Relational Power

The Relational Concept of Power

The relational conceptualization of power takes place in the context of post-Weberian definitions of power. Max Weber had defined power as any chance (and not probability, as often translated) within a social relation to impose one's will also against the resistance of others, no matter what gives rise to this chance. For Robert Dahl, A has power over B to the extent that A can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do. Hence, the main characteristic of a relational approach is that it locates power in a human relationship, thus distinguishing it from the sheer production of effects (power in nature). At the same time, relational is not to be confused with relative. It does not mean that once the resources are taken into account, there is something more in the power relationship.

Such relational concepts of power are opposed to views that see power in terms of its resources or instruments: power exists in and through a relation, it is not the possession of any agent. In a famous example, Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz illustrate this with reference to a situation in which a sentry levels his gun at an unarmed intruder, whom he orders to halt or else he will shoot. If the intruder stops, it seems the threat has worked: the sentry has exercised power. Bachrach and Baratz deny that this is necessarily so. If the intruder was also a soldier, he or she might obey because that is what a soldier does when receiving an order from a sentry. The alleged power resource was ineffectual here, because it was the intruder's value system that made the intruder obey, not the gun. On the other hand, if the intruder does not obey and is killed, we may again not be seeing a power relationship. Strictly speaking, the killing of the intruder is not power, because the intruder apparently valued entering the base more than his or her own life; the killing only shows the ultimate powerlessness of force (violence) in the face of a suicide attack. (In a more strictly Weberian reading, however, it would be fair to say that the sentry exercised power in imposing his or her will—not to allow anyone unauthorized to enter the base—against the resistance of the intruder.) Pushing the example to its extreme, the intruder may have wanted to commit suicide but gets the sentry to do it for him or her. In this case, the intruder, by being shot, exercises power over the sentry. The central point is that no analysis of power can be made without knowing the relative importance of conflicting values in the mind of the power recipient, if not also of the supposed power holder. The capacity to sanction and the resources on which the sanctions are based are a part of power analysis, but in themselves are insufficient for an attribution of power because what counts as a sanction in the specific power relation is itself dependent on the specific values in the minds of the people involved.

...