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8/10/2019 Isaac - The Faces of Power
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Jeffrey
C.
Isaac
7
behaves
in
various
circumstances,
and
especially,
whether
there
are
any
regularities in its behavior. 6
Like
Hume,
Popper
associates
any attempt
to
provide
real
definitions
and
analyze
causal necessities with medieval
scholasticism
and
unscien-
tific
metaphysics.
Also like
Hume,
he construes
causality
as
constant
conjunction. Popper
writes:
To
give
a causal
explanation
of
an
event
means
to deduce a
state-
ment which
describes
it,
using
as
premises
of
the deduction one
or
more universal
laws,
together
with
certain
singular
statements,
the
initial
conditions. .
. .
The
initial
conditions describe
what
is
usually
called the cause
of
the
event
in
question.7
Thus,
because
any
talk of natural
necessity
is
derisively
branded
meta-
physics
and
because the
only meaning
that can thus be
given
to
causality
is as
empirical regularity,
the
task
of
scientific
explanation
becomes
deductive-nomological-the
formulation
of
generalizations
about
empir-
ical
regularities
which enable us
to
predict
that Whenever
A,
then
B. '
This
ideal
of scientific
explanation,
once dominant
within
philosophy
of
science,
has
been
subjected
to much criticism in
philosophy.
But,
just
as
it took
political
scientists some time before
they
were
willing
to
adopt
this
ideal,
there has
also been a
lag
between its abandonment
by
philosophers
and its
rejection
by
political
scientists. One
consequence
of this
is its con-
tinuing
influence on
the debate
about
power.
II. The
First Face
of
Power
This
understanding
of
scientific
explanation
shaped
a new
and
rigorous
effort to
formalize the
concept
of
power.
A
number of
articles
were
published,
all
variations on the
same
theme-power
is a
causal
relation
between the
behaviors
of two
agents,
causality
being
understood as con-
stant
conjunction.9
6.
Karl
R.
Popper,
The
Open
Society
and its
Enemies,
Vol. I
(Princeton,
NJ:
Princeton
University
Press,
1966),
p.
32.
7. Karl
R.
Popper,
The
Logic
of
Scientific
Discovery
(London:
Hutchinson,
1959,
and
New
York:
Harper
&
Row,
1968),
pp.
59-60.
8.
See,
in
addition
to
Popper,
Carl
Hempel's
Aspects
of
Scientific
Explanation
(New
York:
Free
Press,
1965),
especially
pp.
364-67.
As
Holt
and
Turner
write:
Typically,
the
[scientific]
hypothesis
involves a
predicted
relationship
between
at
least
two
variables and
takes
the
general
form
of
'If
A,
then
B.'
Holt
and
Turner,
Methodology, p.
6.
9.
See,
for
example,
Herbert
A.
Simon,
Notes
on
the
Observation
and
Measurement
of
Political
Power,
Journal
of
Politics
15
(1953);
and
James G.
March,
An
Introduction
to
the
Theory
and
Measurement
of
Influence,
American
Political
Science
Review
49
(1955).
8/10/2019 Isaac - The Faces of Power
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8
Beyond
he
ThreeFaces
of Power
This
approach
was
taken
up by
Robert
Dahl,
one of the most
impor-
tant figures n the three facesof powerdebate.Dahl, in a seriesof arti-
cles,
argued
the
need for a
definition
of
power
amenable
o
the
kind of
empirical
research nvisioned
by
behavioralism.
Thus he
wrote:
power
terms
n
modernsocial science refer to
subsetsof
relations
among
social
units
such
that the
behaviorof one or more units
(the response
units,
R),
depend
in
some circumstances n
the behavior
of other units
(the
con-
trolling
units,
C).'1
Power, then,
is
an
empiricalregularity
whereby
he
behavior
of
one
agent
causes the behavior of another.
Dahl is
explicit
about
this,
noting
that:
For
the assertion
C has
power
over
R'
we can substitute he asser-
tion 'C's behavior
causes R's
behavior'
.
.
. the
language
of
cause,
like the
language
of
power,
is
used
to
interpret
ituations
n
which
there
is a
possibility
that some event
will
intervene
o
change
the
order of other
events.
That this
notion
of
power
rests
on a
Newtonian
analogy
seems obvious.
We are all
naturally
at rest or at constant
velocity,
until our
movement
s
altered
by
an
external
force. Power
is
that force
whereby
social
agents
alterthe behaviorof otheragentsor, as Dahlputsit, getthemto do what
they
would
not otherwise
do.'2 True
to
his
empiricism,
Dahl
insists that
there are
no
necessary
relationships
between
the behaviors
of
agents,
writing
that
the
only meaning
that
is
strictly
causal
in
the notion
of
power
is one
of
regular
sequence:
hat
is,
a
regular
sequence
such
that
when
A does
something,
what
follows,
or
what
probably
follows,
is
an
action
by
B. '3
These
remarks
may
sound
unexceptionable,
but their
force must
be
emphasized.
Dahl
is
insisting
here thathis notion
of
power
smacksof
no
metaphysics,
hat its assertioninvolves
nothing
that is not empirically
evident.
This
view of
power
s
the basis
of theentire
hreefaces
of
power
debate.
All
of the
contestants
agree
hat
power
s an
empirical
elation
of
cause
and
effect,
and none
of
them conceives
of
power
as
involving
any
necessary
connections,
or
what
I will latercall structural
elationships.
This is
not to
say
that
the reason
for
this is because
subsequent
con-
10.
Robert
A.
Dahl,
Power,
International
Encyclopedia
of
the Social
Sciences,
vol.
12
(New
York,
1968), p.
407.
11.
Ibid.,
p.
418.
12. Robert
A.
Dahl,
The
Concept
of
Power,
Behavioral
Science
2,
no.
3
(July
1957):
203-4.
13. Robert
A.
Dahl,
Cause
and
Effect
in the
Study
of
Politics,
in Cause
and
Effect,
ed.
Daniel
Lerner
(New
York:
Free
Press,
1965), p.
94.
8/10/2019 Isaac - The Faces of Power
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Jeffrey
C.
Isaac
9
testants
consciously
wished
to endorse
the Humean
view.
It
is,
rather,
that they simply failed to challenge it, most likely because they failed to
recognize
it-an
interesting
example
of
the
power
of
a view which
is
neither
asserted
nor
recognized
as
such.
The
controversy
about
power
does
not revolve
around
this
major
premise.
It
revolves,
instead,
around the
following question:
How
do
we
identify
those instances
in
which
A
gets
B to do
that which
B
would
not
otherwise
have
done? As Steven
Lukes
points
out,
this
question
hinges
on the
question
of a
counterfactual:
What would
B
have otherwise
done?
Dahl's
answer to this is that B's revealed
preferences
indicate
this.14
Thus, A has power over B means that A's behavior regularly causes B
to do
something
which B does
not want to
do. This
has been
called
the
first face
of
power
insofar as it involves manifest
instances
of
conflict
and
compliance.
It
has also
been called the decisionist view
insofar
as
it is
limited to
instances of actual
decisionmaking
or choice in
action.
It is on
the
basis of this
interpretation
of the
counterfactual
that
Dahl,
and
his
student Nelson
Polsby,
insisted that
any
scientific
claims
about
power
must
focus
on instances
of
manifest
conflict.
In
this
insistence,
they
employed
their
understanding
of
scientific
method in
order
to
delegitimate radical critics of American society who wrote about power
without
referring
to
regular
sequences
of
the
above-mentioned
sort. Thus
Polsby,
in
his
Community
Power
and Political
Theory,
chastised what he
called
categorialism,
categorical
claims such
as
A
has
power
over
B
which
refuse
to
specify
the
empirical
conditions,
the
causal
behaviors,
under which B
can
be
predicted
to act
(note
the
similarity
of this
criticism
to
Popper's
invidious
distinction
between
methodological
nominalism
and
essentialism).
Thus
Polsby
writes about
the
claim
that
there
is
a
dominant
class:
For
this
latter
statement to
mean
anything
in
a
scientific
sense,
we
must,
according
to the
formal
requirements
postulated
above,
make
reference
to
specific
decisions in
which
particular
outcomes
are
affected
by
members
of
the classes into
which
we
divide
the
population,
and
secondly,
we
must
state
the
conditions
under
which we
can
take it
as
demonstrated
that
the
upper
class
does
not
have
more
power
than
the
lower
class.'5
Ascriptions
of
power,
then,
are
falsifiable
predictions
about
the
stimuli
14.
Dahl,
The
Concept
of
Power.
15.
Nelson
Polsby,
Community
Power
and Political
Theory (New
Haven,
CT:
Yale Uni-
versity
Press,
1980), pp.
5-6.
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10
Beyond
the
Three
Facesof Power
of the
powerful
and the
responses
of the
powerless.
Similarly
Dahl,
in
his
now-classic
Critiqueof
the
RulingElite Model, criticizedC. Wright
Mills
by asserting
hat
I
do not
see how
anyone
can
suppose
hat he has
established he dominanceof a
specific
group
in
a
community
or
nation
without
basing
his
analysis
on the carefulexaminationof a
seriesof
con-
crete
decisions. '6
It is
important
o see what these criticisms
accomplished,
or
doing
so
will
clarifyexactly
what this article s
criticizing.
On the
one
hand,
some
very
sensibleand
plausiblepoints
are
made
regarding
he
importance
of
empirical
evidence
and the
possibility
of
theoreticalcriticism. On the
other hand, the whip hand of scienceis deployedto questionthe very
meaning
and
reference
of
claims about
power
that do not
conform to
Dahl's decisionist
perspective.
t
is not Dahl's
emphasis
on the
empirical,
but his
reliance
on
empiricism,
on the
Hume/Popper
view
of
causality
and
scientific
explanation,
hat is the
problem
with his
view
of
power.
III.
The
Second
Face
of
Power
The
Dahl-Polsby
view
of
power
was
challenged
by
Peter
Bachrach
and
Morton
Baratz,
who
introduced
the
notion
of a second
face
of
power.
Their
criticismrestson two
points.
The firstis thatDahl and
Polsby
sometimes
write
in
a
naively
positivist
vein,
as
though
the
loca-
tion
of
power
were
unproblematic
nd
simply
a
question
of
observation.
Bachrach
and
Baratz
nsist
that
this
is
mistaken,
hatall science
nvolves
the
making
of
judgements
of
significance
which
are derived
rom
a
theo-
retical
perspective.
Their
second
objection
is that
Dahl's
formulation
misses
a
crucial
eature
of
power-the
suppression
f conflict.
In
criticiz-
ing
Dahl's
decisionist
focus
on
actual
conflict,
Bachrach
and
Baratz
develop
the
concept
of
a
nondecision,
which
they
define
as a
decision
that
results
n
suppression
r
thwarting
of
a
latent
or manifest
challenge
to
the
values
or
interests
of the
decision-maker. 8
The
point
of
this
argument
s that
power
entails
not
simply
nteraction,
but
limitations
on
interaction.
Yet,
their
formulation
s also
ambiguous
and
open
to
the
charge
hat
it is little different
from
Dahl's.
On the
one
hand,
Bachrach
andBaratz
suggest
a
structural
ormulation,
conceiving
16.
Robert
A.
Dahl,
A
Critique
of
the
Ruling
Elite
Model,
American Political
Science
Review
58
(1958):
463-4.
17. Cf.
Peter
Bachrach
and
Morton
Baratz,
The
Two
Faces of
Power,
American
Political
Science
Review
56
(1962):
942-52,
and
Decisions
and Nondecisions:
An
Analytic
Framework,
American
Political
Science
Review
57
(1963):
632-42.
These
essays
are
reprinted
in the authors'
Power
and
Poverty (New
York:
Oxford
University
Press, 1970).
18.
Bachrach
and
Baratz,
Power
and
Poverty,
pp.
43-44.
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Jeffrey
C.
Isaac
11
power
as
implicated
n
institutionalized
ractices.
It
is in this
regard
hat
they refer to Schattschneider'sonceptof the mobilizationof bias,
writing
hat:
Political
systems
and
sub-systems
develop
a
mobilization
of
bias,
a set of
predominant
values,
beliefs,
rituals,
and
institu-
tional
procedures
rules
of
the
game )
that
operatesystematically
and
consistently
o
the benefit
of
certain
groups
and
persons
at
the
expense
of
others.Those who benefit
are
placed
n
a
preferred
osi-
tion to
defendand
promote
their
vested
interests.19
This formulation, however, comes dangerouslyclose to postulating
underlying
structural relations
as
determining
behavior,
risking
the
essentialism
o
scorned
by
properly
trained scientific
theorists.
Polsby
makes
the
point:
The
central
problem
s this:
Even
if
we can
show
that a
given
status
quo
benefits
some
people
disproportionately
as
I
think
we
can for
any
real
world
status
quo),
such
a
demonstration
alls short
of
showing
that
the
beneficiaries
created
the
status
quo,
act
in
any
meaningfulway to maintain t, or could, in the future,act effec-
tively
to deter
changes
n it.20
Once
again,
the
mark of
science
is the
examinationof
behavior,
but a
given
status
quo,
in
and of
itself,
holds
no
interest for
the
theorist
of
power.
In
the
end,
Bachrachand
Baratzsacrifice
heir
interest
n
structure o
the
interest of
science.
They
say
explicitly
that
power
involves
actual
compliance
and
go
so far
as to
assert hat
it
cannot
be
possessed,
only
exercised.2'Conceding
to
behavioralism,they hold that although
absence
of conflict
may
be a
non-event,
a
decision
which
results
n
pre-
vention of conflict
is
very
much
an
event-and an
observable
one,
to
boot. 22
By
admitting
his,
Bachrachand
Baratz
expose
themselves o a
criticism
made
by
Geoffrey
Debnam-that
implicit
n
their
formulation
19.
Ibid.
20.
Polsby,
Community
Power,
p.
208,
emphasis
added.
See
also
Raymond
Wolfinger,
Nondecisions
and
the
Study
of Local
Politics, American Political Science Review 65
(1971),
for
a
similar
criticism.
For an
interesting critique
of the
positivism
which
Polsby/
Wolfinger
fall
into,
and
a
defense
of the
possibility
of
discovering
covert
decisions of Bach-
rach
and
Baratz's
sort,
see
Frederick
Frey's
Nondecisions
and
the
Study
of
Local
Politics:
A
Comment,
American
Political
Science
Review 65
(1971).
21.
Bachrach
and
Baratz,
Power &
Poverty, p.
19.
22.
Ibid.,
p.
46.
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Jeffrey
C. Isaac 13
to instances of
behavioral
compliance
as the
one- and
two-dimensional
views do. He asks, Is not the supreme exercise of power to avert con-
flict and
grievance
by influencing, shaping,
and
determining
the
percep-
tions
and
preferences
of
others? 26
Lukes submits that
his
view
of
power, along
with
those of Dahl
and
Bachrach and
Baratz,
all can be seen as alternative
interpretations
and
applications
of
one and the same
underlying concept
of
power,
accord-
ing
to which A exercises
power
over
B
when
A
affects B in a manner
con-
trary
to B's interests. 27
It is Lukes
who makes
the
concept
of
interest
central to
the
debate,
yet
it
is
important
to see how much
his
similarities
with his predecessors outweigh his differences. Lukes agrees that power
is a
causal
concept denoting
behavioral
regularities.
He
agrees
too
that
A
has
power
over
B
means that A's
behavior
causes
B
to do
some-
thing
that
B
would not
otherwise do. As Lukes
puts
it,
any
attribution
of
the
exercise of
power
. . .
always implies
a
relevant
counterfactual. 28
In
the
cases of the
first two
faces
of
power,
the
counterfactual
is
pro-
vided
by
the
existence
of
empirical
conflict
between the
revealed
prefer-
ences of A
and B.
Lukes
differs
from
these views in
insisting
that
preferences
can
themselves
be
the effect of the
exercise
of
power.
He
thus
insists that what B would do otherwise cannot be gauged properly by B's
preferences,
but
rather
by
B's
interests.
Lukes,
then,
defines
power
as
follows:
A
exercises
power
over
B
when A
affects B
contrary
to B's
interest. 29 The
concept
of
power
can
thus refer to
relations
between A
and B
even in
the
absence of
empirical
conflict.
Lukes
contends
that
this
view
captures
the
essence of
power
as an
empirical
relation
between
A
and B
and
that the
sole
difference
between
this view
and
those
articulated
by
his
antagonists
is
that
those
holding
the three
different
views
of
power
I
have
set out
offer different
inter-
pretations of what are to count as interests and how they may be adverse-
ly
affected. 30
Lukes's view
is
that the
concept
of
interest,
or
what has
been
called
objective interest,
refers to
what
an
agent
would
do
under
ideal
democratic
circumstances. It
thus
follows
that if
it can
be
plausibly
argued
that A
affects B in
a
manner
which
limits
B
from
doing
what
B
26. Steven Lukes, Power and Authority, in A History of Sociological Anslysis, ed.
Tom
Bottomore and
Robert
Nisbet
(New
York:
Basic
Books,
1978),
p.
669.
27.
Lukes,
Power: A
Radical
View,
p.
27.
28.
Ibid.,
p.
41.
29.
Ibid.,
pp.
22-25.
30.
Ibid.,
p.
27.
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14
Beyond
the
Three Faces
of Power
would do under ideal
conditions,
then it can
be
properly
said that A exer-
cises
power
over
B.31
This notion of
objective
interest has been
subjected
to
a
great
deal of
criticism,
some of which
will be
discussed below.
But
regardless
of the
merit of Lukes's
understanding
of
interests,
the
importance
of the con-
cept
for
him
is
grounded
in
his
commitment to
viewing power
as an
empirical
regularity.
Despite
his criticisms of his
antagonists,
he is
explicit
that
he
is
merely interpreting
a
shared
concept.
Insofar
as
this is
true,
Lukes's
formulation,
like that of Bachrach
and
Baratz,
is
ambigu-
ous
regarding
the
socially
structured and
culturally patterned
dimen-
sion of power.
In
a
later
essay,
Power and
Structure,
Lukes seeks to
clarify
this,
arguing
that
structural and
empirical approaches
must be
synthesized
and
suggesting
that there
is a dialectic of
power
and structure. 32
Social
structure limits
action,
and
power,
being
an
event-like
phenomenon,
is
discernible
empirically.
Power,
he
says,
is an
agency concept,
not
a
structural
one,
yet
he
writes that it
is held
and
exercised
by agents
(individual
or
collective)
within
systems
and
structural
determinants. 33
This clarifies
somewhat
the relation
between
power
and structure-social
structure provides the limits within which power is exercised. But it also
leaves
unanswered
the
problem
posed
by
Lukes's
earlier
discussion of
power
in
structural
terms.
In other
words,
what is
the
nature of
these
structural
determinants
of
power?
How
determining
are
they?
If
power
is
an
agency
concept
rather
than
a structural
one,
and
if it denotes
behavioral
regularities,
then
what
precisely
is the
difference
between
Lukes's
third
face of
power
and
the
view
of Bachrach
and
Baratz?
Is
it
31.
Ibid.,
pp.
34-35. This view of interests, as Lukes acknowledges, has been developed
by
William
E.
Connolly,
On
'Interests'
in
Politics,
Politics
and
Society,
2,
no. 4
(Sum-
mer
1972).
This
conception
owes
much to
the
work of
Jiirgen
Habermas,
particularly
his
Knowledge
and
Human
Interests
(Boston:
Beacon
Press,
1968).
Lukes
explicitly
links
himself
to
the
idiom
of critical
theory
in a later
paper,
On
the
Relativity
of
Power,
in
Philosophical
Disputes
in the
Social
Sciences,
ed. S.
C.
Brown
(Sussex
and
New
Jersey:
Harvester
and
Humanities,
1979),
p.
267.
It is
therefore
curious
that
in a more recent
paper
he
rejects
Habermas's
(and
his own
earlier)
transcendental
conception
of
objective
interest,
opting
instead
for
a
Weberian
subjectivism
in
many ways
akin
to
Polsby.
See Steven
Lukes,
Of
Gods
and
Demons:
Habermas
and
Practical
Reason,
in Habermas:
CriticalDebates,
ed. John
B.
Thompson
and
David
Held
(Cambridge,
MA:
MIT
Press,
1982).
This is
an
issue
on
which
Lukes
shows
some
confusion.
For a
critique,
see
Michael
Bloch,
Brian
Heading,
and
Phillip
Lawrence,
Power
in
Social
Theory:
A
Non-Relative
View,
in
Brown,
Philosophical
Disputes,
pp.
243-60.
32.
See
Steven
Lukes,
Power
and
Structure,
in
Essays
in
Social
Theory,
ed.
Steven
Lukes
(London:
Macmillan,
1977).
33.
See
Lukes,
Power
&
Authority, p.
635;
Relativity
of
Power,
pp.
263-4.
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Jeffrey
C. Isaac 15
simply
a focus
on
a
different class of
events,
those which involve
the
transgression of objective interest rather than simply compliance? If
Lukes's
view is
different,
his bifurcation
of
power
and structure
does
not
go
far
in
showing
us how.
In
short,
Lukes
seems unable
to
articulate
the
structural nature
of
social
power
which,
he
rightly
notes,
is so
important.
In
the
end,
Lukes
leans
toward a
view of
power
differing
little
from
that of
his
predecessors.
Like
them,
he views
power
in
terms of
behav-
ioral
regularities
rather
than
their
structural determinants.
And like
them
he
conflates the
possession
of
power
with
its
exercise,
insisting
that
power
is an
agency
concept
rather
than
a
structural
one. Lukes
explicitly
rejects the locution power to, and instead accepts an exclusive
emphasis
on
power
over.
For
him,
power
is exhausted in
interaction,
in
the
regularity
with which
A
can
get
B to
do
something,
thus
having
power
over
B. His
formulation
leaves
no room for
consideration
of
the
enduring powers
to
act
which
are
possessed by
A
and
B,
and which
are
brought
to bear
in
interaction.
He
justifies
inattention
to
the
locution
power
to
by
arguing
that
it is
out
of line
with
the
central
meaning
of
power
as
traditionally
understood
and with
the
concerns that have
always
preoccupied
students of
power. 34
But it is
precisely
this tradi-
tional idiom that I wish to question. An adequate formulation of the
concept
of
power
must
recognize
that the
power
one
agent
exercises over
another
agent
in
interaction
is
parasitic upon
the
powers
to
act
which the
agents
possess.
The
purpose
of
the
above
discussion
has
been to
demonstrate some
root
similarities
among
the
contestants
of the
three faces of
power
con-
troversy,
and
to
point
out
that
the
debate
about
power
has been con-
ducted
within
rather narrow
parameters. Nonetheless,
within
these
parameters,
some
serious
problems
are left
unresolved.
And
while
the
irresolution of conflict is not always a signal of something awry, in this
case it
may
indicate
the need
to
broaden the
parameters
of
debate,
and
in
fact
to
free the
discussion from
its
behavioralist
legacy.
The
major
unresolved
difficulty
of the
debate
concerns
the
problem
of
the
limits
within
which
interaction
occurs,
or
what
I
have
called the struc-
tural
nature
of
power.
This
problem
has
proven
inarticulable
within
the
confines
of the
debate,
in
virtue
of
the
shared
premise,
established
by
the
behavioral
revolution,
that
power
is the
empirical
causation of one
actor's behavior
by
that of
another actor.
Bachrach
and
Baratz,
as
well
as Lukes, have failed to develop the structural dimension of power to
which
they
rightly point.
This is
not a
problem
for
Dahl,
who
never raises
34.
Lukes,
Power: A
Radical
View,
p.
31.
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