition the world into core, semi-periphery
and periphery, impelling differential development
processes within, and unequal power relations
between, each region.
Jeffrey D. Wilson
See also Imperialism; Marxist Accounts of Power;
Structural Power
Further Readings
Amin, S. (1976). Unequal development: An essay on the
social formations of peripheral capitalism. Hassocks,
Sussex, UK: Harvester Press.
Cardoso, F. H. (1972). Dependency and development in
Latin America. New Left Review, 74, 83–95.
Frank, A. G. (1967). Capitalism and underdevelopment
in Latin America. New York: Monthly Review Press.
DETERMINACY
Determinacy belongs to a set of interrelated concepts concerned with causation and causal relations in the natural or social worlds—a set that
includes determination, contingency, dominance,
overdetermination, determinability, and undecidability. For the social world, determinacy also
raises questions about event and structural causation, the agency–structure problem, and issues
of free will. This entry focuses on (1) causation,
(2) social agency, (3) the relation between structural and agent causality, (4) the attribution of
responsibility for events, and (5) ecological dominance as a type of structural causality that escapes
one-sided structural determinism.
Causation and Agency
Causation is no more, but certainly no less, than
the production (or, better, coproduction) of effects
and, as such, occurs throughout the natural and
social world. Causation is always relational. The
capacity of a given force (or set of forces) to produce effects depends on its own causal powers and
on the liabilities of the substance(s) or forces on
which it acts and the circumstances in which it
does so. Capacities and liabilities always exist in
the first instance as potentials: they may remain
latent and, if activated, may be reinforced, countered, or modified, intentionally or not, by other
causal powers and liabilities. This suggests that
power can be defined as a specific form of causation that entails the production of effects that
would not otherwise happen. Of particular interest
in the social sciences is the connection between
power and agency, that is, the issue of whether and
how agents’ conduct makes a difference. This
raises difficult questions about intention and the
unintended, mediated effects of its exercise.
Empirically, it is often hard, sometimes impossible, to identify unambiguously, let alone uncontroversially, which, if any, agent(s) made a—let alone
the—decisive difference to the occurrence of a given
event. This is partly because events lack natural
boundaries and can be defined in different ways for
different purposes. This is especially true in complex conjunctures with multiple time horizons and
temporalities, with a complex interweaving of
Determinacy
scales of action and spatialities, with interaction
among many mechanisms, processes, and events,
and with many types of agency and social force on
the stage and behind the scenes. Identifying the
agent(s) that made a decisive difference involves
the selection, from many possible causal linkages,
of those judged causally effective for a given result.
Given that agents always act in specific circumstances, with distinctive constraints and opportunities that condition and mediate the exercise of
power, one can attribute responsibility to circumstances, non-agential mechanisms, or actors. Any
attribution will in turn relieve, in whole or part,
other contributing circumstances, mechanisms, or
actors of responsibility.
However, because all actions occur in a continuing flow of actions, one can always redefine
responsibility by redefining the event, extending
timelines backward or forward, or looking at the
origins of circumstances previously bracketed out.
Redefining the event to be explained (i.e., the
explanandum), extending its spatiotemporal context, and identifying a wider range of relevant
causal factors would all change the attribution.
Further complications can be introduced by inquiring into the origins of identities, preferences,
modes of calculation, and so on, rather than taking
these too as given. This may prove especially
important when explaining events, processes, and
outcomes that involve relations of power and
domination or where the nature, causes, and solutions of major crises or analogous events are at
issue. Such complexities generate debates about
the one-, two-, or three-dimensional nature of
power (see, classically, Steven Lukes). There is a
risk of a manifold, infinite regress here, such that
attributing responsibility so far, and no further, can
be seen as a “political” act with its own social
consequences.
Determinacy and Contingent Necessity
Whereas determination refers to the process of causation, determinacy involves the probability that a
given effect will occur through the actualization of
different sets of causal chains. This bears critically
on structure and agency. Where a given causal
effect is highly constrained structurally, it is strongly
determinate. Moreover, where many structural
forces interact to generate these constraints, the
175
effect is causally overdetermined. Where the constraints are loosely coupled and many outcomes
are possible, structural determinacy is correspondingly looser. This increases the scope for the actions
or interactions of particular social agents to make
a difference. The same point can be made in terms
of the dialectic of path dependency and path shaping. Loose coupling confronts actors with multiple
choices. If no set of decision-making rules unambiguously determines the single correct course of
action for actors when they assess relevant circumstances, the situation can be described as (algorithmically) undecidable. This forces actors to exercise
free will. In such contexts, choice, however interpreted, becomes a key part of the explanation.
This analysis points to the importance of contingent necessity. This apparently self-contradictory
concept highlights the fact that, whereas the combination or interaction of different causal chains
produces a determinate outcome (necessity), no
single theory can predict or determine how or
when such causal chains converge or interact (contingency). This is one feature of the asymmetrical
nature of causation. We must analyze the many
determinations in a concrete conjuncture and
show how they interact as necessary or sufficient
conditions in a contingent pattern of causation.
This excludes all pretence to construct the theory
of power and instead shows the need for theoretical and empirical tools to examine specific
conjunctures.
Exploring contingent necessities (or, better, contingently realized interactive causal necessities)
requires one to combine concepts, assumptions,
and principles of analysis from different theoretical domains and to link them to a given, theoretically defined explanandum. An explanation is only
more or less satisfactory relative to a given
explanandum that has been isolated (hence, “constructed”) by an observer from inexhaustible complexity. Max Weber spoke here of the practical
impossibility (and, in many cases, theoretical
redundancy) of following causal relationships
down to the microscopic level of necessary links
among the elementary constituents of reality. This
applies regardless of the relatively macro–micro
nature of the problem or the generality of the
historical developments and outcomes to be
explained. So it is vital to explain specific events in
terms of specific causal antecedents, noting how
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Determinacy
specific causal processes or causal intersections
from among many possible intersections intervened
to produce an event that would not otherwise have
occurred. The more macroscopic the explanandum
and the greater its spatiotemporal reach, the more
likely that structural rather than agential choice
causation will be privileged in the explanation.
This is where questions of determinacy invoke
the specter of determinism. This involves offering
one-sided causal explanations for complex, contingently necessary events, processes, or outcomes.
Notorious social science examples allegedly occur
within Marxism, including technological determinism, economic determinism, class reductionism,
politicism (an exaggerated emphasis on political
class domination and struggle), and ideologism or
idealism (an overemphasis on ideological or more
general ideational factors, respectively). But similar forms of one-sidedness occur in other modes of
social explanation. Thus, technological determinism characterizes declarations that one cannot
“halt the march of progress.” Economic reductionism is common in muckraking and attempts to
identify the material interests at stake in any decision, enduring structure, or continuing process.
Class reductionism occurs whenever actions are
explained in terms of location in the relations of
production, opportunities for profit in the market,
levels of income or accumulated wealth, housing
status, lifestyle, self-identification, or social status.
Politicism is common in realism in international
relations, in state-centered analyses of politics that
emphasize the special logics, identities, and interests of states, state managers, parties, and political
movements, and in theories that prioritize war,
preparation for war, and its impact. Finally, idealism occurs when analysts focus one-sidedly on the
role of ideas in history and disregard structural
and conjunctural factors that select among ideas
with the result that no idea is as powerful as one
whose time is “ripe.”
Economic Determinacy
The complexity of causal relations precludes such
one-sided causation and excludes “determination
in the last instance” by a single set of causal forces,
however tempting this might be for simplifying
(the presentation of) an explanation or, for practical purposes at least, holding some factors/forces
responsible. This problem can be exemplified
through the historical materialist approach to economic determinacy. This may involve no more
than strategic essentialism (privileging some causes
or forces over others as a basis for decisive strategic action) but it may also (and often does) involve
definite ontological claims about the relative
importance of causal forces. Typically at stake here
is the relationship between the logic of a profitoriented, market-mediated economy and the development or roles of other institutional orders or
everyday consciousness and action. This directly
touches the circumstances, if any, in which onesided explanations can be legitimately deployed.
First, following Weber, we should distinguish
among the directly economic moments of social
relations, extra-economic moments that affect economic performance, and moments liable to economic causation. Neglecting this distinction leads
to conclusion that the economic is determinant in
the last instance because almost everything belongs
to at least one of these categories so that the “economic” will figure somehow in every event and its
explanation. Second, surveying work on economic
determinacy proper, we can distinguish among
economic determination in the first instance, economic domination, bourgeois hegemony, and ecological dominance. These involve quite different
forms of economic determination.
Economic determination in the first instance
refers, legitimately, to the primacy of production
inside the economy. In short, wealth must first be
produced before it can be distributed or, in more
Marxist terms, value must first be produced before
it can be realized, redistributed, and reallocated.
The more that profit-oriented, market-mediated
exchange invades new areas, such economic determination will be greater, whether other types of
exchange existed there before. This is a feature of
contemporary neoliberalism but has no immediate
bearing on the primacy of the economy in relation
to residual extra-economic institutional orders or
social life more generally.
Economic domination rests on the capacity of
those controlling strategic resources vital for a
given branch of production or the economy as a
whole to influence economic decisions or performance through the exercise of veto, strike, or
blackmail power. Such domination may also affect
other social relations insofar as the operations of
Determinacy
public or private institutions, organizations, or
agents require access to such resources. Note here
that economic bodies may depend in turn on
access to resources that are generated outside the
economy.
Bourgeois hegemony also has a dual significance. It can refer to the capacity of specific
economic forces to win hegemony for their
techno-economic paradigm, business model, or
broader economic strategy within the wider
economy, or to the capacity to win such hegemony within the wider society, so that the hegemonic economic imaginary enters the assumptions
and operations of other institutional orders and
becomes part of common sense.
Ecological dominance is the most interesting,
and least explored, dimension of economic determinacy. It refers to the capacity of the profitoriented, market-mediated capitalist economic
order—including its extra-economic supports—to
influence the performance and, hence, evolution of
other societal subsystems or institutional orders
more than they can influence it. Originating in
biology, this concept does not refer to the influence
of the natural environment but to relations of
dominance within a given social ecosystem. As
such, the concept does not imply that the economy
will inevitably become the ecologically dominant
system in a given ecosystem. Ecological dominance
is a property of the interaction among different
systems and ways of life rather than one possessed
by a given system considered in isolation. Thus, a
given system can be more or less ecologically
dominant; its dominance will vary across systems,
institutional orders, and spheres of everyday life;
and the extent and form of its dominance will
depend on the overall development of the relevant
social ecosystem. This implies in turn that the
development of any ecologically dominant system
will be shaped by the operation of other systems or
the attempts by specific social forces to reverse,
brake, or guide that dominance to advance their
own logics or modes of understanding. Thus, as
Edgar Morin argued, ecological dominance is an
ecological relation in which one system becomes
dominant in a complex, co-evolving situation; it
does not entail a one-sided relation of domination
whereby one system unilaterally imposes its logic
or will on other systems. There is no last instance
in relations of ecological dominance; they are
177
always contingent. So there is no economic determination in the last instance in this regard if the
profit-oriented, market-mediated capitalist economy is, as Marxism indicates, more likely to
become ecologically dominant.
This suggests new ways to study economic determination as well as other forms of determinacy in a
complex social world. Economic determination
was always problematic for historical materialism
as the economy lacks the autonomy (in the sense of
being “a cause without cause”) to fully determine
the extra-economic in the first, middle, or last
instance. Indeed, as many theorists (including Karl
Marx, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Karl Polanyi,
Joseph Schumpeter, or Friedrich von Hayek) have
noted, the market economy has important extraeconomic conditions and operates best when
embedded within an appropriate form of market
society. Conversely, a theory of internal relations,
in which everything is related to everything else in
a unified totality, cannot explain the causal asymmetries in interactions within and among institutional orders and everyday life. Ecological dominance is a third option. It highlights the scope for
asymmetrical causal relations based on differential
capacities and liabilities in a social ecosystem, such
that, although one system may be ecologically
dominant, it will nonetheless be differentially influenced in turn by its specific relations of reciprocal
interdependence with other systems. Where the
coevolution of interdependent institutional orders
and social life occurs in the always contingent
shadow of the ecological dominance of capital
accumulation, however, a certain coherence is
likely between what Marxism often, albeit misleadingly, describes as the economic base and its
superstructure (see the entry on superstructure and
substructure). Such structured coherence is particularly clear in the tight coupling among the economic, juridical, and political systems as operationally autonomous but materially interdependent
institutional ensembles within capitalist societies.
Conclusion
Determinacy is a crucial aspect of power and
domination. It is best explored in terms of the
nature of causation, causal powers, and causality;
the complexity of the natural and social worlds
and the problem of contingent necessity; the need
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Determinism
to engage in complexity reduction; the contingent
nature of attributions of responsibility—to circumstances, structures, or agency—in a given situation; and the range of theoretical approaches to
social inquiry and their differential privileging of
particular variables and entry points. This entry
has focused on economic determination and determinacy in historical materialist explanation. But
the arguments are easily generalized to other forms
of domination, such as patriarchy, institutional
racism, uneven development, or center–periphery
relations, where one-sided explanations may prove
tempting. The notion of ecological dominance is
especially useful in exploring determinacy because
it entails no commitment to one-sided causation or
explanation.
Bob Jessop
See also Agency–Structure Problem; Causation;
Domination; Free Will; Lukes, Steven; Marx, Karl;
Racism, Role of Power in; Substructure and
Superstructure; Weber, Max
Further Readings
Hausman, D. M. (1998). Causal asymmetries.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Jessop, B. (2007). State power: A strategic-relational
approach. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Teubner, G. (1983). Law as an autopoietic system.
Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
DETERMINISM
Determinism is the thesis that historical processes
occur following scientific laws that ensure that all
constituent events and states of the world are necessary and inevitable. Every event is caused by a
previous event, all the way back to the Big Bang at
the start of the universe. The way things are now
could not have been otherwise.
The deterministic thesis is developed in various
ways, but the important aspect for the consideration of power is how this affects our attitudes
toward agency: that is, how it affects the power of
individuals to influence the world. If everything is
caused, then everything I do is caused, and I have
no independent causal powers. Thus, the correct
explanation of any event in which I am involved
must include previous events that caused everything I did. Agents can then be dropped from historical explanations.
Such a thesis has obvious implications for theories of freedom and free will because our usual
notion of free will is that we do have independent
causal powers. When we act, we have choices, and
“having choices” means that we could have chosen
differently. This has to be a necessary feature of
free will and independent human action.
We consider here whether determinism and free
will are compatible, and whether, even if determinism is true in some sense, we can still talk about
humans having causal powers. A view that suggests both determinism and the meaningfulness of
claims that humans have independent causal powers is usually called compatibilism. We note that
the determinism versus free will issue is separate
from or at least orthogonal to debates about structure and agency. Structure is, to some extent, the
sets of social relations of agents acting, so if we act
as we do because of structural constraints, we are
not discussing determinism in the usual sense.
Determinism as it is usually considered would
mean that structures are created through historical
inevitability just as human agency is so caused.
Both agency and structure are caused by past
events, so how agents and structure interact will
not affect the fundamental causal story. Thus, if
determinism is true, then either we have to consider the structure–agency debate otiose or we
have to conclude that our compatibilist stance
might have little effect, in itself, on our attitude to
the relationship between structure and agency.
Certainty and Probability
We should get one issue out of the way before proceeding further. One way of construing the world
is that nothing occurs with certainty. At the subatomic level, events seem probabilistic in the sense
that we can only say with some probability what
has occurred. One way of thinking about the universe is that one event does not follow another
precisely with a probability of 1, but rather a probability that might approach 1 but never actually
attains 1. Thus, a billiard ball striking another at a
given angle and speed on a baize surface of given
Determinism
qualities under specific atmospheric conditions
will lead the other to move at given speed and
angle, not with certainty, but only with very high
probability. The universe might very well be like
that. However, this is of little comfort to those who
worry that a fully determined universe leaves no
room for free will. After all, what is the difference
whether my actions are determined with probability 1 or with a probability approaching 1, when
the difference between the probabilities has something to with things going on at the subatomic
level and nothing to do with me? The issue is
whether I can have any effect. To what extent am
I in control or being determined? Whatever I do,
with a probability approaching 1 or with a probability approaching zero, all that matters is whether
these were determined (at the relevant probabilities) by events that went before.
Causation
In much of modern physics, the notion of causation has been jettisoned. The fundamental mathematics of physical processes do not include any
causal arrows. Physicists usually consider that our
notion of cause is simply a psychological imprint
on the universe, given entropy. We see the causal
arrow where entropy is greatest—that is, where
there is least disorder in the sense that energy is
more dissipated. One way of thinking about this is
that the universe can be described by sets of mathematical equations, none of which involve any
notion of causation (each side of an equivalence
can be thought to describe or explain the other),
but that we impose a notion of causation by the
way in which we view the order of events. Causation is thus an imposition on the physical universe
by us as living creatures. This is important because
it might help us understand what we mean when
we suggest that the events we have witnessed were
inevitable or that they could have been otherwise.
Taking an example of Daniel Dennett, was the
assassination of John F. Kennedy determined at the
time of the Big Bang? Let us assume determinism
is true, and thus, given the precise conditions at the
time of the Big Bang, every event in the universe
followed its course until the moment Kennedy was
shot. Do we consider that a full causal account of
President Kennedy’s assassination must include the
entire history of events that led from the Big Bang
179
to that moment? Did the Big Bang ultimately cause
Kennedy’s death? Well, only in the sense that it
caused everyone’s death. That is, the Big Bang was
necessary for the assassination of Kennedy, but it
was not sufficient. Imagine Kennedy was assassinated much as he was but that Lee Harvey
Oswald’s bullet entered Kennedy at a slightly different angle and stopped his heart faster than it did
in the actual world. In the deterministic universe,
if we run the story back we must find that the Big
Bang had to have been slightly different in some
way. Hence, it is not true that the Big Bang as it
actually occurred was necessary and sufficient for
the assassination of Kennedy. It is these sorts of
counterfactual notions by which we ordinarily
think of the contingency of events such as the
assassination of Kennedy. So we consider issues
such as, “had I left the house slightly later, then I
would have been on the road at that time, and thus
would not have reached the junction at the same
time as the motorbike.” We know the world has to
be the way it is in the sense that once it is that way,
it has to be that way. But we consider how the
world could have been had we acted differently.
Thus, our sense of something not being inevitable
is in a counterfactual sense. But how could this
reassure us about our independent powers in a
deterministic world?
Reactions and Addictions
Consider certain actions that are reactions, things
we do automatically, not unconsciously but quickly
almost without conscious thought, such as braking
hard to avoid hitting a motorbike at a junction.
Your actions were caused because your car was
going to hit the motorbike. It was caused by whatever causes our desires not to kill people on motorbikes. It was caused by the learned behavior of
driving and stopping cars. And the evolutionary
pressures led humans to have fast reactions, so fast
we act almost without conscious thought to avoid
danger. We know all of these facts—determinism
does not teach us anything here—but we also
know that we could have hit the motorbike: we
might not have braked in time. But we do not
worry that our reactions are outside of our control
and not subject to free will.
The latter consideration might be a little too
fast. After all, we do worry about things we do
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Determinism
that we do not want to do. We want to lose weight,
but have the chocolate cake and the extra biscuit.
We might want to lie to our partner, but know
that when we do we will blush or stammer or give
something away so the partner knows we are
lying. We are aware that we are not fully in control
of our desires and our behavior. And often when
we describe these behaviors we use the language of
determinism. Addicts talk about being driven to
drink or to gamble; we talk about “not being able
to resist” the cake or the biscuit; or knowing that
we are not in control of our blushes or “tells” that
give us away when we are lying. Nevertheless, we
do not consider that these facts mean that everything we do is determined. These facts do not lead
us to think we do not have free will. After all, we
use them to contrast with the other actions to
which we are not driven.
We might think about such activities that we
are driven to as being ones where the incentives to
act differently are just too high. If we have really
strong incentives to lose weight—to fit into the
wedding dress—then we might overcome the
chocolate temptations when otherwise we could
not. It has been shown that the brain states of
addicts demonstrate pleasurable highs just before
indulging in the addictive behavior (taking the
drug, pulling the arm of the slot machine). Here
the temptations are too great to resist in part, for
the addict, because the pleasure comes about
through the temptation rather than the actions in
themselves.
What is the difference then between the driven
behavior and other behaviors where we do not feel
driven? The actual outcomes, the actual behavior,
cannot be changed: whatever happens, happens.
However, where the temptations were not so great,
we can imagine not doing the actions we actually
did do. In the car example, we probably could not
have avoided braking: our evolutionary heritage
gave us the reactions and the training did the rest.
We do not mind that; indeed we are pleased that
our reactions and training were so good, and we
do not worry about the deterministic universe.
After all, what we did was what we wanted to do.
In most of our actions, even those we regret, we
say we did what we wanted to do. Only when we
do not want to do what we do, in some sense, at
the moment we take the actions do we feel driven.
But here the distinction is not between one sort of
action and another, but our attitude to that action
even as we are doing it.
Something is inevitable for a person if that person can do nothing about it. Once driving the car,
hitting the motorcycle is inevitable if it pulls out too
close for me to be able to brake in time. In that
case, I might say that it was inevitable that I
knocked down the motorcyclist given my speed and
his or her actions. What I mean by that is that there
is nothing (reasonable) that I could have done to
avoid that collision. Indeed, the unexpected leads
us to say there is nothing we could have done. We
expect cars to pull out from junctions if they have
priority, so we slow down or stop to see if there are
any cars that are going to do so. In such a case, it is
no excuse to say, “Given the speed I was traveling
and given how he pulled out, it was inevitable I was
going to hit him.” Any such excuse leads to the
response, “Then why were you traveling at that
speed?” The more predictable or, if you like, the
more determined the environment the more control
we can have over our actions with regard to it.
Feeling and Being
Braking quickly to avoid hitting the motorbike is a
result of reactions created during our evolutionary
history and the driver training we received. Nevertheless, we feel as though we are in control, and
indeed, we are. Even if the reaction occurred faster
than I can consciously think about braking, I still
braked. Indeed driving a well-functioning car might
give the strongest sense of control that one can
have. Paradigmatic examples of making choices
might actually lead to feelings of being in less control. I might be faced with a tough decision: do I
hire or let go a probationary employee? I might take
a long time weighing the pros and cons, and reluctantly decide to let him or her go, thinking it best for
the company and for the person, who might always
struggle in that role. Surely this is a paradigm
example of choice, yet I might feel in less control
because I like the person and would like to have him
or her continue, but feel in the end it would be best
not to hire that person. It seems out of my control
because it is the nature of the role the person is
being asked to perform and his or her fitness to
carry out that role that have forced my hand.
So feeling in control is not anything to do with
the nature of the decision making as such. Whether
Deterrence Theory
one’s actions are reactions or behavior that occurs
after careful consideration one might feel more or
less in control of the situation. However, how one
feels, it might be objected, is not the same as
whether one is really in control. And that is the
issue with regard to determinism. But is it? In a
fully determined world as perceived by modern
physics, causation has no role except as measured
by entropy. For most physicists, causation has no
role in fundamental physics so it is best described as
a psychological imposition on the universe by creatures like us. And we have that psychological impetus because it is to our advantage. The reactions
that we have developed through evolution have
fitted us well in this world, and these reactions, like
our way of viewing the world, are part of our psychology. Thus, to the extent that causation in the
universe is a psychological imputation, then our
feeling of being in control in those situations where
we impute a causal role for ourselves is the causal
role in those situations. Determinism and our view
of ourselves as agents are completely compatible.
Independent Power
Agents have independent powers because they are
part of the fabric of the universe and act and react
in relation to structures and the environment
around them. Those powers are independent in the
same way that anything is independent. They can
be described without reference to anything else.
The extent to which nothing can be described
without reference to anything else gives the limit to
that independence. Even if all processes are historically determined, agents still have independent
powers, and the extent to which they feel in control is the extent of that control because it is the
extent to which their actions can be described
without reference to anything else outside of them.
Keith Dowding
See also Agency; Agency–Structure Problem; Autonomy;
Control; Free Will; Freedom
Further Readings
Benci, V., Cerrai, P., Freguglia, P., Israel, G., & Pellegrini,
C. (Eds.). (2003). Determinism, holism and
complexity. New York: Kluwer.
181
Dennett, D. C. (2003). Freedom evolves. London: Allen
Lane.
DETERRENCE THEORY
Deterrence theory in international relations concerns the conditions under which a state i is able
to prevent another state j from attacking i by convincing j that it runs the risk that this attack will
be answered by a retaliatory strike that will inflict
catastrophic damage. The theory has primarily
been developed by U.S. strategic thinkers—most
notably Bernard Brodie, Albert Wohlstetter, and
Thomas Schelling—since the 1940s against the
background of the nuclear arms race between the
United States and the Soviet Union, which lasted
until the end of the 1980s. Given this background,
deterrence theory in international relations has
particularly focused on the requirements and
implications of a “stable balance of terror,” a situation, that is, in which each of the states involved
has acquired the capability, in case it is the victim
of a surprise attack, to launch a counterattack
that will severely punish the aggressor.
Until the beginning of the 1930s, there existed
only two ways to make sure by military means that
an adversary refrained from armed aggression.
One way meant that a state, with or without the
assistance of allies, attempted to dissuade the
opponent from attacking by building a defense
strong enough to convince the opponent that it
would not be worth its while to attack. The other
way was aimed at compelling the adversary, again
with or without the help of allies, to disarm.
Thanks to a successful surprise attack on the
adversary’s territory (or by threatening to carry out
such a preemptive strike), a state could compel its
enemy to reduce its weapons arsenal or its military
forces. Note that a credible defense means that the
adversary is prevented from behaving in a certain
way, though in the case of successful “compellence,” the adversary is forced to behave in a
particular manner. For this reason, it is easier to
prevent aggression through defense than through
compellence. The preparations for war by the
opponents were furthermore geared to fighting a
war on the ground. Everything turned on the conquest of territory, or, conversely, on the prevention
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Deterrence Theory
of the conquest of territory. The development of
long-range bomber aircraft added a third method
for preventing an adversary from attacking: deterrence. This means that a state threatens to punish
its opponent in case of attack by “strategic bombardments” of the attacker’s population and industries, rather than fighting it out on the ground. The
aim of deterrence, just like defense, is to discourage a potential aggressor from attacking. Here,
however, a state does so not by ensuring that the
state’s defense is so strong that it would never pay
the aggressor to attack, but by seeing to it that an
attack will be severely punished with the large-scale
destruction of the aggressor’s resources. Defense is
a strategy based on denial, and deterrence is based
on punishment. To explore the relationship between
defense and deterrence still further, if a state succeeded in building a perfect defense, so that it was
completely invulnerable to whatever offensive
weapons a possible attacker might employ against
it, then this state could no longer be deterred by
any other state. The crucial chain in the theory’s
line of argument must be that a nuclear surprise
attack will elicit a nuclear counterattack that will
wreak havoc on the attacker’s cities and population. As many have pointed out, it is highly problematic whether this will happen in fact. It may be
rational to threaten with Armageddon to prevent
an attack, but is it rational to carry out this threat
when the deterrent has failed and the dreaded
attack has started? Deterrence theory is apparently
based on the assumption that the leader of a state
that becomes the victim of a nuclear attack will act
like an envious individual: that she or he will prefer the outcome that both states are destroyed to
the outcome of defeat. But surely we can imagine
that the leader who has to take the fatal decision
to launch a retaliatory strike will not always be
capable of willingly ordering the destruction of the
lives of tens of millions of people out of revenge?
A retaliatory nuclear strike therefore can never be
a certainty, only a possibility. But if this is correct,
then the credibility of the deterrent is undermined
in advance and has thereby lost any effectiveness it
might have had. Schelling recognized this problem
and argued that the threat of inadvertent war and
its consequent horrors—the suggestion that a
disastrous all-out war can be the result of an accident, panic, or misapprehension, that there might
be no time to reflect coolly on the fatal decision to
launch the retaliatory strike—will lend the deterrent its credibility and convince the potential
aggressor not to attack. In view of the possible terrible consequences, a “threat that leaves something
to chance” will be credible, when in other circumstances it would fail.
Accepting Schelling’s argument, a state i will be
successful in deterring another state j from attacking i, if i has been able to convince j that a surprise
attack or a preemptive strike on i might lead to a
devastating counterattack. In this situation, state i
must have succeeded in convincing state j, first that
the latter will never be able to destroy in a first
strike i’s capability to strike back and inflict unacceptable damage on j, and second that j can never
be sure that i will not use this second-strike capability in retaliation. If state j for its part has also
succeeded in acquiring a second-strike capability,
as well as in convincing i of the possibility that it
might be used in retaliation, then both states find
themselves in a situation of what has come to be
known as mutually assured destruction (MAD).
The term and its acronym were introduced in
1964. Originally, the concept was to be known as
assured retaliation, but as Lawrence Freedman has
pointed out, “this was felt to be too bland. The
harshness of the term and the inescapable tragedy
described in its definition were intentional.” Later,
the term mutual or common deterrence was also
introduced to emphasize that states that find themselves in this situation have a common interest in
avoiding their annihilation.
A balance of deterrence can only work if it is
stable. This means that the retaliatory capacity of
the states must remain more or less invulnerable to
a surprise attack. The states will therefore constantly worry about the consequences of possible
technological advances that may increase the effectiveness of the other’s first-strike weapons and
thereby the vulnerability of its own second-strike
force. This susceptibility to technological innovation is one of the reasons that induced Wohlstetter
to speak of a “delicate” balance of terror. Were
one of the states able to steal a march on the other
in greatly strengthening its first-strike forces as a
result of a technological breakthrough, then this
would have a highly destabilizing effect on the balance, and increase the chances of nuclear war. The
more vulnerable the second-strike capability of the
one state becomes, the more that will be tempted
Deterrence Theory
to use the capability before the state is destroyed
by the other state’s superior first-strike forces.
Common deterrence can only work if the states
involved, even in case of an all-out surprise attack,
will always have the capability of destroying the
cities, industries, and the population of the attacker.
Second-strike weapons must be not precision
weapons, but weapons of indiscriminate destruction. Seen from this perspective, a stable balance of
terror, in Schelling’s words, “is simply a massive
and modern version of an ancient institution: the
exchange of hostages . . . a tacit understanding
backed by a total exchange of all conceivable hostages.” Although this analogy, as Michael Walzer
has shown, is not fully correct, because hostages
are kept under restraint, whereas the peoples of the
states that mutually deter one another are able to
lead normal lives (in the case of the United States,
they were even free to emigrate), it has to be admitted that mutual deterrence can only work if both
parties accept that their societies should not be
protected against a second strike. For this reason,
the attempts by the United States and the Soviet
Union in the 1960s to build an anti-ballistic missile
(ABM) system to protect cities from the effects of
an enemy attack, as well as the U.S. Strategic
Defense Initiative (SDI) in the 1980s to develop a
system to detect, track, and shoot down incoming
rockets, apart from being not feasible, flatly contradicted the logic of common deterrence.
Although it is perfectly understandable that states
finding themselves in a situation of mutual deterrence will want to protect their populations as
much as possible against the disastrous consequences of a nuclear war that may be the result
of miscalculation or accident, mutual deterrence
can only be effective if they refrain from taking
such measures. Strategic thinkers or “defense
intellectuals” may stoically resign themselves to
this unpalatable truth, but one can readily understand why this is too much to ask from the leaders and the general populace of the states that
face MAD.
Already in the early 1950s, in the wake of the
launch of the “New Look” by the Eisenhower
administration in an attempt to get defense spending under control by cutting conventional forces
and relying more on the U.S. capacity for “massive
retaliation,” U.S. defense analysts came to realize
that an exclusive reliance on vast thermonuclear
183
forces to deter acts of aggression would be untenable. In view of the terrifying consequences, the
use of nuclear weapons is only conceivable in situations where the vital interests of the state are at
stake, which means that a state possessing only an
arsenal of nuclear weapons would be powerless to
deal with minor acts of aggression, in particular
when the latter were committed by an adversary
that possesses a second-strike capacity. To counter
limited aggression, a state must have the capability
to fight with success a defensive war on the lower
rungs of the escalation ladder with conventional
and perhaps even battlefield nuclear weapons.
This is the doctrine of graduate deterrence. A state
that possesses nuclear weapons must have at the
same time the weapons that enable it to repel
aggression at any level lower than all-out nuclear
war. Many have noted with Hans Morgenthau
that this doctrine seems to spell disaster. Does it
not follow that nuclear states will be more prepared to get involved in low-level armed conflicts,
which subsequently escalate to higher and higher
levels, thereby increasing the chances of a thermonuclear war, the prevention of which was the
purpose of the enterprise in the first place? The
conclusion therefore can be no other than that the
same rule applies to these conventional and tactical nuclear weapons as to the nuclear weapons
making up a state’s second-strike capability—they
are there to deter but not to use.
The understanding that a state possessing
nuclear weapons will only use these weapons in
situations where its vital interests are at stake is
highly relevant in the case where a nuclear state
has not excluded the possibility that it will use its
nuclear weapons to punish an attack on a nonnuclear ally, again particularly when that ally is
attacked by a state that also has a second-strike
capacity. Is this “extended deterrence” credible?
This question lay at the heart of many disputes
between the United States and its West European
allies during the cold war, once it had become clear
that U.S. territory had become vulnerable to a
Soviet nuclear attack, at first with long-range
bombers and later on with missiles. Was Western
Europe vital enough to the United States for it to
use nuclear weapons to punish Soviet aggression,
thereby risking a nuclear counterattack on its own
territory? Seen from this angle, the primary function of the U.S. troops and weapons stationed on
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Deterrent Threats
West European soil was not so much that they
could contribute to a successful defense were
Soviet troops to cross the Elbe River, but that they
acted as a threat that leaves something to chance.
They were hostages, this time in the true sense of
the word, to the U.S. commitment to Western
Europe, and the Soviet Union could never be sure
that U.S. anxiety and anger about their fate following a Soviet invasion might not trigger a fatal
nuclear response.
Edward Carr observed in 1939 that war “lurks
in the background of international politics,” and it
should be added that war has retreated even further into the background after World War II, at
least as far as the relationships between the nuclear
powers are concerned. In a situation of common
deterrence, strategy is no longer necessarily related
to the actual use of the means of violence. For
these powers, the distinction between strategy and
politics (diplomacy) has disappeared. In the nuclear
age, arms are for influencing potential opponents
rather than for defeating them, and this perception
led Kenneth Waltz to the conclusion that, as far as
the spread of nuclear arms is concerned, “more
may be better.”
Robert H. Lieshout
See also Extended Deterrence; Mutually Assured
Destruction
Further Readings
Freedman, L. (1989). The evolution of nuclear strategy.
London: Macmillan.
Schelling, T. C. (1980). The strategy of conflict.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Waltz, K. N. (1981). The spread of nuclear weapons:
More may be better. London: International Institute
for Strategic Studies.
Wohlstetter, A. (1959). The delicate balance of terror.
Foreign Affairs, 37(2), 21–33.
DETERRENT THREATS
The fundamental idea of deterrence is simple
enough. A party is deterred from some action
when it decides against the action to avoid a
response threatened by a second party. Note the
two conditions: (1) the threat by the second party
must be explicit and contingent on the initial
action and (2) absent the threat, the first party
must prefer to carry out the action. Deterrence has
long played a role in human life—for instance in
law enforcement systems designed to deter crime,
in the efforts of parents to deter children from
misbehaving, and in policies of empires aimed at
deterring attacks on their possessions and client
states. Also common is the two-sided variant of
deterrence, in which two sides reciprocally deter
each other, as in an armed standoff.
Deterrence has always been a fundamental
component of international politics. But at the end
of World War II, the demonstrated power of
nuclear weapons persuaded many thinkers that the
success of deterrence was now of ultimate priority:
the proper aim of deterrence based on the threat of
nuclear retaliation seemed to be to ensure that the
threat never had to be implemented. Success in
deterrence was declared to be the keystone of U.S.
foreign policy, and U.S. military strategist Bernard
Brodie famously suggested that the main purpose
of the military had been to win wars, but from
now on its main purpose is to avert them.
But deterrence based on a threat that cannot be
carried out seemed problematic. The debate about
rationality and deterrence began in the decade
immediately following World War II when the rapidly developing field of game theory was exploring
the concept of rational choice, defined as choosing
alternatives that are most in the chooser’s own interest. To see the terms of the debate, represent unilateral deterrence as an extensive-form game shown in
Figure 1, where the first party is called Initiator and
the second Defender. Deterrence occurs when the
Initiator chooses Do Not Act, and the outcome is
Status Quo (SQ). Other possible outcomes are Revision (Rev), if Initiator acts but Defender does not
respond, and Confrontation (Conf), if Initiator acts
and then Defender responds. To understand deterrence, one must understand when each possible
sequence of actions will be selected.
Before addressing the conditions for the success
of deterrence, we make the assumptions that
(A1) Initiator prefers Revision to Status Quo.
(A2) Defender prefers Status Quo to Revision.
Deterrent Threats
Confrontation
Respond
Act
185
Defender
Initiator
Do not act
Do not
respond
Revision
Status Quo
Figure 1
Unilateral Deterrence
Without (A1), there is nothing to deter. Without
(A2), there is no reason to deter it. Consistent with
these assumptions, Initiator is a revisionist state
and Defender a status-quo power.
For games such as unilateral deterrence, game
theory recommends a solution concept called subgame perfect equilibrium, which models each
player (party) as making choices to achieve its
most preferred available outcome, on the assumption that any subsequent choices will be made
according to this same principle. Assuming rationality and full information, choices depend solely
on each player’s relative preferences over the three
possible outcomes: barring ties, Initiator has three
preference orderings consistent with (A1), and
Defender has three consistent with (A2). As it happens, there is always a unique subgame perfect
equilibrium, which is shown in Table 1. In particular, the outcome is Status Quo when Defender
prefers Confrontation to Revision and Initiator
prefers Status Quo to Confrontation. Thus, for
deterrence to succeed, Defender’s threat must satisfy two conditions:
(C1) Credibility: Defender prefers Confrontation
to Revision.
(C2) Capability: Initiator prefers Status Quo to
Confrontation.
Here, credibility means that, should the situation
actually arise, Defender would prefer to execute the
threat, and capability means that Initiator prefers
that the threat not be carried out; in other words,
the threatened response would hurt Initiator.
For the unilateral deterrence game, game theory
has a second, weaker solution concept. A Nash
equilibrium is a pattern of planned choices (a
“strategy profile”) that, if anticipated by all parties,
motivates each party to choose according to the
pattern, in its own interest. The pattern (Do Not
Act, Respond) is a Nash equilibrium if condition
Table 1
Unilateral deterrence (Figure 1) outcomes
consistent with (A1) and (A2)
Initiator’s
Preference
Defender’s
Preference
Outcome
Conf Rev SQ
Conf SQ Rev
Conf
Conf Rev SQ
SQ Conf Rev
Conf
Conf Rev SQ
SQ Rev Conf
Rev
Rev Conf SQ
Conf SQ Rev
Conf
Rev Conf SQ
SQ Conf Rev
Conf
Rev Conf SQ
SQ Rev Conf
Rev
Rev SQ Conf
Conf SQ Rev
SQ
Rev SQ Conf
SQ Conf Rev
SQ
Rev SQ Conf
SQ Rev Conf
Rev
(C2) holds, and does not depend on (C1). Thus,
the Nash equilibrium analysis says that deterrence
works as long as the threat is capable, without
regard to credibility. The crucial idea is that, if
Initiator believes Defender’s threat, then its capability is sufficient to deter Initiator.
For nuclear deterrence immediately after World
War II, and throughout the cold war, that was
exactly the issue. Many arguments were advanced
to explain the remarkable stability of deterrence
despite the lack of credibility of the threat of nuclear
retaliation. Structural theorists argued that broad
structural parameters, such as the bipolar nature of
the system and the nuclear retaliatory threat, were
responsible. The missile war model essentially sidestepped the credibility issue, deriving stability conditions from the balance of offensive and defensive
capabilities. The simultaneous 2 2 chicken game
was posited as the fundamental model of bilateral
deterrence, combining actions and threats; the
decision-theory approach considered a continuous
186
Deutsch, Karl
sequence of these games, and calculated optimal
choices based on a model of the opponent’s decision
making (rather than the assumption of rationality).
Thomas Schelling, in particular, was the first to
emphasize the non–zero-sum nature of the chicken
model, and his ideas of making threats credible
were developed into so-called manipulative bargaining theory, which included such strategies as
manipulating one’s own payoffs (to make a threat
more credible), and even feigning irrationality.
Schelling also proposed the threat-that-leavessomething-to-chance, an idea that was eventually
incorporated into game-theoretic analyses of deterrence as probabilistic beliefs that a threat is beyond
control and may therefore be executed. These
game models showed that deterrence is an outcome that rational players might attain, though
they did not explain why the players might construct such a situation. Finally, perfect deterrence
theory offered a new and unified model of all
deterrence, making it fully rational and replacing
the credibility requirement with uncertainty about
the other side’s true preferences. Deterrence, Frank
Zagare and Marc Kilgour argued, is based on the
Initiator’s probabilistic belief that the Defender
prefers to execute the threat; nuclear deterrence is
different in degree but not in kind.
Marc Kilgour
See also Chicken Games; Conventional Deterrence;
Deterrence Theory; Extended Deterrence; Mutually
Assured Destruction; Rationality; Threats
Further Readings
Schelling, T. C. (1980). The strategy of conflict.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Zagare, F. C., & Kilgour, D. M. (2000). Perfect
deterrence. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press.
DEUTSCH, KARL (1912–1992)
One of the foremost U.S. political scientists of the
post–World War II period was Karl Deutsch,
whose work helped expand the frontiers of knowledge of politics and political development. The
creation of a network of scholars, a lifelong dedication to teaching, a commitment to data-based
research, and the publication of numerous academic works were among Deutsch’s major contributions to the field of social sciences.
Karl Wolfgang Deutsch was born on July 21,
1912, to Maria Scharf Deutsch and Martin Deutsch
in Prague. Karl had a brilliant academic record
from German Staatsrealgymnasium, the German
University, and Charles University in Prague, where
he took a law degree. An outspoken opponent of
Nazism, he and his wife Ruth Slonitz could not
remain in Nazi-dominated Czechoslovakia of the
post-Munich era, so they emigrated to the United
States in 1938. Deutsch enrolled at Harvard for
further studies and joined government service after
the U.S. entry into World War II. As a member of
the International Secretariat of the San Francisco
Conference of 1945, he participated in the creation
of the United Nations. He began his teaching
career at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT). Deutsch also worked on his doctoral dissertation, Nationalism and Social Communication,
at Harvard and published scholarly articles. In
1952, he was appointed a full professor of history
and political science at MIT. His teaching assignments spanned reputed institutions and universities
in the United States and abroad. Deutsch was with
the Center for Research on World Political Institutions at Princeton University; the Center for
Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Palo
Alto, California; the University of Chicago; and
Yale University before becoming Stanfield Professor of International Peace at Harvard.
Deutsch’s first major academic work was an
empirical study of West Germany’s revival after
1945. He used quantitative methods to try to test
hypotheses in the social sciences. His book Nationalism and Social Communication: An Inquiry Into
the Foundations of Nationality, based on his doctoral dissertation, was truly interdisciplinary. His
model of nationalism was valuable for research on
nation building and international integration.
Deutsch collaborated widely with colleagues from
many disciplines. In Political Community and the
North Atlantic Area, Deutsch explained how the
interaction between the elites and masses in the form
of communications was vital in development of
nationalism. His emphasis was more on community formation than on union of separate units.
Dictatorship
Deustch is best known as a systems theorist popular in political science in the 1950s and 1960s.
More mathematical than many other systems theorists, he applied cybernetics and the study of
communications and controls to politics using
simulation models and system dynamics in verifying different propositions pertaining to social,
political, and economic problems. The application
of mathematical analysis opened new ground in
the study of politics. His best-known work is The
Nerves of Government, which examined communication and control in political systems.
Patit Paban Mishra
See also Nationalism
Further Readings
Deutsch, K. W. (1963). The nerves of government:
Models of political communication and control.
London: Free Press of Glencoe.
Deutsch, K. W. (1966). Nationalism and social
communication: An inquiry into the foundations of
nationality. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Merritt, R. L., Russett, B. M., & Dahl, R. A. (2001). Karl
Wolfgang Deutsch: July 21, 1912–November 1, 1992.
Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
DICTATORSHIP
Dictatorship is an autocratic form of governance
under which the ruling authority is responsible to
no one for his or her deeds. The term is used synonymously (although not necessarily accurately)
with the terms totalitarianism, tyranny, despotism, and absolutism. Dictatorial regimes have
historically been responsible for some of the most
malevolent, socially injurious actions ever perpetrated by humankind. This entry highlights some
of the characteristics of dictatorships, how they
have historically manifested themselves, and the
implications for the evolution of human rights.
The term dictatorship refers to an autocratic
style of rule or governance. It is distinguished from
the term totalitarianism in that the latter term
includes reference to the degree of control (namely,
over the totality of social existence), which typically
187
includes the means of production and labor. The
etymology of the term dictatorship locates its origin in the early Roman constitution, which provided for a temporary office of exceptional power
for use in emergencies. When considered in its
original Roman context, Juan J. Linz notes that
dictatorships cannot be identified until they have
disbanded, because the classification of a dictatorship is contingent on its temporary status. A less
restrictive definition is provided in the Oxford
English Dictionary, which defines a dictator as “a
ruler or governor whose word is law; an absolute
ruler of a state.” Perhaps the quintessential example of a modern dictator in this context was Adolf
Hitler, whose word was given the full force of
codified law subsequent to the German Reichstag’s
passage of the Enabling Act in 1933.
Scholars have recognized that there are varying
degrees of dictatorship and usually classify them
according to the extent of control they maintain
over the daily affairs of their citizenry. Jeanne
Kirkpatrick identified one end of the continuum as
representing “totalitarian dictatorships,” which
are characterized as regimes that are focused on
massive intervention in all areas of social and economic life. These are typically motivated by some
underlying utopian goal and are exemplified by the
dictatorial regimes of the former Soviet Union and
Nazi Germany. At the opposite end of the spectrum of dictatorships are less repressive traditional
autocracies. These regimes interfere minimally
with conventional social relations, typically doing
so only to the extent that it helps ruling elites
capitalize on the fruits of their status, often by
draining state financial reserves to increase their
personal wealth. Consequently, they are sometimes
referred to as “tin-pot” regimes. Traditional autocracies are also relatively politically unstable in
comparison with more repressive dictatorial
regimes, which is unfortunate considering that
they have historically been less antagonistic toward
nations founded on democratic ideals. Traditional
autocracies flourished in the Middle East during
the late 20th century, and are exemplified in the
dictatorial regimes of Ferdinand Marcos and
Manuel Noriega.
Some scholars have noted that the economic
motivations underlying political decision making
in democratic regimes is qualitatively similar to
the decision-making process that occurs under
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Diplomacy
dictatorship. These scholars note that dictators do
not repress merely for the sake of repression, but
to maintain and increase their political power. All
governments provide services, including dictatorships, in the form of protection from potentially
hostile regimes as well as funding public works
projects (e.g., roadway construction). Ronald Wintrobe found that the type of dictatorial regime
affected how it responded to improving economic
conditions, whereby traditional autocracies reduced
their level of repression whereas totalitarian regimes
acted contrarily.
One of the distinguishing features of a dictatorship is the degree to which power is monolithically
located in the hands of few ruling elites. Even
where there exists a proliferation of government
institutions, within dictatorships they derive their
power from central authorities. Another characteristic of dictatorships involves their use of complex
ideologies that justify the historic legitimacy of the
regime and are used to interpret and understand
contemporary events. Within a dictatorship, political participation is usually possible only to the
degree that one joins the party ideologically
favored by the regime.
Another hallmark of dictatorship is the emphasis leaders place on controlling dissenting and contrary political perspectives. The degree of control
can range from supervision and control of media
outlets to outright suppression, with potentially
dire consequences for nonconforming individuals.
Dictatorships maintain elaborate police forces
whose duties typically include the monitoring and
censorship of dissidents seen as potentially challenging to the legitimacy of the regime. The consequences for those who criticize dictatorial regimes
from within can be dreadful and include torture,
confinement in concentration camps, forced labor,
and outright murder. In cases where dissidents
have been prosecuted via judicial proceedings for
their alleged misdeeds, dictatorial regimes have
occasionally concealed their intent by facilitating
elaborate “show trials.” These procedures involve
the forgery of an actual judicial procedure to produce the foregone conclusion of guilt. Of recent
international interest is the trend toward making
dissidents (and their families) disappear. These
cases only garner attention by virtue of their
unusual lack of fanfare coupled with the stifled suffering and questioning of confused acquaintances.
Dictators are historically responsible to no
domestic or international entities for their actions
and policies, ruling with the absolute authority of
functional deities. When considered as a class, dictators have been responsible for instigating, promoting, and participating in many of the most
socially injurious actions ever committed.
Douglas J. Dallier
See also Absolutism; Arendt, Hannah; Authority;
Exploitation; Fascism; Ideology; Military in
Government; Responsibility; Totalitarianism
Further Readings
Arendt, H. (1958). The origins of totalitarianism. New
York: Meridian.
Friedrich, C. J., & Brzezinski, Z. K. (1965). Totalitarian
dictatorship and autocracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Kirkpatrick, J. J. (1982). Dictatorship and double
standards: Rationalism and realism in politics. New
York: Simon & Schuster.
Linz, J. (1975). Totalitarian and authoritarian regimes. In
F. Greenstein & N. Polsby (Eds.), Handbook of
political science. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
Wintrobe, R. (1990). The tinpot and the totalitarian: An
economic theory of dictatorship. American Political
Science Review, 84(September), 849–872.
DIPLOMACY
Diplomacy is not an unequivocal concept and can
be simply defined as the conduct of international
relations by negotiation. Alternately, diplomacy is
characterized as the communication system of the
international society, the peaceful conduct of relations among political entities, or, in more existential
terms, mediation between estranged individuals,
groups, or entities. Whereas the very word diplomacy might be imprecise, one might distinguish
two different perspectives on diplomacy in the
scholarly literature, both of which relate to
power—yet in contradictory ways.
One perspective, closely associated with classic
realism, is to regard diplomacy as an asset of
states. Diplomacy then becomes a component, or
reflection, of state power. Another perspective
Diplomacy
views diplomacy as an international institution,
that is, a relatively stable collection of norms and
rules that prescribe behavioral roles, constrain
activity, and shape expectations. Diplomacy is then
located at the level of international society rather
than of individual states, and is seen to temper,
rather than reflect, state power.
Hans Morgenthau is emblematic of the first
perspective. In his Politics Among Nations, he
includes “the quality of diplomacy” among elements of national power. Considering all the other
factors that determine national power as the raw
material of power, Morgenthau argues that the
quality of a nation’s diplomacy combines these different factors into an integrated whole, turning
potentialities into actual power. To Morgenthau,
the conduct of a nation’s foreign affairs by its diplomats is for national power in peace what military
strategy and tactics by its military leaders are for
national power in war.
Diplomacy, in this view, is included among, and
depends on, other, more material capabilities;
hence, it reflects state power. However, the quality
of diplomacy may modify the value of other elements of state power. Thus, skillful diplomacy can
increase the power of a nation beyond what one
would expect it to be in view of other, material
factors. Conversely, poor diplomacy may prevent
otherwise powerful states from making full use of
their power potentials. As an example of an outclassed state in material terms wielding power
chiefly by virtue of its brilliant diplomacy, Morgenthau cites France from 1890 to 1914. Furthermore, he argues that British power covaried with
the quality of British diplomacy, and that the first
decades of skillful U.S. diplomacy were followed
by a long period of mediocrity, or even ineptitude.
Raymond Aron, another classic realist, expresses
a similar dual understanding of diplomacy as an
element of state power. On the one hand, diplomacy implies the use of economic, psycho-political,
and violent means and the choice of appropriate
means among them; on the other hand, “pure”
diplomacy relies on persuasion alone, without economic and political pressure or violence. Yet, Aron
doubts that pure diplomacy exists. To be sure,
states may make every effort to convince both
adversaries and onlookers that they want to persuade or convince, not to constrain, and adversaries may have the illusion of freedom, even when
189
they are in fact yielding to force. Yet, persuasion
that is not backed up by power has little chance of
success, according to Aron.
The other, institutionalist perspective on diplomacy is primarily associated with the so-called
English School. Adherents of this school argue, in
opposition to realists, that beyond an international
system, however anarchic, there exists an international society, reflected in certain international
institutions with concomitant norms, rules, and
practices. Diplomacy is seen as one of these institutions. Martin Wight characterizes diplomacy as
“the master-institution” of international relations,
and other authors in the English School tradition
count diplomacy among the central international
institutions along with sovereignty, war, and international law.
As one of the major institutions of the society of
states, diplomacy is seen to have a moderating
influence on state power, “taming the sovereigns,”
in Kalevi Holsti’s words. Diplomacy is one crucial
component in the set of institutional arrangements
that for the most part allows states to coexist
peacefully and to interact in rule-bound environments that enhance the opportunities for mutual
communication, trade, and flows of people and
ideas. By providing links of communication and
representation between states and regulating their
day-to-day intercourse, diplomacy sets limits on
the unrestricted use of state power.
If diplomacy is viewed as a “thin” international
institution, involving merely rules of coexistence,
allowing political units “to live and let live,” an
institutionalist perspective can be combined with
the realist conceptualization of diplomacy as a
reflection of state power. However, if diplomacy is
viewed as a “thick” institution, involving a shared
commitment to peace among diplomats, guided by
raison d’état and by raison de système, it serves as
a restriction on state power.
At issue is the relationship between diplomacy
and the use of force. Whereas diplomacy has
been characterized as the art of convincing without using force, some students of contemporary
international relations have coined the phrase
coercive diplomacy to denote the use of threats
or limited force to persuade opponents not to
change the status quo in their favor or to call off
or undo an encroachment. In this view, the use
of military power can be an integral part of
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Discipline
diplomacy. In one sense, therefore, diplomacy
and war can be seen as complementary rather
than contrary institutions.
Historically, symbolic power, or precedence, has
played a prominent role in diplomacy. Early European diplomacy was full of endless struggles for
precedence and crises caused by intended or unintended slights between diplomats. In the 19th century, diplomatic rules that neutralized the issue of
precedence were initiated and gradually institutionalized. Thus, precedence among envoys is now
established according to the date they have presented their credentials, disregarding the power of
the state they represent, and alphabetical order is
used by international organizations and conferences to avoid precedence issues in seating arrangements, treaty signatures, and the like.
Christer Jönsson
See also Anarchy in International Relations; Gunboat
Diplomacy
Further Readings
George, A. L. (1991). Forceful persuasion: Coercive
diplomacy as an alternative to war. Washington, DC:
U.S. Institute of Peace Press.
Holsti, K. (2004). Taming the sovereigns: Institutional
change in international politics. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Jönsson, C., & Hall, M. (2005). Essence of diplomacy.
Houndmills, UK: Palgrave Macmillan.
Raymond, A. (1966). Peace and war: A theory of
international relations. New York: Praeger.
DISCIPLINE
Discipline is a cognate of power related primarily
to self-control, or power over oneself. Whoever
has power over his or her self has discipline. By
extension, discipline relates to power over others
in the sense of training or having instilled training
in others such that one is able to successfully command them. An army that obeys has discipline.
Although they are distinct, obedience is sometimes
confused with discipline. The sort of discipline
exhibited by armies involves a command–obey
structure containing two distinct parties and a
hierarchical arrangement of some sort. In its
wider senses, for example when scholarship or
the sciences are referred to as disciplines, discipline implies obedience to rules and expectations,
but need not imply two parties nor any sort of
hierarchy.
Self-control has usually been understood as the
ability to command and obey oneself. Another
understanding takes self-control as the ability to
make oneself fully submit to an authority, such as
a leader, community, or scripture. The latter has
been common among military and religious orders,
whereas the former has been a prime area of concern for philosophers.
For many philosophers, such as Aristotle and
Niccolò Machiavelli, self-control is a prerequisite
for attaining and maintaining power over others.
For Aristotle, it is required for gaining mental and
physical skills in general, but is especially crucial
for acquiring a virtuous, well-rounded character.
The virtues are conceived as a set of habits, and
Aristotle believed it was possible to train oneself to
have virtuous habits. For example, if one talks too
much or too little, then to achieve the virtuous
mean between them requires restraint from speaking in the first case and motivation to speak in the
second. Repeated application of the proper principle will yield the habit of speaking a moderate,
virtuous amount. For other thinkers, such as Friedrich Nietzsche, independence of mind requires selfdiscipline, because “he who cannot obey himself
will obey someone else.”
For Machiavelli, the first task of a would-be
sovereign is to raise and discipline a militia. The
militia will tend to reflect the character of its
sovereign even more than will the populace at
large, and thus an obedient militia requires a
leader who publicly exhibits exquisite selfcontrol, even if he or she privately lacks it. Similarly, leaders of monastic orders must exhibit a
high degree of self-control in the sense of total
submission to monastic principles, even if they
privately lack it.
Bryan Finken
See also Ability; Aristotle; Capability; Control; Hierarchy;
Machiavelli, Niccolò; Nietzsche, Friedrich; Power To
and Power Over; Religious Power; Submissive;
Subordination
Discourse
Further Readings
Aristotle. (1984). Ethics. In J. Barnes (Ed.), The complete
works of Aristotle. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press.
Machiavelli, N. (2005). The prince. (P. Bondanella,
Trans.). New York: Oxford University Press.
DISCOURSE
The notion and analysis of discourse has gained
increasing prominence within the social sciences.
The linguistic turn that took place in the 1960s
and 1970s reflected and spurred a growing scientific interest in the role of language beyond its
function as a means of expression or representation. The structural linguistics of Ferdinand de
Saussure showed how our use of language in daily
interactions (parôle) is formed by underlying language structures (langue). The theory of speech
acts advanced by John Austin claimed that the
utterance of particular statements, under certain
circumstances, can be seen as a way of acting and
doing things. Following these lines of argument, it
was increasingly recognized that language and
social action are intertwined in what Ludwig
Wittgenstein termed language games. Actions and
language are interrelated in a multiplicity of ways,
and our actions are meaningful and shaped by
language-mediated conceptions of ourselves and
the world we live in.
In the 1980s, the linguistic turn was further
deepened by poststructuralist theories emphasizing
the constitutive role of incompletely structured
systems of signs, psychoanalytic theories claiming
that the unconscious is structured like a language,
and post-Marxist theories interested in the ways
power and domination are exercised and sustained
through ideological discourse. The underlying
assumption of the new theories of discourse is that
meaning and identity are not determined by an
underlying essence such as God, reason, human
nature, or the laws of capital accumulation. Rather,
social meanings and political identities are constructed within discourses defined as more or less
sedimented systems of rules, relations, and articulations that are shaped and reshaped in and through
power struggles. Hence, it becomes important to
analyze how particular discourses structure the
191
terrain of social and political action, how these discourses are created, and how they can be transformed. How, for instance, can it be that the NATO
campaign in Kosovo was referred to as a “humanitarian intervention” rather than as “military aggression”? How can it be that “welfare” has increasingly
been seen as a “problem” and an “expenditure”
rather than as a “policy goal”? How can it be that
social clients and psychiatric patients tend to be conceived as “self-responsible citizens in need of empowerment” rather than as “objects of paternalistic
governance and therapeutic treatment”? Discourse
analysis aims to answer these sorts of questions.
The analysis of discourse reveals a “fourth face
of power” added to the three faces of power identified by Steven Lukes. Hence, power is not merely
exercised by strong and resourceful actors who are
capable of prevailing in an open conflict, suppressing conflicts by controlling the political agenda, or
manipulating the other actors’ perceptions of their
interests so as to avoid conflicts altogether. There
is also a structural power that cannot be led back
to a conscious, willful, and self-interested actor.
Rather than being masterminded by strategic
actors, structural power defines how the actors
perceive themselves, each other, and the entire terrain in which they are operating. Structural power
defines the conceptual framework, the rules of the
game, and the identity of the actors, but that does
not mean that the actors are reduced to passive
bearers of the discursive structure. The structural,
or discursive, notion of power does not eliminate
autonomous agency. In contrast, the notion of
power aims to mobilize the free action of social
and political actors within a discursive framework
that shapes their action in certain ways and
thereby ensures conformity.
The Latinate root of discourse refers to the
practice of running here and there (dis “in different directions” and currere “to run”). That is
precisely what we do in conversation, dissertation,
and textual practices, which today constitute the
common meaning of discourse. We cover a certain
ground, topic, or issue by moving back and forth
and combining old and new contents and expressions. We cover the world with text.
In linguistics, discourse is defined as a textual
fragment larger than the sentence. But as a result
of Louis Hjelmslev’s and Roland Barthes’ formalization of structural linguistic, which purged it of
192
Discourse
all reference to phonetic or semantic substance,
everything from military parades and TV commercials to political demonstrations and public administration reforms can be analyzed in terms of the
construction of particular discursive forms. The
expansion of the notion of discourse to include all
kinds of social practices led to a growing appreciation of the formative role of power and politics. For
whereas specific language systems tend to be quite
stable over time because the individual speakers
have no interest in changing the meaning of words,
the broader discursive systems of language-mediated
practice will be subject to ruptures and transformations caused by political conflicts and struggles.
Theories of Discourse
Discourse theory developed as a cross-disciplinary
attempt to combine and integrate central insights
from linguistics and psychology with central
insights from social and political science. Hence,
there were linguists and psychologists who aimed
to analyze the social causes and impact of a particular language usage and there were social and
political scientists who sought to analyze how language was used to create ideological misrepresentations of social reality. The first group of linguistic
discourse analysts includes different kinds of sociolinguistics, content analysis, conversation analysis, and discourse psychology. Sociolinguistics
analyzes the relation between our socioeconomic
status and our vocabulary and linguistic code.
Content analysis analyzes our usage of particular
words, word classes, and word combinations in
order to identify particular patterns. Conversation
analysis focuses on the organization of linguistic
interaction in formal or informal settings. Finally,
discourse psychology analyzes the strategies of the
speakers and how they aim to achieve particular
objectives by producing a shift in the framing of
the conversation and in the style in which it is
deployed. Although they clearly offer fruitful tools
for analyzing spoken and written language, the
linguistic theories of discourse generally fail to
relate the linguistic analysis to questions about
politics, ideology, and power.
The second group of critical linguists and Marxist
ideology theorists depart from linguistic discourse
analysis by claiming that language cannot be
analyzed independently of its social and political
function. The analytical focus is on how discourse, through its combination of different concepts, phrases, and images, produces a particular
representation of social reality. The aim is to
show how language is used to produce ideological misrepresentations that help sustain the power
of the ruling elite. However, despite the explicit
attempt to ground the critique of ideology in a
linguistic analysis of concrete discourses (newspaper articles, political speeches, etc.), the attempt
of the critical linguists and ideology theorists to
develop a theory of discourse failed because it
remained trapped within a Marxist theory of ideology that presupposed a privileged access to the
objective reality that is hidden by ideological
misrepresentations.
Critical Discourse Analysis
Critical discourse analysis (CDA), as developed
most consistently by Norman Fairclough, is far
more successful than its predecessors in balancing
linguistic analysis with the analysis of power and
ideology. CDA expands the notion of discourse to
include all linguistically mediated practices. Social
practice is discursive insofar as it contributes to a
semiotic production or interpretation of text. Discursive practices are ideological to the extent that
they contain linguistic expressions that we take for
granted and that, therefore, contribute to naturalizing social relations. Social and political actors
use ideological discourse to sustain their own
power or to challenge the hegemonic power of
other actors. Hence, ideological discourse plays a
key role in maintaining and transforming societal
relations of power. However, whereas CDA clearly
demonstrates the power effects of discourse, it
remains unclear how we should understand the
relation between discursive practices and the nondiscursive context. Actually, there is a tendency to
reduce discourse to a linguistic mediation of causal
powers embedded in socioeconomic structures.
This significantly reduces the explanatory power
of discourse analysis.
Foucault
The distinction between the discursive and the
nondiscursive comes from the early works of the
French philosopher Michel Foucault. However,
Discourse
Foucault advances a theory of discourse that is
quite different from the one developed by CDA.
Whereas CDA defines discourse as an empirical
collection of social practices with a semiotic content, Foucault defines discourse as the conditions
of possibility for producing particular statements.
As such, Foucault does not focus on the form and
content of particular utterances, but rather on the
rules of formation guiding and regulating the production of statements. His archaeological analysis
aims to reveal the discursive rules that regulate
what we can talk about; from which position we
can talk about it; which concepts we can use when
talking; and which strategies, in terms of themes
and theories, it is possible to advance in a particular discursive context. Foucault later modified this
quasi-structuralist approach, when, as a part of his
genealogical analysis, he insisted on viewing the
sedimented forms of discourse as both a medium
and outcome of a myriad of power struggles that
take place at all levels of society. To account for
how discourses are produced in and through
power, Foucault developed a new notion of discursive power that transgresses the classical sovereignjuridical notion of power epitomized by Thomas
Hobbes’s Leviathan. Power is not exercised by a
centralized authority that represses the subjects by
means of laws, juridical sanctions, prohibitions,
and taboos. Rather, power is exercised through a
decentered network of mobile forces that aim to
produce particular meanings, identities, and forms
of knowledge.
Laclau and Mouffe
Foucault’s works are one of the main sources of
inspiration for Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe
in their development of a post-Marxist and poststructuralist theory of discourse. Laclau and
Mouffe agree with Foucault’s insistence on the
internal relation between discourse and power,
and they adopt Foucault’s quasi-transcendental
approach to the analysis of discourse. Discourse is
defined as a relational totality of signifying
sequences that provides the conditions of emergence for any meaningful object. Hence, like Kantian transcendentalism, discourse analysis focuses
on the conditions of possibility for our perceptions, utterances, and social actions rather than on
the factual immediacy or hidden meaning of social
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phenomena. However, there are two important
differences between classical transcendentalism
and poststructuralist discourse theory. The first
difference is that discourse theory does not conceive the conditions of possibility as ahistorical
and universal, but emphasizes their historical variability and the impossibility of completely separating the conditions of possibility from what they
make possible. The second difference is that discourse theory does not locate the conditions of
possibility in a subjective mind, but rather sees
them as a part of an incomplete discursive structure that is constantly destabilized by empirical
events and political struggles.
Laclau and Mouffe take issue with, and finally
abandon, Foucault’s distinction between the discursive and the nondiscursive. The distinction is
theoretically unsustainable because it can be shown
that all the examples of apparently nondiscursive
phenomena—such as institutions, architecture,
techniques, production organization, and so on—
are differential orders and therefore discursive.
The distinction between the discursive and the
nondiscursive only occurs in Foucault’s earlier
work. But it is a very unfortunate distinction
because it has permitted discourse theorists with a
Marxist origin to reduce discourse to a regional
instance of ideological articulation, which is somehow determined by extra-discursive structures.
This possibility is eliminated by Laclau and Mouffe,
who argue that discourse, ultimately, is coextensive with the social. All social relations are
discursive and all discursive relations are power
relations.
The assertion of the discursive character of the
social does not—as some might believe—dispense
with the realist claim concerning the independent
existence of a world external to our thoughts, consciousness, and language. However, the only way
we can have access to this existing matter is by
articulating it as a meaningful object with a particular discourse. Matter can be constructed in
different ways within different discursive systems
and the discursive construction of its being will not
put its existence into question. For example, the
head scarf of a young Turkish girl might be constructed as a symbol of religious faith, a fashion
product, or a sign of rebellion against her secularized parents. No matter how the particular textile
is constructed, it is still the same physical object.
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Discourse
Derrida, Lacan, and Žižek
Laclau and Mouffe combine and synthesize
insights from Foucault’s power analytics with
insights from Jacques Derrida and Jacques Lacan.
Derrida’s deconstruction of the notion of centered
and totalizing structures leads us straight to the
notion of discourse. The classical notion of structures depicts a complex totality in which meaning
and identity are determined by a privileged center.
As Derrida shows, however, the idea of a determining center is contradictorily coherent because it
assumes that the center structures the entire structure while escaping any kind of structuration. By
giving up the idea of a determining center, which is
given in its full presence beyond the reach of the
play of meaning, the process of signification extends
almost infinitely. In this situation, everything
becomes discourse in the sense of being constituted
within relational ensembles of signifying sequences
that in the absence of an ultimate center are structured by a multiplicity of mutually substituting
centers that fail to invoke a totalizing closure.
Meaning and identity are partially fixed within
discourses that tend to construct a binary textual
hierarchy between a privileged inside and an inferior and threatening outside. The binary hierarchies
are results of decisions taken in an undecidable terrain in which the constant oscillation between
determinate options cannot be arrested by any
pregiven rule or rationality, but requires a constitutive, contingent, and political intervention that
tends to realize one particular option at the expense
of other options. There might be good reasons for
choosing this option, but it is impossible to provide
an ultimate ground for the decision, which will
always be marked by a certain undecidability. The
undecidable character of the social meaning and
identity is revealed by deconstruction that shows
that the inferior outside of a privileged essence is
constitutive of the inside. For example, it can be
demonstrated that the celebrated reign of the free
market requires heavy state intervention to create
and sustain a more or less free market.
Whereas Derrida’s works can help us understand the contingent construction of discourse,
Slavoj Žižek’s version of Lacanian psychoanalytic
theory can help us understand the discursive construction of subjectivity. The subject is internal to
the discursive structures, but it should not be
reduced to a decentered assemblage of relatively
fixed subject positions whereby the subject is
hailed as a “woman,” “immigrant,” “consumer”
and “student.” Žižek urges us to account for the
subject before its subjectivation. The subject aims
to find a way of representing itself within the symbolic structure of discourse. However, the symbolic
structure is constantly disrupted by the real, which
is defined as the traumatic kernel of social life that
resists symbolization. The disruption of the symbolic order prevents the reduction of the subject to
yet another structural position within a particular
discourse. The subject emerges as a split subject in
the cracks and fissures of the incomplete structure.
As such, the subject has neither a fully achieved
structural identity nor a complete lack of identity,
but rather has a failed structural identity. In this
situation, the split subject can either lapse into
paralyzing self-denial or attempt to reinvent himself or herself by establishing an illusionary full
identity in and through acts of identification.
Hence, instead of giving in to a self-destructive
alcoholism, an unemployed party functionary from
the former Soviet Union may find comfort, and the
promise of a new order and a fully achieved identity, by means of identifying with the Orthodox
Church, Russian Nationalism, or some other populist cause. Viewed through this analytical lens,
identity is not the cause of the subject’s political
identifications, but rather the result of the split
subject’s identification with an available and credible political imaginary. Social and political imaginaries are structured around tendentially empty
signifiers such as progress, modernization, freedom, the people, and so on, which because of their
conceptual vagueness and ambiguity are capable of
representing different political identities that have
become unified by their common experience of
being negated by disruptive events or enemy forces.
The Role of Hegemony,
Social Antagonism, and Dislocation
Discourses are relational systems of meaning and
identity. According to Laclau and Mouffe, social
identities can be linked either through relations of
difference or through relations of equivalence. The
differential construction of identity stresses the difference between a particular identity and other
identities, whereas as the equivalential construction
of identity emphasizes the “sameness” of different
Discourse
identities that can be constructed through either
metonymy or metaphor. Sometimes the differential
logic prevails as in the modern welfare state that
constructs different social, political, and economic
groups as legitimate differences within an organic
whole. This contrasts with other situations such as
wars, revolutions, and big political upheavals
where the social and political space tends to
become divided into two opposed camps and there
is no place for a middle ground.
Discourses tend to become unified by nodal
points that are defined as tendentially empty signifiers that are not attached to a particular signified
and, therefore, can function to construct a knot of
meaning that partially fixes the meaning of different floating signifiers that are proliferating in the
wake of disruption and crisis. For example, floating signifiers such as regulation, competitiveness,
and state might be partially fixed by being referred
to the master signifier of globalization that tends
to reformulate regulation in terms of liberalization
and market regulation, competitiveness in terms of
structural competitiveness, and the state in terms
of a facilitating state that aims to govern selforganizing actors and networks.
Discourse is a result of articulation that is
defined as a practice that establishes an internal
relation among dissimilar elements such that their
identities are mutually modified. When, for example, liberalism became articulated with democracy,
the result was that the liberal state was democratized and democracy was restricted to the public
sphere, thus exempting the capitalist economy and
the patriarchal family, which were both located in
the private sphere, from the democratic demands
for equality. Articulations that involve the production of political frontiers between friends and
enemies are defined as hegemonic articulations.
Hegemony is an articulatory practice that aims to
construct a political as well as moral intellectual
leadership and thus engages in the struggle for our
hearts and minds. According to Antonio Gramsci,
a hegemonic force must transgress its own narrowly defined interest and construct a collective
will with a national and popular character. Vladimir Lenin saw hegemony as merely the working
class’s political leadership of a tactical alliance of
workers, soldiers, and peasants. The social classes
should strike together, but march separately. By
contrast, Gramsci claimed that the social classes
195
must develop a common political project that blurs
and modifies the original class interests. The hegemonic force must articulate a variety of interests
and demands in a collective will that provides a
particular reading of the sociopolitical problems
and offers a way of solving them in accordance
with cherished norms and values. Gramsci’s
attempt to transgress the class reductionist scheme
of Marxism is hampered by his insistence that only
the fundamental classes—that is, the proletariat
and the bourgeoisie—are capable of exercising
hegemony. This economistic attempt to anchor the
contingent logic of hegemonic articulation in the
economic structures is abandoned by Laclau and
Mouffe, who insist that the economy is an institutionalized discursive terrain that is crisscrossed by
political struggles and power strategies.
Foucault has convincingly demonstrated that
the limits and unity of a hegemonic discourse cannot be constituted with reference to its style,
vocabulary, or objects that are often shared with
other discourses. Neither can it be constituted in
relation to an external element that is different
from the moments within the discourse because in
that case the outside is reduced to being simply one
more difference within the discourse. Therefore,
the construction of the limits and unity of a hegemonic discourse must involve the construction of a
constitutive outside that has no common measure
with the discourse in question, but poses a threat
to its differential order. The construction of a radical and threatening otherness is a result of the
exclusion of discursive elements that are articulated in a chain of equivalence that collapses their
differential character. The chain of equivalence
emphasizes the “sameness” of the excluded elements. But as the number of elements expands, it
becomes clear that the only thing they have in
common is that they constitute a threat to the discursive order from which they are excluded. The
unification and delimitation of a hegemonic discourse through the construction of a radical and
threatening outside is captured by Laclau and
Mouffe’s notion of social antagonism. Social antagonism is neither a “real opposition” where one
physical object clashes with another object; nor is
it a “logical opposition” in which A is contradicted
by non-A. Rather, in both cases, A remains fully A,
whereas in social antagonism A is negated by antiA. In other words, social antagonism unifies a
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Dispositif
hegemonic discourse by constructing an external
enemy that prevents the closure of the discursive
system.
A hegemonic discourse that is unified by a social
antagonism separating the discursive system from
its constitutive and threatening outside can be very
stable over time because it might be able to integrate
new events by turning them into legitimate discursive differences. But precisely because discourses
only manage to produce a partial fixation of meaning and identity, they are bound to come up against
events that they fail to inscribe in their symbolic
order. The failure to integrate, domesticate, and
inscribe new and emerging events will lead to a
complete or partial breakdown of the discursive
system and the proliferation of floating signifiers.
Thus, when faced with the unrepresentable kernel
of social life, the finite and contingent discourses are
dislocated. A good example of dislocation is the
stagflation crisis that hit most of the Western economies in the beginning of the 1970s. The so-called
Keynesian doctrines of economic crisis management
were dislocated by the joint occurrence of rising
unemployment and mounting inflation. Dislocation
reveals the undecidability of the social and opens a
political terrain for hegemonic struggles about how
to heal the rift in the dislocated structure. As such,
dislocation is the condition of possibility for articulation, hegemony, and political transformation.
Discourse is formed by hegemonic articulations,
unified by social antagonisms, and transformed by
political interventions facilitated by structural dislocation. The attempt to suture a dislocated discourse by advancing a new hegemonic project will
always involve some kind of ideological totalization. Ideology does not hide or misrepresent an
objective social reality because social reality is
always already constructed in and through discourse. Rather, what ideology systematically hides
and misrecognizes is the precarious and contingent
character of social meaning and identity that is
rooted in the ultimate undecidability of the social.
Ideology is a totalizing gesture within hegemonic
discourses that aims to present the discursively
constructed meanings and identities as natural,
objective, and given and denies the presence of a
constitutive outside. As such, ideology aims to
efface the traces of power from the social fabric.
Ideology constructs myths that function as simplifying reading principles that aim to make a
complex, chaotic, and dislocated terrain intelligible. Ideological myths are sometimes transformed
into social imaginaries that provide a totalizing
horizon that permits a limitless inscription of
social and political demands into the promise of a
new order. In this sense, the Enlightenment, the communist dream of a classless society, and the welfare
state project can all be seen as examples of social
imaginaries, whereas neoliberalism, the Third Way
project, and right-wing populism can be seen as
myths aspiring to become social imaginaries.
The power of ideological totalization derives
from the fact that we do not necessarily abandon
the myths and social imaginaries that we ascribe to
when their totalizing and reductive ploys are
revealed. We are often prepared to “act as if” the
totalizing ideological fantasy provides an adequate
account of the social world—not because it is
rational to do so, but because it gives us a certain
enjoyment to mask the failure of ideological totalization. We are freed from facing the undecidable
and antagonistic character of the social, and we
are permitted to displace our self-blockage to an
imaginary enemy who is held responsible for the
corruption of the social. As such, the enjoyment
attached to ideological fantasy explains the strong
grip of ideology and, therefore, why it is so difficult to escape the structural power of discourse.
Jacob Torfing
See also Foucault, Michel; Gramsci, Antonio; Hegemonic
Power; Hegemony; Ideology; Laclau, Ernesto, and
Mouffe, Chantal; Lukes, Steven; Three Faces of Power
Further Readings
Fairclough, N. (1995). Critical discourse analysis.
London: Longman.
Laclau, E. (1993). Discourse. In R. E. Goodin & P. Petitt
(Eds.), Contemporary political philosophy (pp. 431–437).
Oxford, UK: Blackwell.
Torfing, J. (1999). New theories of discourse. Oxford,
UK: Blackwell.
DISPOSITIF
Apparatus, dispositif, and machine are three terms
that figure significantly in French theorizations of
Distributive Justice
different forms of power. In English, apparatus
(derived from Latin) translates as both appareil
(apparatus, machine, device, camera) and dispositif (arrangement, disposition, device, or apparatus). The notion of state apparatus (or appareil
d’état) is especially associated with Louis Althusser,
a French structural Marxist, and his followers.
Dispositif was first used in the study of the cinema
but for present purposes is more often associated
with Michel Foucault’s analyses of power/knowledge relations. Machine is a broader term with
many connotations, ranging from the machinery
of state power to the desiring machine. The term
has a key, albeit often loosely metaphorical, role
in the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari,
such as their 1972 work Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism et Schizophrenia.
In Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,
Althusser supplements Karl Marx’s theory by identifying the state’s key ideological as well as repressive functions in reproducing class domination. He
distinguished a relatively unified repressive state
apparatus (RSA) from a plurality of relatively
autonomous ideological state apparatuses (ISAs).
Although the former comprises the core of the
state (executive, legislature, judiciary, and police–
military apparatus), the ISAs include diverse institutions such as the family, education, organized
religion, and the media. RSAs and ISAs operate in
different ways to secure class power and social
cohesion. Although the RSA relies more on coercion, it has an important ideological moment, and,
although ISAs rely more on ideology, coercion
remains in the background. Subsequent work has
explored the changing articulation of the RSA and
ISAs in different kinds of political systems, whether
“normal” bourgeois democratic regimes or exceptional regimes such as military dictatorships, fascism, developmental states, or new forms of
authoritarian rule (see, for example, Nicos Poulantzas’s 1972 work, Fascism and Dictatorship).
Foucault introduced dispositif in an interview
after Surveiller et punir (translated as Discipline
and Punish) appeared in 1975; it also figured in
The History of Sexuality, Volume 1 (1976) and,
more prominently, in his studies of governmentality between 1976 and 1979. His most elaborate
account presented dispositif as a general network
or web of relations among a “thoroughly heterogeneous ensemble” of linguistic and nonlinguistic
197
relations, discourses and institutions, architectural
forms, scientific statements, philosophical and
moral propositions, and so forth. More important
for Foucault than a given dispositif’s individual
elements were (a) how their articulation in games
of power, knowledge, and truth served strategic
functions in addressing an urgent need; and
(b) how the dispositif produced appropriate subjects for specific types of power/knowledge relations. In their very different ways, the arguments
of these leading French scholars have influenced
studies of power across many disciplines and
regarding the most varied topics. The main theoretical and methodological interest in apparatus,
dispositif, and machine concerns how relatively
heterogeneous elements are combined to generate
specific strategic effects in power relations across
different sites and scales.
Bob Jessop
See also Althusser, Louis; Foucault, Michel; Marx, Karl;
Postmodernist View of Power in International Relations
Further Readings
Althusser, L. (1971). Lenin and philosophy and other
essays. London: Verso.
Foucault, M. (1980). The confession of the flesh. In
Power/knowledge (C. Gordon, Ed. & Trans.,
pp. 194–228). New York: Pantheon.
DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE
Justice is often taken to hold over two domains:
the distributive and the corrective. The latter is
concerned with questions of punishment and rectifications of injustices. The former concerns the
just distribution of the benefits and (nonpunitive)
burdens of social life. These include civil and
political rights as well as income, wealth, health
care, and so on. Debates about distributive justice
are critical to contemporary politics. In this entry,
we consider arguments that justice requires promoting welfare; an equal distribution of holdings;
a distribution that benefits the worst off; and a
distribution that merely respects the rights of
property holders. Finally, we ask whether justice
198
Distributive Justice
should have the central place accorded it in contemporary political thinking.
Justice is a matter of each person receiving what
is due to him or her. In the liberal tradition, this
ties it closely to the formal idea of equality that
requires that things that are relevantly alike should
be treated alike. In the absence of relevant differences between people, justice requires that each be
treated as an equal. Of course, without an account
of “relevant differences” and of what it is to be
“treated as an equal,” this does not tell us very
much. Indeed, one way to characterize many of the
debates in distributive justice is as being about the
characteristics or properties that might count in
distinguishing persons and over the meaning of the
demand to treat persons as equals.
These debates have tended to focus on the distribution of income, wealth, and the goods of economic activity generally (and that will be the focus
here). In the matter of civil and political rights,
there is a broad consensus that has held since the
end of World War II that there are no relevant differences between sane, adult, citizens and that each
is entitled to an equal share of such rights in recognition of his or her status as a citizen (although
even here there are debates about the scope of
justice—whether it applies only to citizens, or to
everyone, or to everyone in a territory including
migrants and children, etc.; this entry will not consider these questions).
Utilitarian Theories of Justice
Perhaps the most obvious way to justify some or
other distribution of goods—or to justify principles that ought to govern the institutions that
together determine that distribution—is by reference to whether what results advances the overall
or average welfare of those affected by it. This is
the case made by utilitarians who hold that the
right principles of distributive justice are those that
will bring about greatest future utility (i.e., the
greatest future good for persons, however that is
defined). This means that the right content of the
principles of justice is an empirical matter. Although
most utilitarians agree that having equal civil and
political rights will maximize utility, there is no
similar agreement on the economic arrangements
(socialist, capitalist, mixed, etc.) that will achieve
that goal.
Although utilitarian theories are attractively
simple and appeal to an intuitively plausible criterion for thinking about just institutions (surely one
consideration in thinking about the institutions we
have ought to be their consequences for human
welfare?), they are widely criticized for failing
to respect the rights of persons. Consider, for
example, a distribution in which some have an
abundance of goods and others are kept in abject
misery and yet which is utility maximizing (the
utility gained by the rich being greater than the
disutility suffered by the poor). According to utilitarianism, this is acceptable, and it is just.
Utilitarians commonly reply to this objection
that in “the real world” scenarios such as this one
are very unlikely to occur. As noted, this is also the
account they give of the egalitarian distribution of
civil and political rights (in the real world, distributing these rights equally is utility maximizing). As
an empirical matter, the utilitarian claim can be
disputed, but even if it is granted, it seems to deliver
the right answers for the wrong reasons. We think
that adult sane citizens have equal rights as a reflection of their equal standing, not because giving
them those rights equally has good consequences.
Egalitarian Theories of Justice
The principle that governs the distribution of civil
and political rights, then, is one of strict egalitarianism. The goods in question are allocated equally
to (almost) all members of society on the basis that
that everyone is owed equal respect and that an
equal distribution of these goods best reflects this
ideal. This raises the question of why we do not
simply extend the same principle of strict egalitarianism to other (economic) goods?
The idea of a strict egalitarian distribution of all
benefits and burdens of social cooperation can be
criticized on both theoretical and technical grounds.
Those who press theoretical objections contrast the
case of civil and political rights with economic
entitlements. When it comes to the former, all adult
sane citizens are relevantly alike and an equal distribution of these rights reflects their equal status.
However, when it comes to economic goods, some
critics of egalitarianism claim that citizens are not
all relevantly alike. For example, some are talented
and hardworking and thus more deserving. Other
critics argue that an inegalitarian distribution
Distributive Justice
could make everyone better off, and so egalitarianism is inefficient. Finally, others argue that maintaining an equal set of holdings would involve
continuous interference in the freedom that citizens have to transfer their goods to one another in
gifts or exchanges.
The most pressing technical problem with
(although not limited to) strict egalitarianism is
that it needs to specify what it is that ought to be
distributed equally to treat citizens as equals. One
answer is to distribute resources equally. However,
different people will gain very different levels of
benefit from similar bundles of resources and the
outcome in terms of welfare of an egalitarian distribution of resources may be very inegalitarian
(e.g., a disabled person may need considerably
more resources than would an able-bodied person
to derive similar levels of satisfaction from life).
Justice as Fairness
The most famous contemporary attempt to respond to these problems—and the theory of distributive justice that has become the starting point
for all recent discussions of the topic—is found in
John Rawls’s idea of justice as fairness. Rawls
accepts the criticism advanced against strict egalitarianism that everyone can be materially better
off if incomes are not maintained at a strictly equal
level (a criticism that reflects the experience of
industrialized countries during the last few centuries: the wealth of an economy is not fixed and the
most common way of producing more wealth is a
system that rewards the more productive with
greater incomes). In addition, he sees the need to
provide an “index” of goods to be distributed. He
argues that persons in an original position—a
social contract—would agree to a distribution of
primary social goods (including civil and political
rights and income and wealth) governed by two
principles of justice that must be satisfied in turn.
The first principle requires strict equality in civil
and political rights. The second principle specifies,
first, that social and economic inequalities must be
attached to positions that are open to all under fair
equality of opportunity and, second (in what is
called the difference principle), that any social and
economic inequalities must be to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged. This deviation from
strict equality in holdings is justifiable as long as
199
the inequality results in the least well off being
better off than they would be under strict equality.
Advocates of desert-based principles argue that
the difference principle ignores claims that people
deserve economic benefits given their contribution
to social products and the effort they expend in
their work. For the desert theorist, distributive systems are just insofar as they distribute incomes
according to the different levels earned or deserved
by the individuals for their productive efforts or
contributions in that society. It may be objected
that desert-based theories require extremely difficult measures to isolate contribution and effort,
particularly in a complex economy. Moreover, they
make economic benefits dependent on factors over
which people have little or no control—for example, someone may be more or less productive
depending on inherited talents or because his or her
particular skills are in great demand given other
people’s tastes.
Responsibility-Sensitive
Egalitarian Principles
So-called responsibility-sensitive egalitarian principles inhabit a middle ground between these two
positions. Theorists regard the difference principle
as flawed because it is insufficiently “ambitionsensitive” (because it does not ensure people live
with the consequences of their free choices) but
they also emphasize the necessity of “endowmentinsensitivity” (that people’s holdings should not be
determined by [dis]advantageous natural abilities
or brute bad luck). Thus, rather than a distribution
governed by the difference principle, responsibility-sensitive egalitarians argue for a principle that
people should be entitled to the outcomes (good
and bad) of their choices, but should be compensated for the operations of luck.
Responsibility-sensitive egalitarianism has generated a great deal of discussion. Those who
favor it think that it incorporates the idea of
deserts into traditional egalitarianism. Critics,
though, argue that how responsibility-sensitive
egalitarianism could actually be implemented in a
real economy is unclear because a distinction
between natural and developed talents would be
difficult, if not impossible, to identify. Others
think that it has deflected traditional egalitarianism away from its core concern with the plight of
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Distributive Justice
the disadvantaged and the effects of relative
inequalities in societies.
Libertarian Theories
For all their differences, what all the theories considered so far have in common is that they conceive of a just distribution as being one that fits
some pattern (a pattern in which utility is maximized, the worst off are as well off as possible, or
people have the results of their choices and not the
results of luck). Libertarians characteristically
object to any patterned distributive ideal, regardless of whether material goods or welfare are at
stake. The basis of the objection is as follows.
Surely, they argue, the point of giving people holdings (income, wealth, etc.) is to allow those people
to use their holdings as they see fit in living their
lives. Thus, given some initial just set of holdings,
people will freely trade, bargain, bet, transfer, and
so on, with one another. The result of all this freedom will be to upset the pattern. Yet, if the initial
holdings were just, and people freely interacted
with one another (no one stole from, or coerced,
another), then how can the result be unjust? Thus,
the only way that the pattern can be restored is by
an illegitimate use of state power in violation of
people’s freedoms.
Thus, rather than developing some pattern theory of distributive justice, libertarians favor rules
that establish and protect the rights of individuals
(particularly rights of property in their own person
and in things justly acquired). Whatever then
results from the use of those rights is just, and
interference by the state (e.g., in the form of redistributive taxation) is unjust.
Critics of the libertarian position have typically
focused on three difficulties the theory faces. First,
it is not clear how one gives an account of, let
alone establishes, a set of just initial holdings. To
whom, for example, does the land of the United
States belong: to the descendents (however that is
to be established) of those who first found it; of
those who first colonized and farmed—made use
of—it; or of those who purchased it from Native
American tribes? Second, the argument depends
on the idea that injustice cannot arise from the
accumulation of many individual, isolated acts,
each of which is just. But there is no reason to
think that. Finally, the theory depends on citizens
being granted property rights, and being granted
such rights absolutely. However, we can surely
believe that we have a conditional right to, say,
our monthly salaries. The condition being precisely that those salaries can be subject to just
taxation.
The foregoing discussion has proceeded on the
basis that justice is not merely one virtue among
others, but that it is the most important virtue of
social institutions. Some or other distribution
might be more efficient, more benevolent, more
likely to promote artistic endeavor (or whatever),
but these things do not matter in the face of the
charge that they are unjust.
The Theories Critiqued
This view has been challenged. In a less radical
form, some feminists argue that liberal theories of
distributive justice are blind to the oppression that
occurs in the private sphere. Enduring inequalities
for women arise especially because women often
have primary responsibility for child rearing and,
as a result, retain substantial disadvantages when
competing in the market. As a consequence, feminists argue, all theories that rely on market mechanisms will yield a distribution of wealth in which
women will systematically have less income and
wealth than men. This is a less radical challenge in
that it offers a critique of the traditional liberal
boundaries of political authority, but in the name
of securing a just distributive outcome.
The more radical version of the critique requires
that justice itself is displaced as the core virtue of
distributive schemes. For some feminists and communitarians, justice “colonizes” spheres in which
it has no place—destroying valuable social relationships that are maintained by friendship, love,
care, or fraternity. Theorists of justice might agree,
at least in the sense that they think that certain
circumstances make justice necessary. These circumstances include moderate scarcity and the conflicting demands of persons for their “fair share.”
The response of those who would favor justice,
then, is that the absence of care and community is
precisely what makes justice so important.
Matt Matravers and Alex Bavister-Gould
See also Democracy; Fair Division; Freedom; Liberalism
Domhoff, G. William
Further Readings
Barry, B. (1995). A treatise on social Justice: Vol. 2.
Justice as impartiality. Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press.
Dworkin, R. (2000). Sovereign virtue. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Goodin, R. (1995). Utilitarianism as a public philosophy.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Kymlicka, W. (2002). Contemporary political philosophy:
An introduction. Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press.
Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Rawls, J. (2001). Justice as fairness: A restatement.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
DOMAIN
The domain of power or influence refers to the
persons whose policies are affected. When power
is exercised, it must be with respect to some person or group. The person or group affected is the
domain of power. In potential power relationships, the domain refers to those persons potentially affected.
The term domain was introduced by Harold
Lasswell and Abraham Kaplan in Power and Society to specify one of the basic dimensions of power.
The other two dimensions were weight and scope.
Weight refers to the amount of power or the
degree to which the policies of others are affected.
Scope refers to the kinds of policies affected.
Robert Dahl has also emphasized the importance of specifying scope and domain in specifying
a power relationship. The observation that a person has a lot of power may not be meaningless, but
it is not very meaningful. It begs the questions of
“With respect to whom?” and “With respect to
which issues?” Thus, specification of domain and
scope is important for clear communication.
Specifying domain and scope also has important
implications for the measurement of power. If the
power of an actor varies with respect to different
scopes and domains, it is difficult to determine an
actor’s total power. A sea captain may have a great
deal of power with respect to the members of his
or her crew and passengers but very little power
with respect to other people. A powerful legislator
201
may have much power with respect to how his or
her fellow legislators vote but very little power
with respect to whom they marry, how many children they have, what they eat, or where they take
their vacations. Although one might say that someone who has power with respect to a large number
of people has more power than does someone who
has power over a small number of people, one
might not want to do so. It could be argued that
power over a large number of weak people constitutes less power than power over a small number
of very powerful people. Variations in the scope
and domain of power do not make it impossible to
measure the total power of and actor or to compare the power of actors, but they do make it difficult to do so.
David A. Baldwin
See also Capability; Community Power Debate; Dahl,
Robert A.; Domination; Hegemony; Influence;
Lasswell, Harold; Power Indices; Scope; Social Power
Further Readings
Dahl, R. A., & Stinebrickner, B. (2003). Modern political
analysis (6th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice
Hall.
Lasswell, H. D., & Kaplan, A. (1950). Power and society:
A framework for political inquiry. New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press.
DOMHOFF, G. WILLIAM (1936– )
G. William Domhoff is a research professor in
psychology and sociology at the University of
California, Santa Cruz. He has published many
books and articles dealing with the power structure in the United States. A leading power elitist
and neo-Marxist analyst of power, he has been
highly influential in urban studies and sociological
studies of power in the United States.
His first best-selling book, Who Rules America?
(published in 1967), is a detailed description and
analysis of the links between political elites in business, politics, and the military in the United States.
Five further editions under the title Who Rules
America Now? were published between 1983 and
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Dominant Parties
2009, updating the list of elites and their links. The
argument of the books is that class and corporate
finance dominate U.S. politics, though Domhoff
also offers some hope that activists can operate
within a democracy to break the class structure
and offer a better future.
Domhoff argues that the structure of U.S. society is dominated by class and capitalism. The neoMarxist line is that the structure of capitalist society provides easier access for businesspeople into
the political system, but he is not a determinist in
any sense. Rather, he sees the power structure
operating through personal and social networks
that enable the elite to dominate. He does see these
elites as competing, largely through the two-party
system, but at the end of the day that struggle is
simply for which circles will dominate U.S. politics, and not for any distributional struggle that
will benefit the U.S. people as a whole.
Domhoff argues that although the democratic
system allows ordinary people to have a route into
the political process, access is much easier for the
wealthy. The relative costs of taking part in politics
are lower and they have links through personal
networks. He believes that the facts of class domination are overshadowed in most academic writing because analysts concentrate far too much on
institutional processes and do not examine outcomes to the extent they should. That the outcomes benefit the rich so much demonstrates their
domination.
In 1978, Domhoff published Who Really
Rules?, a reexamination of the materials that Robert Dahl and his associates collected in writing
their classic Who Governs? Here Domhoff argues
that, rather than supporting a pluralist view of
power in New Haven, Connecticut, Dahl and his
associates had actually collected material demonstrating elite dominance.
Domhoff has also been closely associated with
the growth machine or growth coalition argument
that urban politics is dominated by development
and that development is skewed toward exchangevalue rather than use-value and, hence, benefits
capitalists rather than local people.
Keith Dowding
See also Dahl, Robert A.; Elite Theories; Growth
Coalitions; Marxist Accounts of Power; Pluralism
Further Readings
Domhoff, G. W. (1990). The power elite and the state:
How policy is made in America. New York: Aldine de
Gruyter.
Domhoff, G. W. (2010). Who rules America? Boston:
McGraw-Hill.
DOMINANT PARTIES
Parties are considered dominant if they achieve
electoral dominance both vertically and horizontally. Vertical electoral dominance is achieved when
a party surpasses a threshold of vote or seat shares.
In the literature, the demarcation of this threshold
varies from a majority of at least 40% to 70% of
raw votes or lower-house seats. Horizontal electoral dominance requires such a majority to be
sustained longitudinally—usually over a generation. For example, Italy’s Christian Democratic
Party, an archetypal dominant party, controlled the
parliamentary executive for 36 years (1945–1981).
Dominant parties often amount to an infraction
on the “alternation rule” that requires meaningful
democracies to have regular and intermittent
exchanges of power between major political parties. As such, dominant parties emerge frequently
in so-called partial democracies where electoral
competition is ostensibly open but less than fair. A
number of obvious explanations account for the
rise and persistence of dominant parties in illiberal
democracies: electoral fraud, corruption, oligopoly,
control by the dominant party of public finances
and its usurpation of the national mythology, or a
submissive attitude to authority among citizens. In
advanced democracies, however, the emergence of
dominant parties is perplexing. By definition, a
healthy democracy should contain a vigorous
culture of opposition politics. Moreover, the dominant party phenomenon hardly squares with
studies in organizational behavior that illustrate
how these kinds of bodies should be particularly
arthritic in adapting to change over time. Hence, a
robust understanding of the emergence, persistence, and breakdown of dominant party systems
depends on advances in the theory of political
competition. Attempts to explain dominant-party
systems have focused on either the demand side of
the problem by studying electoral behavior, the
Domination
supply side of the problem by examining party
behavior, or by investigating the role of structure.
Some approaches from electoral behavior argue
that dominant parties are sustained either by a lack
of social cleavages that would stimulate greater
political competition or by the absence of voter
dealignment from the dominant party. These
approaches have found limited empirical corroboration. In cross-polity analysis, the number of
political parties does not seem to correlate with
social cleavages when political competition is measured against ethno-linguistic fractionalization.
Meanwhile, dealignment explains little when one
observes how negative retrospective voting often
fails to translate into positive prospective voting
for the opposition. Structural approaches have
argued that the number of major competitors in a
party system is shaped by institutional factors such
as district magnitude or the choice of electoral formula. However, the explanatory power of this
argument is weak because the collection of electoral systems within the population of dominant
party systems is heterogeneous.
Supply-side models have attempted to explain
the number of competitors in a party system by
calculating when it is rational for parties to be
formed. Although such models have demonstrated
high internal validity, they tend to assume a neutral
political market, where parties enter with the same
relative advantage and voter preferences are accurately distributed across a left–right spectrum.
Other approaches have attempted to advance theories of party behavior via a more realistic account
of the asymmetries in resources between opposition and incumbent parties. Single-party dominance may also be attributed to the shortcomings
of opposition performance. Some suggest that
dominant-party systems place centrifugal ideological pressure on opposition parties, framing them as
antiestablishment, niche parties that subsequently
fail to attract the support of the median voter.
Adam Packer
203
Pempel, T. J. (Ed.). (1990). Uncommon democracies: The
one-party dominant regimes. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
DOMINATION
When we talk about power, often what we mean
more specifically is domination. Domination refers
to a situation where an agent exercises relatively
stable, ongoing control over the actions of other
agents (“agents” taken broadly to mean anything
from individual persons, to social groups, to organizations and institutions). Domination is not episodic. Relations of domination are, by definition,
firmly established, and often naturalized and taken
for granted. Even specified to this degree, the concept of domination is used to cover a wide range of
social relations. To unpack it further, we need to
look at several key aspects of this idea. First, domination can be taken as a neutral description of certain kinds of relationships, but it also tends to have
strongly negative evaluative connotations. For
many, domination is by definition morally wrong.
Second, paradigmatic understandings of domination often portray it as a process of which the
dominated are unconscious, or only partially conscious. But domination can also be quite explicit
and recognized by all involved. Third, the idea of
domination shades into more general social
processes of socialization that regulate human
behavior, without being clearly authored by any
dominant agent. This raises difficulties for defining
the boundaries of domination. Fourth, the modern
state, as potentially the most powerful form of
social organization, is routinely involved in domination. Finally, although we primarily use the concept of domination to describe large-scale structural
social relationships (e.g., between social classes), it
also gets used regarding patterns of interpersonal
interactions, indicating the scope of a concept ranging from macro- to microlevels of analysis.
See also Core Parties; Democracy; Political Parties
Further Readings
Greene, K. F. (2007). Why dominant parties lose:
Mexico’s democratization in comparative perspective.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Descriptive Versus Normative
Senses Of Domination
It sounds strange to suggest that domination might
be a normatively neutral concept, neither good nor
bad. We tend to regard domination as implying
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Domination
harm and unjust treatment. But it can be argued
that, to be useful for social analysis, a purely
descriptive, normatively neutral concept is precisely what is needed. If relationships of domination are common features of our social landscape,
then we need to be able to describe, analyze, and
comparatively study these, dispassionately, before
any normative evaluation of the relationships in
question. Such a view seems to have informed one
of the most influential figures on the social analysis
of domination, the German sociologist Max Weber
(1864–1920). Weber used the German word
Herrschaft to identify relationships in which one
actor can routinely expect his or her commands,
whether explicit or implicit, to be obeyed, and
even internalized as principles of action, by those
they are directed at. Herrschaft has manifold connotations (domination, dominion, rule, authority,
leadership) that are not easily translated into a
single English word. Anglophone scholarship tends
to vacillate between the terms domination and
authority when translating from Weber, perhaps
betraying ambivalence toward Weber’s normatively neutral use of Herrschaft. The key point is
that for Weber, the influence of a charismatic
teacher on his or her pupils, conventions of deference between tenants and landlords in agrarian
societies, the ability of an established democratic
government to rule, or the cultivation of widespread
nationalist fervor by a dictator were all equally
instances of domination (Herrschaft), phenomena
of the same type, regardless of how we might morally judge them. In keeping with this principle,
Weber described most forms of domination as
“legitimate,” meaning not that they should be
approved of, but that those subject to domination
frequently found that situation justifiable on some
grounds, and that this was basic to the operation of
domination. Thus, Weber spoke of legitimate domination, a phrase that has an oxymoronic ring for
most English speakers. This linking of domination
and legitimacy leads many to prefer the translation
“authority” for Herrschaft, because we think of
authority as inherently involving legitimacy.
Consciousness of Domination
by the Dominated
Many kinds of social relationships unambiguously
exemplify domination. Slavery rests on slave owners
having a legal right to command the actions of
their slaves, and the knowledge that extreme force
may be brought to bear on slaves who resist commands or the claim of ownership itself. Populations conquered in war are subjected to the rule of
the victors, through military occupation and martial law. Prisoners live under the rigid regimes of
their keepers. In all these cases, force and its threat
overtly underwrite the claims to domination, tending to make the nature of the power relationship
explicit for both sides. But even in these kinds of
relationships, the dominated will sometimes
accommodate themselves to their situation, regarding rights to dominate as legitimate, and personal
conditions of subordination as natural.
However, such unambiguous forms of domination, perhaps because they are so apparent, have
not featured prominently in recent social scientific
explorations of domination. Instead, the greatest
attention is paid to those forms of domination that
seem to operate beyond the awareness, or at least
the full awareness, of the dominated. Domination
is often thought to quintessentially involve the
ideological manipulation and mystification of the
dominated, not mere material subjugation. Thus,
Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) elaborated the term
habitus especially to describe the way class domination becomes encoded in different class-based
sensibilities and criteria of “taste,” which are
learned and embodied at a preconscious level, thus
reinforcing the general class structure of a society.
Another highly influential figure, Michel Foucault
(1926–1984), argued that human subjectivity itself
is a historical creation, shaped by wider societal
patterns of power. For him, the modern period was
characterized by the rise of institutions and practices (e.g., criminology, medicine, psychiatry) that
make enforceable claims to superior knowledge,
thereby compelling subjects to participate in selfunderstandings suitable to their domination by
these institutions and practices. And Steven Lukes
(b. 1941), in a celebrated critique of political analysis, argued that social power is not just a
matter of how manifest conflicts of interest get
decided, but also of how and why conflicts of interest remain latent, and unarticulated, and how the
very desires, preferences, and motives of the less
powerful get formed in the first instance to suit the
interests of the dominant. In all these approaches,
there is an emphasis on how domination intervenes
Domination
in the very formation of the self-understandings of
the dominated.
Acknowledging the insights of these approaches,
we need to bear in mind that familiar modes of
domination often fall in between the extremes of
explicitness and implicitness outlined previously.
For instance, in colonial contexts, one often finds
complex and socially stratified attitudes toward
the colonizers among the members of the colonized society, as some in the upper strata see
opportunities in accommodating themselves to the
values and mores of the colonizing society, whereas
those further down, or embedded in social institutions marginalized by colonization, more often
experience only the condition of subjugation. In
assessing such intermediate cases, we must ask
whether relations of domination are encoded in
laws and backed by state-sanctioned force, versus
more diffusely embedded in social institutions and
attitudes. We also must appreciate that multiple
modes of domination attached to ethnicity, race,
class, gender (among others) can operate as a more
complex interacting system of domination, reinforcing or eroding each other, according to specific
circumstances. More generally what these observations suggest is that the awareness of domination
by the dominated varies according to the degree of
explicitness of the mode of domination, and within
any societal relationship of domination, understandings of that relationship will vary between
members of the dominated group.
Domination Versus Socialization
These observations raise another problem. To the
degree we can define a relationship of domination
between one individual or group and another, we
can identify, at least theoretically, an axis of competing claims on the nature of that relationship
and its legitimacy. But when we consider the individual’s relationship with the wider society and its
demands on the individual, talk of domination
becomes more problematic because societies are
processes, not agents in any significant sense. The
coordination of individual with group behavior
though social conventions, norms, and values is in
our nature. We are evolutionarily designed to have
our behavior shaped and constrained by the larger
social groups we are part of, through formal and
informal processes of social learning beginning at
205
birth. In this sense, through socialization, societies
exhibit a great deal of stable, ongoing control over
their members, but no one is really doing the controlling. However, this is not to say that this wider
process of socialization does not interact with processes of domination between social groups.
Although there must be some forms of generalized
social control, the actual forms they take are likely
to be inflected by societal patterns of domination.
Thus although it is natural to feel shame in the face
of strong disapproval from peers, because one
engages in behavior widely deemed inappropriate
to one’s gender, or because one’s speech patterns
betray working-class origins, this indicates a historically specific pattern of social relations, one
that encodes aspects of domination. This congruence between necessary processes of socialization,
and more contingent processes of domination,
facilitates the naturalization of domination for
both the dominant and the dominated. Correspondingly, in regard to the critical social analysis
of domination, the congruence can also encourage
analytic slippage, from more targeted critiques of
specific relations of domination, to less focused
and more totalizing critiques of society in general.
Domination and States
Modern states however, perhaps by definition,
exercise stable, ongoing control over populations,
issuing myriad commands that are followed on a
daily basis. Although the state is not an agent per
se, it is the instrument of the groups that control it,
and exhibits institutional logics that steer the commands and actions of those that occupy it. Allowing for this quasi-agentic status, let us say that
states normally engage in domination over their
citizens. However, that domination may be biased
against the interests of some sectors of the population, and in favor of others, and has particular
latitude regarding aliens without legal status within
state’s territories. A state that does not dominate,
in Weber’s broad nonevaluative sense, is hardly
worth the name; the question is, how is domination rendered legitimate for those subject to it?
Antonio Gramsci’s (1891–1937) concept of
hegemony, a position of dominance in a given
sociopolitical setting, is relevant here. Gramsci
analyzed early 20th-century Italian politics in
terms of the hegemony of the bourgeoisie, achieved
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Domination
by creating alliances (a “historic bloc”) with subordinate groups (such as peasants and workers in
key industries) and core institutions such as the
Catholic Church. Thus, state domination was a
manifestation of the successful historical alliance
around shared interests by certain groups operating within it. In addition to dominating their citizens, states can dominate each other geopolitically,
thus specialists in international relations sometime
use hegemony to mean an alliance, or transnational historic bloc, between a dominant state (or
set of states) and other transnational actors such as
the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the UN
Security Council, and multinational corporations.
The general image is the same, but on a global
scale. Both senses of hegemony imply the possibility of counter-hegemonies, that is, alliances of
subordinated groups within specific state contexts,
or of sets of subordinated countries and transnational actors, around shared interests attempting
to dislodge the power of an existing historic bloc.
For Gramsci, as a Marxist, this approach to
historical political analysis assumed that class
struggle within capitalism was the core process of
contemporary human history. However, the general idea of analyzing strategic alliances does not
logically entail privileging the economic sphere
and is compatible with approaches that have more
heterogeneous, less economistic understandings of
the institutionalization of power.
From Macro to Micro Dimensions
Small-scale, interpersonal relations can also be
understood in terms of domination. Again, this
runs from relatively coercive forms, such as a
patriarch controlling household resources and
thus its members, to willing subordination, motivated by love, admiration, moral commitment, or
some other legitimating rationale. And again, we
are more likely to recognize interpersonal domination when it appears pathological. The classic
example is when a charismatic individual becomes
the center of a cult of believers, as did the Reverend Jim Jones who eventually led a group of 909
followers into group suicide when their utopian
community in rural Guyana was falsely perceived
to be under mortal threat in 1978. Personal
accounts suggest Jones elicited from his followers
a complex combination of inspiration, devotion,
emotional dependence, and psychic insecurity—all
contributing to the tragic end. This example is
extreme—charismatic-centered communities do
not necessarily go this way. But the general sociological type of the small, tightly knit community of
uncritically devoted followers focused on the leadership and message of a single individual is well
established. Uncomfortable as it is to consider,
such extremes of human behavior have correlates
in more routine interpersonal dynamics. Small
social groups are always susceptible to the leadership, explicit or implicit, of individuals with
commanding personalities, and even everyday friendships often exhibit modest dominant–subordinate
dynamics. Indeed, such imbalances may have positive effects, both practical and psychic, for those
involved.
Finally, the micro points back to the macro, to
the “gearing up” of dynamics of interpersonal
domination to the macrosocietal level, by means
of mass communication and symbolic representation. Charismatic leaders have clearly dominated
mass societies (e.g., Hitler), but how this works is
not obvious, it being very difficult to analytically
disentangle psychic devotion to the person of the
leader from the various modes of ideological suasion and material coercion at the disposal of the
modern state. Conversely, the legitimacy of bureaucratic organizations in complex societies often
hinges on personalistic perceptions of a leading figure, be it a head of a state, church, or corporation.
Where the power of an organization is a matter of
explicit public scrutiny, “faceless bureaucracy”
often just is not tenable.
Jonathan Hearn
See also Authority; Bourdieu, Pierre; Gramsci, Antonio;
Habitus; Hegemony; Leadership; Legitimation; Lukes,
Steven; Structural Power; Weber, Max
Further Readings
Bourdieu, P. (1989). Social space and symbolic power.
Sociological Theory, 7(1), 14–25.
Foucault, M. (1980). Two lectures. In Power/knowledge
(C. Gordon, Ed., pp. 78–109). New York: Pantheon.
Gramsci, A. (1971). Selections from the prison notebooks
of Antonio Gramsci. (Q. Hoare & G. N. Smith, Eds.
& Trans.). New York: International Publishers.
Dowding, Keith
Hearn, J. (2008). What’s wrong with domination?
Journal of Power, 1(1), 37–49.
Scott, J. C. (1990). Domination and the arts of resistance:
Hidden transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press.
Weber, M. (1978). Domination and legitimacy. In
Economy and society (G. Roth & C. Wittich, Eds.,
pp. 941–948). Berkeley: University of California Press.
DOWDING, KEITH (1960– )
Keith Dowding has made two key contributions
to understanding political power: demonstrating
the importance of the collective action problem
for our understanding of power and demonstrating the interplay of agency and structure with his
concept of “systematic luck.” Collective action
problems show that a group of actors might seem
powerless even if there is no other group acting
against them. Dowding claims that both pluralists
and structural approaches fail to grasp this simple
idea. Systematic luck is almost the converse, how
one group can get what it wants even though the
group does not act. Building from Brian Barry’s
idea of luck as “getting what you want without
trying,” Dowding claims luck is not randomly
distributed, but often tied to a person’s location in
the social structure or “system” the person inhabits. First developed in Rational Choice and Political Power, then in the more accessible Power,
Dowding explains that although the systematically lucky might have access to resources that
make them powerful, they often want what they
get (as opposed to get what they want) because
their interests noncontingently coincide with policy makers. The concept of systematic luck is
often misunderstood by those who think Dowding
is arguing that, for example, capitalists are lucky
rather than powerful. He argues they are both,
but luck can explain why the powerful often do
not seem to act yet attain the outcomes they want.
207
Dowding has applied these notions to traditional debates in urban theory, arguing that growth
coalitions and regime theory can be illuminated by
the idea of systematic luck. Indeed, this idea is very
close to Clarence Stone’s systemic power that
underpins his original regime concept. The difference is that Dowding predicates power to agents
(individuals, parties, groups, organizations) and
not to structure itself, though his accounts of both
what the collective action problem and systematic
luck mean for analysis of power in society are
highly structural.
Dowding is also widely known for his theoretical work about, and promotion of, rational choice
theory, testing Charles Tiebout’s hypothesis regarding efficient service-provision, exploring why government ministers resign, and latterly turning to
the measurement of rights and freedoms. Awarded
a doctorate from Oxford in 1987 for his dissertation Collective Action, Group Organization and
Pluralist Democracy, Dowding joined the London
School of Economics and Political Science in 1993
after teaching at Oxford and Brunel Universities.
An editor of the highly regarded Journal of Theoretical Politics since 1995, he is now research professor at the Research School of Social Sciences,
Australian National University.
Kennedy Stewart
See also Agency; Barry, Brian; Collective Action Problem;
Growth Coalitions; Luck; Lukes, Steven; Morriss,
Peter; Structuration; Systematic Luck; Systemic Power
Further Readings
Dowding, K. (1991). Rational choice and political power.
Aldershot, UK: Edward Elgar.
Dowding, K. (1996). Power. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press.
Dowding, K. (2003). Resources, power and systematic
luck: A response to Barry. Politics, Philosophy and
Economics, 2(3), 305–322.
E
to explain why men have been more likely to
attain social dominance. Their theory suggests that
the declining importance of male size and strength
within high-status occupations combined with
lower birth rates and shared child rearing underlie
the erosion of men’s social dominance in postindustrial societies.
Eagly has also initiated discussions of the political dimensions of research on sex differences, urging scientists to resist both simplistic “just-so”
stories of evolutionary sex differences and liberal
“political correctness” in favor of openness to the
data. Eagly and her colleagues were the first to
notice, in contradiction to prevailing views of sexism as antipathy toward women, that women are
actually stereotyped more favorably than men. At
the same time, she noted that this favorability
occurs because stereotypical female traits (e.g.,
nurturance) suit women for traditional, lowerstatus feminine roles. These findings challenged
the notion that prejudice is an undifferentiated
antipathy and sparked important advances in
understanding the nature of sexism.
Eagly has also been a strong advocate and
practitioner of meta-analysis (which allows for
statistically sophisticated averaging of effects
across studies). For example, Eagly and colleagues’
meta-analysis of studies on reactions to women
leaders revealed that women are disliked when
they adopt a masculine leadership style. These
findings inspired Eagly and Karau’s role congruity
theory, which suggests that prejudice is not a simple
antipathy toward a group, but a relatively lower
evaluation of group members when evaluated for
EAGLY, ALICE (1938– )
Why do men possess more power than women in
so many cultures? Does this reflect evolved differences in aptitudes or socially imposed strictures
that favor men and discourage women from
obtaining positions of power? Few have made as
significant theoretical and empirical contributions
to understanding these questions as has Alice
Hendrickson Eagly.
Eagly’s early interests in attitudes led her (in the
1970s) to a critical examination of findings that
women are more easily influenced than men. Her
review suggested that social status rather than
inherent sex differences (the previously accepted
explanation) accounted for these effects. These
insights led Eagly to further explorations of sex
stereotypes, culminating in social role theory,
which explains how a gendered division of labor
(and the gender hierarchy it reflects) creates sex
differences in behavior and corresponding sex
stereotypes (e.g., women are more likely to enact
the nurturing behavior the homemaker role
demands).
By relating social structure (roles) to prescriptions for behavior, Eagly’s theory accounted for the
origins of sex differences. In response to evolutionary psychologists, Eagly and Wendy Wood
expanded the social role approach. Their biosocial
theory incorporates the interaction of biological
sex differences, such as men’s greater size and
strength and women’s reproductive role, with
social factors (e.g., the development of agriculture)
209
210
e-Governance
roles that do not match the group’s perceived
traits.
Peter Glick
See also Sexism, Role of Power in
Further Readings
Eagly, A. H. (1995). The science and politics of
comparing women and men. American Psychologist,
50, 145–158.
Eagly, A. H., & Wood, W. (1999). The origins of sex
differences in human behavior: Evolved dispositions
versus social roles. American Psychologist, 54,
408–423.
E-GOVERNANCE
E-governance is the use of the Internet and related
information technologies by governmental organizations internally and to interact with citizens,
firms, nongovernmental organizations, and other
governments. Defined so, e-governance offers the
potential to reshape power relationships between
governments and citizens, particularly in those
countries with widespread use of the Internet.
For citizens, the Internet opens new ways to seek
and find information from government but also
from a proliferation of other information sources.
The Internet gives citizens access to expertise—for
example, on health and education—that can rebalance information asymmetries in their interactions
with public sector professionals. The Internet also
reduces the costs of political mobilization and
organization, strengthening civil society in ways
that may increase the influence of interest groups
on public policy issues in liberal democratic states.
Less benignly, the usefulness of the Internet for a
wide range of criminal and fraudulent activities
puts pressure on states to develop further their
surveillance techniques. In authoritarian states, the
Internet may offer new ways in which citizens and
groups can challenge state authority, for example
by disseminating information about the regime
across global networks or using social media to
coordinate protests and demonstrations.
Conversely, e-governance may also increase the
power of governmental organizations in relation
to citizens. Governments in most developed
nations spend around 1% of gross domestic
product (GDP) on their own information systems
and electronic presence. The capacity of such
technologies to collect, store, and analyze personal information about citizens increases the
state’s ability to influence societal behavior and
control citizens, with new potential for state intrusion into individual privacy even in democratic
states. Authoritarian states can use Internetrelated technologies to strengthen their authority
over citizens through surveillance of online activity. The challenges to authoritarian regimes posed
by citizen use of the Internet has led to widespread censorship and filtering of the Internet
across China and most Arab states and prohibition of its use in North Korea, for example. Some
states have also used the Internet to challenge the
authority of other states, attacking the electronic
capability of another government and waging
“cyberwar.”
The extent to which power relations are rebalanced through use of the Internet will rely partly
on the relative capacity of governments and citizens to innovate with technology. The Internet is
perhaps the first information technology that has
been used more extensively by citizens and civil
society than by governments, and for this reason,
there is a greater chance of citizen empowerment
than from earlier technological developments,
such as mainframe computer systems, the personal
computer, or databases. Convergence with other
popular technologies, such as mobile telephones
and mainstream media outlets, accentuates this
pattern, as do so-called Web 2.0 technologies,
which allow users to generate their own content
and to participate in large-scale collaborative networks or forums such as blogs, video-sharing
sites (such as YouTube), Wikipedia, social networking sites, and so on. Governmental organizations, in contrast, have been slower to adopt these
innovations, sometimes struggling to manage
large information technology investments and
unwieldy databases and being reluctant to
embrace the informality of social networking
technologies and the part-authenticated nature of
the information that Web 2.0 applications provide. For this reason, e-governance may, ultimately, empower citizens relative to government.
Helen Margetts
Elections
See also Globalization; Governmentality; Internet and
Power
Further Readings
Dunleavy, P., Margetts, H., Bastow, S., & Tinkler, J.
(2006). Digital-era governance: IT corporations, the
state and e-government. Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press.
ELECTIONS
Elections are the process by which people are
voted in and out of positions of power. In representative democracies, elections determine who is able
to exercise power and who is not and in this way
grant politicians and parties power to enact their
policies. Elections give power to ordinary citizens
who may have few other ways to voice their preferences in the political world. For many, elections
are the only means by which they participate in
politics. Elections commonly receive widespread
coverage in the media and concentrate the public’s
attention on political matters. They are meant as a
peaceful way in which the people can have their
voices heard and usually involve a coordinated and
peaceful transition of power. In this way, elections
bring order and stability to the political world.
The outcome of elections depends on the nature
of the political system, which determines how
political power is configured. Elections can vary
from “first-past-the-post” (FPTP) elections where
a party is often able to govern with a majority in
the legislature to proportional representation (PR)
elections where parties form government coalitions that share power and work together. For
example, in FPTP parliamentary systems such as
Australia, a party can have a majority in the lower
and upper houses, giving the governing party effective control over what legislation is passed. Conversely, PR systems (which operate, for example, in
many European countries) often involve coalitions
and a great deal of negotiation between parties,
thus spreading power across the parties. There are
also parliamentary and presidential elections,
which have very different outcomes and consequences for political power.
There are other variations in how elections are
conducted in various countries. In some countries,
211
elections are held on fixed dates, whereas in other
countries they can be held (often within certain
time periods) at the discretion of the party in
power. The way in which electoral districts are laid
out can dramatically affect the outcome of election. Gerrymandering is a process by which a ruling group can bias electoral districts in its own
favor.
Electoral proportionality is also important. In
some countries, parties can win an election without
securing the majority of the vote. Electoral systems
can therefore produce disproportional outcomes.
For example, in the 1992 British general election,
the Liberal Democrats won 17.9% of the vote but
only 3.1% of seats in the House of Commons.
Elections are now a common feature of contemporary society. The number of electoral democracies greatly expanded throughout the 20th century.
According to Freedom House in 2009, there are
121 electoral democracies in the world. It remains
to be seen whether the number of electoral democracies will contract or expand over time. Freedom
House has expressed concerns that a “democratic
recession” is setting in.
The 19th century saw the development and
extension of the party system around which elections continue to be based today. Whereas before
elections involved parties representing capital or
labor, in recent elections a much larger array of
parties represents a much larger array of interests.
The spectrum of parties has broadened considerably in the last few decades. Parties such as green
or disarmament parties have come to represent the
new issues and interests of the public.
Absent effective opposition parties, however,
elections are often not held in “free and fair” conditions. Elections often involve opposition parties
making the argument that they are a better alternative than the governing party. However, in places
where there are no effective opposition parties,
electoral legitimacy is questioned. In this sense,
elections are not always synonymous with democracy. In many countries, voters are presented with
very little choice and elections occur under suspicious conditions. Holding elections is a necessary
but not sufficient condition for citizens to live in
freedom and have a say over their country’s future.
Foremost among these other conditions are civil
and political rights and a free media. Absent these
conditions, elections can lack any substantive
meaning. In frustration with this, some citizens
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Elite Theories
may adopt other means of having their voices
heard, such as protests or sit-ins. In authoritarian
countries, however, these efforts are often stymied.
Elections are often used in authoritarian states to
give the perception of legitimacy to those who
want to maintain power.
Modern elections in advanced democracies
occur in a very different environment from that in
the past. Television and the Internet have greatly
altered the nature of elections by exposing politicians to greater scrutiny and sometimes reducing
politics to entertainment. Opinion polls have also
changed elections by changing the strategy of parties and politicians by giving them access to information about voter’s preferences and opinions in
between elections. Parties also conduct internal
polling to find out more about the popularity of
leaders and policy. Whereas before the electorate
voiced its views through elections predominantly,
now opinion polls can provide a snapshot of the
public mood at any given time. There is also much
greater volatility in vote choice with social class
playing a smaller influence than it did before with
partisan loyalty and identification decreasing and
“swing voters” often determining the outcome of
elections. In some cases, radical parties have
appealed to these new “floating” voters by making
populist appeals, further creating instability in the
political world.
Aaron Martin
See also Democracy; Legislative Power; Political Parties;
Referendums; Voting
Further Readings
Colomer, J. M. (Ed.). (2004). Handbook of electoral
system choice. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gallagher, M., & Mitchell, P. (Eds.). (2005). The politics
of electoral systems. Oxford, UK: Oxford University
Press.
ELITE THEORIES
Elite theories of power hold that power is primarily concentrated in hands of a few, or the elite. The
first and perhaps the most famous proponent of an
elite theory was noted American sociologist
C. Wright Mills in The Power Elite (1956). As
Alan Wolfe notes in his afterword of the republication of The Power Elite in 2000, Mills took aim at
two prevailing views of U.S. society at the time,
namely, pluralism and the end of ideology thesis.
Pluralism is the view that power is not concentrated in the hands of the few but rather spread out
among different groups. The “end of ideology”
thesis holds that the debate about any ideological
differences was over and that any problems that
remain could be solved with technical expertise.
Mills argued instead that power in U.S. society
is not spread out evenly, but is instead concentrated in the hands of few that
are in command of the major hierarchies and
organizations of modern society. . . . They occupy
the strategic command posts of the social structure, in which are now centered the effective
means of the power and the wealth and celebrity
which they enjoy. (Mills, 1956, p. 3)
In contrast with the end of ideology thesis, Mills
argues that the debate over ideas is not truly
exhausted, but instead it is merely being silenced.
Mills felt that democratic politics ideally should be
an arena where different viewpoints and opinions
should be debated freely and openly. However,
Mills felt that the concentration of power allowed
the debate to be skewed to favor the viewpoints
of the power elite. This, according to Mills, has led
to the degradation of public discourse and the
erosion of democracy, which in turn has led to
power being shifted away from elected representatives. This is why Mills says at the beginning of
The Power Elite that the powers of ordinary citizens often seem to be driven by forces that they
cannot see.
Floyd Hunter in Community Power Structure
makes a similar case. His study focused on control
at the local level in the United States. Although he
is not as confrontational as Mills is, Hunter’s conclusions are nonetheless scathing. He found a small
group in control of most of the social structures in
“Regional City” with most citizens simply acquiescing to the decisions made by those in power.
The social and political structures, Hunter claims,
“are controlled by men who use their influence in
devious ways . . . to keep down public discussion
Empire
on all issues except those that have the stamp of
approval of the power group” (Hunter, 1953, p.
249). The one thing common to proponents of
elite theories of power is that they do not think
that the concentration of the power in the hands of
elites is a good thing for society. First, elite concentration of power ensures that certain viewpoints
do not make it into the public discourse. Second,
and as a result of the first point, most citizens will
have no information or knowledge about how
power is being used to affect their lives.
Although the accusations made by elite theorists
are certainly scathing and impassioned, they have
been criticized for not sustaining their theoretical
criticisms with empirical verification. Early elite
theorists used reputational analysis to empirically
base their claims. Reputational analysis proceeds
by asking people who they think are powerful, and
then triangulating responses by questioning those
names as powerful. Modern elite theory, as represented by William Domhoff, uses many techniques
to analyze the elites, including examining the
schools they attended, the clubs they belong to,
and so on. Modern network analysis generates
similar ways of examining links between elites.
The growth coalition literature expands elite
theory into a more structural direction by suggesting that it is the structures of power that lead
developers at the local level and capital at the
national and multinational level to have greater
power. Another direction, also more structural
than elite theory has taken, is through the work of
Clarence Stone who, like Hunter, bases his empirical work on Atlanta. Regime theory and its associated idea of systemic power suggests that elites
tend to dominate through sharing specific ideas.
Elite versions of these analyses concentrate on the
personnel involved and their family backgrounds
as part of the structures of power in society.
Joseph Angolano
See also Domhoff, G. William; Growth Coalitions;
Hunter, Floyd; Mills, C. Wright; Regime Theory in
Urban Politics; Reputational Analysis
213
Mills, C. W. (1956). The power elite. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Wolfe, A. (2000). Afterword. In C. W. Mills, The power
elite. New York: Oxford University Press.
EMPIRE
An empire is a regime of domination, created
when a powerful state (the “core”) imposes its
rule on a number of weaker territories and peoples
(the “periphery”), controlling or strongly influencing the internal and external affairs of those
countries. The imperial power exercises ultimate
sovereignty over core and periphery, but the two
parts are run on divergent principles. Empires
were not formed because the core state wished to
assume responsibility for administering outside
territories; there were usually more salient reasons
for acquiring an empire, such as economic or strategic imperatives. Running empires required a
delicate power balance: on the one hand, empires
were vehicles for strong states to increase or consolidate their power resources, through acquiring
land, raw materials, military forces, and cheap
labor; on the other hand, coercive control of outside territories could exhaust a state’s resources
and bring an end to its empire. Empire building
involved high costs for the core state, so acquired
territories were expected to yield an adequate
return on investment. To maximize returns,
empires were generally run “on the cheap” unless
more expensive strategies became necessary.
Empires crumbled when the core state became
weak and a stronger state took over, or when the
costs of maintaining an empire became so prohibitive that dismantling was the only rational
option. Most analysts believe that empires are
now a thing of the past and have been replaced by
hegemonic relationships. But recent authors have
argued that empires still exist, controlled by powerful coalitions rather than individual states.
Historical Background
Further Readings
Hunter, F. (1953). Community power structure: A study
of decision makers. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press.
Empires have existed since ancient times, at least
since Sargon of Akkad formed the first Mesopotamian empire in 2300 BCE. Early empires were
continental, with core territories located in the
214
Empire
Middle East, Asia, North Africa, South America,
and Europe. Some ancient empires, notably Rome,
controlled far-flung territories, but their mode of
expansion was overland rather than by sea. From
the 15th century on, advances in seaborne technologies meant that maritime empires could form.
Land empires continued to exist—the Ottoman,
Russian, Chinese, and Austro-Hungarian empires
survived into the 20th century—but overseas
imperialism became the dominant form of territorial expansion, and the center of geopolitical power
shifted to Western Europe. During the 15th and
16th centuries, Portugal and Spain were the main
imperial powers, extending their rule to the New
World, Africa, South Asia, and the Caribbean. By
the end of the 16th century, other imperial rivals—
namely, France, England, and Holland—began to
emerge, acquiring territories in the Americas,
Southeast Asia, and Africa. Thereafter, the global
power balance became multipolar, with different
countries assuming the lead position and wars
between imperial rivals resulting in territorial
transfers between empires. In the late 19th century,
three new European powers—Belgium, Italy, and
Germany—joined the race for empires, as did two
countries from outside the region, the United
States and Japan, which expanded overland as well
as overseas. European territorial annexations in
Africa, Asia, and the Pacific between 1880 and
1900 resulted in 80% of the world’s land being run
by empires.
Systems of Coercion and Control
Empires combine coercive force with political
control. The dual character of empires is contained in the word itself. Empire derives from the
Latin imperium, which in ancient Rome meant
“sovereignty,” or the legal authority to make and
enforce laws and to wage war. During the reign of
Augustus, the term gained a territorial dimension
and the Imperium Romanum referred to Rome
and its newly acquired dependencies as a single
entity. The imperator or “emperor” was the new
unit’s head of state and military commander-inchief. These words and their dual meanings were
appropriated by later empires: in 1876, Queen
Victoria declared herself “Empress of India,”
whereas the highest official in most British colonies was the governor-general.
Coercive force was necessary both for acquiring
and running empires. Military theorists have estimated that the ratio of power required for a superior state to regularly exercise control over an
external territory and defend its position is about
three to one. Hence, core states needed to be significantly more powerful than are the territories
they conquered if their empires were to survive. Of
course, not all peripheries were acquired by force,
although most were. Michael Doyle has flagged
three instances when groups in weaker polities
invited core powers to extend their rule into the
weaker polities: Cameroonian kings Bell and
Acqua to British Prime Minister Gladstone, factions within Corcyra to the Athenian empire, and
elites within Greece and Britain to the Roman
Empire. The military played a key role in taming
rebellions and defending territorial borders against
attack by rival powers. Peripheral populations
could often be controlled through subtle threats of
military action, so brute force was not always
required. But in some cases—for example, the
Spanish invasion in the Americas and the westward expansion of the United States—indigenous
groups were exterminated. In maritime empires, a
strong navy was necessary for quickly transporting
military forces across the globe and providing
security for the smooth flow of trade. Subject
populations were often recruited as troops to form
the lower echelons of the imperial military forces,
for deployment locally as well as across the empire.
Core state officials had ultimate authority over
all parts of the empire, core and periphery. The
same set of people determined policy for both
parts, but each was governed according to divergent principles. Core state institutions operated in
the interests of their citizens, or at least a large
enough proportion to command legitimacy. Meanwhile, rule in the peripheries took place without
the explicit consent of local populations and
served the interests of the core state. Peripheral
policies had two main purposes: to maintain the
territories within the empire and to generate
income and other benefits for the core. The bulk of
peripheral revenues not remitted to the core was
spent on military and police activities, in effect
forcing peripheral populations to fund their own
subjection. Because empires are large entities
incorporating diverse populations, political control of the periphery was not possible without the
Empire
cooperation of local elites. These “collaborators”
were given power, status, and a small portion of
peripheral revenues in exchange for keeping the
peace, securing imperial trade, collecting taxes,
and, where possible, supplying the empire with
troops and cheap labor. These collaborators helped
keep administration costs low and reduce chances
of popular rebellion.
Specific systems of peripheral rule varied
depending on the time period, the availability of
local elites capable of commanding legitimacy, and
the structure of the international system. Most
ancient empires before Rome lacked the political
capacities and infrastructures to directly govern
the territories they conquered. Hence, they ruled
their peripheries informally: territories were legally
independent, and local clients governed their jurisdictions unhindered as long as they kept trade
routes open and passed on a large proportion of
the taxes they collected to the core. The core maintained sovereign control of certain key areas, however, including finance, military, diplomacy, trade,
and political succession. An alternative method of
informal rule employed by England, Holland,
and France during the 17th and 18th centuries,
and by England during the 19th century, was
quasi-government through chartered companies:
private trading firms were authorized to acquire
territories and administer them on behalf of the
core, and were provided with monopoly powers
and naval support in exchange for a share of the
profits. The Roman Empire was the first to rule
formally by annexing territories and assigning a
governor to them to directly implement imperial
policies. The governor represented the core state
and carried out functions on its behalf, such as
levying tax, administering justice, and controlling
police forces. However, the core state retained sovereign powers for trade, defense, and external
affairs and could overturn any decision made by
the governor. Local elites formed the lower echelons of government, supervised by the governor. All
empires after Rome used some combination of
formal and informal rule. However, informal rule
was preferred because it generated revenues for the
core at low cost and without the responsibilities of
formal, direct rule. Conversely, multipolarity in the
international system after the 16th century rendered formal rule necessary for deterring imperial
rivals from forming alliances with peripheral elites.
215
But some modern empires discovered a route
around the problem: peripheries could be ruled
formally, with core-appointed “residents” overseeing independently functioning local elites who
administered large provinces rather than small
localities. This was the “indirect rule” system
employed in many British colonies since the late
19th century.
Benefits of Empire
The main benefits generated by an empire were
economic. In some cases, territorial extension preserved economic advantages already gained: Sargon conquered neighboring areas in Mesopotamia
to protect existing trade routes and surpluses. In
other cases, expansionism occurred to promote
economic growth in core states: the Roman empire
spread to obtain slaves to overcome labor shortages in domestic agriculture, whereas late Victorian empires were constructed to secure cheap raw
materials and new markets to feed industrialism at
home. Coercion and control mechanisms were
used to obtain maximum economic gains. In many
European empires, peripheral populations were
forced off fertile lands to make way for settlers
from the core who wanted to exploit agricultural
and commercial opportunities there. The state
assisted settlers by providing them with imported
slave or indentured labor or by forcing indigenous
populations to work on their plantations or mines.
Settlers were also given monopoly production
rights, precluding peripheral populations from
developing industries of their own. Empires were
run as economic enclaves: peripheries were permitted to produce only the few commodities that the
core required, and raw materials were transported
from periphery to core, manufactured, and then
forcibly sold back to peripheral groups at a profit.
From the 15th to the 18th centuries, imperial powers applied mercantilist principles to monopolize
the benefits of trade from peripheries. Peripheries
were thus tied to the core in economic dependence,
creating a gap between European growth economies and peripheral economies, which persisted
even after free trade replaced mercantilism.
Technological innovations, particularly in
weaponry, transportation, and communications,
enhanced the core’s abilities to coerce and control
the periphery. In early empires, innovations such as
216
Empire
the chariot and iron weapons allowed more technologically advanced powers to dominate less
advanced groups. In modern times, military technologies such as the repeating rifle, the Maxim
machine gun, and armored steamships allowed
European empires to impose their rule on tribal
societies. Effective control of peripheral populations was not possible before animal-powered
vehicles, paved roads, and sailing ships enabled the
flow of movement and communication across large
surfaces. Empires require infrastructures connecting core and periphery, as well as routes into and
through the periphery. Railways, roads, and ports
enabled the rapid transport of officials and military
forces, as well as commercial goods, across and
between territories. Innovations in communications, such as the telegraph, enabled the core state
to more directly influence policies in distant peripheries and helped lower the costs of imperial control.
But coercion and control could not be too
oppressive or overbearing; otherwise, there was the
risk of rebellion. Revolts were costly and diverted
military and police forces from other duties—for
example, defending territorial borders against invasion by rival powers. Additionally, resistance could
sometimes be successful, resulting in loss of prestige or even an empire. The Roman Empire collapsed partly because it placed too many tax, military, and other demands on its subject populations.
Overtaxation without political representation was
the prime reason American revolutionaries fought
for, and won, independence from the British
Empire. Slave uprisings against the French in Haiti
were also ultimately successful. Successful revolts
and independence movements had observation and
demonstration effects, increasing the likelihood
that other peripheries would follow suit.
Resistance could be subverted, and the costs of
coercion and control reduced, by assimilating
peripheral populations into the culture of the core
territory. In some early empires, cultural diffusion
was achieved through intermarriage between rulers
and ruled. Some later empires, such as the Roman
and the French, believed that assimilation could
dissolve cultural differences and strengthen peripheral bonds of loyalty to the empire. Hence, they
extended citizenship rights to peripheral groups
that adopted their customs and values. Most modern European empires relied on missionaries from
the core to transmit their culture to peripheral
populations. The relationship between religious
and imperial state institutions was symbiotic: missions benefited from military protection and state
financial support, and imperial control was facilitated by church teachings that state authorities
should be obeyed. In the Spanish and Portuguese
empires, powerful papal bulls authorized imperial
expansion. Cultural diffusion was a two-way process in all empires, affecting rulers and ruled and
producing a hybrid culture. The ideas, customs,
and habits of many empires lasted well beyond
their regimes. Ideas and lessons from the Roman
Empire were applied by succeeding empires.
Decolonization and After
All empires crumble eventually, under the strain of
ruling other territories or because stronger challengers emerge and wrest the empires from their rulers.
The two processes are interlinked: whereas peripheries initially enhance a core state’s power, at some
point they become more expensive than the benefits
they provide, and the core becomes weakened trying to maintain control of them. Most core states
devised strategies to stem losses—for example,
gradually granting self-government to peripheries.
This happened in the Roman Empire under Augustus and in the 20th-century British Empire. In modern empires, the spread of Western ideas and education alerted peripheral populations to inherent
inequalities in imperial policies and the different
rules applied to core and periphery. Post–17thcentury Europe had rejected monarchical rule in
favor of popular representation, yet continued to
autocratically govern its overseas peripheries. Political consciousness gave rise to demands for equal
treatment and political representation, then to
nationalist struggles for self-determination and independence. Ideas also traveled between empires:
hence, the U.S. war of independence inspired French
revolutionary ideas, which in turn stimulated Latin
American independence movements. Wars among
powerful polities also weakened core states and produced imperial challengers, who took control of
defeated countries’ empires or demanded that they
dismantle them. Early empires, such as the Persian
and Mughal, lost their empires for the former reason, and 20th-century European empires were pressured to decolonize by the new world powers, the
United States and Soviet Union.
Entrepreneurs
With near-complete decolonization of European
maritime empires by the 1980s and the collapse of
the Soviet empire in 1991, most analysts agreed
that the era of formal empires had come to an end.
However, many claimed that the United States still
operates an informal empire, using its international dominance, overseas military bases, control
of international political and financial institutions,
and all-encompassing cultural and technological
influence to force other countries to act according
to its wishes. Some have termed U.S.–led interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq formal imperialism.
Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri contend that
globalization processes, which began during the
imperial era, have created a new empire: the core
is no longer a single state but a transnational network of powers comprising states and economic
actors that dominates and exploits a periphery that
is not territorially bounded but progressively
incorporates the entire globe.
Gita Subrahmanyam
See also Domination; Globalization; Imperial Power;
Imperialism
Further Readings
Abernethy, D. B. (2000). The dynamics of global
dominance. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Doyle, M. W. (1986). Empires. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press.
Hardt, M., & Negri, A. (2000). Empire. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
Howe, S. (2002). Empire: A very short introduction.
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
ENTREPRENEURS
Entrepreneurs are the economic actors who, in
competitive markets, make decisions about which
goods to produce and at what price to market
them. Entrepreneurial activity is understood here
to include both innovation, the introduction of
new goods and new methods of production, and
market making, attempts to find new customers
for existing products or to sell to new customers
at a more profitable price. Traditionally, and in
217
both popular discourse and economic theory,
entrepreneurs have been pictured as the buccaneering, larger-than-life owners of individual businesses. Indeed many would still argue that it is a
defining feature of entrepreneurs that they risk
their own resources in the pursuit of profit. At the
same time, however, it has become conventional
to distinguish between entrepreneurs and the
entrepreneurial function and to argue that the
latter can be performed by appointed managers.
Do entrepreneurs possess power? Economists
such as Israel Kirzner who belong to the Austrian
School argue that they do not. Entrepreneurs are
the “Prime Mover[s] of [economic] Progress” and
routinely make decisions that can affect the lives of
millions of people. In doing so, however, they are
simply responding to and so are the servants of
consumer preferences. Entrepreneurs, in themselves, have no power to change those preferences
and if they chose to ignore them would soon be
driven out of business. What if, through an astute
reading of the market, an entrepreneur is able to
acquire a degree of monopoly power? Would he or
she then be able to exercise this power by exploiting consumers? Kirzner would argue that entrepreneurs could not. Because it is always open to other
entrepreneurs to enter a market if they feel that
there are profits to be made, apparent monopolies
when measured in current market share are, in
practice, always contestable and this means that
entrepreneurs cannot exploit consumers. Much the
same argument might be made in relation to the
powers exercised by entrepreneurs over their workforces. Entrepreneurs might, subject to minimal
government standards, be able to set workers’
wages and working conditions, and this might be
said to give them a degree of power. They must,
however, exercise this power in the context of a
competitive market. If entrepreneurs were to abuse
their power, this would simply encourage their
workers to seek alternative employment.
Very different accounts of the role of the entrepreneur are offered by Joseph Schumpeter (1883–
1950) and John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006).
Schumpeter argued that entrepreneurs acquire
“spectacular prizes” to the extent that they are
able to anticipate what consumers might want and
what they can be persuaded to want. He also
argued that successful entrepreneurs do often
acquire, in the short term at least, a degree of
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Environmental Treaties
monopoly power over consumers, although he
cautioned that the existence of monopoly should
be regarded as a sign of economic vitality rather
than of inefficiency.
In The New Industrial State, Galbraith argued
that the entrepreneur no longer exists as an individual person, and that, within the modern economy,
the entrepreneurial function is instead exercised by a
large group of anonymous specialists who work
within giant corporations where ownership is
divorced from economic decision making. Galbraith views the rise of the giant corporation with
ambivalence. On the one hand, he recognizes that
corporations have accelerated the rate of innovation. On the other hand, he argues that corporations are able to anticipate and manipulate consumer preferences to “create the wants they seek to
satisfy.” In this respect and at least in the tone he
adopts, Galbraith appears to go farther than
Schumpeter. Schumpeter indicates that consumers’
preferences are malleable but leaves the impression
that entrepreneurs must nevertheless at least
engage with them. Galbraith seems to suggest that
“product planners . . . advertising and sales executives [and] public relations men” can create preferences out of thin air. He also maintains that corporations have routinely hijacked the democratic
political process and extracted policy concessions
from government. In each of these respects, Galbraith would argue that entrepreneurs working
within corporations possess a measure of power.
In recent decades, the concept of entrepreneurs
and of entrepreneurship has been borrowed by
political scientists. There are three common applications here. First, those writing about the process
of party competition have often likened votemaximizing party leaders to profit-maximizing
business entrepreneurs. Second, policy analysts
such as John Kingdon have identified a crucial role
for entrepreneurs within the policy process in
discovering and repackaging innovative policy proposals, identifying previously unnoticed policy problems, and coupling these two streams by brokering
coalitions of support for a new policy initiative.
Finally, a more applied literature within social policy
has sought to account for the success of particular
community-based voluntary organizations in terms
of the activities of “social” entrepreneurs who can
acquire funding, energize workers, and overcome
bureaucratic obstacles.
The impression left in each of these cases is that
entrepreneurs must be alert to and exploit previously unrecognized opportunities by gaining the
support of either voters or political leaders but that
entrepreneurs do not themselves possess any political power. Against this, it might be argued that
political entrepreneurs do possess considerable
power insofar as they are able to set policy agendas
and shape political leaders’ preferences. In these
respects, the power exercised by political entrepreneurs might be likened to that attributed to economic entrepreneurs by Schumpeter and, less
benignly, Galbraith.
Andrew Hindmoor
See also Policy Entrepreneurs
Further Readings
Galbraith, J. K. (1967). The new industrial state.
Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin.
Kingdon, J. (1994). Agendas, alternatives and public
policies. Boston: Little, Brown.
Kirzner, I. (1980). The prime mover of progress: The
entrepreneur in capitalism and socialism. London:
Institute of Economic Affairs.
ENVIRONMENTAL TREATIES
Environmental treaties are binding international
agreements designed to address issues of natural
resource management, pollution, and other ecological concerns that are not contained within political
boundaries of states. Treaties symbolize states’
intent to engage in cooperative action to address an
existing problem or take precautionary action to
prevent ecological deterioration. Both state and
nonstate actors may attempt to use environmental
treaties to promote their own interests and influence
the actions of others. In this way, environmental
treaties can become mechanisms by which actors
may wield varying degrees of power over others.
History of Environmental Treaties
The first multilateral environmental treaty was
recorded in 1868. Since then, more that 450
Environmental Treaties
multilateral and 900 regional agreements have
entered into force. Most of these have been
adopted since 1972, when the UN Conference on
the Human Environment was held in Stockholm,
Sweden. This landmark meeting was the first
mega-conference convened to discuss international
environmental issues in a systematic and comprehensive way. To date, three subsequent mega-conferences have been held and a plethora of environmental agreements have been concluded internationally, regionally, and globally. Although cooperative environmental agreements are often hailed
as positive steps toward managing resources, protecting fragile ecosystems, or preventing harm to
human health, the UN Environment Programme
has noted that parties often find it difficult to meet
the numerous obligations conferred on them by
these agreements.
Key Actors
Both state and nonstate actors are involved in the
development and implementation of environmental treaties. State actors may include both bureaucrats, or government-designated policy experts,
and scientific advisers appointed by states to assist
policy makers in their analysis of technically complex issues. Nonstate actors may include representatives of corporations, industry associations, and
civil society advocacy groups. These actors participate in treaty development and implementation by
lobbying decision makers, contributing ideas to
policy discussions, and providing evidence that
may influence policy choices.
The Role of Science in
Environmental Policy Making
Science plays an important role in the formulation
of environmental treaties. The complexity of environmental problems and lack of certainty about
hazards posed by various technologies and activities have led policy makers to rely increasingly on
scientists for advice about appropriate policy
responses. As advances in technology (e.g., chemical production and use) have changed the way
humans interact with the environment, new issues
relating to environmental and human health degradation have arisen. The risks associated with these
technologies are often poorly understood, and
219
evaluation of these hazards often requires individuals with scientific expertise to predict possible outcomes under conditions of great uncertainty. Policy
makers have called on scientists to interpret complex technical information, assess the risks posed
by various activities, and help devise appropriate
policy responses to problems. Thus, scientists have
become key actors in the formulation of many
international environmental agreements.
Governments, corporations, and advocacy
groups all employ scientists to analyze problems
and represent their interests during the stages of
policy making in which scientific evaluation of
environmental problems is carried out. Thus,
although science is often regarded as separate from
politics, in reality economic and social interests are
often promoted during the earliest, supposedly
politically neutral, stages of policy making. The
technical complexity of many contemporary environmental problems can create opportunities for
stakeholders to promote their political agendas by
emphasizing knowledge gaps or scientific uncertainty. Parties on all sides of an issue can use scientific evidence (or the lack thereof) to argue in favor
of their own policy preferences. Exaggeration of
scientific uncertainty or strategic framing of issues
are two examples of the way in which power can
play an important role in the formulation and
implementation of environmental treaties.
Enforcement
Enforcing the rules established by international
environmental treaties is very difficult. Most treaties rely on what can be summed up as peer pressure to encourage parties to abide by the terms of
the agreements. Theoretically, environmental treaties are voluntary contracts that states sign and
ratify only if they support the treaties’ objectives
and are willing to implement any subsequent measures. In practice, nations may have difficulty abiding by the tenets of a treaty, or their interests
change in ways that create incentives for noncooperation. Formal punishment (e.g., sanctions) for
failure to abide by such agreements is virtually
nonexistent. Although disincentives for noncooperation may appeal to members of civil society,
policy makers often prefer to encourage a spirit of
cooperation, in hopes that such support will lead to
future opportunities for the advancement of an
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Espionage
international environmental agenda. Punitive measures such as sanctions may discourage countries
from engaging in policy-making discussions from
the start. To encourage cooperation, some treaties
(particularly those involving nations from both
developed and developing nations) include financial or technical support mechanisms to help countries abide by the treaty’s requirements. Some
observers have argued that offering more incentives
for nations to sign and implement treaties would
improve both the scope and effectiveness of environmental treaties. Such incentives could take the
form of financial assistance, technological development, special trade agreements, and so forth.
Jessica Templeton
See also Agenda Setters; Coordination; Elite Theories;
Framing; Global Governance; Knowledge and Power
Further Readings
Andresen, S., Skodvin, T., Underdal, A., & Wettestad, J.
(2000). Science and politics in international
environmental regimes: Between integrity and
involvement. Manchester, UK: Manchester University
Press.
Center for International Earth Science Information
Network (CIESIN). (1996–2001). Environmental
Treaties and Resource Indicators (ENTRI). Palisades,
NY: CIESIN. Retrieved from http://sedac.ciesin.
columbia.edu/entri/
Conca, K., & Dabelko, G. D. (Eds.). (2004). Green
planet blues: Environmental politics from Stockholm
to Johannesburg. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Susskind, L., Moomaw, W., & Gallagher, K. (Eds.).
(2002). Transboundary environmental negotiation:
New approaches to global cooperation. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass.
ESPIONAGE
Literally the conduct of spying (from the French
espion meaning “spy”), espionage is usually
referred to as “covert collection” by the intelligence
community, as opposed to the gathering and processing of information from publicly available open
sources. Covert collection is broadly grouped into
five collection methods, known in U.S. parlance as
“collection disciplines”: (1) human intelligence,
(2) signals intelligence, (3) imagery intelligence,
(4) measurements intelligence, and (5) signatures
intelligence.
Human intelligence (HUMINT) is the receipt of
information from human sources or agents (career
employees of intelligence services are always designated intelligence officers). This can include highly
sensitive reporting from informants active within a
target group or government known as penetration
agents; defectors who are former members of the
target groups who have changed sides and fled
their home community; information provided by
escaping servicemen or gleaned from the interrogation of prisoners of war; and less sensitive materials by debriefing refugees and business travelers.
Human intelligence requires very careful evaluation or validation to establish what the information
does or does not indicate, and whether the information can be trusted or not. Agents can be mistaken
or captured and “played back” on their controllers
to feed deceptive information, a practice known as
doubling an agent. Agents may also be sincerely
mistaken or exaggerate claims to curry favor with
the intelligence officer to whom they report. In their
favor, human sources can provide unique insight
into the intentions, personalities, and methods of a
target organization or government.
Signals intelligence (SIGINT) comprises the
interception and interpretation of (mainly) electromagnetic signals. SIGINT is divided into the interception and interpretation of communications
(COMINT) and the monitoring of noncommunicative signals such as radar or telemetry transmissions
or electromagnetic leakage from the operation of
various electronic systems grouped together as
electronic intelligence (ELINT). Signals can be
intercepted from ground-level facilities such as
mobile units of the army or air force on land or
ships at sea and at fixed scale monitoring stations
(known colloquially as “antenna farms”). Signals
can also be monitored either by staffed or unstaffed
aircraft operating in the atmosphere (known as air
breathing platforms) or from Earth orbit by reconnaissance satellites (termed non-air-breathing platforms). Most communications, even over targeted
channels, are of little or no intelligence value.
Consequently, a distinction is drawn between the
overall body of intercepted traffic or take and that
which is actually of intelligence use, which is
Essentially Contested Concept
termed product. Product is typically as little as
10% or less of the take.
Intercepted communications are generally divided between encrypted, which are in code, and
clear traffic, which is not, whether in the form of
voice or text. Encrypted materials must be decoded
before they can be processed or exploited. However, even if a particular cipher is not successfully
broken, a great deal can be learned about the target just from the pattern of communications being
generated. Direction finding uses multiple receivers to triangulate the location of a transceiver,
whereas traffic analysis examines which transceivers or “nodes” in a communications network send
and receive the most traffic and to and from which
other nodes.
Imagery intelligence (IMINT) is the use of various imaging technologies to generate pictures that
can then be interpreted to extract intelligence information. Photographic intelligence (PHOTINT)
generally refers to images taken in the same light
spectrum that the human eye uses to see. Much
imagery intelligence employs nonvisible wavelengths, such as parts of the invisible spectrum that
the eye cannot detect. Infrared (IR) imagery, for
example, detects heat radiated or reflected by an
object. IR also makes it possible to form judgments
about the composition as well as shape and size of
objects because different materials generate heat in
different frequencies. Radar imagery can “look”
through poor weather conditions, although it is
best for imaging solid objects such as buildings
and vehicles. Nonvisible wavelength imagery is
termed either hyperspectral imagery or multispectral scanning.
IMINT may be collected at ground level by elements of the uniformed services engaged in reconnaissance or surveillance and from above using
air-breathing or space-based platforms much like
SIGINT. Indeed, many satellites carry both imagery and SIGINT sensor suites. Satellites have the
particular advantage for imagery purposes that
they can legally overfly foreign countries in space,
but aircraft are not allowed to enter a foreign
country’s sovereign airspace without permission.
Imagery intelligence is chiefly limited to that
which can be observed. It is also vulnerable to
denial and deception through concealment and
what is called spoofing through the use of false or
notional equipment and facilities such as phony
221
tanks made of wood or empty buildings prepared
to appear in active use. Although innovations in
imagery are constantly made to penetrate them,
denial and deception techniques also continuously
develop and usually cost an order of magnitude or
more or less than the imagery platform and its sensors. Moreover, high-resolution systems such as the
U.S. KEYHOLE satellites or the Russian Zenit and
Yantar systems are exceptionally expensive to build
(in the late 1980s, the KEYHOLE 12/Improved
Crystal satellites reportedly cost approximately one
billion dollars each), and it is costly in fuel to alter
their orbit to cover any new target. Consequently,
they only operate in comparatively small numbers.
Measurements and signatures intelligence (MASINT) is a very wide category that subsumes gathering and interpreting chemical or radioisotope
signatures from sources such as air, soil, or water
samples that may indicate particular weapons
development, manufacture, and testing; information from active or passive sonar surveillance systems; and detecting and measuring seismic signals
to detect and measure underground nuclear tests.
Philip H. J. Davies
See also Central Intelligence Agency; Intelligence
Further Readings
Burrows, W. (1988). Deep black: The startling truth
behind America’s top-secret spy satellites. New York:
Berkley.
Herman, M. (1996). Intelligence power in peace and war.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Lowenthal, M. (2006). Intelligence: From secrets to
policy. Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly
Press.
Shulsy, A. N., & Schmitt, G. J. (2002). Silent warfare:
Understanding the world of intelligence (3rd ed.).
Washington, DC: Brassey’s.
ESSENTIALLY CONTESTED CONCEPT
Power is often described as an essentially contested concept. That term was first introduced
into political theory in 1958 by William Gallie,
who applies it to various subject-terms including
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Essentially Contested Concept
power. In some hands, the use of the idea of an
essentially contested concept is taken to entail that
the meaning of words such as power or interests
has not been universally agreed. The terms have
been discussed for many years, so the lack of consensus suggests that there will never be any agreement. However, there are many scientific terms
about which there has been much debate and
whose meaning in standard definitions has altered
over the years. In physics, the concept of atoms
has changed over time, and the central concept of
gene in evolutionary theory has several meanings
that are much debated. However, physicists and
evolutionary biologists do not normally consider
their concepts to be “essentially contested.”
Rather, essentially contested concepts are not
merely those over which there happens to be no
agreement over a long time, but those that because
of their central role in normative theory can never
achieve a universally agreed definition. The claim
that power has an ineradicably normative nature
leads many to suggest that there can never be
agreement over its meaning.
If we take the term essential seriously in the idea
of an essentially contested concept, then we are
suggesting that some terms are necessarily of their
nature contestable (and perhaps we should replace
“contested” with “contestable” in such discussion). This would mean that even if people do
reach agreement, they can never do so decisively;
there will always be the possibility that someone
can come up with a reason for challenging the
definition. As William Connolly maintains, universal criteria for relevant reasons to accept a definition do not suffice to completely settle any debate.
In The Terms of Political Discourse, Connolly sets
out three criteria for essential contestability. First,
that there is no settled agreement; second, that
future attempts will fail; and third, that there are
good reasons why such attempts will fail. The third
makes contestation into essential contestability.
That there can be no decisive agreement might
derive from two processes. The first is that there is
no empirical evidence that could prove one account
of, say, the power structure, over another. The
claim here is that empirical evidence will always
fail to allow the possibility of agreement. We might
illustrate this claim with the old community power
debate. In that debate, pluralists maintain one
vision of the power structure; elitists maintain
another view. Both recognize that within democracies politicians have to consider the views of the
masses; otherwise, the politicians will be thrown
out of office. Both recognize that democracy is
better than dictatorship. However, pluralists maintain that power is generally dispersed among competing elites who represent the interests of different
groups, that the same group does not dominate in
all issue areas, and that there is some competition
between groups within issue areas. Elitists maintain that the same sets of people dominate in all
issue-areas and govern in their own interests.
One might think that empirical evidence could
decide between these competing views. We could
see if the elites form one reference group or several.
We could examine the circulation of elites. However, the two sides might disagree about what
counts as circulation of elites and so whether there
is one reference group or many. For example, both
might agree that it is not the same individuals in
positions of power, but elitists claim that they all
come from the same social class and that whatever
else they do, they protect the interests of that class.
So both might recognize that different people exist
in different issue areas but differ in their interpretation of whether those elites form one reference
group or several. And they may differ about
whether the elites govern almost exclusively in
their own interest (and only support the interests
of others to the extent the interests of the elite and
the mass coincide). Here, the disagreement is over
the meaning of elite in terms of reference group
and in terms of interest.
Even then, we might go farther. Pluralists might
suggest that the elites do, by and large, govern in
the interests of the masses because, once policies
are put to the masses, most (and not always the
same majority) support those policies. The elitists
then maintain that surveys and polls are not decisive because we have to examine why people support those policies. People might not have full
information; they might be mistaken about their
own interests because of propaganda from the
elites in positions of power. In this simplification of
this community power debate, therefore, we can
see that judgment or the empirical evidence is complicated by disagreement about the application of
several terms such as elite, interests, and power.
One possible solution is to see the terms in the
rival accounts as terms within that theory, so the
Exchange Theory
terms elite, interests, and so on, can be marked
relative to a theoretical claim. Hence, we have
“elitep” and “elitee” for elites as understood by
pluralists and elitists, with similar definitions for
all other terms in the rival accounts. In that way,
we do not have essential contestability over the
concepts, though we might still have rival interpretations of the nature of the power structure. But
what is the nature of that disagreement? One side
cannot maintain the other is wrong in their claims
if, given their definition of the terms, the power
structure is correctly described, even though it is
correctly described in the terms of the other theory.
Without some common set of agreements about
terms and their entailments, all we have are different theories. They are not even rival different theories. This leads to relativism, understood as the
thesis that there is no truth of the matter in such
cases, only underdetermined descriptions.
One way the two views might be made to
appear rivals is in terms of our normative attitudes
toward them. The elitists generally believe that the
structure of power in society is wrong, and power
should be more dispersed. The pluralists are more
sanguine because they believe that power is already
dispersed. However, unless they agree over what
dispersed means—and they are not likely to
because the term power is assumed to be essentially contested—all we are left with are rival normative views, rather than rival empirical accounts.
This constitutes the second reason why essentially
contested concepts are thought to be so: that people
have different normative commitments and they
cannot reach agreement over those commitments.
They might appear to agree that, for example,
equality is good, or that power should be dispersed,
but simply disagree over the empirical provenance
of those terms.
Keith Dowding
See also Community Power Debate; Elite Theories;
Interests; Pluralism
Further Readings
Connolly, W. E. (1983). The terms of political discourse.
Oxford, UK: Martin Robertson.
Gallie, W. (1962). Essentially contested concepts. In
M. Black (Ed.), The importance of language.
Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.
223
EXCHANGE THEORY
Exchange theory was developed by social psychologists and sociologists to model human relationships
as forms of reciprocal trade. People give things to
each other to get things back. When I give a gift to
a friend, I do so for exchange reasons, not necessarily to receive a gift but perhaps, say, out of gratitude
and to further friendship through conversation.
Exchange theorists model these exchanges much
as economists model trade or bargaining. People
who trade can create value by exchanging in a
mutually beneficial way, but they might have divergent interests with regard to the precise nature of
the trade in the sense that they place different valuations on the commodity being traded. The difference in valuation is the potential surplus created
through trade, and this gives both the incentives to
exchange. However, each might have an incentive
to pretend to value the exchange less than they
really do to gain extra from the trade. For example, one lover might pretend he is less enamored of
his partner than he really is, to extract more care
and attention from her. He might lead her to
believe that if she does not give complete devotion
he might leave the relationship, whereas he would
show her complete devotion if he thought she was
about to leave him. In economic terms, the two
lovers have a common interest in the production of
the “love surplus” but diametrically opposed interests with regard to its distribution.
In standard (pre-game-theoretic) economic discussions of trade, power takes almost no role. All
we have are two partners who can trade for mutual
advantage. However, most people would see a
potential power relationship in the previous discussion. Imagine for a moment two potential lovers.
The first (a man, say) is desperate for the affection
of the other, but the second (a woman) is relatively
indifferent to the affection of the first. The asymmetry with regard to distribution of affection
means that the second lover can demand great
attention from the first while giving relatively little
in return. Observing such a relationship, we might
say she has a great hold over him: she has the power
to force him to behave in ways that he would prefer
not to. She will not let him go to the sporting events
he would like to attend, mix with his old friends,
and so on. There is an exchange going on, one that
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Exclusion
(by assumption) he prefers to not having this
exchange at all, but one that disadvantages him
relative to her. In other words, she gains more than
he does because she values the exchange less.
Exchange theory deals with these types of asymmetrical power relationships by examining the
nature of trades with regard to the equity. In
exchange theory, if both parties have similar attitudes toward equitable exchange—that is, both
(a) hold the same beliefs about relative profit
and (b) hold the same beliefs about equitable
exchange—then inequitable social exchange will
not continue in the long term because one party
might feel annoyed and the other guilty. More
interesting for social exchange theory is where the
parties do not have similar attitudes. This is seen in
the example given earlier, where the beliefs of the
parties about the relative profit vary drastically.
However, third parties (the friends of the two lovers, for example) might have similar attitudes
toward relative profit and, hence, see one partner
as exploiting the other. In social exchange theory,
therefore, the degree of power of partners in social
exchanges is measured relative to the valuations of
the profits of the exchanging parties.
Love is a good example precisely because “love
is blind” and being in love might make one oblivious to what one would ordinarily see as exploitation. In retrospect, one might realize that a partner
had great power over one and regret the inequitable exchange that one accepted at the time. In
exchange theory, the degree to which one party can
have power over another depends on the degree of
dependence that one has on the other. In the “love
market,” for example, if there is a shortage of supply of potential female lovers, say, then men would
be more dependent on the lover with whom they
have managed to enter into social exchange. The
price of a loving relationship increases with the
shortage of love-exchanging partners. Dependency
thus gives power. Sometimes there might be mutual
dependency, which should lead to equitable
exchange. If there were only two people on a desert
island, say, then they would have mutual dependence that might lead to equitable trade over time.
However, one important aspect of exchange theory
relative to standard economic bargaining models is
that people might gain benefit from exchange
itself. Thus, the two people on the desert island
would not have equitable exchange if one of them
valued the exchange relationship itself more than
did the other—say she is unable to forage for food
as efficiently as he does, or he would be content
living alone whereas she needs company.
Exchange theory in terms of social relationships
has been extended to power dependency theory in
political network analysis. Here, organizations are
thought to exchange resources (money, influence,
information, etc.) for mutual gain. The more powerful organizations are those that are less dependent
on the exchange than their partners. Thus, a government regulatory department that had several
sources of information about the effects of regulation on its clientele would be less dependent on
individual sources than would a department that
had only one source of information. Thus, if the
regulatory agency depended entirely on the industry
or professional body that it was regulating, then the
entire power over regulations would lie with those
being regulated. Similarly, dependency theory has
been applied to exchange relationships between
nations and international organizations.
Keith Dowding
See also Bargaining; Chicken Games; Dependency Theory
in International Relations; Exploitation; Networks,
Power in; Networks and Communities
Further Readings
Blau, P. (1964). Exchange and power in social life. New
York: John Wiley.
Coleman, J. (1991). Foundations of social theory.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cook, K. S., & Emerson, R. M. (1978). Power, equity
and commitment in exchange networks. American
Sociological Review, 43, 721–739.
Homans, G. C. (1961). Social relations: Its elementary
forms. New York: Harcourt Brace.
EXCLUSION
The concept of exclusion has risen to prominence
in policy debate and academic research since the
1980s. The discovery of a “new” poverty at that
time, characterized by growing long-term unemployment, an increased strain on welfare systems,
and a proliferation of demands for social justice,
Exclusion
created an unstable political context and a concomitant struggle to define a program of action.
This has seen the new poverty accounted for in
three distinct ways. One focuses on the emergence
of an underclass, denoting a body of people who
have fallen beneath the conventional class structure. This does not simply add a new layer of
stratification to modern industrial societies, for
the dominant account of the underclass is of a
body of people who are unable or unwilling to
support themselves other then through crime, welfare, and sporadic employment in the informal
economy. A second account focuses on the problem of social cohesion, which is framed by the
challenges posed by globalization, and in particular the impact of market liberalization on national
economies and the organization of public services.
Here, the main concern is how to implement
reforms without creating inequalities that might
lead to social fragmentation and a loss of political
legitimacy. Finally, the third account reemphasizes
relations of domination, exploitation, and discrimination long associated with coercive state
power, capitalist relations, patriarchy, and racism.
These are very different ways of interpreting
poverty and inequality today, and all are gathered
into the concept of exclusion, which raises the
question of whether and how such a contested concept might be used for the purpose of social and
political analysis. One way of handling this diversity is to retain it, so that the different (and at times
competing) accounts are examined as discourses. A
discourse can be defined as a relational field of
meanings that is constituted by and constitutive of
a particular social context, and within which
knowledge and practice intersect and interact with
other discourses. In this way, exclusion can be seen
to articulate a number of strategies and programs
that together constitute a field of political struggle.
Power and the Excluded
Each of the three discourses sketched can be presented as a statement about the excluded that is
both diagnostic and evaluative:
1. The excluded have opted out.
2. The excluded have been left out.
3. The excluded have been kept out.
225
The third statement, which is generally expressed
by the political Left, has the most to say in connecting exclusion specifically to power. This is because
the Left has tended to derive an understanding of
power from a Marxist conception of ideology, of
state, and of social relations. However, when examined as a discourse, each statement can be seen to
adopt a distinct position on power relations.
1. The core argument is that the excluded
belong to an underclass that has become disconnected from, and may even actively oppose, social
norms and the rule of law. Whether because of
lack of ability or willingness to exercise responsibility and self-discipline, the underclass poses a
threat to social order. Assuming a moral decline, of
which the underclass is merely the most visible
manifestation, the discourse articulates a negativesum view of power relations, identifying the egalitarian aspirations of state welfare and affirmative
action programs as primary causes. The central
thesis is that far from eradicating poverty and
inequality in the structure of opportunities, mechanisms of redistribution actually socialize the poor
and the less capable into habits of dependency,
which in turn erodes social power while fostering
conditions that are conducive to criminality.
2. The core argument is that the excluded are
the unfortunate and unintended victims of modernization, which is to say that they have been
disadvantaged or marginalized by changes that
have occurred in the context of late modernity. As
a sociological thesis of unintended effects, this is a
discourse of renewal and reform that finds its clearest formulation in the post-left–right third way
politics. The central thesis is that we are on the
cusp of a new age, with a new economy that can
benefit everyone if, and only if, each and all recognize that they have responsibilities as well as rights.
The discourse articulates a positive-sum view of
power relations that links individual empowerment
to social empowerment, devolving responsibility to
the individual, transforming the citizen into a consumer of public and private services, and encouraging self-help and mutual assistance in the form of
familial and community relations.
3. The core argument is that the excluded are
a new servant class subjected to a global economy
that operates in the interests of the dominant
226
Exclusion
consumer classes, nations, and global regions. The
discourse articulates a zero-sum view of power
relations, and it identifies the “new” poor as
migrant communities, ethnic minorities, solo
mothers, and other marginalized groups who
depend on sweatshop labor and low-paid service
sector work. Furthermore, against the idea that
the underclass is a collection of criminal and feckless individuals, it is argued that the impoverished
conditions once associated with the third world
are now found in the ghettos of first world countries, with the new poor blamed for their poverty,
or at the very least made responsible for it, through
neoliberal reforms that are making welfare entitlements tentative and conditional on participation
in training programs and make-work schemes.
Although each of these discourses provides a specific account of power and exclusion, they all converge on the more general problem of order.
Power, Order, and Exclusion
At the most general level of analysis, the concept
of exclusion evokes a conception of order that is
based on a relation between an inside (inclusion,
the included) and an outside (exclusion, the
excluded). Between one and the other is a relation
of difference and division, which raises the question of how such frontiers are constituted and
instituted. The study of nationalism and ethnicity
has produced an impressive literature on how
populations, cultures, states, and territories are
ordered into discreet entities through the construction of divisions and differences, the boundaries of
which have given rise to the bloodiest conflicts in
history. A more wide-ranging approach to this
problematic can be found in the poststructuralist
literature. Poststructuralist theory proposes that
any ordered field or system—whether a discourse,
a social order, or the international system of
nation-states—is constituted through exclusion.
The basic premise (drawing on Jacques Derrida’s
notion of différance) is that each element within a
system of elements defers meaning to itself by differing from the others. Chess is a good way of
illustrating this point. If we want to explain chess
to someone who knows nothing about the game,
then it becomes clear that explaining what the
rook can do is pretty meaningless unless we define
the rook in relation to the knight, the bishop, and
all the other pieces. The chessboard supports a
definite universe of identities, dispositions, and
relations that are constituted through difference.
When we move to the study of social order, then
there are three important added dimensions: first,
when taken as a whole, the system of elements can
be conceptualized as a field of power relations;
second, this field has been constituted through
struggle and strategy; and third, order, which is
the outcome of struggle, is constituted through the
deferral or exclusion of some meanings and the
inclusion of others. In this way, it can be argued
that any ordered field or system is constituted by
what it excludes, which is also to say that there is
no order without exclusion. At this level of
abstraction, the outside of order is essentially
beyond language and representation: it is simply a
horizon of deferred meanings that renders order
unstable. The questions that follow are “how”
questions: how is order actually created, how does
it endure, how is it transformed? Studies inspired
by the work of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal
Mouffe have shown that order is accomplished
through hegemony, which stabilizes the field by
constructing a specific representation of the inside–
outside relation. From a Western perspective, the
most pertinent example today is the war on terror.
In contrast to terrorist and terrorism, both of
which can be given tangible form, terror is a bottomless discursive vessel that can be can be endlessly filled with meaning. As a purely negative
symbol, terror is used to constitute a united inside
that must be defended. Representations of this
inside, such as “the coalition of the willing” or
“the free world,” are symbolically charged and
yet, like terror, remain essentially vague. In the
same way, the political Right has waged a reasonably successful campaign against affirmative action
and welfare in the United States by shaping the
discourse of the underclass as an immanent threat.
In Europe, however, the discourse of cohesion has
become hegemonic, and although this may suggest
a more egalitarian social democratic ethos, policy
is focused on employability rather than on redistribution as the solution to exclusion.
An alternative, though related, approach to the
study of power, order, and exclusion is inspired by
the genealogical method of critique developed by
Michel Foucault. An example would be an analysis
Exclusion
of liberal government and exclusion. In postEnlightenment Europe, J. S. Mill could reasonably
assert that there was a natural incompatibility
between subjection to the will of others and selfgovernment. However, he also argued that the
doctrine of liberty had definite limits: it did not
apply to children and it did not apply to childlike
or “primitive” cultures. His point was that neither
was (yet) capable of self-government, so that in
both cases the correct and legitimate mode of government was a benevolent form of despotism. In
other words, children and childlike cultures must
acquire the arts of self-government, which assumes
a willingness and ability to learn. The argument,
which is derived from universal claims about
human reason and the equal moral worth of all
individuals, reflected a widely held evolutionary
theory of social change. And it was precisely this
claim to the universal that constituted the exception to Mill’s axiom of self-government. Not all
people were capable of practicing freedom and so,
in the name of reason, civilization, and progress,
the bodies and minds of children and childlike
adults—or the capacity for action that is human
life—was to be acted on. But acted on how, and by
whom? The answer, at least in principle, was education. If those to be subjected to education and
training were capable of self-government, then in
time they would benefit from the freedoms that a
liberal order bestows on its subjects. Freedom was
made contingent on the willingness to learn and
the ability to comply with specific norms of conduct, with the ideal subject of liberal order both a
self-supporting laborer and a responsible citizen.
The autonomy so dear to liberals turns out to be a
mode of self-discipline, which can also be imposed
by external authorities.
This is an example of how knowledge is transformed into a regime of truth, not through the
design of individuals such as Mill, but as discourses
are assembled from struggles and strategies. The
consistency of Mill’s position is found in the way
that he assumes all people everywhere to be capable of self-government. What makes the adult of
the civilized society different from children and
primitives is not a question of essence; it is simply
that the minds of children and the mentality of
childlike peoples are less developed. And yet Mill’s
argument belongs to a system of knowledge that is
constructed against an outside that is made into an
227
inferior reflection of itself. Classical liberal government was built on illiberal foundations, and yet
this was concealed by projecting a socially constructed hierarchy onto a temporal axis so that it
became part of the natural order of things.
This type of analysis shows that the subject of
liberal order was not given by nature only to be
discovered during the age of Enlightenment.
Instead, the subject was made within a tapestry of
disciplinary powers that began with the child and
the primitive and expanded through the growth of
medicine, psychiatry, education, social work, charity, and child rescue. Furthermore, although liberalism is often associated with the impartial rule of
law, in practice a liberal order deploys law and
norm in dividing the population and excluding
certain people from the status of the autonomous
and rational individual. During the 19th century,
paupers were subjected to the harsh conditions of
the state-administered workhouse, unmarried
mothers to private Magdalen asylums, juvenile
delinquents to reformatories, and the children of
the “perishing classes” to industrial schools. Likewise, the insane, the mentally defective, inebriates,
and others perceived to be childlike or primitive in
their habits were also excluded in the name of
security, order, and progress. Whether coded as
care, cure, or control, the effect of these social
technologies was to construct a universe of subjects who collectively populated the margin of
order and defined its internal limits. And as this
margin was carried into the 20th century, so it
became the focus of professional social work and
the welfare state, as well as of more sinister strategies. Alert for defective minds, deficient bodies,
malformed character, and dangerous dispositions
that might corrupt the individual and degrade the
population, the authorities policing the margin
confronted some of the fundamental questions of
the day: should the delinquent, the defective, and
the depraved be left to their own devices in the
hope that they would eventually die out? Could
they be cured? Was it better to place them in custody so that the risk of procreation was controlled?
Or the most insidious of all: should they be exterminated, either through selective sterilization, or
collectively, by applying the techniques of bureaucratic organization and industrial production to
the task of purification? In the wake of the Holocaust, there was some effort involved in opposing
228
Executive Power
the egalitarian strategy of the welfare state to the
brutal techniques of eugenics, but this tends to
overlook the fact that both are examples of what
Foucault called biopower, or sociopolitical technologies that act on life and living populations.
More recently, and coinciding with the changes
and challenges sketched earlier—the discovery of
a new poverty, an increased strain on welfare
systems, and a proliferation of demands for
social justice—the exclusions that operated
through incarceration have been challenged.
Although this has had a limited impact on the
prison, there has nonetheless been a general trend
away from custody and detention to care and
treatment within the community. A question for
analysts today is whether social inclusion is a
form of empowerment, a new mode of control, or
both simultaneously.
Order Without Exclusion?
In contrast to the distinctly modern projects of
emancipation and equality, the prevalence of
debate on inclusion and exclusion suggests a shift
away from the pursuit of a final emancipation or
end-state of achieved equality. This is coincident
with a range of debates on postmodernity, late
modernity, and a second or reflexive modernity. A
mode of social organization might be emerging
that is predicated on the insight that exclusion is
the condition of possibility for order, and that
order can never be more than provisional because
the standing conditions that structure and stabilize
social relations are contingent on political struggle.
Kevin Ryan
See also Discourse; Domination; Foucault, Michel;
Hegemony; Laclau, Ernesto, and Mouffe, Chantal
Further Readings
Bauman, Z. (1998). Work, consumerism and the new
poor. Buckingham, UK: Open University Press.
Garland, D. (2001). The culture of control. Oxford, UK:
Oxford University Press.
Levitas, R. (1998). The inclusive society? Social exclusion
and New Labour. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave.
Ryan, K. (2007). Social exclusion and the politics of
order. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.
EXECUTIVE POWER
The separation of powers theory, as developed by
the 18th-century French political philosopher
Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, distinguishes between executive, legislative,
and judiciary power as three branches of government that are not to infringe on each other’s constitutionally vested competences. The executive
consists of a government, its ministerial bureaucracy, and subordinate governmental agencies.
The separation of powers doctrine more or less
accurately describes power relationships in presidential systems, but in parliamentary systems,
executive and legislative powers are fused because
the executive’s capacity to govern depends on the
parliamentary majority’s willingness to support it.
In place of an institutional separation of powers,
parliamentary systems are therefore characterized
by a functional division of powers between the
government majority and the opposition. All this is
only empirically relevant in democratic political
systems because in autocratic regimes formal allocation of powers has no systematic consequences
for how real power is executed by dictators, ruling
parties, or military juntas.
The executive power is the authority to enforce
laws and to ensure that they are implemented
as intended. Organizational structures to carry
out these functions vary considerably. Intragovernmental relationships in presidential systems
vary between a clearly dominant president with
subordinate departmental chiefs in the United
States and a more evenly balanced power structure
in some of the Latin American countries. In parliamentary systems, the role of the prime minister
varies relative to ministers, depending on cabinet
manuals or informal traditions and on whether the
government is formed by just one party or is a coalition government. Whereas the British prime minister is clearly first among equals, the constitutional
position of the German federal chancellor with his
or her competence on guidelines is politically
limited because the chancellor has to respect the
autonomy of his or her coalition partner(s). In other
parliamentary democracies, Italy being a good
example, the prime minister has virtually no prerogative competences at all. In addition, presidents
in presidential systems combine the roles of head of
Exercise Fallacy
state and head of government, whereas in parliamentary systems with their dual executive, there
exist elected presidents or monarchs as heads of
state alongside the prime minister. In some instances,
these presidents hold real political power that has
given rise to a—however heavily debated—new type
of democratic governance: semi-presidentialism.
The relationship between the government, no
matter how power is internally allocated, and the
bureaucracy has traditionally been seen as hierarchically structured. On this account, ministers are
seen as principals who rely on ministerial civil servants and agencies as agents with all the agency loss
problems that delegation of power relationships
implies. Parallel to delegation theory, which studies
the opportunities to prevent or minimize agency
loss and to maintain political control of bureaucratic implementation, core executive studies have
recently begun to criticize the traditional hierarchical accounts of the interorganizational structure of
the executive by pointing out that network governance may be a more appropriate concept.
André Kaiser
See also Legislative Power; Prime Ministerial and
Presidential; Separation of Powers
Further Readings
Dunleavy, P., & Rhodes, R. A. W. (2007). Core executive
studies in Britain. Public Administration, 68(1), 3–28.
Mainwaring, S., & Shugart, M S. (1997). Presidentialism
and democracy in Latin America. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press.
Weller, P. (1985). First among equals: Prime ministers in
Westminster systems. London: George Allen &
Unwin.
EXERCISE FALLACY
Exercise fallacy was coined by Peter Morriss,
from a point made by Anthony Kenny. Both
authors start from the recognition that power
refers to a capacity or disposition, rather than to
an event or occurrence. Philosophers who have
investigated how we should understand the meanings of such dispositional terms have started with
229
simple natural powers, such as “soluble.” To say
that sugar is soluble in water is to say (something
like) that if sugar is put into water, it will dissolve.
This does not describe any event that has occurred;
it is a claim about what would happen if such an
event did occur. What is meant by saying, “This
sugar lump is soluble in water,” is very different
from what is meant by saying, “This sugar lump
has dissolved in water.” Or, in Kenny’s example,
whisky only begins to exercise the power to intoxicate after it is imbibed, but it possesses this power
even when it is sitting harmlessly in the bottle. The
power endures. Ignoring this distinction—to think
that a power can only exist when it is being exercised—is to commit the exercise fallacy.
Both philosophers and social scientists have
been tempted by the exercise fallacy. The motivation for doing so of many philosophers (and some
social scientists) has been a wish to rid our language of unscientific metaphysical ideas, such as an
immortal soul or a spirit of the age driving history.
This led to the view that we can only meaningfully
talk about what we can observe. Postwar social
scientists were much influenced by this empiricist
trend in philosophy. They similarly wanted to rid
social science of much of what they considered to
be metaphysical nonsense. Thus, the behaviorist
school wanted to limit social science (particularly
psychology) to talk about behavior, and thus
remove the “unscientific” focus on mental events,
which were necessarily unobservable, and therefore perhaps not there at all. Behavioralism in
political science demanded a similarly pared-down
vocabulary. And that led to the exercise fallacy in
political science. Thus, Robert Dahl (among others) claimed that to say that someone had power
was to say no more than that that person was causing something to happen. But this is false: just as
the whisky’s power exists when the whisky is not
being drunk, so does the president’s power exist
when he or she is not doing anything with it.
More recently another influential, and very different, school in social science has taken to committing the exercise fallacy: disciples of Michel
Foucault. This is partly because of an elementary
blunder in translation, in which two, quite different, French words—pouvoir, which denotes the
action, and puissance, which designates something
lasting and permanent—are both rendered by the
English word power. This has resulted in its
230
Exit and Voice as Forms of Power
becoming an orthodoxy, among Foucauldians
writing in English, that power exists only when it
is exercised. Thus, the exercise fallacy has returned
in this banal and uninteresting form.
Peter Morriss
See also Ability; Ableness; Dahl, Robert A.; Foucault,
Michel; Morriss, Peter; Vehicle Fallacy
Further Readings
Kenny, A. (1975). Will, freedom and power. Oxford, UK:
Blackwell.
Morriss, P. (2002). Power: A philosophical analysis
(2nd ed.). Manchester, UK: Manchester University
Press.
EXIT AND VOICE AS
FORMS OF POWER
If you want others to do as you wish, you can ask
them, or threaten them in some way. In certain
circumstances, a threat to walk away can make
asking someone more likely to succeed. Albert
Hirschman made this point well in his famous
book Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (1970). The basic
idea is quite simple: people or organizations have
two main responses to the decline in the quality of
a product. They may voice, such as complain, or
exit by buying another company’s product. This
insight extends to a variety of situations where
people became dissatisfied, such as consumers of
public services, members of political parties, or as
employees, and in each situation people use the
voice and exit options open to them. Hirschman
did not just describe these actions; he argued that
they might be rival options, or complementary
ones. People might trade off voice and exit; if exit
is easy and cheap, then people tend to voice less
when they have an exit option. The threat of losing customers helps keep organizations such as
business firms on their toes; losing customers
affects their profit line. In that sense, the market
power of consumers is their exit strategy, and the
individual power of a consumer is the threat of
exit. A trade union gains power of voice in negotiating with management with the threat of pulling
workers out of their jobs. But entities other than
firms in a competitive market might be more sanguine about the possibility of people exiting. An
authoritarian regime might be happy to allow
citizens to leave rather than give them a voice.
In that sense, the salience of exit and voice may
give more power to those who are already not
responsive and who do not like competition. Individuals who leave are not exercising power because
their exit shows they have failed to get a response
from their target. Only the threat of exit is a power
resource, and it only works if the target cares
about the exit of the person.
There are many situations where individuals
can trade off exit–voice to their advantage and
wield power. For one, they can use their potential
for exit to make their voices heard. Discontented
employees know about this weapon very well:
even hinting they might leave their job can be an
easy way to get better terms and conditions and to
avoid the costs of leaving. Sometimes the possibility of exit means that the individual can voice more
strongly, in what is called “noisy exit.” Critics of
authoritarian regimes, such as of the former German Democratic Republic, can protest more effectively if they know they can leave. Alternatively,
consumers or citizens are reluctant to exit because
they have loyalty, so they voice with added passion. Loyalists might voice even more strongly
when others are leaving because they can point to
the destructive effects of exit. And those on their
way out can give a signal to the rest left behind. So
even though voice weakens in the face of exit, the
threat of exit can strengthen voice in some circumstances. The key insight is that the ingenuity people
display in communicating their options to the
powerful allows them to increase their influence.
Peter John
See also Bargaining; Free Market; Loyalty; Threats; Trade
Further Readings
Dowding, K., John, P., Mergoupis, T., & Van Vugt, M.
(2000). Exit, voice, and loyalty: Analytic and
empirical developments. European Journal of Political
Research, 37(4), 469–495.
Hirschman, A. O. (1970). Exit, voice, and loyalty:
Responses to decline in firms, organizations and
states. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Expectancy Confirmation, Power and
EXPECTANCY CONFIRMATION,
POWER AND
When people interact with others, they often use
preconceived beliefs and expectations as guides to
action. Their actions, in turn, may prompt interaction partners to behave in ways that confirm initial beliefs. This phenomenon, in which belief
creates reality, is known by several names—the
self-fulfilling prophecy, expectancy confirmation,
and behavioral confirmation (terminology that
emphasizes how the target’s actual behavior confirms the perceiver’s initial beliefs). The behavioral
confirmation scenario has been demonstrated in a
series of empirical investigations in which a person (the perceiver), having adopted erroneous
beliefs about another person (the target), acts in
ways that cause the behavior of the target to confirm the perceiver’s expectations.
Considerable evidence suggests behavioral confirmation effects are robust and generalize over a
wide range of expectations and interaction contexts. Moreover, research has demonstrated that
power plays a possible causal role in this interplay
of belief and behavior in several compelling ways:
those with expectations tend to hold positions of
power, the motivations of powerful perceivers differ from those of powerless targets, behavioral
conformation is particularly likely within interactions between powerful perceivers and powerless
targets, and expectations themselves create a sense
of relative power thereby turning perceivers into
powerful perceivers.
One way that power may be implicated in
behavioral confirmation is that those with expectations are often those in positions of power. One
can readily think of a variety of situations with
powerful perceivers and less powerful targets. For
example, teachers, interviewers, employers, and
therapists all have positions of power and are apt
to have expectations about others with less power.
Moreover, these positions of power often make
expectations relevant; for example, teachers may
rely on expectations about student performance to
guide their teaching efforts, employers may rely on
expectations in supervising employees, and therapists may draw on expectations in designing therapeutic strategies. Thus, it may be particularly likely
that people in positions of power are guided by
231
their expectations in dealing with those of lesser
power.
Moreover, research by Mark Snyder and Julie
Haugen indicates that the motivations of perceivers often differ from those of targets and these
differences set the stage for behavioral confirmation. Typically, the motivation of perceivers is to
“get to know” the target and this motivation leads
perceivers to use expectations as a guide for their
interactions, as those in positions of high power
rely more on stereotyped expectations in their
dealings with persons of lesser power. For example, a perceiver interviewing someone expected to
be tardy is likely to ask about the times the target
had been late in the last month; any affirmative
response confirms the initial expectation of tardiness. Further, because of the power associated with
the position of interviewer, the interviewer may
have ample opportunity to direct the interaction
based on his or her expectations, choosing the
interview topics that are addressed and making it
difficult for the target to avoid discussion areas
that might not confirm the perceiver’s expectations. By contrast, the motivation of the target is
often “to get along” with the perceiver. This motivation leads targets to acquiesce to whatever inquiries a perceiver directs at the target and not attempt
to redirect the conversation. Even if targets are
aware of negative expectations held about them,
they put themselves at risk attempting to disconfirm the expectations that perceivers hold about
them. In general, people are not pleased when their
expectations are disconfirmed. Thus, targets may
actively confirm expectations in an effort to please
and “get along” with the powerful perceiver.
Furthermore, the net effect of the interrelations
between power, motivation, and the roles of perceiver and target is that behavioral confirmation is
particularly likely in interactions that involve a
powerful perceiver and a powerless target. In his
research, John Copeland demonstrated that power
can be created in the laboratory and can be as
simple as making a decision about whether someone else should continue in an experiment. Thus, in
the classic perceiver/target experimental paradigm,
when the power to decide whether the other participant will have the opportunity to earn a reward
in a subsequent phase of the experiment is assigned
to the perceiver, behavioral confirmation occurs;
however, when this kind of explicit social power is
232
Exploitation
given to the target, the perceiver’s expectation has
no effect on the behavior of the target. In addition,
motivation follows power, such that the person
with the power is motivated to get to know the
other person; when that person is the perceiver, he
or she acts on expectations and treats the target in
ways that elicit behavioral confirmation.
Finally, power confers the opportunity and ability to have one’s expectations confirmed; the expectations themselves confer a sense of power on those
who hold them. In experimental settings, Austin
Baldwin, Marc Kiviniemi, and Mark Snyder
found that the simple act of providing an expectation about an anticipated interaction partner is
sufficient to elicit feelings of power over that person. This sense of power comes from feeling that
one knows something about someone else and
that this knowledge will be of use in social interaction. This effect seems particularly pronounced
when the knowledge associated with holding an
expectation confers a sense of relative advantage
(i.e., that one knows something about the other
person that the other person does not know about
oneself).
The intricate interplay of expectations, power,
and behavioral confirmation is not only of theoretical significance, but has “real world” implications
too. Every day, people encounter others who have
stereotypes, have implicit and explicit biases, or
simply have access to information about them.
These a priori expectations are often erroneous and,
perhaps more often than not, are in the hands of
those who have some sort of power. Whether it is
the teacher with overt expectations about what
minority children are capable of, or the prospective
employer who is scrutinizing the résumé of a job
applicant eagerly seeking employment, a powerful
perceiver’s expectations are likely to affect the target’s behavior and consequently his or her opportunity for success.
Mark Snyder and Jennifer Filson
See also Knowledge and Power; Relational Power; Social
Power
Further Readings
Snyder, M., & Stukas, A. (1999). Interpersonal processes:
The interplay of cognitive, motivational, and
behavioral activities in social interaction. Annual
Review of Psychology, 50, 273–303.
Snyder, M., Tanke, E., & Berscheid, E. (1977). Social
perception and interpersonal behavior: On the selffulfilling nature of social stereotypes. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 656–666.
EXPLOITATION
To exploit something in the most general sense of
the term simply means to make use of it. Especially with regard to natural resources, exploitation tends to refer to consumption only. What
makes the concept a basic one of social critique
and theoretically controversial is that apart from
this value-neutral meaning, exploitation can also
be used pejoratively. In social theory, the concept
of exploitation is usually used to characterize
social relations in which an actor or category of
actors uses others for their own ends because of a
fundamentally asymmetric power relationship
between them. Accordingly, most authors define
exploitation as taking advantage of another person unfairly, that is, as using someone who,
because of his or her disadvantaged and inferior
position, has to comply with the exploiter’s will.
However, the classic and most influential theorist
of exploitation, namely Karl Marx, did not share
this standard account of the concept.
Marx: Surplus Labor and Surplus Value
Marx’s account differed in two ways. First, Marx
explicitly rejected the moral framing characteristic
of the standard notion of exploitation. Second, he
restricted the concept to the field of labor relations. Most disputes about the concept of exploitation center around these two issues. The first
concerns the status of the concept of exploitation:
what is the function of the notion of exploitation
in social theory? The second issue concerns the
range of social phenomena to which the concept
of exploitation is applicable: which social relations can be exploitative?
Marx identified exploitation as the appropriation of another’s surplus labor. Surplus labor is the
amount of labor exceeding what is necessary for
the reproduction of the worker’s labor power, that
Exploitation
is, for producing the worker’s living conditions
sufficient for the worker’s capability to keep on
working. Appropriation of surplus labor is by no
means specific to capitalist societies. It is rooted in
forced labor and just changes in form in relation to
the different ways forced labor has historically
been organized in societies. In slaveholder and feudal societies, exploitation as the appropriation of
surplus labor occurred in the form of a direct
appropriation of surplus labor or in the form of a
requisition of the surplus product, respectively.
Leaving aside that the institution of slavery disguises the fact that not all of the slave’s labor is
exploited insofar as the exploiter is interested in
the reproduction of the slave’s labor power, to
Marx there is nothing mysterious about these historically prevalent forms of exploitation. What is
enigmatic is rather how exploitation can occur
within capitalist societies given that these societies,
in principle, have abolished forced labor and rest
on free labor, instead. The Marxian theory of
exploitation is intended to solve this riddle.
Marx’s analysis of capitalist exploitation centers
around his notion of the “doubly free worker”:
Under capitalist conditions, the worker is free in
the first sense of being the owner of his labor
power, legally uncoerced to work for another apart
from contractual labor relations the worker enters
into at his or her discretion; the worker is free also
in the second sense of being free from any means of
production, hence, undermining the worker’s freedom in the first sense, necessitated to sell his or her
labor power to make a living. Nonetheless, neither
is the surplus labor nor the surplus product of the
worker directly appropriated by another under
capitalist conditions. The free worker is not
exploited in the same way as the slave and the serf.
How can the worker be exploited at all? How is it
possible that capitalists appropriate free workers’
surplus labor? The mystery resides in the fact that
under capitalist conditions goods appear as commodities insofar as they are primarily produced for
the market, and all goods can, in principle, be converted into each other (by monetary means) through
economic transactions. Therefore, all these transactions have to take the form of an exchange of
equivalents. The commodity of labor power is no
exception to this rule. Marx argues that the capitalist economy functions in such a way that the workers are paid according to the value of their labor
233
power. There is no robbery involved in capitalist
labor relations. To explain how capitalist labor
relations can embody an exchange of equivalents as
well as the capitalists’ appropriation of the workers’ surplus labor, Marx focuses on the specific
form surplus labor takes under capitalist conditions, namely surplus value. Capitalist exploitation,
then, consists in the appropriation of surplus value.
Key to Marx’s notion of surplus value is his
analysis of the singular character of the commodity of labor power that is rooted in the labor theory
of value he developed on the basis and in critique
of classical political economy (most notably Adam
Smith and David Ricardo). According to this conception, labor is the sole source of value. Value,
Marx states, depends on, but must not be confused
with usage value, that is, a good’s particular utility
for an actor. In case such goods result from human
activity, they have to be understood as products of
concrete labor, that is, qualitatively defined labor.
Concrete labor—such as, for example, the productive activities of a carpenter and of a weaver—as
well as the different usage values of the products
are incommensurable, however. Value, in contrast,
that allows for the exchangeability of commodities
in a market economy (and is realized in economic
transactions as exchange value), arises from
abstract labor, labor stripped of all qualitative
characteristics and determined in purely quantitative terms. Accordingly, the value of a commodity
is defined by the (average) amount of labor power
necessary for its production. The singular character of the commodity of labor power, then, resides
in that its usage value consists in producing value.
Labor relations embody an exchange of equivalents insofar as workers are paid whatever is necessary for the reproduction of their labor power;
surplus value is produced by consumption of this
labor power in excess of the amount necessary for
its reproduction, that is, by the worker’s additional
working time beyond what would be necessary for
his or her reproduction.
Being rooted in an exchange of equivalents, no
injustice is involved in capitalist exploitation,
according to Marx. Yet, the concept of exploitation receives attention just for the reason that it is
not normatively neutral. It is intended to identify a
wrongness hidden behind the façade of free contractual relations. One reason why Marx did not
frame exploitation in normative terms is that he
234
Exploitation
believed subjects’ normative assumptions to
depend on the socioeconomic conditions prevailing in their society. If, however, one grants more
autonomy to the realm of moral argument than the
materialist Marxian scheme of society allows for,
that is, the scheme of a foundational economic
base and an ephemeral superstructure (of politics,
law, morality, art, etc.), then the normative ambiguities of the notion of exploitation are open to
debate. What kind of wrongness is involved in
exploitation?
Other Analyses of Exploitation
An obvious answer, it would seem, is that because
the liberal notion of freedom disguises the social
coercion that forces the “free” worker to sell his or
her labor power, capitalist labor relations resemble
an exchange of equivalents only on the surface;
without such coercion workers would own the
whole product of their labor. They are actually
entitled to this whole product, and the wrongness
of exploitation consists precisely in the fact that
they receive less than they are entitled to. The normative core of such an understanding of exploitation is a strong notion of self-ownership according
to which agents have the basic right freely to dispose of and capitalize on their natural talents. This
interpretation of the concept of exploitation has
led some authors to claim a close affinity between
Marxism and libertarianism; it is fundamental to
left-libertarianism and at the heart of an extensive
debate on the normative content of exploitation
that has taken place within analytical Marxism.
The classic contribution to this debate is John
Roemer’s influential analysis of exploitation.
Roemer uncouples the concept of exploitation
from the highly problematic labor theory of value
that (in its Marxian as well as Ricardian, etc., variants) had been superseded already in the late 19th
century by the neoclassic subjective theory of value
based on the concept of marginal utility. Instead of
relying on an objective theory of value, Roemer
grounds his approach on a theory of property relations. This leads him to define as exploitative all
those situations in which actors are worse off than
they would be under conditions of an equal distribution of (external) resources. Exploitation, then,
arises from distributive inequality, especially the
unequal distribution of the means of production.
Thus, Roemer’s analysis downsizes the normative
weight of exploitation that is made dependent on
a theory of just distribution. Indeed, Roemer even
advises Marxists to redirect their focus from
exploitation to inequalities in the distribution of
assets and points to the fact that exploitation only
counts for one kind of injustice among others.
Confronting the problem how, on the one hand,
actors can be conceived of as responsible agents
(thereby allowing for legitimate inequalities) while,
on the other hand, acknowledging that inequalities
have to be remedied by redistributive measures
insofar as they arise from conditions that are
beyond an individual’s control, he further argues
for certain restrictions on self-ownership, the supposed normative core of the Marxian concept of
exploitation.
The normative implications of the concept of
exploitation are qualified by this reconceptualization, but of greater importance are the consequences for its explanatory function. According to
Roemer, exploitation might be overcome by redistributive measures; in this regard, there is no difference to the neoclassic notion of exploitation as
payment of workers beneath the marginal product
of their labor. Marx, in contrast, believed that the
private ownership of the means of production
must inevitably lead to exploitation for systemic
reasons. Hence, redistribution (and, for that matter,
any intervention confined to the distributive sphere)
must necessarily fall short; only a reorganization of
the economic system, that is, the productive sphere,
would be suited to eliminate the fundamental
wrongness of capitalist societies. In this view, the
proposition that exploitation is the fundamental
wrongness of capitalist societies does not imply
that there are no other kinds of injustice, possibly
even of greater harm to those suffering them; it
simply means that exploitation is that wrongness
that sustains conditions under which suffering is
inevitable. Whether convincing in this respect, it is
central to Marx’s account of exploitation that it
does incorporate an explanation of its systemic
causation; such an explanation is in danger of getting lost in Roemer’s reformulation.
The latter also applies to another set of conceptual analyses. Besides the extensive debate on
exploitation, justice, and self-ownership in analytical Marxism and the discussion about the relevance
of coercion and structural factors to exploitation,
Exploitation
questions about the concept’s normative content
have also been raised concerning the issues of consent and harm. Joel Feinberg has argued for a very
broad understanding of exploitation and has
defined it in terms of gaining from a relationship
with another person; such a relationship may rest
on consent and does not necessarily involve any
harm in the sense of a violation of rights. Subsequently, Alan Wertheimer has claimed that exploitation can involve a moral wrong even if the
exploited is not harmed because a social relationship may be mutually advantageous, but less
rewarding to one party than it should be. In determining what actors are entitled to, Wertheimer
discusses the neoclassic marginal utility principle
and develops the concept of a hypothetical fair
market price.
However, his focus on noneconomic exploitative
relationships might be better served by framing the
concept of exploitation itself in noneconomic
terms. Such an approach has been presented by
Robert Goodin, who defines exploitation as taking
advantage of another person’s vulnerabilities in an
unusual situation and, therefore, in an inappropriate manner. Yet, it has been remarked that Goodin’s commitment to a consequentialist moral theory
undermines his assumption that exploitation can
be mutually advantageous. Ruth Sample develops
an alternative Kantian conception of exploitation
as degradation that might be suited to capture
mutually advantageous exploitative relations and
cases of exploitation the Marxian analysis did not
focus on.
Debates about exploitation are not limited to
the question whether the concept should be interpreted in moral terms and, if so, what its normative content consists of; discussion also gravitates
around the problem of identifying the scope of the
concept of exploitation. Marx restricted it to labor
relations and focused his analysis on capitalist
relations of wage labor that he tended to identify
with industrial labor relations. Niklas Luhmann
has argued that the concept of exploitation is
linked to stratified societies and is not applicable
to today’s functionally differentiated world society
for which the distinction between inclusion and
exclusion might turn out to be central; others have
argued that current structural transformations
render exploitation anything but obsolete. To
highlight changes in exploitative labor relations
235
caused by economic globalization, namely the
increased power of employers to capitalize on
workplace insecurity by threatening to shift production to another country, Pierre Bourdieu has
coined the term flexploitation.
The shift from industrial to service labor represents another structural change of the economy
that has been at the center of a different discussion
dating farther back. Disagreement concerns the
question whether the labor theory of value, still
defended by some, and the concept of surplus
value can be applied to white-collar work. In view
of recent changes within the field of service labor,
the growing importance of immaterial production,
and the structural transformation in the direction
of knowledge-based societies, Michael Hardt and
Antonio Negri have proposed uncoupling the
notion of value from quantitative criteria and
defining exploitation as the private appropriation
of collectively produced value. With this move,
Hardt and Negri also aim to do justice to criticisms
according to which the concept, whether based on
a version of the labor theory of value or not,
remains too narrow and blinds us to important
cases of exploitation when modeled on capitalist
labor relations.
Most important, such shortcomings of classic
accounts of exploitation have been demonstrated
by feminist authors. They have pointed to affective
and emotional exploitation in the context of unpaid
labor and reproductive activities in the supposedly
private sphere of the household and the family.
Moreover, the specific vulnerabilities of children
and women have been discussed with regard to
sexual exploitation. Last but not least, recent developments in biotechnology have put pressure on the
distinction between exploitation within social relations and exploitation of natural resources. As this
overview indicates, technological trends and structural changes constantly spark new debates. Nor is
there a consensus on the scope or on the normative
content and the theoretical function of exploitation. It will remain a contested concept.
David Strecker
See also Capital, Marxist; Critical Theory; False
Consciousness; Gender, Role of Power in; Ideology;
Justice; Marx, Karl; Marxist Accounts of Power;
Social Power; Structural Power; Substructure and
Superstructure; Systematic Luck; Systemic Power
236
Extended Deterrence
Further Readings
Arneson, R. (1981). What’s wrong with exploitation?
Ethics, 91, 202–227.
Cohen, G. A. (1990). Marxism and contemporary
politi
