The Concept of Power

Having argued that the literature on political parties is deficient in its treatment of power, the next step in my analysis is to take a closer look at what differing theories actually have to offer. This is not necessarily a simple task, since definitions of and approaches to power vary widely. Indeed, this is a key reason for declining to define power in narrow terms and seeking instead to accept its diversity, treating it as a heuristic tool rather than a concept to be nailed down once and for all. My purpose in this chapter is, first, to analyse the different dimensions of debate about power. The issues I want to deal with here relate to (a) the level of analysis — to what extent is power synonymous with agency, embedded in structure or organisation — and (b) the nature of power, or what it actually does — is it a coercive force (‘power over’) or does it refer to the kinds of capacities people have and how they are shaped (‘power to’)? What is the relationship between the two? Along the way, I will deal with questions of ‘interests’ and how they are constituted and related problems of ‘false consciousness’, which lead me to ask whether ‘interests’ is a helpful term to use in this context. Secondly, I will seek to make some generalisations in answer to the question of what, in the light of these wide-ranging but fundamental debates, can we broadly define power to be? Thirdly, I will introduce an outline of my theoretical framework of power which will serve as a springboard into the rest of the book’s more detailed analysis. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.