p.17-18 [Nelson] Polsby writes
one can conceive of 'power' - 'influence' and 'control' are serviceable synonyms - as the capacity of one actor to do something affecting another actor, which changes the probable pattern of specified future events. This can be envisaged most easily in a decision-making situation. (1963:3-4)
and he argues that identifying 'who prevails in decision-making' seems 'the best way to determine which individuals and groups have "more" power in social life, because direct conflict between actors presents a situation most closely approximating an experimental test of their capacities to affect outcomes' (p.4).
p.20 Schattschneider's famous and often-quoted words:
All forms of political organization have a bias in favour of the exploitation of some kinds of conflict and the suppression of others, because organization is the mobilization of bias. Some issues are organized into politics while others are organized out. (Schattschneider 1960:71)
p.21 Coercion, as we have seen, exists where A secures B's compliance by the threat of deprivation where there is 'a conflict over values or course of action between A and B' (p.24).
p.30-31 Talcott Parsons... seeks to 'treat power as a specific mechanism operating to bring about changes in the action of other units, individual or collective, in the processes of social interaction' (1967:299).
p.37 I have defined the concept of power by saying that A exercises power over B when A affects B in a manner contrary to B's interests.
p.65 What do we need the concept of power for? ...First, the practical context... you need to know the powers of others 'to get them to do things for you, or you may want to make sure that you don't run the risk of them doing unwelcome things to you.' (Morriss 2002:37). We need to know our own powers and those of others in order to find our way around a world populated by human agents, individual and collective, of whose powers we need to be apprised if we are to have a chance of surviving and flourishing. And of course our own powers will in part depend on harnessing and evading or diminishing the powers of others. We carry around in our heads maps of such agents' powers - of their dispositional abilities to affect our interests - usually as tacit knowledge, which allows us some measure of prediction and control. Power functions here (as Latour suggests) as a way of summarizing much-needed counterfactual knowledge of what agents would do under hypothetical conditions.
p.67 Third, the evaluative context. Here what is at issue is the judging, or evaluation, of social systems, of 'the distribution and extent - of power within a society'.
p.68-69 the power of the powerful consists in their being capable of and responsible for affecting (negatively or positively) the... interests of others... social life can only be understood as an interplay of power and structure, a web of possibilities for agents, whose nature is both active and structured, to make choices and pursue strategies within given limits, which in consequence expand and contract over time.
p.69 having power is being able to make or to receive any change, or to resist it... power is a potentiality, not an actuality - indeed a potentiality that may never be actualized.
p.70 Thinking clearly about power is not easy
p.73 not all outcomes will have equal weight in assessing the extent of an agent's power... In assessing overall power, value judgements will always be necessary to determine which outcomes count for more and which for less.
p.76 Bertrand Russell defined power as 'the production of intended effects' (Russell, 1938:25).
p.90 Power, he [Foucault] wrote, 'is tolerable only on condition that it mask a substantial part of itself. Its success is proportional to its ability to hide its own mechanism' (Foucault 1980c[1976]:86). [JLJ - perhaps power requires an effective enforcement mechanism that cannot be easily evaded. Such enforcement mechanism is effective when hidden (such as a hidden surveillance camera or an unmarked police car), well-funded (such as a police department), complex (such as the tax code), multi-tiered (such as police for common crimes, FBI for professional criminals), professionalized (such as an armed forces led by trained leaders). Power is effective if and only if creative/strong/organized groups try many, many ways to avoid compliance, and ultimately decide it is easier to comply. The question, ultimately, is how to recognize the many facets of power, so that we might determine, at each point in our lives, how to 'go on'. Isn't that what we really want? Power reduces to a part of a model of society that we manipulate, guessing that this or that will happen, so that we might scheme and plan. Few care about power the concept. It is the power in the world that is real, than can and is wielded, that forms part of 'I do this, now he does that, now I do this...', that we care about. The mind 'sniffs' for power to detect its presence, then constantly games cause-and-effect ways to avoid its clutch]
p.91 The idea, in its non-overstated and non-exaggerated form, is simply this: that if power is to be effective, those subject to it must be rendered susceptible to is effects. [JLJ - I would say that if power is to be effective, those subject to it must be made to consider compliance as preferable to all alternative action schemes.]
p.134 What concerns us here... is the shaping of agents' desires and beliefs by factors external to those agents. Jon Elster has called this 'adaptive preference formation' - the trimming of desires to circumstances... adjusting one's aspirations to what is feasible is sensible and indeed wise.
