Question

Two factors that seem to influence a particular group’s ability to get what it wants from social policy are (1) the perception that the group is deserving and (2) the political organization and power of the group. How have these factors affected social policy in recent years?

Answer 1

Government implies that there are relations of power between rulers and ruled, but the context of rule is not limited to the state. Government in this sense is in operation whether the power relationship is between states and citizens, institutions and clients, parents and children, doctors and patients, employers and employees, masters and dogs, or even oneself and oneself. (Think of the training regimes, studying routines, or diets people put themselves through as they seek to change or direct their lives in a particular way). The role of the state and its influence on society (and vice versa) is just one aspect of governmental relationships.

As we noted above, power relationships refer in general to a kind of strategic relationship between rulers and the ruled: a set of practices by which states seek to govern the life of their citizens, managers seek to control the labour of their workers, parents seek to guide and raise their children, dog owners seek to train their dogs, doctors seek to manage the health of their patients, chess players seek to control the moves of their opponents, individuals seek to keep their own lives in order, etc. Many of these sites of the exercise of power fall outside our normal understanding of power because they do not seem “political”—they do not address fundamental questions or disagreements about a “whole way of life”—and because the relationships between power and resistance in them can be very fluid. There is a give and take between the attempts of the rulers to direct the behaviour of the ruled and the attempts of the ruled to resist those directions. In many cases, it is difficult to see relationships as power relationships at all unless they become fixed or authoritarian. This is because our conventional understanding of power is that one person or one group of people has power over another.

Endeavours to gain power and influence do not necessarily lead to domination, violence, exploitation, or abuse. Leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi, for example, commanded powerful movements that affected positive change without military force. Both men organized nonviolent protests to combat corruption and injustice and succeeded in inspiring major reform. They relied on a variety of nonviolent protest strategies such as rallies, sit-ins, marches, petitions, and boycotts.

It is therefore important to retain the distinction between domination and power. Politics and power are not “things” that are the exclusive concern of “the state” or the property of an individual, ruling class, or group.