Lukes, Steven (1941-)

Steven Lukes is currently a professor of sociology at New York University. Lukes has also lectured at the University of Siena (1996–2000), the London School of Economics (2001–2003), and Balliol College at Oxford University (1966–1987). Lukes took his BA in 1962 at Balliol College. He worked as a research fellow at Nuffield College and lecturer in politics at Worcester College and took his MA in 1967. He took his doctorate in 1968, writing a dissertation on the work of Emile Durkheim. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and has been a visiting professor at the University of Paris; New York University; the University of California, San Diego; and the University of Jerusalem.

Lukes's main research interests are in political and social theory, the sociology of Durkheim and his followers, individualism, power, rationality, the category of the person, Marxism and ethics, the sociology of morality, and new forms of liberalism. Lukes has published extensively over the course of his academic career in both books and academic journals. His most important books are Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work, A Historical and Critical Study (1973), Power: A Radical View (1974), and Liberals and Cannibals: The Implications of Diversity (2003).

Lukes's most influential work, Power: A Radical View, was first published in 1974, and has been reprinted many times. In 2005, a second edition was released with two additional chapters titled “Power, Freedom, and Reason” and “Three-Dimensional Power.” In it, Lukes outlines his famous theory of the three faces of power. Lukes begins by asking two questions. The first asks how should one think about power theoretically and how to think about it empirically. The second, which Lukes says cannot be answered without answering the first, is whether American politics is dominated by a ruling elite or exhibits pluralist democracy. In response to the first question, Lukes submits that there are three faces, or dimensions, to power.

The first dimension of power is the most straightforward, which is that of basic decision-making power. It also the most visible and most observable of the three faces of power. It focuses on actual behavior and specific outcomes of decision-making processes. In this view, power is in the hands of those who prevail in decision making. The first dimension of power looks directly at observable conflict between interests. These interests are observed by the expression of policy preferences, which is revealed by political participation. Proponents of this one-dimensional view of power include Robert Dahl, Nelson Polsby, and Raymond E. Wolfinger.

The second face of power is in essence the power to influence, or to use Lukes's term, the power of nondecision making. Nondecision-making power is the power that groups and individuals have to control the agenda in debates and make certain issues unacceptable for discussion in moderate [Page 394]public forums. Proponents of the second dimension of power took exception to the one-dimensional view of power, claiming that it reflects a far too narrow understanding of power. Because of this, Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz argue that the one-dimensional view gives a misleadingly sanguine pluralistic picture of American politics. Not only can power be enforced by exerting decision-making power, it can also be enforced by controlling and setting the norms, values, and the design of the systematic decision-making procedures that consistently benefit certain groups at the expense of others.

...