Environment and Planning A 2014, volume 46, pages 2385 – 2400

doi:10.1068/a130080p

Power and contingency in planning

Kristof Van Assche

Faculty of Extension, University of Alberta, 10230 Jasper Avenue NW, Edmonton, AB,
T5J 4P6, Canada; and Communication Group, Wageningen University; and ZEF/Center for
Development Research, Bonn University; e-mail: vanassch@ualberta.ca
Martijn Duineveld
Cultural Geography Group, Wageningen University, PO Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen,
The Netherlands; e-mail: martijn.duineveld@wur.nl
Raoul Beunen¶
Faculty of Management, Science and Technology, Open University of the Netherlands, PO
Box 2960, Heerlen, 6401 DL, The Netherlands; and Strategic Communication Group at
Wageningen University; e-mail: raoul.beunen@ou.nl
Received 3 July 2013; in revised form 21 April 2014

Abstract. In this paper we analyse the role and reception of poststructuralist perspectives
on power in planning since the 1990s, and then ask whether a renewed encounter with
the works of poststructuralist theorists Foucault, Deleuze, and Luhmann could add
something to the points that were already made. We make a distinction between the power
of planning (the impact in society), power in planning (relations between players active
in planning), and power on planning (the influence of broader society on the planning
system), to refine the analysis of planning/power. It is argued that an interpretation of
Deleuze, Luhmann, and Foucault, as thinkers of power in a theoretical framework that
is based on the idea of contingency, can help to refine the analysis of power in planning.
Planning then can be regarded as a system in other systems, with roles, values, procedures,
and materialities in constant transformation, with the results of each operation serving as
input for the next one. The different power relations constitute the possibilities, the forms,
and the potential impact of planning.

Keywords: power, contingency, acting space, governance, evolution

Introduction
Power is an important and often debated concept and issue in contemporary planning. This
importance is reflected in the literature on the political character of planning practices
(Flyvbjerg, 1998a; Swyngedouw et al, 2002), on the ways planning deals with conflicting
interests and perspectives (Gunder and Hillier, 2009; Hillier, 2002; Pløger, 2004), and on
the possibilities for planners to make a difference in society (Grange, 2012; Miraftab, 2009).
The current prevalence of the topic owes much to the efforts of a group of power theorists
in the 1990s, who opened the door to a renewed reflection on power in planning after a period
of relative silence. We can mention among others Flyvbjerg (1998a; 2001; 2004), Hajer (1995;
Hajer and Versteeg, 2005), Yiftachel (1998; Yiftachel and Huxley, 2000), Allmendinger
(Allmendinger and Tewdwr-Jones, 2002), Hillier (2002; but see previously Hedgcock et al,
1991), Throgmorton (1996), Tewdwr-Jones (Tewdwr-Jones and Allmendinger, 1998), Crush
(1994), or Fischler (2000). Their appearance in planning can be seen as a belated arrival of
postmodernism in planning, a tardiness understandable in a discipline and field often closely

¶ Corresponding author.
2386 K Van Assche, M Duineveld, R Beunen

associated with and identifying with governments steeped in high-modernist ideologies of

knowing, steering, and remoulding society through spatial interventions (Ferguson, 1994;
Hillier, 2002; Scott, 1998).
Many of these theorists were inspired by authors now often described as poststructuralist:
including Foucault, Lacan, Derrida, and Barthes. Foucault, who explicitly focused on power
relations in government and society, and on the functions of expertise in governance, figured
most prominently in the thinking of the power theorists in planning. With all the differences
between the early poststructuralists from the 1960s and 1970s (in the case of Lacan arguably
even earlier) and between the later planning theorists, one can say that what seeped through
in most cases was the idea of a social, discursive, construction of reality. Science lost its
privileged access to truth and science-based planning had to be scrutinised carefully in
its claims.
Planning in the Foucault-inspired perspective introduced then appears as inherently
political, and ought not to present itself as a value-neutral and/or scientific endeavour
(Flyvbjerg, 1998b). It operates in a field of contested and shifting forms and expectations
of state power and, within that, planning power (Hajer, 1995; Hillier, 2002). It requires a
mix of formal and informal institutions to exert influence (Van Assche et al, 2014a; Wood,
2009). Planning, in this perspective, takes place in a fragmented society, marked by networks
mixing state and nonstate actors, and all of these can use or oppose planning (Booher and
Innes, 2002; Munro, 2000; Rydin, 2010). Moreover, power and knowledge are intimately
entwined in any institutionalised form of planning. This is the case in each step of the process,
from the definition of issues, actors, and procedures, to the forms of reinterpretation in
implementation, and the strategic uses of maintenance and neglect (Ferguson, 1994; Gunder,
2010; Scott, 1998).
By now many planning scholars believe reflections on planning should carefully
reexamine its assumptions, like its discursive construction and the embedded power relations,
and carefully avoid mixing up wish and reality, description and prescription (Fischler, 2000;
Yiftachel, 1998; Yiftachel and Huxley, 2000). Since the wave of power theory in planning in
the 1990s many of these ideas have become commonplace. Nonetheless, we argue, there are
a couple of reasons for further reflection.
Firstly, both in theory and in practice, some of the lessons have sunk in only superficially.
Many authors pay lip-service to some of the tenets above, but then happily proceed to mix
prescription and description, to exaggerate the power of social engineering, to assume a unity
of community that is clearly fictitious, to omit any substantial reflection on assumptions
or on the form of democracy that is implied in research, planning and/or the plan (for the
critiques, see Allmendinger and Haugton, 2007; Gunder, 2010; Moulaert and Cabaret, 2006;
Van Assche and Verschraegen, 2008; Wood, 2009;). Some of this can be ascribed to funding
politics, and to existential anxiety in the (anticipated and feared) absence of modernist forms
of government. It can also be ascribed to the influence of neighbouring disciplines where a
positivist mind-set lingered on for a longer time: for example, environmental studies, transport
studies, and development studies (Abbott, 2012; Ferguson, 1994; Latour, 2004; Miller, 2002).
Another reason is that in the analysis of power, in planning and in other disciplines, much
has happened, and one cannot purely present recent developments as filling in the details
of the picture that emerged in the 1990s. Different lines of poststructuralist investigation
continued to alter and expand the repertoire of images of planning and power: for example,
the recent work on complexity and nonlinearity (De Roo and Silva, 2010; Van Assche and
Verschraegen, 2008).
In this paper we want to revisit some of the poststructuralist tenets on power already
present in planning theory, bring new developments to attention, and rearticulate a set of
Power and contingency in planning 2387

older and newer insights in a new frame, organised around the ideas of positionality (the
place of planning in society) and contingency (Pottage, 1998; Teubner, 1989). Contingency,
as that which is possible but not necessary, as that which is but could have been different,
has a philosophical lineage dating back to Aristotle. It was revived by medieval scholastics,
then largely forgotten in the Renaissance and subsequent philosophies looking for universal
principles and laws. It reentered academic debates with structuralism (Levi-Strauss, Greimas)
and in poststructuralism it accumulated new meanings. We will investigate the utility of
such a poststructuralist expanded version of contingency for the understanding of power
and planning. We argue that planning theory can benefit from the understanding of power as
essential to the daily functioning of a planning system, the continuous evolution of a planning
system and the dynamic relations with its environment. Understanding these different
manifestations of power can shed a new light on the way planning comprehends itself and
its environment, and on the ways it tries to organise itself and its environment. We therefore
distinguish power in planning and power of planning, and we connect the steering attempts
of planning with its attempts to know itself and the world it aspires to intervene in. We also
pay attention to the influence of society on planning, on planning systems and practices, and
speak there of power on planning. Power of planning, we will argue, cannot be understood
without reference to power on planning and power in planning, and power in all these forms
can only be comprehended as interwoven with knowledge, as part of power/knowledge
configurations.
This basic conceptual structure already owes much to the insights accrued by the
application and development of various lines of post-structuralism (eg, Foucault, Deleuze,
Derrida, Lacan, Luhmann, Latour) in more policy-oriented research. Although we cannot
give a comprehensive overview of both planning theory and poststructuralism here, we
intend to indicate which concepts and perspectives are still useful to rethink power in, on,
and of planning. The scheme of power in/on/of planning helps to structure insights in power
dynamics stemming from different strands of poststructuralism in a way that might facilitate
a revisiting of the positionality of planning. Using the scheme as an ordering principle, we
assemble a version of poststructuralist power theory that helps to deepen the analysis of
planning practice and the role of planning in society. Leaning on the work of Pottage, who
combined in novel ways Deleuze, Luhmann, Foucault, and Latour in power analysis, and
also leaning directly on Luhmann, Deleuze, and Foucault, we emphasise the potential role
of contingency as a cornerstone concept of a theory of power and planning. An orientation
on contingency can give a sharper delineation of the positionality of planning in society and
of the possibilities and limitations to influence that society from a certain position.
Before introducing such conceptualisation of power and planning we reflect on the
historical presence of power in planning theory. We contextualise and analyse the role and
reception of perspectives on power in planning since the 1960s, a genealogy of power concepts
in the context of planning theory that adds to the understanding of that discursive landscape.
This we believe to be helpful in our reformulation and development of poststructuralist power
concepts in that same context.

Power in planning: it comes and goes as a topic of reflection

Power is not a new topic in planning. In the 1970s, Friedmann (1971; 1973) discussed in
detail power relations and their importance for local and regional economic development, as
well as the restrictions they impose on planning as a practice of policy integration. Earlier
case studies had already shown that in the delineation of preferable scenarios for future
development, and notably in their implementation, power, its use and abuse, was something
that could not be overlooked (see, eg, Fischler, 2000; Forester, 2001). Davidoff (1965) and
other advocacy planners wanted to bring planning more closely into the orbit of politics.
2388 K Van Assche, M Duineveld, R Beunen

It was also acknowledged that planners themselves, supposedly representing ‘the people’ in
a quest for the common good, availed themselves of various power tactics and strategies that
would appear questionable now (eg, Hardy, 1991; Jacobs, 1961). Robert Moses in New York
can be mentioned as one of the giants of planning who knew how to play the power game to
push his plans forward, against the resistance of many (Brown, 1986).
Planning already had its critics, and many of those critics referred to the questionable
legitimacy of planning and planners, to the questionable accumulation of power in the hands
of planners and networks around them that escaped democratic control (Gunder, 2010). Also
its steering power was questioned (Boyce, 1963; Friedmann, 1973). In the 1960s and 1970s,
a neo-Marxist wave of critique could be noticed in the literature of mostly neighbouring
disciplines, a perspective that often analysed the planning enterprise as de facto reproducing
the socioeconomic status quo of certain classes and elites (Harvey, 1973; Kiernan, 1983;
Lefebvre, 1968). In the 1970s, policy analysts in the line of Wildavsky added to the choir
of planning sceptics, doubting not only the realism of many planning expectations, but also
the democratic quality of both policy formation and implementation (eg, Wildavsky, 1979).
One could observe a parallel movement more clearly located within the planning
discipline, where planners were seen as the ones who had to deal with power (negatively
defined) in their quest to further the common good [most famously: Forester (1989)]. Many
planners were aware early that the plan-making process itself could be captured by various
interest groups, and that plans could be routinely ignored, reinterpreted, selectively enforced,
or misrepresented after adoption [see, eg, Friedmann’s (2008) reflections]. In other words,
from the early days planners in the US and in Europe were forced to think about power on
a daily basis, and had to devise strategies to navigate the minefields of a practice that was
always politicised. Even when and where planning as such was embraced and theoretically
legitimised, many planners were aware that their power could not be taken for granted. They
were aware that it was not limitless, and that their work required a continuous reflection
on the balance of power. Yet, when in the late 1990s Foucault’s work seeped into planning
academia, it caused a shock (Lacan, Deleuze, and Latour arrived later—see below). The
works of the power theorists mentioned above all drew the attention to a widely experienced
philosophical shift towards poststructuralism, and some included in the discussion
its philosophical predecessors, such as Nietzsche and Machiavelli (Flyvbjerg, 1998a; Hillier,
2002). Some of the critics (eg, Forester, 2001) pointed out that not much new could be found.
A combination of factors can help us to understand both the irritation and the fascination
the ‘power theorists’ of the 1990s evoked. By now, with the benefit of hindsight, it is clear
that indeed the claim of discovery of the irrational and of power games in planning was
exaggerated, partly for rhetorical effect. This exaggeration can also be explained by the
ascendance in the previous decade of communicative planning theories, often inspired by
Habermas, who portrayed power as something negative, as oppressive. Good planning was
the search for power-free deliberations (eg, Forester, 1989; Healey, 1997; Sager, 2006). In
other words, the emphasis on (Habermasian) rationality caused a Freudian return of the
repressed, a new discovery of irrationality and of power in all its guises (eg, McGuirk, 2001).
Rediscovery of power was rediscovery of context, of the multiple embeddings of planning
in society.
Also, outside that communicative paradigm the topic of power had been lingering in the
shadows of the discipline. The spur of neo-Marxist interest in the 1960s and 1970s mostly
took place in geography, sociology, political science, and philosophy. Many planners had
gone back easily to a silent identification with the powers that be (cf Friedmann, 1998;
Hoch, 1992; Wildavsky, 1979). Baum in 1983 noticed the ambiguity many planners felt
about discussing power. Simultaneously, both in politics and in academia, many voices
Power and contingency in planning 2389

questioned both the steering power and the legitimacy of steering ambitions of the state. Both
neoliberal critiques and leftist critiques seemed to argue for a smaller state, and for a shift
from government to governance (Hajer, 1995; Hardy, 1991; Hillier, 2002; Wildavsky, 1979).
This was fertile ground for a renewed reflection on the position of planning. And, as said,
the new theorists’ poststructuralist leanings were felt more as shocking in planning than in
most other disciplines, because of usually tacit assumptions regarding the possibility of direct
access to truth, either through (rational) science or (rational) discussions, an access seen as a
precondition for intervention (Miller, 2002; Scott, 1998).

Conceptual frame: revisiting power and finding contingency

We define planning broadly as the coordination of policies and practices affecting spatial
organisation (Van Assche and Verschraegen, 2008). This definition enables us to look at
a wide variety of planning practices and aspirations. Power, we understand, at this initial
stage of definition and in line with much of the Foucauldian-inspired planning literature, as
something that is always present and consists of “relations that exist at different levels, in
different forms; … power relations are mobile, they can be modified, they are not fixed once
and for all” (Foucault, 1997, pages 291–292). Power should be understood
““as the multiplicity of force relations immanent in the sphere in which they operate and
which constitute their own organization; as the process which, through ceaseless struggles
and confrontations, transforms, strengthens, or reverses them; as the support which these
force relations find one other, thus forming a chain or a system, or on the contrary, the
disjunctions and contradictions which isolate them from one another” (1998, page 92).
It produces some discourses, realities, knowledge, subjects, objects, and values and pushes
others into the background (1998, pages 81–102; cf 1994).
Pottage (1998; 2004) shows, drawing on Luhmann (largely absent from planning theory)
and an extensive knowledge of the full conceptual trajectories of Deleuze (very recently
proliferating in planning theory) and Foucault, that for all three reality consists of events and
that, over time, recursive repetition of events leads to new structures, with both elements
and structures, both objects and subjects, to be considered products of transformation and
starting points for further transformation. This comes close to Deleuze’s (1993) concept of the
fold, Lacan’s idea of a gap (Žižek, 2003; 2012), or Luhmann’s (1989; 1995) differentiation,
as the creation of discontinuities that need continuous reproduction to stabilise temporarily.
In this perspective, Foucault’s later assertion that “power comes from power” (1994,
page 238) and his perspective that power is always relational appear more meaningful. Power
in process is power that needs to be reproduced in a recursive manner, from one event to
the next one. Pottage (1998) persuasively argues that such a concept of power, away from
object–subject distinctions, away from moralising too, and away from rigid subject–structure
distinctions, is the only way to read the late Foucault consistently. This concept of power
helps to preserve the two meanings of power, as the fuel of the universe (a Machiavellian
legacy) and as, in one small subdomain, the potentiality emerging in relations between
individuals and structures. It allows seeing power as a relational effect and understanding
the performative effects of particular attribution of power to objects or subjects (cf Allen,
2003). In Deleuzian terms, one can speak of embedded machinic assemblages, with different
evolutionary speeds.
Pottage’s interpretation brings Deleuze, Foucault, and Luhmann closer to each other,
in insisting on the importance of contingency concepts in structuring their theory, and their
understanding of power and strife (cf Mouffe, 2000; Pløger, 2004). Contingency itself
acquires a new meaning in this reinterpretation of the poststructuralists: not only the idea that
the identity of something is not necessarily as it is but, more radically, the idea that literally
everything is contingent: elements, structures, relations, and operations. A contingency that
2390 K Van Assche, M Duineveld, R Beunen

is compatible with a structured universe only because of the recursive operations of power.
“In place of ontological substances and structures, ‘emergence’ deals instead with structures,
processes and theories that produce themselves out of their own contingency” (Pottage,
1998, page 3). It is this theory of emergent elements and processes that furthers the later
Foucault’s notion of power “clearly and unequivocally distinguished from ‘sovereign’ or
‘repressive’ power” (page 25) and that creates new linkages and compatibilities between the
different poststructuralists, between their visions of what is and what can be. Both the actual
modes of reproduction of discourses, systems, and machines, and the ascriptions regarding
elements, structures, and effects in this reproduction embody power and have power effects.
Such contingency perspective is gaining ground in complexity theories and it has produced
novel insights in the working, effects, and limitations of steering and coordination attempts in
disciplines like economics, law, and public administration (MacKenzie et al, 2007; Teubner,
1989; Walker et al, 2008).
Structures and elements, subjects and objects, all evolve in a manner that relies on power
(Foucault, 1975; 1976; 1994) and none is entirely stable. In policy and planning this entails
that no insertion of a new formal institution can be equalled by a new de facto coordinative
structure, while no new structure can alter reality by itself. It is precisely in the continuous
interaction between objects and subjects, between elements and structures, between discourses
and materialities, that realities are changing (Duineveld et al, 2013; Pottage, 2004). As we will
see, giving such contingency concepts central place in planning theory alters the perspective
on the impact of plans and planning, while allowing for an agency of space, both planned
and unplanned.

Power in, on, and of planning

Contributing to the developments sketched above, and for the reasons mentioned in the
introduction, we will now refine the analysis of planning/power and for that we distinguish
three foci of attention: power in planning, power on planning, and power of planning. Power
in planning refers to the mechanisms of power that mark the planning system itself.
Understanding power in planning is about understanding the relations in the planning
system. Power on planning refers to the influence of broader society on the relations in the
planning system. Power of planning refers to the impacts of planning discourses and practices
in society at large. This can entail literal implementation and partial implementation, but it can
also entail various political, economic, social, and cultural effects. For each relation we will
highlight contributions from different lines of research, different lines of poststructuralism to
the understanding of each relation. Some of the concepts introduced are new, others not so
much, and, among the latter, some have been introduced previously to planning theory, others
not. We indicate, as far as possible, their provenance, novelty, and added value. This also
helps to further clarify the structure and genealogy of our perspective and its added value.
Power in planning
Within the context of planning, power relations define not only the strategic interactions
between actors, but also the definition of actors, issues, realities, problems, methods, and
solutions (Hillier, 2002; cf Ferguson, 1994). Following Foucault, we consider power to be
omnipresent in the construction of possible and desirable futures in the planning system: in
micro and macro relations, strategies, tactics, institutions, knowledge, and in the framing of
what is real, possible, and desirable (Gunder and Hillier, 2009).
The planning system needs an image of the outside world to operate on, as well as tools to
implement decisions, plans, and policies in that outside world. Complexity theory (eg, Beunen
and van Assche, 2013; Chettiparamb, 2006; De Roo and Silva, 2010; Innes and Booher,
2010) and social systems theory (eg, Valentinov, 2014; Van Assche and Verschraegen, 2008)
Power and contingency in planning 2391

argue that the reduction of complexity within the planning system enables it to reproduce
itself and to interact with society at large, while at the same time this reduction obscures
many features of that larger reality. This is similar to Foucault’s (1969; 1975) observation
that the selectivity of discourse at once opens up reality and closes alternative interpretations.
Internal complexity of the planning system is needed to accommodate a model of the
outside world that is subtle enough to operate upon; on the other hand, an established model
becomes quickly entrenched and easily obscures alternative planning options and strategies
(Luhmann, 1990). The focusing of attention creates a grip on the world but, in the long run,
by necessarily closing off other understandings (and their institutionalisation), the trade-offs
can be less understanding, steering, and control (cf also Latour, 1996).
A second aspect of the reduced internal complexity is that in a large organisation, or in
a web of organisations, power is just as much the power to block as the power to push (cf
Foucault, 1994). Blocking can take the shape of hiding information, slowing down, spreading
rumours, evading responsibility or action, undermining legitimacy or public image, and so
forth. If a planning system becomes more complex, there are many cogs to hamper it, and the
cogs tend to be less visible (Luhmann, 1990). If one considers planning to be an activity that
is not limited to the state apparatus, then the relation with the various faces and evolutionary
stages of power that Foucault described have to be assessed in that light (Sayer, 2004).
Indeed, whether in the form of juridical power or biopower (Foucault, 1976), the state cannot
be seen as a single-handed creator of objectivity and subjectivity (Kooij, 2014). It is in the
game of interactions between state and nonstate actors that these actors receive their shape
and role (cf. Hillier, 2008). Such an assertion is in line with the late Foucault, where power
became more clearly dissociated from intentionality and subjectivity, and with a Deleuzian
perspective of planning as assemblage (Allen and Cochrane, 2010; Pottage, 1998).
An insight from actor-network theory (a rather recent variant of poststructuralism, tracing
its lineage via Latour to Foucault) that can be incorporated here is that in this game of powers
material objects can play various roles (Sayes, 2014). That is, objects can be more than
passive resistance. They can have agency and be actants, actively coguiding the development
of planning [Latour (1996); see Rydin (2010) for a pointed defence]. One can think here of
infrastructure and irrigation networks, but also of physical spaces that clearly result from
previous planning efforts, as objects upholding legitimacy and underpinning the versions
of reality circulating [for strong parallels in development policies, see Ferguson (1994) and
Scott (1998); for the organisational scale, see Czarniawska-Joerges (2008)].
If one looks at the productivity of planning in this manner, it is also easier to reconcile
Foucault with the insight of Deleuze and Luhmann that reality is made up of events: events
that occur and leave no trace (DeLanda, 2006; Deleuze, 1988). Indeed, in our contingency
concept (introduced above), drawing on a combination of the three authors, structures appear
in a process of emergence, of recursive repetition. Moving closer to planning, and adding
to the older presence of poststructuralism in planning theory, one can say that structures,
such as discursive structures, but also configurations of actors and institutions, appear and
disappear, and are part of an emergent order that is immanent, but at the same time perfectly
capable of constraining the internal and external linkages that make up actors in a governance
network (DeLanda, 2006; Hillier, 2008). Again in Deleuzian terms, but drawing on the newly
integrated conceptual frame presented here, one can say that a planning system, as the web
of actors, rules, documents, and built spaces, that reproduces itself, can be presented as a
mutual imbrication of a machinic and an enunciative assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari,
2004), together capable of producing a wide variety of effects.
2392 K Van Assche, M Duineveld, R Beunen

Power on planning
The external influences on the planning system cannot be discussed without reference to its
internal mechanics. In A Thousand Plateaus, Deleuze and Guattari (1987) seem to dismiss
planning together with the project of the modernist state intending to order its territory by
means of oppressive gestures and molar thinking. Also for the early Foucault (eg, Foucault,
1966; 1969) planning would have looked like an activity strongly tied to power/knowledge
regimes that lost legitimacy. Yet, as Hillier (2008) and others have pointed out, both planning
practice and planning theory have transformed and opened up themselves in so many ways
that the association between planning and the enterprise of high-modernist state craft does
not seem warranted any more.
If one tries to grasp the array of influences of society at large on the planning system, and
consider the multiplicity of potential relations between planning and society, it makes sense
to place Deleuze in line with many mainstream theories giving importance to complexity
and evolution, such as institutional economics and social systems theory (Van Assche et al,
2014b). Planning requires a level of complexity, a series of emergent orders enabling a
structure of interaction that is not only capable of machining, of relating various elements
and producing somewhat predictable effects, but also of stabilising itself for a while. One
could argue that the move from modernist planning to more flexible and adaptive forms of
spatial governance represents a new ‘plateau’, a new pattern of interactions that represents an
evolutionary achievement.
This does not stop evolution, however. Actors in the planning system, as well as the
role of planning in society and the role of government in society, will keep evolving. This
irrevocably changes the effects of society on planning, but also the effects of planning in
society. The decoupling of power and intentionality, present with Foucault (see, eg, Fischler,
2000), Deleuze (DeLanda, 2006), and Luhmann (Van Assche and Verschraegen, 2008),
ought to be remembered here. In our developing perspective, this decoupling is compounded
by a dissolution of ‘actors’, and the emphasis on contingency, which implies that linkages
between actors, intentions, and effects are observer-dependent descriptions that are or could
have been different for different observers (Borch, 2005). What counts as an actor is very
different in different places and times and the effects of their actions are related to their
intentions in myriad manners (Hillier, 2002; McFarlane, 2009; Yiftachel, 1998). In addition,
the consistencies in these intentions are shaped and reshaped continuously (Flyvbjerg,
1998a; Hardy and Leiba-O’Sullivan, 1998). The plans themselves can be called actants, and
what was said about actors also applies to them. External factors influencing their internal
functioning, and internal or external factors shaping their role in the world, can shift at any
moment, and the reconstruction of the reasons for these shifts will often have to follow the
intricate and unpredictable pathways of the rhizome, unveiling unexpected linkages between
individual or collective desires, anxieties, concepts, objects, and instances of pure coincidence
(Hillier and Gunder, 2005).
Disappointments in society with planning, or with a political party, with an ideology, with
a certain lifestyle tied to images of collective identity, events that are felt as traumatic, pasts
that are reinterpreted, all these can cause shifts in the planning system and the position of
planning in society, and thus affect the dynamics of power there (Friedmann, 1971; Gunder,
2010; Wildavsky, 1979).
This perspective also has direct implications for the types of knowledge that play out in
the internal games of the planning system. Certain actors identify with certain discourses,
either scientific or otherwise, and in other cases they deploy them to maintain or improve their
position in the system [see, eg, Hoch (1992), but, again, Friedmann (1998) and especially
(2008)]. Competition, as a productive tension between different perspectives, tends to speed
up the transformations of power/knowledge configurations and to speed up the selection and
Power and contingency in planning 2393

delineation of actors in the system, and of shifts in the pattern of linkages between the web
of planning actors and their environment (Van Assche et al, 2011). Changes in society affect
directly or indirectly the forms of knowledge that can play out within the planning system,
either adopted by actors in the system, or by adding and removing actors (Gunder, 2010;
Hardy, 1991; Kiernan, 1983). Since planning is also a form of spatial policy integration, there
will be a need to decide on first-ordering principles, in terms of types of knowledge allowed
to order space first and in terms of types of use.
Power of planning
The power of planning in society, as in the effects of planning in society, has to be considered,
as mentioned before, to be extremely varied. If we maintain the combination of contingency
and interdependency (in distributed agency) envisioned by Deleuze, Luhmann, and the late
Foucault, then the effects of efforts at spatial coordination in society can vary wildly. This
does not at all mean that planning has no use or that we have to assess the effects of plans and
planning as negative or futile, because what usually happens is different from what was at
some point predicted or desired. One does not need implementation or steering in the sense
imagined by the modernists to make ongoing attempts at coordination of spatial policies
and practices worthwhile. Rather it implies that the assessment of planning effects cannot
be reduced to a set of categories produced within the planning system (Allen and Cochrane,
2010; McFarlane, 2009). For understanding the impact of planning in society, it is useful
to remember that, although the overt function of planning is coordination, the success of
planning hinges on the dissemination of its articulations in society: that is, the distribution
and acceptance of concepts, strategies, forms, and materialities (Van Assche et al, 2012).
Hence Luhmann’s famous assertion that planning is possible if people are used to being
planned (1997, page 41).
The planning system, and society at large, can be seen as interlocking assemblages,
each capable of producing lines of flight, of conceptual innovation, including new ways
to consider the future (Hillier, 2008). The imaginary order can be considered an immanent
pool of resources for these endeavours (Žižek, 2004). Planning fantasies can be potentially
totalitarian, and they can be emancipatory. Fantasies in and of the community at large can
restructure the imaginary of planning, and, under certain circumstances, it can also happen
the other way around.
‘Steering’ and ‘implementation’ look different in this unfolding perspective. Luhmann’s
assertion is compatible with what can be deduced from the late Foucault and Deleuze on
steering and implementation. Our integrated perspective therefore helps in establishing the
aforementioned middle ground between cynical apprehension of steering attempts and blind
belief in the possibilities of steering. Indeed, actions can have effects that are predictable to
a certain degree, but an interpretation of effects as results of steering remains just that: an
interpretation (Luhmann, 1990; 1995). Power in this sense, as Grange, drawing on Dryberg,
has argued, should be understood as that which authorises the retroactive construction of
the ability, authority, or identity to plan, as if this were a presupposed capacity, possible to
posit in the subject [Allen (2003); Grange (2012); similar to Seidl (2005) on organisational
strategy].
A further reduction of steering ideology into one concept of ‘implementation’ makes
it only more difficult to observe the process of linkages between players, objects, and
knowledges that can produce effects (Ferguson, 1994; Scott, 1998; Wildavsky, 1979). It
obscures the productive structure of the machinic and enunciative assemblages even more. A
related ideology, compounding the opacity, is that of politics (and planning as a helper) as the
centre of society, enabling it to have a full and ‘objective’ overview of society, improving its
chances to successfully intervene in society (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987; Luhmann, 1990).
2394 K Van Assche, M Duineveld, R Beunen

Thus, assumptions of steering, implementation, and politics compound to veil the view
of the functioning of the assemblages from within. This combination of machining and
veiling the machining (of producing and naturalising the product) is a classic trope of
poststructuralism, but can appear now as grounded in a more generally applicable theory
of power, and the link with distributed agency makes a balanced reassessment of steering in
planning more easy.
Lacanian-inspired research in planning (Gunder and Hillier, 2007; Hillier and Gunder,
2005; Wood, 2009) and beyond (Žižek, 2003; 2004; 2012) can help us to grasp why these
steering ideologies persist, despite disappointment after disappointment, and why they inspired
successive phases of overconfidence and lack of confidence in the power of planning. [Both
Wildavsky (1979) and Friedmann (2008) report this wavering.] Planning is underpinned by
interlocking phantasmagoric constructions, and planning theory ought to entail a reflection
on this substructure of planning; it ought to be a traverse of the fantasy, in Lacanian terms
(Hillier and Gunder, 2005). Yet, ‘fantasy’ sounds too negative and draws one away from the
performative and coherence-creating functions of the imaginary order (Žižek, 2003; 2012).
The imaginaries of planners, the planning community, and the community at large, in
other words, can resonate in patterns that are hard to predict, with different desires competing,
sometimes attenuating, sometimes magnifying each other. In a Deleuzian perspective, each
planning process can be described as a game of deterritorialisation and reterritorialisation
that reshape the planning machine in each case. Yet, if planners consider this, there is still
a danger of silently assuming that what makes the planner more powerful is good for the
community, so the strategies which advocate for more planning are considered legitimate in
advance (Fischler, 2000; Grange, 2012; Gunder, 2010; Hoch, 1992). An empowering role
in society could better be described as a continuous vigilance, in making society sensitive to
new combinations of powers, actors, values, objects, and places. We believe that the specific
simplifications of the world pertaining to high-modernist ideologies (Scott, 1998) created
indeed a powerful position for planning in society. It also created a tendency to depoliticise
planning activities, since consensus and assumed neutrality allow for expert prominence
(Hoch, 1992; Wildavsky, 1979). It produced a nostalgia among many planners for days of
prominence, and a continuous identity crisis. Both the ideological underpinnings of planning
and its cognitive limitations are forgotten over and over again, and cognitive closure makes
it harder to adapt. Friedmann noted, in 1971:
““Wisdom has it that to be a good planner is to be acutely aware not only of what our work
can reasonably be expected to accomplish, but also what it cannot; as professionals, we
have to be aware of our cognitive limitations” (page 251).
Žižek (2004), talking about the powers and dangers of cyberspace, as a place where
reinvention of futures and identities is maybe too easy, sees a way to tame the beast:
““This, then, opens up the possibility of undermining the hold a fantasy exerts over us
through the very overidentification with it, i.e., by way of embracing simultaneously,
within the same space, the multitude of inconsistent fantasmatic elements” (page 381).
This might apply to planning too, where, to open up the cognitive closure lamented by many,
an exaggeration might be one therapeutic way to become aware of the fantasmatic character
of a planning ideology that sustains itself by excluding reflection on the power structures
upholding it. Then, it might become clear, but also easier to accept, that for some places and
problems spatial planning might not be the most appropriate answer and that where planning
does emerge, it might be without planners bearing the label ‘planner’ (Abbott, 2012). This,
however, should not lead us to abandon the project of planning. It is just that some of the
assumptions regarding the power of planning and planners are metamorphosed remnants of
a modernist ideology.
Power and contingency in planning 2395

Discussion and conclusion

Distinguishing between power in, on, and of planning is useful to explore and disentangle
the different foci of attention in the power/planning debates, and to integrate known and
not so familiar poststructuralist strands of thought for the analysis of planning in society.
It allows us to see planning as a system within society where power relations constitute
the possibilities, the forms, and the potential impact of planning. Using and developing the
concept of contingency, we show how the coevolution of the planning system and its
environment is driven by the productive collisions between irreconcilable perspectives in a
pattern of agency that is far more distributed than usually assumed. It involves more relations
and possible patterns of relations, yet also more possible states of temporary stability,
heightened predictability of effects, and coordinative power. Coevolution means that changes
on one side spur changes on the other side, and that the structure and functioning of one
side can be explained by looking at the history of the two sides and their form of relation.
The positionality of planning in a particular case is therefore to be understood as the result
of a coupled evolution of planning and society. Power of and power on planning are to be
analysed as two sides of the same coin, as the dual force driving the evolution. Power in
planning is framed by that duality. The mechanics of power in planning can be deduced from
the specific entwining of the two other aspects of power. Changes in the relationship between
power of and power on planning are bound to affect power in planning, while changes in
the power landscape in planning itself have wider effects only if mediated by a particular
position of planning in society.
Actors, their patterns of interaction, and the potentiality embedded in these interactions
are emerging and contingent structures. They arise out of events, to which they cannot
be reduced (DeLanda, 2006; Pottage, 1998; Sayer, 2004). Recursive events enable
evolution and self-transformation. Power, in such a perspective, is the force in the contingent
construc­tion and reconstruction of the elements that constitute planning. Power is located in
synchronic and diachronic relations; relations in networks of discourses and materialities,
structures and elements, subjects and objects. All these networks reproduce themselves, with
the previous state of the world as the input for the next one. Such recursivity is important,
since it explains the crystallisation of identities and structures in and by assemblages,
social systems, or dispositifs (for Deleuze, Luhmann, and Foucault, respectively). Neither
individual agency nor structures ‘explain’ power, or are the essential point of intervention.
Rather, agency should be seen as distributed, ambiguous, and evolving.
Remaining within the same perspective, one can also account for power in the more
narrow sense, as the potential to get things done, in planning, and for planning in society. This
potential exists, but is subjected to the mechanics of contingent reproduction of society and
its elements described above. Power as the potential to influence is continuously reshaped.
The configuration of potentialities is both the outcome as well as the precondition for the
recursive operations of power. Just as the subjects, their values, and the power attributed
to them can only be understood as ‘folds’, or temporary discontinuities and densities in the
fabric of reality, the power relations between subjects are subjected to the same processes
of self-transformation. Cause, effect, intentionality, and its cohesive version, rationality, are
considered ascriptive (and a posteriori) in character. Also, references to values and associated
descriptions as oppression and subjugation, emerge in the same process.
Spatial planning, as the coordination of policies and practices affecting spatial organi­
sation, cannot assume stability in actors, values, and procedures. Places assigned to ‘actors’
and the recognition as actor are already political gestures. Political gestures have to be
recognised as such, as they will confer more power and stability on these actors and make
their values more prominent. This is not an argument against planning in its many forms,
2396 K Van Assche, M Duineveld, R Beunen

like participatory planning, it is an argument for reflexivity in planning and for the recognition
of planning as politics. Very similar points can be made and have been made about policy
analysis and public administration (Miller, 2002; Wildavsky, 1979), environmental studies
(Hajer and Versteeg, 2005; Luhmann, 1989), and development studies (Abu-Lughod, 1990;
Escobar, 1988; Ferguson, 1994). Also, in management studies, steering power has been
systematically overestimated and lack of reflexive insight in power relations is mentioned
as one of the main reasons (Czarniawska-Joerges, 2008; Hardy and Leiba-O’Sullivan, 1998;
Seidl, 2005). The idea that planners can know, either in advance or during the process, what
is good for a community or what is the best procedure to get there is a trace (in the Lacanian
sense of a stain) of a modernist configuration of power. A configuration whereby planners
silently take the role of the king, the position that enables overview, a unified perspective that
can define the place of everything (Luhmann, 1990; Pottage, 2004; Scott, 1998). The stress
on contingency in no way diminishes the potential power of planning. It does undermine the
hopes of ever stabilising a planning system or of ever perfectly tying it to a community. This
point, both critical and hopeful, emerges from our integrated perspective on power, from
a contingency perspective that stresses emergence, continuous reconstruction, distributed
agency, and a homology between power on planning and power of planning. It can help
in finding a middle ground between radical deconstructions of planning as oppressive
or completely disconnected from the life in communities and, on the other hand, overly
optimistic expectations regarding the steering power of planning and a perfect fit with a
community.
Our perspective establishes connections between power in/on and of planning. It shows
planning as self-transformation, shaped by previous states of planning, current states of
society, modes of coupling between them. It shows new sources of flexibility in planning,
unexpected effects of actions and ascriptions, and unobserved agencies that can modify
planning efforts. Discerning new linkages between power in/on/of planning makes it
impossible to define a priori each aspect. Agency and effects in any direction can be grasped
only after understanding the whole.
Looking back at the evolution of the power discussion in planning, it is even clearer
now that the reception of poststructuralist perspectives on power was deeply entwined
with the identity politics of the discipline and the profession, traditionally identifying with
government, community, or civil society (Van Assche et al, 2013). Indeed, as Friedmann
(1971; 1973; 1998; 2008) and others (Brooks, 1988; Gunder, 2010; Hillier, 2002; Hoch,
1992) have indicated again and again over the decades, the drive to be applied in the ‘real’
world often led to limited theoretical efforts and a limited understanding of that ‘real’ world.
This was bound to lead to never-ending disappointments in practice. Unfortunately, the self-
referential character of the planning community usually led to a further doubting of theory,
or calls to tie theory even closer to current practice (to bridge a ‘gap’). Yiftachel [cited in
Flyvbjerg (2001, page 291), and echoing older observations by Friedmann and Wildavsky]
speaks of “a normative and inward-looking discourse”. The anti-intellectual slant made it
even more difficult to introduce new insights and made it more likely to jump on new, hastily
assembled theories (such as communicative planning) that seemed to promise straightforward
application and a regained prominence of planning in society. It also made it more likely to
be recaptured in positions that reinforced the status quo (Gunder, 2010; Harvey, 1973; Jaret,
1983; Scott, 1998).
Luckily, a more diversified reflection on the roles of planning in society has developed over
the last few decades. The poststructuralist power theorists of the 1990s, we believe, played a
major role in this development. In deepening the engagement with theoretical developments
outside planning, and building on the insights already taken, we think a contingency
Power and contingency in planning 2397

interpretation of poststructuralism, bringing Foucault, Deleuze, and Luhmann closer to each

other in their conceptualisation of power, is useful to consider. Such conceptualisation offers
a refinement of power analyses in planning as well as additional insights in the dialectical
relation between planning and society. It puts forward an evolutionary perspective that
recognises how traces of the past shape the existing structures that are the precondition for
transformation of the planning system. Contingency therewith provides further insights in
the way planning efforts build upon existing configuration of power/knowledge and of actors
and institutions, and it allows for a more realistic delineation of the spaces for change.
Much in line with the tradition of American pragmatism (Pellizzoni, 2003), it looks like
continuous reflection in governance, as an organisation of friction between perspectives, and
an organised sensitising for alternative world-views, is of the essence if one wants to avoid the
emergence of governance systems that are experienced as oppressive. Increased reflexivity
and flexibility might avoid a situation in which planning is seen as “an old-fashioned, static
ideology devised chiefly to advance the interest of a few professions in climbing to positions
of dominating influence in the society” (Friedmann, 1971, page 317).
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