Peter Bachrach

Two Faces of Power

The concept of power remains elusive despite the recent and prolific outpourings of case studies on community power. Its elusiveness is dramatically demonstrated by the regularity of disagreement as to the locus of community power between the sociologists and the political scientists. Sociologically oriented researchers have consistently found that power is highly centralized, while scholars trained in political science have just as regularly concluded that in “their†communities power is widely diffused. Presumably, this explains why the latter group styles itself “pluralist,†its counterpart “elitist.†There seems no room for doubt that the sharply divergent findings of the two groups are the product, not of sheer coincidence, but of fundamental differences in both their underlying assumptions and research methodology. The political scientists have contended that these differences in findings can be explained by the faulty approach and presuppositions of the sociologists. We contend in this paper that the pluralists themselves have not grasped the whole truth of the matter; that while their criticisms of the elitists are sound, they, like the elitists, utilize an approach and assumptions which predetermine their conclusions. Our argument is cast within the frame of our central thesis: that there are two faces of power, neither of which the sociologists see and only one of which the political scientists see.

Decisions and Nondecisions: An Analytical Framework

In recent years a rich outpouring of case studies on community decision-making has been combined with a noticeable lack of generalizations based on them. One reason for this is a commonplace: we have no general theory, no broad-gauge model in terms of which widely different case studies can be systematically compared and contrasted.Among the obstacles to the development of such a theory is a good deal of confusion about the nature of power and of the things that differentiate it from the equally important concepts of force, influence, and authority. These terms have different meanings and are of varying relevance; yet in nearly all studies of community decision-making published to date, power and influence are used almost interchangeably, and force and authority are neglected. The researchers thereby handicap themselves. For they utilize concepts which are at once too broadly and too narrowly drawn: too broadly, because important distinctions between power and influence are brushed over; and too narrowly, because other concepts are disregarded—concepts which, had they been brought to bear, might have altered the findings radically.Many investigators have also mistakenly assumed that power and its correlatives are activated and can be observed only in decisionmaking situations. They have overlooked the equally, if not more important area of what might be called “nondecision-making†, i.e., the practice of limiting the scope of actual decisionmaking to “safe†issues by manipulating the dominant community values, myths, and political institutions and procedures. To pass over this is to neglect one whole “face†of power.

Power and Its Two Faces Revisited: A Reply to Geoffrey Debnam

In a pair of articles published a dozen years ago and more extensively in a book-length essay that appeared in 1970, we expanded the then-existing analytical model for studying the political process (defined to include nongovernmental as well as governmental actors and institutions).1 Ruthlessly oversimplified and somewhat abbreviated, these were the assumptions and hypotheses that constituted our conceptual framework:

DUAS FACES DO PODER

Este artigo apresenta duas concepcoes de poder, a partir do exame e da critica de duas tradicoes de pesquisa. A tradicao sociologica, que originou a corrente elitista, postula a existencia do poder nas comunidades; a tradicao politologica, que originou a corrente pluralista, questiona a existencia de elites dirigentes em comunidades e instituicoes. O artigo argumenta que a tradicao elitista postula o que deve ser provado, ao passo que a pluralista esta correta em investigar se ha de fato grupos governantes nas sociedades, mas sua abordagem e restrita e deixa de lado um aspecto essencial da questao. Assim, os autores do artigo argumentam que, anteriormente a face visivel do poder, manifestada pelos individuos e grupos que tomam efetivamente as decisoes (ou que impoem os vetos), os pesquisadores devem prestar atencao a face invisivel do poder. Essa outra face consiste na capacidade que individuos ou grupos tem de controlar ou manipular os valores sociais e politicos (isto e, de “mobilizar vieses”), impedindo que temas potencialmente perigosos para seus interesses e perspectivas sejam objeto de discussao e deliberacao publica.