Social Power

Definitions

Social power, as defined by Dowding, can be described as power over and outcome power as power to. The former must involve a social relation between two or more actors, for if there were only one actor, there would be nobody to exercise power over anyone else. On the other hand, outcome power applies, for instance, to the ability of an isolated person on a deserted island to pick coconuts (he has the power to pick the coconuts.) This is not to deny that a large portion of outcome power, when exercised, affects individuals. In our increasingly globalized world, buying a rug in London could affect the wage of a poverty-stricken rug weaver in Africa. This action has social consequences; however, it is not necessarily a case of social power. Social power involves the deliberate manipulation of incentive structures, and because the reasons for purchasing a rug usually do not include a desire to inflict hardship on others, then this can hardly be said to be a case of the consumer exercising social power over the producer. The use of the term deliberate in Dowding's definition of social power is therefore to be used in a strict sense.

The other aspect of the definition worth elaborating is that it must involve the manipulation of another actor's incentive structure in the hope that it will bring about some desired end. One might set out to deliberately harm another, but not necessarily to manipulate their incentives for acting. A mafia boss might make the call to eliminate a traitorous employee. The ability to kill this individual is an instance of outcome power, though not of social power because the mafia boss is not exercising power over his employee any more. The mafioso is eliminating the individual's incentive structure rather than manipulating it. The key [Page 617]point here is that the doomed individual is not used as a means to achieve some desired outcome, but is a component of the desired outcome itself (i.e., his death.) Of course, if the boss were attempting to build a reputation that the mafia deal severely with traitors, this reputation might be used to manipulate the incentive structure of other would-be traitors to make them reassess the risk they run by betraying the mafia. However, this reputation would be used as social power to warn would-be traitors, not to warn the unfortunate individual killed to enforce this reputation.

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