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Steven Lukes's Radical View of Power1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

R. A. Young
R. A. Young
Affiliation:
Linacre College, Oxford University
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Type
Review Article/Synthèse Bibliographique
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 11 , Issue 3 , September 1978 , pp. 639 - 649
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1978

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References

* Power: A Radical View Lukes, StevenLondon: Macmillan, 1974, pp. 64CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Dahl, Robert, “A Critique of the Ruling Elite Model,” American Political Science Review 52 (1958), 463–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Who Governs? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961)Google Scholar; Polsby, N. W., “How to Study Community Power: The Pluralist Alternative,” Journal of Politics 22 (1960), 474–84CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Community Power and Political Theory (London: Yale University Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Merelman, R., “On the Neo-Elitist Critique of Community Power,” American Political Science Review 62 (1968), 451–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wolfinger, R., “Nondecisions and the Study of Local Politics,” American Political Science Review 65 (1971), 1063–80CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Bachrach, P. and Baratz, M. S., “The Two Faces of Power,” American Political Science Review 56 (1962), 947–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, “Decisions and Non-Decisions: An Analytical Framework,” American Political Science Review 57 (1963), 632–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar; idem, Power and Poverty (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Crenson, M. A., The Un-Politics of Air Pollution (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971)Google Scholar; Bachrach, P. and Bergman, E., Power and Choice: The Formulation of American Population Policy (Toronto: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973)Google Scholar.

4 Dahl, “The Ruling Elite Model,” 468.

5 Ibid., 469. Bachrach and Baratz accept this point as well, in their “Communication to the Editor,” American Political Science Review 62 (1968), 1268–69Google Scholar: “Obviously, if a particular set of beliefs was universally embraced in a given community, no one could tell whether the consensus was ‘false’ or ‘genuine.’” See also Power and Poverty, 49–50.

6 Wolfinger, “Nondecisions,” 1077. See also Merelman, R., “Communication to the Editor,” American Political Science Review 62 (1968), 1269CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 Crenson, Un-Politics, 33–34.

8 Crenson has a good prima facie case with air pollution (although he makes no claim to be dealing with real interests). Lukes agrees it is obvious that “informed citizens would prefer not to be poisoned,” but even this is on the assumption “that such an alternative did not entail increased unemployment” (46).

9 Bachrach and Baratz, “Decisions and Non-Decisions,” 635.

10 Crenson, Un-Politics, 107–31, 182; Dahl, Who Governs? 101.

11 Bachrach and Baratz, “Decisions and Non-Decisions,” 633–34, n. 12. See Wolfinger's comments on their treatment of this question, “Nondecisions,” 1067–68, and their revisions in Power and Poverty, 26.

12 Lukes does, however, speak of the “successful” exercise of power, and this is defined according to A's wishes (40–41). But this does not exhaust the categories of power.

13 Lukes, Power, 50. For the view that counterfactual conditionals are in essence compressed arguments, see Mackie, J. L., “Counter-factuals and Causal Laws,” in Butler, R. J. (ed.), Analytical Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1962), 66–80Google Scholar. Along similar lines, see Rescher, Nicholas, “Belief-Contravening Suppositions,” The Philosophical Review 70 (1961), 176–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar: to introduce a counierfactual supposition into a set of related statements requires that some of those statements be revised. Logic shows the need for such a revision, but the revision is not a matter of logic; instead it depends on inductively derived covering laws. See also Chisholm, Roderick M., “Law Statements and Counterfactual Inference,” Analysis 15 (1955), 97–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Frey, Frederick W., “Comment: On Issues and Nonissues in the Study of Power,” American Political Science Review 65 (1971), 1081–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar, esp. 1094–99.

15 That is, since power was apparently not exercised after all, if the general rule that in such cases men act according to their interests is to be maintained, then the particular ascription of interests must be dropped. See Adams, Ernest W., “Subjunctive and Indicative Conditionals,” Foundations of Language 6 (1970), 89–94Google Scholar.

16 Taylor, Charles, “Interpretation and the Sciences of Man,” Review of Metaphysics 25 (1971), 3–51Google Scholar; Silverman, D., “Methodology and Meaning,” in Filmer, P., et al. , New Directions in Sociological Theory (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1973), 183–200Google Scholar; Phillips, D., Abandoning Method (London: Jossey-Bass, 1973)Google Scholar, chap. 5.

17 This is the only conclusion to be drawn from his treatment of Parsons and Arendt, whose notion of ‘power to’ is redefined by Lukes as not concerning power at all. So what Lukes refers to as the “core concept” is no less contestable than the “view.” (This is, incidentally, contrary to the parallel Lukes draws between his notions of concept and view and Rawls's distinction between concepts and conceptions.)

18 W. B. Gallie, “Essentially Contested Concepts,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (New Series) 56 (1955–56), 167–98. Such concepts must be: (i) appraisive, (ii) internally complex, (iii) composed of parts whose importance could be differently arranged in rival conceptions, and (iv) that to which it refers must be open; that is, adaptable to changed circumstances, and (v) each side realizes that the concept is contested and so uses it both aggressively and defensively.

19 Ibid., 176–77.

20 Ibid., 177 (his emphasis).

21 Lukes, Power, 30–31. Their notion is recast as ‘influence,’ since it does not refer to the clash of interests.

22 Gallie, “Contested Concepts,” 191: “[T]he achievement … revives and realizes, as it were in fuller relief, some already recognized feature of an already valued style of performance, i.e., that of the original exemplar.”

23 See Wolin, Sheldon, “Political Theory as a Vocation,” American Political Science Review 63 (1969), 1062–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Of course, to be persuasive in the present, the contention must occasionally be made that the favoured interpretation is not only supported by evidence, but is also “true”: Lukes, Power, 9.

24 “Decisions and Non-Decisions,” 636–37.

25 Frey, “Comment,” 1089, 1093, 1099. See also Pateman, Carole, Participation and Democratic Theory (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 67–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 91–94.

26 Bachrach and Bergman, Power and Choice, 8.

27 When in a minority, holding such a position is poor strategy. As Gallie noted, the mutual recognition of essential contestedness can either raise the debate to a higher level, or lead one side to prosecute heretics and make itself right (“Contested Concepts,” 193–94).