Power – its "hard" and "soft" aspects

Power impacts on us in so many ways – at the office, at university, when we seek authorisation 

for a document, even when we go shopping. It can be exercised benignly or harshly. 

What redress do we have when we feel we are being unfairly treated – do we meekly accept?

Or do we agitate and protest? 
Power is a topic which crops up fairly frequently on tne blog .but I’ve reached the stage 

I would like to know how my thinking on such an important issue has changed/developed

 over time – so I’ve crafted one of my tables to explore this.

It’s never easy to formulate how you understood things when you were young – although, in my

 case, I do have the evidence of things I wrote almost 50 years ago, particularly an article

 - “Community Development – its administrative and political challenge" - and a little book 

“The Search for Democracy – a guide to and polemic about local government in Scotland" (both in 1977). 

Both had been written after a decade of experience first as a community activist and then 

of a political strategist trying to reform bureaucracy from the inside. 
A careful rereading of both documents gives me this summary of how I then understood power 

Our society is hardly what one would call a participatory democracy. The term that is used - "representative" democracy - is official recognition of the fact that "the people" do not take political decisions but have rather surrendered that power to one tor several) small elites - subject to quinquennial (or infrequent) checks. Such checks are, of course, a rather weak base on which to rest claims for democracy⁴ and more emphasis is therefore given to the freedom of expression and organisation ^. whereby pressure groups articulate a variety of interests. Those who defend the consequent operation of the political process argue that we have, in effect a political market place in which valid or strongly supported ideas survive and are absorbed into new policies. They further argue that every viewpoint or interest has a more or less equal chance of finding expression and recognition. This is the political theory of pluralism.⁵

Community development is an expression of unhappiness with this view of the operation of the policy process. At its most extreme - in some theories of community action - it argues that the whole process is a gigantic confidence trick. In its more liberal version it merely wants to strengthen the voice of certain inarticulate members of society. There is, I think, a relatively simple v. a:-in which to test the claims of those who argue that there is little scope for improvement in the operation of our democratic process and that any deficiencies art attributable to the faults of individuals rather than to the system.' It involves looking at how new policies emerge.

The assumption of our society, good "liberals" that most of us essentially are, is that the channels relating governors to governed are neutral and that the opportunity to articulate grievances and have these defined (if they are significant enough) as "problems" requiring action from authority is evenly distributed throughout society. This is what needs to be examined critically - the concept of grievance and the process by which government responds to grievances. "Problems" emerge because individuals or groups feel dissatisfied and articulate and organise that dissatisfaction in an influential way which makes it difficult for government to resist.

"Grievance" or "dissatisfaction" is not. however, a simple concept - it arises when a judgement is made that events fall short of what one has reason to expect. Grievance is a function of expectations and performance - both of which are relative and vary from individual to individual - or. more significantly, from group to group

The process whereby "problems" are brought to the attention of government can be represented in a diagram you’ll find in the article. From the recognition of these eight stages flow various questions:

1 Do all groups in our society have the same expectations about government or (say) the social services?

2 Do all groups share roughly the same level of critical perception of their own achievement?

3 Is the capacity to articulate grievances equally distributed in society?

4 Is the capacity to organise that articula­tion equally distributed?

5 Is the process by which the political system picks up signals a neutral one?

6 is the process by which civil servants define problems and collect information a random one?

7 Does the way our decisions are taken and implemented affect the chance of their subsequent success? ⁹

Community development grew in the 1960s as, increasingly, negative answers were given to these sorts of questions" and - perhaps more significantly - confidence grew that the situation could be changed.

The table below starts with a post about how aspects of power have been been understood in the UK in some of the literature since the start of the new millenium and then widened the focus to look at how more cosmopolitan figures in Europe and the US have theorised about the subject; and at the more hidden aspects of financial power. 
Amitai Etzioni classified power in terms of “coercion, incentives and moral persuasion” – 

sticks, carrots and seduction we might call it. And if you’re wondering what “moral persuasion” 

is, Joseph Nye’s concept of "soft power"  explains it very well

Recent Posts on power

The post	The take-away	How it advances understanding about power
Who Runs Britain?	The insularity of the British discussion – with Perry Anderson being a rare exception	Included a detailed reading list of the key books on the subject from 1999 to 2018
We need to talk about power	The discussion becomes more cosmopolitan	Steven Lukes (UK and US) Amitai Etzioni (US) Joseph Nye (US)
A Challenge to Financial Power	A tribute to the originality of Robert Skidlesky and David Graeber	See the previous post on rentier capitalism
Against Binary Thinking	Theory Y was right!!	We need to become less cynical
On our Own	How I understand the world – and a draft agenda of change	Jeremy Gilbert’s “Common Ground” (2014) is one of the few books which tries to break out of the left-right conflict
Leaders we Deserve	Klaas’ “Corruptible – who gets power and how it changes us” is a psychological look at the topic and based on a global search which ignores the huge literature on the topic	Few said it better than Robert Michels 100 years ago – in “Political Parties” which looked at how trade unionists and social democrats were seduced by power
Speak Memory	Key reading for me since the 1960s	Another great reading list
On Power	Why are so many books on the subject deeply disappointing
Deepening our power	Forget electoral ref – enact direct democracy!orm

I take 2 lessons from the table - first that my thinking about power has deterioted - the analysis

of 1977 was much sharper than the more recent stuff! And second that I have been too inclined 

to repeat myself- and too reluctant to take the time to read the books I have referenced. 

For example, the process of drafting this post has unearthed another few critical books 

British Politics – a critical analysis Stuart McAnulla (2006) – the book may be 17 years old but it is, for me, simply the most honest analysis of the perversities of the British system

Political Traditions and UK politics Matthew Hall (2011) Very good on the continuing power of tradition on UK politics

Who Runs the Economy – the role of power in Economics https://vdoc.pub/download/who-runs-the-economy-the-role-of-power-in-economics-7a8c1cfqh4u0 ed Robert Skidelsky and Nan see this podcastCraig (2016) A rare discussion of the most profound weakness of modern economics

How Westminster Works – and why it doesn't; Ian Dunt (2022) a brilliant analysis which exposes the superficiality of British politics and the role played in that by political journalists who focus on the Lobby and neglect the work of Select Committees. For a useful discussion see this podcast

But what can I do? Alaister Campbell (2023) Tony Bliar’s spindoctor emcourages citizens to protest. Pity that comes just as the UK government is cracking down on protest!