important modern theories about the nature of politics, especiallye ́litismand
pluralism, depend on answers to these questions. It is held against pluralism,
especially in the version represented by thecommunity powerstudies, that
only open conflicts between identified interests are taken as evidence for the
theories of power distribution, while a secret e ́lite who managed to ensure that
no one ever got the chance of attacking them would be regarded as powerless.
Clearly no one definition can be satisfactory to all needs, and no use of the
concept of power can guarantee to be value free.
Notwithstanding all this, we have an intuitive understanding of power as
something that may indeed, as in the words ofMao Zedong, come out of the
mouths of guns, but also out of the mouths of people, as with ‘powerful’
orators, which can be wielded evilly, but also for good, and which does
ultimately depend on the ability to change peoples’ preferences. The prefer-
ences may be between obeying or dying, or they may be much more trivial
preferences, perhaps for one toothpaste over another. To use ‘power’ as a
concept at all involves assuming some basic possible human autonomy, some set
of preferences that would ‘naturally’ exist. While this is obviously sometimes
no problem (we would naturally prefer not to tell robbers where our valuables
are, and pulling our fingernails out is an effective use of power to change our
preferences), sometimes the arguments become highly metaphysical. It is the
belief that power relations are endemic to all human interaction and largely
determine the quality of human life that makes the concept central, and justifies
political science as an academic discipline, because politics is, ultimately, the
exercise of power. What has, perhaps, emerged in political science over the last
generation is an increasing tendency to see power as arising from relationships,
rather than being wielded consciously by individuals. This has partly been
helped by the radical thinking of power as endemic, even in the language and
discourse of thinkers associated with the Frenchpost-modernists.
Pragmatic
Pragmatic has been used almost as often in a pejorative sense of politicians as in
a commendatory way by politicians of themselves. Whatever its technical
dictionary meaning, the best way of characterizing its use in political argument
is to say that in its commendatory usage it is the political equivalent of
‘common sense’, and when used as opprobrium it means ‘lacking in ideas’,
or possibly ‘just muddling through’. Usually it is the conservative side in
politics who wish to think of themselves as pragmatic, and in so doing they are
seeking to draw a distinction between ‘ideologues’, those who are committed
to some social theory which they feel will solve everything and to which they
will stick at any cost, and the ‘practical’ or common-sense approach of those
Pragmatic