The Complex Nature of Power

3. Factors That Make Conflict Intractable

We talk about powerful people all the time, but what do we mean by "power"? It turns out, it is a very slippery concept. In her Beyond Intractability essay on power, Maire Dugan defines power as the ability to bring about change. Often people define it more narrowly, as the ability to influence others' behavior — to get them to do something you want them to do, even though they do not want to do it themselves. But power isn't one-dimensional. There are many different sources of power and it is often hard to tell who will prevail in a power contest: sometimes the less powerful party can hold an apparently more powerful party at bay, or even force them to do the apparently less powerful party's bidding.

Maire shared Gene Sharp, one of the foremost theorists of nonviolent direct action, pointed out that there are at least six broadly defined sources of power:

authority, that is, the perception among the governed that the leader has the right to give them directives.
human resources in the form of people who support and assist the leader, as well as their percentage in the general population.
skills and knowledge, including the talents of those who work for the leader.
intangible factors, "such as psychological and ideological factors, such as habits and attitudes toward obedience and submission, and the presence or absence of a common faith, ideology, or sense of mission."[3]
material resources in the form of control over wealth, property, natural resources, communications, and transportation. sanctions or reprisals which the leader is both willing and able to use against her/his own constituency and/or an adversary.

On top of that, there are three different ways power can be manifested, or, as Kenneth Boulding famously wrote, there are "Three Faces of Power"—force, exchange, and what he called "love." Or, he went on, if "love" seems too strong a word, think of it as "respect." We talk of it as the integrative system -- the relationships that hold us all together. Although most people most often then of force or coercion when they think of someone wielding power, Boulding points out that integrative power is actually the strongest of the three, because the other two cannot work without it. Even a tyrant cannot keep his power if there aren't people working for him who are willing to enforce his authority. And exchange (trade or negotiation) can't happen if people don't have faith that the other side will follow through.

The articles below explore these complexities and more.