Barnett and Duvall: Power in Global Governance

Barnett, Michael N. and Raymond Duvall. (2005). Power in global governance. Cambridge, UK ; New York: Cambridge University Press. http://www.loc.gov/catdir/toc/cam051/2004049735.html
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/description/cam041/2004049735.html
http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0733/2004049735-b.html

This is the first chapter of an edited volume on the nature of power in international relations. The initial claim is that power has for too long been pigeonholed by realist conceptions. While there is a certain value to this construction of power, it is far from exhaustive. This focus has obscured the study of other forms of power.

Additionally, this book is tied into the current emphasis of study on issues of global governance. The increasing and intensifying connection between different peoples internationally socially, politically and economically is producing a world that is uniquely changing. In addition, because of the end of the Cold-War, many have thought that a qualitatively different world would emerge, one that would necessarily include some construction or increasing importance of global governance.

The authors argue that this focus on global governance has neglected one crucial aspect of governance: power. Without an adequate understanding of the nature of and the ways in that power can differently affect different situations, global governance literature remains relatively impotent.

This account offers four different kinds of power that are distributed over two different axes, forming a 2x2 box. These powers are compulsory power, institutional power, structural power and productive power. The two axes are separated based on the degree to which they emphasize the interaction of different units being closely occurring in space/time, and secondly the degree to which power operates through specific actors or through socially relationships.

“In general terms, power is the production, in and through social relations, of effects that shape the capacities of actors to determine their own circumstances and fate” (8).

“The first dimension concerns whether power works in interactions or social constitution. One position on this dimension treats social relations as composed of the actions of pre-constituted social actors toward one another. Here, power works through behavioral relations or interactions, which, in turn, affect the ability of others to control the circumstances of their existence…The other position consists of social relations of constitution. Here, power works through social relations that analytically precede the social or subject positions of actors that constitute them as social beings with their respective capacities and interests” (9).

“The second core analytical dimension concerns how specific—direct and immediate—are the social relations through which power works” (11).

Compulsory power: direct control over another.

Dahl’s definition: “…power is best understood as the ability of A to get B to do what B otherwise would not do” (13).

“Compulsory power is not limited to material resources and also includes symbolic and normative resources” (15).

Institutional power: actors’ control over socially distant others

“Specifically, the conceptual focus here is on the formal and informal institutions that mediate between A and, as A, working through the rules and procedures that define those institutions, guides, steers, and constraints the actions…and conditions of existence of others, sometimes even unknowingly” (15).

Structural power: direct and mutual constitution of the capacities of actors

“Structural power concerns the structures—or, more precisely, the co-constitutive, internal relations of structural positions—that define what kinds of social beings actors are” (18).

“Structural power shapes the fates and conditions of existence of actors in two critical ways. One, structural positions do not generate equal social privileges; instead structures allocate differential capacities, and typically differential advantages, to different positions…Two, the social structure not only constitutes actors and their capacities; it also shapes their self-understanding and subjective interests” (18).

Productive power: production of subjects through diffuse social relations

“Productive power and structural power overlap in several important respects…Yet structural and productive power differ in a critical respect: whereas the former works through direct structural relations, the later entails more generalized and diffuse social processes…productive power…is the constitution of all social subjects with various social powers through systems of knowledge and discursive practices of broad and general social scope” (20).

“This difference between direct and diffuse social relations of constitution has two important implications for thinking about productive power. First, productive power concerns discourse, the social processes and the systems of knowledge through which meaning is produced, fixed, lived, experienced, and transformed…Second, discursive processes and practices produce social identities and capacities as they give meaning to them…Discourse, therefore, is socially productive for all subjects, constituting the subjectivity of all social beings of diverse kinds with their contingent, though not entirely fluid, identities, practices, rights, responsibilities and social capacities” (20-1).

The chapter closes with a discussion of resistance. “Our taxonomy of power…generates a taxonomy of resistance” (22). Compulsory power causes balancing resistance. Institutional power causes resistance that attempts to change the rules of the game. Structural power causes resistance in the inequality that is inherent in that relationship. Productive power causes resistance in the remaking of subjectivities.