Power in International Relations

Power - extended notes

The aim of this week's topic is to put poststructuralist/ postmodernist conceptions of power into conversation with alternative ways of conceptualising power.

1. Traditional conceptions of power in politics

Hobbes's view of human beings: a 'desire for power after power than ceaseth only in death'. What does he mean by power in this context? He means 'capacity', the ability to do things - capacity uses strength and cunning as its mechanisms. In Hobbes's theory, this ability to do things, the powers that all individuals possess and/ or pursue are transferred to the collective person of the sovereign in the social contract, and then enacted or distributed at the sovereign's will.

Weber: 'probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the basis on which this probability exists.' (through money, military might etc.)

Dahl: 'the ability of A to get B to do what B otherwise would not do' (requires intentionality of A to exercise power over B; conflict of desires on the part of A and B (zero-sum); material and ideational resources that A possesses and can use to move B.

Lukes: critique of Dahl - supplementing Dahl with 2 further 'dimensions':

a) observable power of A over B (behavioural) (Dahl in the committee room)

b) non-observable power of A over B (behavioural) (Bachrach and Baratz in the smoking room)

c) structural power (Marx - ideological) "is not the supreme and most insidious exercise of power to prevent people, to whatever degree, from having grievances by shaping their perceptions, cognitions and preferences in such a way that they accept their role in the existing order of things?" (Lukes, 2nd Ed. PRV, 28)

Debate over Lukes - critique on his reliance of idea of 'real interests', non-observability problems, how can power of this kind be the subject of social scientific investigation?

2. Power in traditional IR: dominant realist view (power/ balance of power), what Barnett & Duvall call 'compulsory power' - very similar to Weber's definition, focusing a lot on Lukes's first dimension. Additions like Nye's introduction of the idea of 'soft power', indicate one attempt to address the shortcomings of traditional IR conceptions: coercion; inducement; attraction - bringing in both institutional and normative dimensions to power (note Nye and interdependence). But does this really change things? See Bially Mattern's critique of soft/ hard power distinction and Nye's response. Still v much a behavioural model.

Hirst (1998) sums up traditional IR view as involving 3 types of elements, echoing Dahl: interactive, quantitative, zero-sum. Points to 2 internal problems: a) tension between interactive elements and idea of quanta - how do you quantify factors such as skill, competence, organization; b) how do you trade off between different means of exercising power - even different material means (men versus money; tanks versus submarines). "The spectacle of American supersonic jets bombing and failing to stop convoys of peasants pushing bicycles in Vietnam indicates that we have little a priori ability to rank quanta of power against one another - apparent weakness or backwardness can actually be a strength." (135) Not only this, but H argues that there are many international phenomena and relations that simply can't be understood in terms of realist notion of power, between state and between state and non-state actors - pointing to eg. patterns of transnational and global governance. "We must also account for complex international forms of governance that are not state-like, that do not necessarily diminish the capacities of nation-states but may actually enhance them." (136)

H suggests we can use Parsons (non zero-sum on power - power more like currency, a social resource that can be more or less effectively mobilized by particular actors, in which there can be win-win situations) and Foucault (productive power - see below).

3. Barnett and Duvall (2005) offer systematic attempt to re-think power for IR, moving away from centrality of 'compulsory' variant - but still seeing this as important.

Direct Diffuse

Power works through: Interactions of specific actors Compulsory Institutional

Power works through Social relations of constitution Structural Productive

a) Compulsory: relations of interaction that allow direct control of A over B (realist and behaviouralist analysis); eg. invasion of Poland.

b) Institutional: indirect control of A over B, perhaps through writing the rules of institutions (liberal interdependence, liberal institutionalist, some constructivist analysis); eg. US/Western control over rules of global trade regimes.

c) Structural: constitution of social capacities and interests of actors (Marxist, world systems theory, Gramscian IPE, maybe also certain version of constructivism, such as Wendt - but B & D a bit unclear on this); eg. capital and labour (Hobbesian culture of anarchy??).

d) Productive: socially diffuse production of subjectivity in systems of meaning and signification (poststructuralist, postmodernist): eg. meaning of development. This is supposed to be close to the Foucauldian idea of power.

4. Productive power (Foucault). So what's going on with this 4th category - that takes up beyond Lukes, beyond realism, liberalism, Marxism? Note that Foucault is targeting Lukes's 3rd dimension in particular (references are to essays highlighted in the Reading List in Vol 3 of F's Essential Writings)

"The history that bears and determines us has the form of a war rather than that of a language - relations of power, not relations of meaning." (TP, 116)

"In defining the effects of power as repression, one adopts a purely juridical conception of such power, one identifies power with a law that says no - power is taken,

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