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Article Excerpt
[Review Essay: Steven Lukes, Power: A Radical View, 2nd ed. (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), viii + 192 pp.]
The publication of an expanded second edition of Steven Lukes's seminal 1974 book is testament to its continuing popularity. Lukes's intuitive three-dimensional model of power, while framed in 1970s academic debates, has remained a fertile basis for research in the social sciences. In the new edition of Power: A Radical View (PRV), Lukes not only republishes the original text, but adds two new chapters of comparable length significantly revising his original analysis. The new edition of PRV has, however, occasioned some sharp criticisms that raise the question of whether his model is still compelling thirty years later.
This short review essay examines three of the potentially most devastating critiques of Lukes's revised text: first, Peter Morriss's charge that it is really "not about power at all"; second, Clarissa Hayward's charge that it lacks a "structural understanding of what power is"; and third, Ian Shapiro's suggestion that its dubious reliance on people's purported "real interests" creates insurmountable difficulties. In the new sections of PRV, Lukes gives ground to these types of critique, but also forcefully defends a revised position. I argue that his rejoinders have bite and that his model remains plausible, if somewhat less compelling than it once seemed.
1.
Lukes's book addresses the following charged question: "How is willing compliance to domination assured?" (10). His answer is that it is assured through the exercise of three types or "dimensions" of power.
In the original text of PRV, Lukes defined power as follows: "A exercises power over B when A affects B in a manner contrary to B's interests" (12). One case would be A winning a political struggle with B with results harmful to B's interests. Such open victories reflect power's first dimension, which can be traced by observing, in Lukes's words, "decisions on issues over which there is an observable conflict of (subjective) interests ..." (19). The italicized terms in Lukes's description (conflict, issue, decision) mark observable phenomena that can be quantified to empirically test hypotheses concerning power. Lukes associated an emphasis on power's first dimension with "pluralist" theory in 1960s American political science. He suggested that an over-emphasis on power's first dimension led pluralists to an overly complacent view of the wide distribution of power in America and the corresponding health of its democratic life (38-39).
Lukes argued that there are other, more elusive dimensions of power. For instance, he argued that A could exercise a subtler (second dimension) power by creating or reinforcing barriers "to the public airing of policy conflicts," permitting "public consideration of only those issues which are innocuous to A" (20). In this way, A predetermines outcomes in a manner detrimental to B's interests. Lukes termed this suppression of conflict "non-decision" making, and argued that it is a widespread phenomenon that pluralists ignore. This is important in regard to pluralist conclusions about the broad distribution of power in America because non-decisions tend to favor elites: they are "a means by which demands for change in the existing allocation ... can be suffocated before they are even voiced" (22-23). While recognizing that quantifying these non-decisions will often require looking beyond formal politics to "potential issues," Lukes stressed that they are attended by "observable conflict," whether overt or covert, and so can be identified empirically.
The really distinctive contribution of the first edition of PRV, however, was in illuminating a third "supreme exercise" of power: A may exercise power over B by "influencing, shaping or determining his very wants," and thus suppressing B's own awareness of his/her unrealized interests (27). Lukes suggested that this type of power need not imply mind control, but is evident in the many ways that perceptions and beliefs are continually shaped or influenced by, for example, "the process of socialization" and "the mass media." Still, while third-dimensional power may be subtle and pervasive, Lukes forcefully argued that it can be exposed by establishing B's "real interests" (28). The gap between B's real interests and his/her distorted perception of those interests then illuminates power's unseen influence, and provides a starting point for the systematic exposure of its operations: the questions of how B has been misled about his/her real interests becomes the basis...
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