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concepts of power

Western political theory

  • 'power-to' – in times of stability, when ruler enjoys loyalty of subjects
  • l'power-over' – extinguish threat to stability, if need be, by domination including violence or threat of violence
Three faces of power
  • Threat power – 'Do what I want or I'll do something you don't want'
  • Economic power – sometimes emerges from threat power, but also involves exchange
  • Integrative power – power of legitimacy, persuasion, loyalty, community, 'a gift to the powerful' by those they dominate
Kenneth Boulding, Three Faces of Power, 1989 

The resurgence of (some) power analysis in the last decades challenges these tacitly assumed links and with it the realist understanding of international politics. Criticising the ‘lump’ concept of power typical for realism, neo-institutionalism has tried to redefine the link between resources and outcomes. Similarly, with regard to the understanding of ‘rule’ and ‘governance’, different structural power approaches have shown the need to conceive of more encompassing power concepts such as to capture important, but otherwise neglected, facets of international rule. *Poststructuralist and *constructivist approaches focus on power as authority and legitimacy, yet not through the establishment of an open social contract, but through the habitual working of discourses and practices which dis/empower agents. This reassessment of the explanatory value of power went hand in hand with the re-conceptualisation of international politics which appears more segmented or diffuse, always less *militaristic, at times more *pluralist, at times more hierarchical. In other words, even if the original realist package tying power and politics has been found wanting, subsequent conceptualisations have usually not given up the link, but redefined it.

Stefano Guzzini, Power 
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