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Political Theory Master Arguments Document
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- Cambridge University (CAM)
Political Theory Master Arguments Document for POL9 interdisciplinary exam.
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Key distinctionsExtent (e.g., of power) vs. scope (e.g., of power: issue breadth they can exercise it over)
, Concepts
Power – theory and concepts
• What are the types of power relevant?
• Is material power more important in international politics than other forms of power?
• How does coercive power work?
• What are the sources of great power?
Definitions
• Power can be defined to be the ability to master one’s environment in order to fulfil
certain goals (Mann, 2012)
• Def of power: “the production, in and through social relations, of effects that shape
the capacities of actors to determine their own circumstances and fate” (Barnett and
Duvall 2005)
Typologies
• Power as material resource: this is true for realists e.g., Mearsheimer
o Compulsory power (Barnett and Duvall); ability to change others’ behaviour
• Power and structures
o Neorealism treats structures as constraints (Long) -structure defined in
neorealism (Wendt notes) as distribution of capabilities
o But structures, agendas are to rationalist, c’v and critical schools important
power
• Power as social resource
• Common sense power: hegemonic Gramscian power
Lukes – three faces of political power (2005)
(1) Decision making power – takes into account both coercive and noncoercive power to
make decisions
(2) Agenda setting power
(3) Thought control: ‘The most effective and insidious form of power is to prevent …
conflict from arising in the first place’ Steven Lukes (2005).
a. E.g. framing poverty as natural
b. Common sense – Gramsci, cultural, moral and ideological leadership over a
group of allied or subaltern groups; linked to Marxist philosophy; social
constraints through norms
Bourdieu and a Constructivist Approach to Power
• Capitals are structurally distributed material resources and means of appropriation of
socially scarce goods
• Habitus consists of a set of historical relations deposited within individual bodies in
the form of mental and corporeal schemata of perceptions, appreciation and action
• Fields consists of a set of objective, historical relations between positions anchored in
certain forms of power. These relations have a logic “the rules of the game”
, • Relationality and power: power has rhe ability to challenge the rules of the game of a
field. Emerges at the intersection of habitus and structural positionality
o Habitus product of life long experience versus capital product of means of
production
o Social change versus biography Neoliberalisation has depended on increasing
power, autonomy and cohesion of businesses and corp and ability as a class to
put pressure on state power, e.g. thru financial institutions, influencing market
behaviours, lobbying, bribery, corruption, influencing elections
Barnett and Duvall (2005)
(1) Compulsory power - “relations of interaction that allow one actor to have direct
control over another”;
a. doesn’t necessarily need intentionality, view from recipient;
b. Can be symbolic, normative power also e.g. activists Clinton landmine treaty
(Price, 1998)... Ian Johnstone UNSC legal norms
(2) Institutional power when actors exercise indirect control over others, such as when
states design international institutions in ways that work to their long-term advantage”
(4). “constraints on interest-seeking action”
a. Spatially distant: Inst’l arrangements e.g. rules, responsibilities, structures of
dependence
b. “Frozen configurations of privilege and bias” – temporally distant
c. Resistance: change rules of the game, e.g. HR NGOs, nuclear regimes of
India/Pakistan
(3) Structural power “concerns the constitution of social capacities and interests of actors
in direct relation to one another”
a. World systems theory
(4) Productive power “the socially diffuse production of subjectivity in systems of
meaning and significance”
• They differ on ‘relational specificity’ (direct: compulsory and structural vs. diffuse
institutional and productive) and what it works through (‘interactions of specific
actors: compulsory and institutional vs. social relations of constitution: structural and
productive)
• Advantages of approach: detaches discussions of power from realism’s limitations,
doesn’t map onto any particular theory, draws from several, discourages thought
about power as competing forms
Keck and Sikkink (1998) – how the power of transnational actors works
• Persuasion or socialisation (not devoid of conflict though)
o Information politics (n.b. Is the issue defined as technical?)... framing of issue
e.g. FGM
o Symbolic politics… US hypocrisy of CRM
o Leverage pol
o Acc pol
• When effective?
o Issue characteristics - harm or equality most key
o Actor characteristics - vulnerability to persuasion or leverage
persuasion
,
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