NATIONAL LAW INSTITUTE UNIVERSITY

BHOPAL

POLITICAL SCIENCE PROJECT

THE CONCEPT OF POWER

Submitted To: - Submitted By:-

Dr. Raka Arya Kapil Karolia
2015 B.A/LL.B48

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 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my sincere and earnest gratitude towards Dr. Raka Arya who
guided me with her invaluable suggestions for making this project .

Without the support and guidance of the people mentioned above, this project would
never have been a success.

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Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................4
Transitive and Intransitive Power............................................................................................................8
Transitive Power:.....................................................................................................................................8
Intransitive power:..................................................................................................................................9
Intransitive Power As A Common Space Of Action:...................................................................................11
Intransitive Power And Politics:.................................................................................................................13
Authority:..................................................................................................................................................14
Integration:................................................................................................................................................15
Conclusion:................................................................................................................................................16

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 Introduction

Power has various meanings. It is a wide concept with many interpretations.

Many philosophers and thinkers have given their own interpretation.

Weber defined power as the ability to control the behavior of others, even
against their will. According to Weber, the most direct source of political power
is coercion, or the right to use or threaten physical force. This idea is central to
Weber's political theories. A definitive example of this is the Cuban missile
crisis. While President Kennedy did not actually detonate nuclear weapons in his
attempts to prevent the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics from
establishing nuclear capabilities in Cuba, this threat of force stopped the
progression of Soviet forces into Cuba. The USSR was unwilling to subject itself
to the possibility of nuclear attack, and thus the threat of physical force gave
the United States political power. Figures in authoritarian governments often
have power stemming from this same source; Weber recognized instabilities in
governments basing their power on coercion because victims of this coercive
power view it as illegitimate and often are willing to fight back.

Hannah Arendt understands power as ‘speaking and acting in concert’. Power

is, for her, the counter concept to that of violence; ‘Power springs p between
men when they act together, Power is what keeps the public realm, the
potential space of appearance between acting and speaking men, in existence’
(Arendt,1958). ‘The space of appearance comes into being wherever men are
together in the manner of speech and action’ (1958). ‘Power corresponds to the
human ability not just to act but to act in concert’ (1970).

“Power is indeed the essence of all government, but violence is not. Violence is
by nature instrumental; like all means, it always stands in need of guidance and
justification through the ends it pursues. And what needs justification by

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something else cannot be the essence of anything.” – Hannah Arendt, “On
Violence”

In "On Violence", Hannah Arendt established a crucial distinction between

power and violence, and though her definition of violence itself comes only via
negative – by what it is not, she articulates a very clear notion of power as
distinguished from force and strength. Whatever it is that we understand
nowadays as power is the rough equivalent of force, that is, the uncontrollable
forces of nature, and has little to do with power as a function of human
relations: power as the ability to act in concert with others.

The concepts of power put forward by Max Weber and Hannah Arendt are
comparatively different; the empirical concept of Max Weber and the highly
normative concept of Hannah Arendt appear not to be at all compatible with
ach other.

At first glance, the difference between the power concepts of Max Weber and
Hannah Arendt only reflects the distinction between ‘power over’ and ‘power to’
as formulated by Hanna Pitkin- a distinction which proved to become very
authoritative in recent power discussion. ‘Power over’ refers to power over
other person, to the carrying out of one’s intentions against the intentions of
others, to the realizing of one’s own options at the expense of the options of
someone else. It is actual power and a social relationship par excellence. ‘Power
to’, on the other hand, is not, or not primarily, directed at other persons in a
social relationship. It represents rather the capacity to do or achieve something,
irrespective of the intentions of others. ‘Power to’ refers, in the first instance,
only to a single individual or group and its capacity for action. It is potential
power and it does not, following Hanna Pitkin, refer to any social relationship.

In this framework, Hannah Arendt takes an extreme position, as she explicitly

limits the existence of power to ‘power to’. The aspect of ‘power over’ not only
is left out, but is conceptualized as violence and opposed to the concept of

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power as ‘power to’. But while describing the constitution of power, Arendt
does not refer to a single individual. The constitution of power actualizes the
community of individuals, and therefore Arendt’s ‘power to’ is not restricted to
being mere potential power. Quite the opposite it is power actualized through
joint communication. Following Arendt’s view, the constitution of ‘power to’
blurs the distinction between potential and actual power. ‘Power to’ in the
understanding of Hannah Arendt is a social relation as well as ‘power over’ in
the understanding of max Weber.

When we consider power essentially as a social relationship, it becomes clear

that Max Weber and Hannah Arendt actually have two very different types of
social relationships in mind. Max Weber understands power in terms of a
relationship in which one person directs his will at another person in order to
subject him to this power. As opposed to this, Hannah Arendt conceives power
as a relationship between persons that develops in the form of communication
and joint action, and is not primarily directed towards people outside. Max
Weber’s formulation concerns transitive power, while Hannah Arendt concerns
intransitive power.

Goehler (2000) coins the term “intransitive power” based on Hannah Arendt’s
(1958) notion of power as “speaking and acting in concert. The terms
“transitive” and “intransitive” are used in analogy to the grammatical distinction
between transitive verbs, which refers to action being done on somebody or
something, and intransitive verbs, which refer back to the subject. “To murder”,
for instance, is a transitive verb, whereas “to die” is an intransitive verb.
According to Goehler, power is transitive when it refers to others, whereas it is
intransitive when it refers to back itself.

Goehler attempted to structure the concept of power such that, in addition to

approaches of a traditional, structuralist and post-structuralist provenance, the
normative approach formulated by Hannah Arendt also receives the attention it
deserves. He tried to formulated the two conceptions of transitive and

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intransitive power in a way that allows for a normative perspective of power to
take account of what the members of a n existing community have orm must
have in common. This normative perspective of power is just as important as
that perspective which conceives of power in terms of its existence over others.
It even represents the basis for a polity’s existence and has consequences for
our understanding of certain crucial aspects of politics.

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 Transitive and Intransitive Power
Transitive Power:
The basic model of transitive power consist in the subordination of one
person’s will by the ail of another. This is also the everyday understanding of
power, and it is what concepts concerned with the exercise of power in
relations of ‘power over” refer to.

Main characteristics of transitive power are:

 Other-reference.
 Relationship of wills.
 Brings something about.
 Regulation.
 Realization.
 Exercises power.
 Interlocking spaces of action.
 Instrumental.

Gerhard Goehler points out that transitive power is not possible without
counter-power- otherwise it would be reduced to pure force or violence. An
actor A who wants to exercise power over B is well advised to take the B’s
counter-power into consideration. Moreover, the separation and balancing of
different and often complementary forms of transitive power is a prominent
aspect of Western Liberal Democracies. For instance, elected officials exercise
power on behalf of electorate, whereas electorate may exercise control by
voting officials out of office. Transitive power may also work indirectly, by way
of behavioral expectations, where the addresses of the power anticipates
possible acts of power and act accordingly. Common to all forms of transitive
power is that they involve zero-sum games. An actor can only gain power if one
or more other actors lose power.

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Intransitive power:
Intransitive power is in contrast, not a zero-sum game. It is self-referential, in
the sense of “powerfulness” or “self-empowerment”. The exercise of intransitive
power involves an intensification of common action, and thus increases of
transitive power. This conception of power has commonalities with Parsons’
conception of power as a circulating medium through which obligations are
exchanged in a political system.

Main characteristics of intransitive power are:

 Self-reference.
 Symbolic relationships.
 Represents something.
 Integration.
 (Self-) employment.
 Generates power.
 Common space of action.
 End in itself.

However, according to Gerhard Goehler, Arendt understands power as an end in

itself, rather than a means to attain external ends. Following Aristotle, she
claims that humans are essentially communitarian beings. It is only within a
community taking the form of political praxis that humans can realize their
telos, i.e. their inner nature or ultimate purpose as human beings.

This leads to questions concerning how intransitive powers function in modern

fragmented societies, what mechanism it develops and how it comes about.
Goehler suggests that some answers may be found in Foucault’s analysis of
disciplinary power and pastoral power, as well as in his view of power as
inherent in discourses. Foucault himself emphasized asymmetric in power, but
he also explicitly recognized the productive aspect of power. Goehler also
suggests that Bourdieu’s social theory may elucidate the sociological grounding

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of intransitive power. Bourdieu claims that the dominant symbolic order in a
society is an important aspect of the social stratification of a society. He views
the dominant social order as an outcome of struggles in which actors attempt
to raise the social value or level of distinction of their particular lifestyles. This
struggle involves the use of intransitive power. However, Goehlor suggests that
once a symbolic order becomes institutionalized, it comes to represent a
legitimate world view and structure the perception of different social classes. At
this point, the dominant symbolic order helps to open a political space for
action, and thus becomes a precondition for intransitive power.

Goelher emphasizes that intransitive power is structured. For instance, in a

modern democratic territorial state it requires a form of organization which is
capable of including all participants without their having to be always physically
present.

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Intransitive Power As A Common Space Of Action:
More formally, Goelher defines intransitive power as follows: “intransitive power
constitutes a community as in effective unit in the form of a common space of
action which is symbolically present”. A common space of action implies that
the actors act on the basis of common value conceptions and principles of
order. For a community to be of lasting duration, the intransitive power must be
fixed beyond changing situational contexts. This requires a process of
institutionalization. The expression “is symbolically present” in the definition of
“intransitive power” implies that political institutionalization is maintained
through the authoritative symbols of the community, which makes common
values and principles of order visible. The authoritative symbols provide
citizens with orientations which are just as effective as cognitive. They enable
citizens to form ties with the community in a ‘softer’ and longer-lasting form
than material sanctions.

Goehler points out that intransitive power produces both an increase and
decrease in the actors’ options. It helps overcoming the limits of the zero-sum
game of power, but at the same time sets clear limitations upon the exercise of
transitive power. Goehler recognizes that transitive power may play a
considerable role in the historical emergence of a common space of action:

The concrete form in which a common space of action is actualized and

maintained, as well as the specific value conceptions and principles of order
that become established in a community, are not simply matters of consensus
and conviction, but first and foremost the result of social struggles (that is, of
transitive relationships of power). Nevertheless, as long a community is able to
maintain its existence, such conflicts will, again and again, lead to intransitive
power.

This description of the mutual interplay between transitive and intransitive

power fits nicely to the results of a study of the disintegration and revival of
tripartite collaboration of HSE in the Norwegian petroleum industry around year

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2000 (Moon et al., 2009). Moon et al. found that the parties were able to build
new trust even as they continued to fight for their interests. Moon et al. also
found that the authorities’ uses a variety of transitive power tactics as means to
reinforce a common space of action.

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Intransitive Power And Politics:
Goehler used concepts of transitive and intransitive power to analyze the
preconditions for dominance and authority. He accepts Weber’s assertion that
dominance (“Herrschaft”) in the absence of coercion can only be maintained
over time of this dominance is accepted as legitimate among the subordinated.
Goehler claims that intransitive power provides the actual empirical foundations
for a stable society. He also states that intransitive power is indispensable for
enabling a polity to acquire and maintain legitimacy.

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Authority:
According to Arendt, "Authority", is a specific source of power. It represents
power vested in persons by virtue of their offices, or of their "authoritativeness"
where relevant information and knowledge is concerned. It is one of the
possible means by which individuals achieve the "strength" as leaders or
participants in decision making that gives them persuasive power. Authority
does not stem merely from the attributes of the individual. Its exercise depends
on willingness on the part of others to grant respect and legitimacy, rather than
on one's personal ability to persuade or coerce. You will, of course, recognize
Max Weber as the original source of this particular distinction. His ideas were
extremely influential in Arendt's intellectual development, although they came
to her indirectly -- through his friend and admirer Karl Jaspers, who served as
her lifelong mentor.

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Integration:
Goehler states that transitive and intransitive power correspond to the two
basic functions of politics: regulation and integration. By regulation, he
understands all forms of goal-directed controls over actors’ options in a
political unit. According to Goehler, regulation works negatively through
commands and prohibitions, or positively through incentives. This corresponds
to the model of transitive power: regulator.

A attempts to make the regulated actor B do something, B would not otherwise

do, either by restricting B’s options or by making certain options appear
desirable. The concept of integration points to the questions as to what holds a
society or community together. He distinguishes between technical integration,
which concerns the exercise of transitive power, and normative integration,
which “can be understood as the process and results of citizens’ permanently
renewed orientations towards the basic values and principles of a political
order. Normative integration brings about the requisite identification and
collective identity. Following Rudolg Smend Goelher emphasis the need for
societies to enable citizens to share in an “experience of community”, i.e. to
orient their actions towards a reservoir of shared values. For those orientations
to work in generating a we-consciousness, they must be visible, ever present,
and capable of being continually experienced by citizens. This requires
symbolic expressions, such as flags and anthems, political constitutions and
visible actions of political leaders and officials in political intuitions. Goehler
thus maintains that intransitive power always has an expressive side.

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Conclusion:
The basic idea of this theory is that power is best understood by making a
distinction between transitive power and intransitive power in social
relationships. This new way of structuring the concept of power has several
advantages. It helps us to understand better the variety of power aspects
discussed in the social sciences today. Moreover, it contributes to a better
understanding of the normative dimension of power and to its direct inclusion
into the analysis of power. The systematic of the concept of power that have
been discussed refers in particular to political power. Here, what becomes
especially clear is the requirement of a concept of power which is both
analytical and normative. The political order of a community- and this is
something which can be learned from the long history of political thought, and
not least from Hannah Arendt- must be based upon a normatively understood
power which generates a minimum level of common ground between the
members of a community, and without which the political order would not be in
a position to maintain its existence. In this way, intransitive power is tied
closely together with the process of integration, namely with social and
normative integration, and both integration and intransitive power require the
continual symbolic expression of the values they stand for to be effective and
maintained. Thus analyzing power remains defective without referring to
intransitive power, and analyzing intransitive power remains incomplete without
paying attention to the symbolic dimension. As to the first, we have to go
beyond the scope of mainstream empirical analysis; as to the latter, we have to
complete Hannah Arendt’s normative concept.

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