The Grammar of Social Power: Power-to, Power-with, Power-despite and Power-over
| Author | Arash Abizadeh |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0032321721996941 |
| Published date | 01 February 2023 |
| Date | 01 February 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0032321721996941
Political Studies
2023, Vol. 71(1) 3 –19
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/0032321721996941
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The Grammar of Social
Power: Power-to,
Power-with, Power-despite
and Power-over
Arash Abizadeh
Abstract
There are two rival conceptions of power in modern sociopolitical thought. According to one,
all social power reduces to power-over-others. According to another, the core notion is power-
to-effect-outcomes, to which even power-over reduces. This article defends seven theses. First,
agential social power consists in a relation between agent and outcomes (power-to). Second,
not all social power reduces to power-over and, third, the contrary view stems from conflating
power-over with a distinct notion: power-despite-resistance. Fourth, the widespread assumption
that social power presupposes the capacity to overcome resistance is false: social power includes
the capacity to effect outcomes with others’ assistance. Fifth, power-with can be exercised via joint
intentional action, strategic coordination and non-strategic coordination. Sixth, agential social
power is best analysed as a capacity to effect outcomes, with the assistance of others, despite the
resistance of yet others. Seventh, power-over and power-with are not mutually exclusive: each
can ground the other.
Keywords
power-over, power-with, Arendt, Weber, resistance
Accepted: 15 January 2021
There have been two great, rival conceptions of power in modern social and political
thought. The first conceives of power as a relation between agents and outcomes. Thomas
Hobbes’s (2012: 10.11)1 famous 1651 dictum in Leviathan, that power consists in an
agent’s capacity or ‘means, to obtain some future apparent Good’, is one of the historical
fonts of this tradition. Peter Morriss’s (2002: 32) more recent statement that power con-
sists in an agent’s capacity ‘to effect outcomes (states of affairs)’ is paradigmatic.
According to the second conception, by contrast, power consists in an asymmetrical
relation between agents. It is a pleasant irony – but also, I shall later suggest, telling – that
Department of Political Science, McGill University, Montreal, QC, Canada
Corresponding author:
Arash Abizadeh, Department of Political Science, McGill University, 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal,
QC H3A 2T7, Canada.
Email: arash.abizadeh@mcgill.ca
996941PSX0010.1177/0032321721996941Political StudiesAbizadeh
research-article2021
Article
4 Political Studies 71(1)
the second conception of power also seems to find expression, 11 years before Leviathan,
in another well-known passage by the same author in his first political work, the Elements
of Law of 1640:
because the power of one man resisteth and hindreth the effects of the power of another, Power
simply is noe more, but the excesse of the Power of one above that of another. For equall powers
opposed destroye one another. and [sic] such theire opposition is called Contention (Hobbes,
1640: 8.4).2
The classic modern formulation is Robert Dahl’s (1957: 202–203) proclamation that
power ‘is a relation among people’ such that ‘A has power over B to the extent that he can
get B to do something that B would not otherwise do’. Michel Foucault’s (1994: 233)
later, even more influential treatment – despite his rather different, less agential concep-
tion – falls into the second tradition as well. In contrast to the term ‘capacity’, Foucault
asserted, power (pouvoir)
brings into play relations between individuals (or between groups): . . . if we speak of the power
of laws, institutions, or ideologies, if we speak of structures or mechanisms of power, it is only
insofar as we suppose that certain [individuals] exercise power over others.3
If for the first tradition power consists in an agent’s power to effect certain outcomes,
for the second it consists in an agent’s power over other agents.4 Proponents of the former
tradition frequently argue power-over is merely a species of power-to; proponents of the
latter, by contrast, often hold that all relevant social power consists in power-over, so that
social power-to reduces to power-over. My agenda here is sevenfold. I will show, first,
that the agential power agents possess and exercise – including agential social power –
essentially consists in a relation between agent and outcome (power-to) and, second, that
not all social power reduces to power-over. Third, I provide a diagnostic explanation for
the widespread view that all social power reduces to power-over, namely, the pervasive
conflation – which we can spot early on in Max Weber’s deeply influential treatment – of
power-over with a rather distinct notion: power-despite-resistance. Social power is fre-
quently equated with power-over, in other words, because it is invariably assumed – again
with Weber – that social power intrinsically presupposes the capacity to overcome resist-
ance. Fourth, I demonstrate that this widely held assumption is false: although overcom-
ing resistance can be one aspect of social power, not all social power presupposes the
capacity to do so. Instead, what makes power social is simply the fact that it consists in a
relation between agents within a social-structural context. The Weberian resistance thesis
ignores the fact, highlighted in Hannah Arendt’s work, that one type of social relation
consists in assistance, not resistance – and, concomitantly, that one important form of
social power is the capacity to effect outcomes with others’ assistance. Fifth, I accord-
ingly outline three different types of power-with: via joint intentional action, strategic
coordination and non-strategic coordination. My fundamental goal is, sixth, to provide an
analysis of agential social power in general and to articulate the grammar of the concept
– and this, by integrating the Weberian and Arendtian moments within a single conceptual
framework. My thesis is that agential social power is a bounded four-variable term: within
a given structural context c, an agent v’s agential social power consists in her capacity to
effect outcomes O, with the assistance of agents X, despite the resistance of agents Y
(where either X or Y may be a null set). More succinctly: agential social power
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