Lukes And The Nature Of Power Literature Review

Task B

With the arrival of behaviourism during the last century, a renewed, and fierce, debate concerning the concept of power ensued; Mills, Dahl, Polsby, Bachrach, Baratz, Lukes are some notable examples of thinkers on power. This review focusses on the discussion surrounding Lukes’ three dimensional view of power and the nature of power as being either a perceptual behaviour or something of a more structural nature. Isaac (1987) provides a detailed rationalist critique on the debate of power without taking part in it. Two main points of criticism anent the debate are that it limits itself to ‘power over’ (domination), and the failure to distinguish between possession and exercise of power (Isaac, 1987). Hayward’s article (2006) concerns itself with Lukes’ view on the relationship between power and responsibility, and Morriss (2006) argues Lukes’ theory does not concern power at all as it concerns domination without capacity. However, both focus on the re-issue of Lukes’ book on power (Power: A radical

This review does not give a full summary of the articles as the main objective of this review is to juxtapose these papers to analyse, compare, and contrast them in relation to Lukes’ concept of power, and to identify any possible gaps which might warrant further