Lukes Reloaded: An Actor-Centred Three Dimensional Power Framework

Politics2016, Vol. 36(2) 118 –130

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Lukes Reloaded: An Actor-CentredThree-Dimensional Power Framework

Terry HathawayUniversity of Sheffield

This article develops an empirically-oriented actor-centred power framework. Building on work of Lukes andGaventa, the article outlines how visible, hidden and invisible power can be understood and operationalised.The article considers how actors can realise their interests through decision making and the control ofresources (visible power); backdoor machinations and institutional organisation (hidden); and the structural-discursive empowerment of the actor and the creation and use of discourse (invisible). Furthermore, aregime evolution approach is sketched that facilitates understanding the dialectical interplay between societyand the formal political arena, and that focuses the measurement of power on societal outcomes – notpolitical outputs.

Keywords: Lukes, Steven; power; powercube; regime evolution

IntroductionPower is a central concept of political studies and one that helps delineate politics fromother disciplines (Clegg, 1979, pp. 32–33). Its central importance for politics lies partly inthe fact that understanding power is a necessary prerequisite for answering the eminentquestion ‘who governs?’ (Dahl, 1961) or, even, Held and McGrew’s (2003, p. 8) moreprecise ‘who rules, in whose interests, by what mechanisms and for what purposes?’.Evolving directly from Robert Dahl’s question, Steven Lukes (1974; 2005) has arguablyprovided the definition of power used in political science.1 Yet, while Lukes’ conception ofpower continues to be widely cited, utilisation of analytical frameworks specifically struc-tured around Lukes’ conception of power in empirical studies has proven limited (Shapiro,2006, p. 147).

There are several reasons for the scant application of Lukes’ conceptualisation of power – notleast the particular conceptualisation itself. This article outlines an approach that overcomesthe weaknesses that have seen limited empirical use of Lukes’ view of power. It does so by firstreviewing the development of the power debates up to Lukes in order to illustrate theproblems with his account, and then shows how recent theoretical innovations can overcomethese problems. Building on this conceptual groundwork, three analytical innovations forapproaching power analysis are suggested: regime evolution; mechanisms of influence; andmethods for detecting invisible power. In total, this article presents an actor-centred (butnot actor-centric) framework of political power that can be used for understanding bothformal political actors (parties, interest groups, governmental organisations) and powerfulsocietal actors (corporations, churches, charities, media organisations, terrorist groups, non-governmental organisations, criminal syndicates, etc.) who have often been overlooked by

POLITICS: 2015 VOL ••(••), ••–••

doi: 10.1111/1467-9256.12099

© 2015 The Author. Politics © 2015 Political Studies Association

Article

Lukes Reloaded: An Actor- Centred Three-Dimensional Power Framework

policy-making studies and gives several suggestions as to how to apply the frameworkempirically. Such a framework has massive potential utility and can help return power to itscentral place in political science.

Power as a conceptStarting with Dahl, a central question of interest group theory was ‘what is power?’ becausean answer to this question would allow a determination of who governs and who is powerfulin the political arena. Dahl’s (1957, pp. 202–203) answer was: ‘[M]y intuitive view of power,then, is this: A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B wouldnot otherwise do.’ This view of power (later called the ‘first face’ of power) was seen a usefulstarting point for understanding how one individual or group has power over anotherindividual or group. However, Dahl’s research agenda coming from his intuitive view ofpower focused only on observable conflict; on the successes or failures of actors involved inkey issue areas (which in 1950s New Haven he identified as urban redevelopment, publiceducation and nomination for local office) in the political arena (Dahl, 1961, p. 175).

Dahl’s position was criticised by Bachrach and Baratz, who argued his focus on ‘key’ issueareas was working after power had been exercised to remove issues from the policy-makingagenda (McFarland, 2007, p. 60). Thus, following Dahl’s established format, Bachrach andBaratz (1962, p. 948) added:

[P]ower is also exercised when A devotes his energies to creating or reinforcing social andpolitical values and institutional practices that limit the scope of the political process topublic consideration of only those issues which are comparatively innocuous to A. To theextent that A succeeds in doing this, B is prevented, for all practical purposes, from bringingto the fore any issues that might in their resolution be seriously detrimental to A’s set ofpreferences.

This ‘second face’ of power was intended to complement Dahl’s research agenda, broadeningthe focus of research to include non-issues and the mechanisms that renders them such.However, for the second face of power it is important ‘to distinguish the deliberately engi-neered suppression of an issue from its unintended de facto exclusion’ (Bernhagen, 2002, p.9) so that the absence of an issue from the political agenda is not assumed to be down topower, when it could be due to such things as irrelevance, absurdity or lack of interest. Themost notable application of this idea of power was Crenson’s (1971) exploration of airpollution in several US cities.

While warning that power is one of Gallie’s (1955) ‘essentially contested concepts’, Lukesintroduced the ‘third face’ of power. Utilising the insights of Gramsci and others, Lukesdeveloped an account of power that concerned ideological hegemony and existed alongsideboth the first and second faces of power. Lukes (1974, p. 23), again following Dahl’s format,puts it thus:

A may exercise power over B by getting him to do what he does not want to do, but he alsoexercises power over him by influencing, shaping or determining his very wants. Indeed, isit not the supreme exercise of power to get another or others to have the desires you wantthem to have – that is, to secure their compliance by controlling their thoughts and desires?

For Lukes, empirical research into the third dimension has to examine control over thepolitical agenda, the ‘real’ and subjective interests of people and attempts at indoctrination.

2 TERRY HATHAWAY

© 2015 The Author. Politics © 2015 Political Studies AssociationPOLITICS: 2015 VOL ••(••)

Hathaway 119

Lukes Reloaded: An Actor-CentredThree-Dimensional Power Framework

Terry HathawayUniversity of Sheffield

This article develops an empirically-oriented actor-centred power framework. Building on work of Lukes andGaventa, the article outlines how visible, hidden and invisible power can be understood and operationalised.The article considers how actors can realise their interests through decision making and the control ofresources (visible power); backdoor machinations and institutional organisation (hidden); and the structural-discursive empowerment of the actor and the creation and use of discourse (invisible). Furthermore, aregime evolution approach is sketched that facilitates understanding the dialectical interplay between societyand the formal political arena, and that focuses the measurement of power on societal outcomes – notpolitical outputs.

Keywords: Lukes, Steven; power; powercube; regime evolution

IntroductionPower is a central concept of political studies and one that helps delineate politics fromother disciplines (Clegg, 1979, pp. 32–33). Its central importance for politics lies partly inthe fact that understanding power is a necessary prerequisite for answering the eminentquestion ‘who governs?’ (Dahl, 1961) or, even, Held and McGrew’s (2003, p. 8) moreprecise ‘who rules, in whose interests, by what mechanisms and for what purposes?’.Evolving directly from Robert Dahl’s question, Steven Lukes (1974; 2005) has arguablyprovided the definition of power used in political science.1 Yet, while Lukes’ conception ofpower continues to be widely cited, utilisation of analytical frameworks specifically struc-tured around Lukes’ conception of power in empirical studies has proven limited (Shapiro,2006, p. 147).

There are several reasons for the scant application of Lukes’ conceptualisation of power – notleast the particular conceptualisation itself. This article outlines an approach that overcomesthe weaknesses that have seen limited empirical use of Lukes’ view of power. It does so by firstreviewing the development of the power debates up to Lukes in order to illustrate theproblems with his account, and then shows how recent theoretical innovations can overcomethese problems. Building on this conceptual groundwork, three analytical innovations forapproaching power analysis are suggested: regime evolution; mechanisms of influence; andmethods for detecting invisible power. In total, this article presents an actor-centred (butnot actor-centric) framework of political power that can be used for understanding bothformal political actors (parties, interest groups, governmental organisations) and powerfulsocietal actors (corporations, churches, charities, media organisations, terrorist groups, non-governmental organisations, criminal syndicates, etc.) who have often been overlooked by

POLITICS: 2015 VOL ••(••), ••–••

doi: 10.1111/1467-9256.12099

© 2015 The Author. Politics © 2015 Political Studies Association

policy-making studies and gives several suggestions as to how to apply the frameworkempirically. Such a framework has massive potential utility and can help return power to itscentral place in political science.

Power as a conceptStarting with Dahl, a central question of interest group theory was ‘what is power?’ becausean answer to this question would allow a determination of who governs and who is powerfulin the political arena. Dahl’s (1957, pp. 202–203) answer was: ‘[M]y intuitive view of power,then, is this: A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B wouldnot otherwise do.’ This view of power (later called the ‘first face’ of power) was seen a usefulstarting point for understanding how one individual or group has power over anotherindividual or group. However, Dahl’s research agenda coming from his intuitive view ofpower focused only on observable conflict; on the successes or failures of actors involved inkey issue areas (which in 1950s New Haven he identified as urban redevelopment, publiceducation and nomination for local office) in the political arena (Dahl, 1961, p. 175).

Dahl’s position was criticised by Bachrach and Baratz, who argued his focus on ‘key’ issueareas was working after power had been exercised to remove issues from the policy-makingagenda (McFarland, 2007, p. 60). Thus, following Dahl’s established format, Bachrach andBaratz (1962, p. 948) added:

[P]ower is also exercised when A devotes his energies to creating or reinforcing social andpolitical values and institutional practices that limit the scope of the political process topublic consideration of only those issues which are comparatively innocuous to A. To theextent that A succeeds in doing this, B is prevented, for all practical purposes, from bringingto the fore any issues that might in their resolution be seriously detrimental to A’s set ofpreferences.

This ‘second face’ of power was intended to complement Dahl’s research agenda, broadeningthe focus of research to include non-issues and the mechanisms that renders them such.However, for the second face of power it is important ‘to distinguish the deliberately engi-neered suppression of an issue from its unintended de facto exclusion’ (Bernhagen, 2002, p.9) so that the absence of an issue from the political agenda is not assumed to be down topower, when it could be due to such things as irrelevance, absurdity or lack of interest. Themost notable application of this idea of power was Crenson’s (1971) exploration of airpollution in several US cities.

While warning that power is one of Gallie’s (1955) ‘essentially contested concepts’, Lukesintroduced the ‘third face’ of power. Utilising the insights of Gramsci and others, Lukesdeveloped an account of power that concerned ideological hegemony and existed alongsideboth the first and second faces of power. Lukes (1974, p. 23), again following Dahl’s format,puts it thus:

A may exercise power over B by getting him to do what he does not want to do, but he alsoexercises power over him by influencing, shaping or determining his very wants. Indeed, isit not the supreme exercise of power to get another or others to have the desires you wantthem to have – that is, to secure their compliance by controlling their thoughts and desires?

For Lukes, empirical research into the third dimension has to examine control over thepolitical agenda, the ‘real’ and subjective interests of people and attempts at indoctrination.

2 TERRY HATHAWAY


120 Politics 36(2)

The most notable attempt to utilise the third face of power empirically was by John Gaventa,one of Lukes’ PhD students, who used Lukes’ framework to study power and quiescence inAppalachian mining communities (Gaventa, 1980). However, several problems were raisedwith Lukes’ account of the third dimension. The main issue concerned the determination ofreal interests, as distinct from perceived or surface interests. Hyland (1995, pp. 205–207)makes this point, writing that Lukes’ third dimension of power ‘requires us to be able toidentify a person’s interests not just independently of some particular preference but inde-pendently of the person’s entire subjective consciousness ... [as] a person’s consciousnesscould have been manipulated on a fundamental level’. Equally, as Hay (1997, p. 49) notes,Lukes fails to ‘disentangle the identification of power and the critique of its distribution andexercise’ with the consequence that ‘the essence of power is negative’ and ‘cannot beexercised responsibly or legitimately’. The result of these problems was that, in spite ofGaventa’s efforts, a substantial empirical2 third face literature did not develop (Dür and DeBièvre, 2007; Shapiro, 2006).

However, recently Gaventa and others (see Powercube.net, 2014) have developed a frame-work for understanding power called the ‘powercube’ (http://www.powercube.net/). Thepowercube was made primarily for the field of development studies, and is intended toprovide a framework for power analysis by academics and activists in the context of anincreasingly interconnected world in order to provide the capacity for resistance. As such, itconsiders the forms of power (which are based upon the three faces of power), the spaces(open, invited, closed) that power operates in and the levels (domestic, local, national, global)at which it operates. These different aspects of power are visually represented in the form ofa cube, which serves to highlight how they are not separate, but interlocking and mutually-reinforcing.

While the spaces and levels of power are important for broadening its investigations, the maininnovation for studies of power lie in the reconceptualisation of the faces of power. In thepowercube, the three dimensions are reformulated as the ‘three forms of power’ and aretermed ‘visible’, ‘hidden’ and ‘invisible’, respectively.

Visible power is that which operates conspicuously and can normally follow from legal rightor, perhaps, an implicit or explicit threat of coercion or punishment. The detection of visiblepower can involve exploring who participates, what potential sanctions exist, whose interestsprevail, who controls important resources, and who is vested with formal authority. As inDahl’s work, then, the focus is on decisions, on who is making them and whose interests getrepresented.

Hidden power concerns the manipulations that occur behind the scenes. It is operating when‘alternative choices are limited, less powerful people and their concerns are excluded, and therules of the game are set to be biased against certain people and issues’ (Powercube.net,2012a), or, as Schattschneider (1960, p. 71) argued, when ‘some issues are organized intopolitics while others are organized out’. Hidden power, then, can work to exclude the interestsof weak actors from, and include powerful actor interests in, formal or informal decision-making procedures – access to important meetings, informal contact between powerfulgroups and decision makers, limitation of choices, and procedural biases all fall within thiscategory of power.

Finally, invisible power moves beyond more concrete actions to the power of ideas andthoughts. It comes in the form of the legitimating discourses that support the powerful, that

LUKES RELOADED 3


discourage minor actions against the interests of the powerful, and that try to exclude thepossibility of serious action against their interests entirely. Importantly, ‘ “invisible power”need not be limited to intentional acts of “thought control” by the powerful, but can also beseen as self-reproducing social processes in which the thinking and behaviour of the powerfuland powerless alike are conditioned by pervasive norms’ (Powercube.net, 2012b). Limitingthe exploration to only intentional acts would likely entail omitting significant amounts ofinvisible power, as once an idea becomes established by conscious action, its survival andsuccess at empowering can be reliant only on unconscious repetition rather than continuedattempts to push the idea (Hayward and Lukes, 2008; Lindblom, 1977, p. 206).3 Invisiblepower generally works to channel thought along the lines of particular discursive currents, tofocus attention on one aspect rather than another, and to explain the current order as bothnatural and legitimate; invisible power seeks to create a set of common sense ‘notions ortheses with which one argues but over which there is no argument’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant,2001, p. 1; emphasis in original). Even for both those more taken with different (but notopposing) discursive currents and for those who reject the main aspects of the dominantdiscourse, their view of what is possible is still conditioned by the existence of the discourse.The detection of invisible power, then, involves exploring the language used by prominentfigures, the assumptions used by policy makers that are considered so self-evident as to notrequire explanation and the repetition of arguments by various actors and the media; whenlooking at powerful actors it involves the exploration of how ‘loud’ the actors can be (unlikein Gaventa’s 1980 work, where the silence of powerless actors was explored). Moreover,while the origins of invisible power may not be traceable or observable in all cases (Fuchs,2005, p. 23); who is empowered by and who is able to utilise the dominant discourse isobservable. ‘Invisible power’, then, is somewhat of a misnomer. The operation of invisiblepower is not invisible, as it is can be identified in a number of ways. The main distinctionbetween it and other forms of power is that, in being more structural, it is less concrete, lesscontrollable and can sustain itself far beyond the actions that created it.

The advantages of this reconfiguration of the three dimensions of power are twofold. First,this reworking offers the insights of the community power debates without relying on theterminology that evolved as part and parcel of those debates; the formulation ‘A has powerover B’, which necessarily makes power an agent-centric and mechanistic concept (Clegg,1979, p. 58), is dropped. Dropping this formulation allows the powercube’s conceptualisationof invisible power to be more comprehensive by including structural elements more readily(Gaventa, 2006, p. 29). The original formulation also encouraged a view of power as some-thing that only exists when being exercised, rather than as a capacity that may not ever needto be exercised to achieve its goals (Clegg, 1979, p. 21; Lukes, 2005, p. 12). As Crenson (1971p.177) notes ‘the mere reputation for power, unsupported by acts of power, can be sufficientto restrict ... decisionmaking’.

Second, concerning the formulation of invisible/third dimensional power specifically, there isless of an issue of entangling the analysis of power with the critique of power. In shifting thefocus from the thought control of one actor over another to a focus on discourse, the objectof analysis moves from only how an actor can directly manipulate using ideas to include theideas themselves and how they empower actors. This shift thus includes instances of powerwhere actors find that a dominant discourse empowers them without having contributed (orhaving solely contributed) to its initial creation. For instance, a newly elected government isnot responsible (or to be blamed) for being viewed as the legitimate authority over a certainterritory, but invisible power is still operating in terms of the structural discourses that bestow

4 TERRY HATHAWAY


Hathaway 121

The most notable attempt to utilise the third face of power empirically was by John Gaventa,one of Lukes’ PhD students, who used Lukes’ framework to study power and quiescence inAppalachian mining communities (Gaventa, 1980). However, several problems were raisedwith Lukes’ account of the third dimension. The main issue concerned the determination ofreal interests, as distinct from perceived or surface interests. Hyland (1995, pp. 205–207)makes this point, writing that Lukes’ third dimension of power ‘requires us to be able toidentify a person’s interests not just independently of some particular preference but inde-pendently of the person’s entire subjective consciousness ... [as] a person’s consciousnesscould have been manipulated on a fundamental level’. Equally, as Hay (1997, p. 49) notes,Lukes fails to ‘disentangle the identification of power and the critique of its distribution andexercise’ with the consequence that ‘the essence of power is negative’ and ‘cannot beexercised responsibly or legitimately’. The result of these problems was that, in spite ofGaventa’s efforts, a substantial empirical2 third face literature did not develop (Dür and DeBièvre, 2007; Shapiro, 2006).

However, recently Gaventa and others (see Powercube.net, 2014) have developed a frame-work for understanding power called the ‘powercube’ (http://www.powercube.net/). Thepowercube was made primarily for the field of development studies, and is intended toprovide a framework for power analysis by academics and activists in the context of anincreasingly interconnected world in order to provide the capacity for resistance. As such, itconsiders the forms of power (which are based upon the three faces of power), the spaces(open, invited, closed) that power operates in and the levels (domestic, local, national, global)at which it operates. These different aspects of power are visually represented in the form ofa cube, which serves to highlight how they are not separate, but interlocking and mutually-reinforcing.

While the spaces and levels of power are important for broadening its investigations, the maininnovation for studies of power lie in the reconceptualisation of the faces of power. In thepowercube, the three dimensions are reformulated as the ‘three forms of power’ and aretermed ‘visible’, ‘hidden’ and ‘invisible’, respectively.

Visible power is that which operates conspicuously and can normally follow from legal rightor, perhaps, an implicit or explicit threat of coercion or punishment. The detection of visiblepower can involve exploring who participates, what potential sanctions exist, whose interestsprevail, who controls important resources, and who is vested with formal authority. As inDahl’s work, then, the focus is on decisions, on who is making them and whose interests getrepresented.

Hidden power concerns the manipulations that occur behind the scenes. It is operating when‘alternative choices are limited, less powerful people and their concerns are excluded, and therules of the game are set to be biased against certain people and issues’ (Powercube.net,2012a), or, as Schattschneider (1960, p. 71) argued, when ‘some issues are organized intopolitics while others are organized out’. Hidden power, then, can work to exclude the interestsof weak actors from, and include powerful actor interests in, formal or informal decision-making procedures – access to important meetings, informal contact between powerfulgroups and decision makers, limitation of choices, and procedural biases all fall within thiscategory of power.

Finally, invisible power moves beyond more concrete actions to the power of ideas andthoughts. It comes in the form of the legitimating discourses that support the powerful, that

LUKES RELOADED 3


discourage minor actions against the interests of the powerful, and that try to exclude thepossibility of serious action against their interests entirely. Importantly, ‘ “invisible power”need not be limited to intentional acts of “thought control” by the powerful, but can also beseen as self-reproducing social processes in which the thinking and behaviour of the powerfuland powerless alike are conditioned by pervasive norms’ (Powercube.net, 2012b). Limitingthe exploration to only intentional acts would likely entail omitting significant amounts ofinvisible power, as once an idea becomes established by conscious action, its survival andsuccess at empowering can be reliant only on unconscious repetition rather than continuedattempts to push the idea (Hayward and Lukes, 2008; Lindblom, 1977, p. 206).3 Invisiblepower generally works to channel thought along the lines of particular discursive currents, tofocus attention on one aspect rather than another, and to explain the current order as bothnatural and legitimate; invisible power seeks to create a set of common sense ‘notions ortheses with which one argues but over which there is no argument’ (Bourdieu and Wacquant,2001, p. 1; emphasis in original). Even for both those more taken with different (but notopposing) discursive currents and for those who reject the main aspects of the dominantdiscourse, their view of what is possible is still conditioned by the existence of the discourse.The detection of invisible power, then, involves exploring the language used by prominentfigures, the assumptions used by policy makers that are considered so self-evident as to notrequire explanation and the repetition of arguments by various actors and the media; whenlooking at powerful actors it involves the exploration of how ‘loud’ the actors can be (unlikein Gaventa’s 1980 work, where the silence of powerless actors was explored). Moreover,while the origins of invisible power may not be traceable or observable in all cases (Fuchs,2005, p. 23); who is empowered by and who is able to utilise the dominant discourse isobservable. ‘Invisible power’, then, is somewhat of a misnomer. The operation of invisiblepower is not invisible, as it is can be identified in a number of ways. The main distinctionbetween it and other forms of power is that, in being more structural, it is less concrete, lesscontrollable and can sustain itself far beyond the actions that created it.

The advantages of this reconfiguration of the three dimensions of power are twofold. First,this reworking offers the insights of the community power debates without relying on theterminology that evolved as part and parcel of those debates; the formulation ‘A has powerover B’, which necessarily makes power an agent-centric and mechanistic concept (Clegg,1979, p. 58), is dropped. Dropping this formulation allows the powercube’s conceptualisationof invisible power to be more comprehensive by including structural elements more readily(Gaventa, 2006, p. 29). The original formulation also encouraged a view of power as some-thing that only exists when being exercised, rather than as a capacity that may not ever needto be exercised to achieve its goals (Clegg, 1979, p. 21; Lukes, 2005, p. 12). As Crenson (1971p.177) notes ‘the mere reputation for power, unsupported by acts of power, can be sufficientto restrict ... decisionmaking’.

Second, concerning the formulation of invisible/third dimensional power specifically, there isless of an issue of entangling the analysis of power with the critique of power. In shifting thefocus from the thought control of one actor over another to a focus on discourse, the objectof analysis moves from only how an actor can directly manipulate using ideas to include theideas themselves and how they empower actors. This shift thus includes instances of powerwhere actors find that a dominant discourse empowers them without having contributed (orhaving solely contributed) to its initial creation. For instance, a newly elected government isnot responsible (or to be blamed) for being viewed as the legitimate authority over a certainterritory, but invisible power is still operating in terms of the structural discourses that bestow

4 TERRY HATHAWAY


122 Politics 36(2)

such legitimacy upon them and that empower them. It is likely, however, that the govern-ment will then serve to utilise and protect this authority – they are first structurally empow-ered and then can reshape and use this power, such as by declaring other actors (sub-nationalmilitants, for instance) illegitimate. That said, the discourse could also possibly constrain sucha government’s actions should they step outside the bounds of the discursive grounding oftheir legitimacy (i.e. if they start to act ‘anti-democratically’, or, at least, if opponents can serveto cultivate such a perception).

Where does power work? A case for regime evolutionIn determining the power of different actors many academics have largely adopted a focus onformal political institutions, with Dahl’s (1961) study of New Haven being the paradigmaticexample of this approach. This idea of focusing on policy-making institutions has been anenduring feature of studies seeking to determine the power of different actors (Dur, 2008;Hojnacki et al., 2012) and makes intuitive sense as, if an actor is able to dominate the politicalsystem, they can realise their interests in society. Indeed, this focus on formal politicalinstitutions can be seen in the very first line of Baumgartner et al. (2009)’s Lobbying and PolicyChange which reads ‘Who wins in Washington?’

However, in terms of determining who is powerful, the approach of studying formal politicalinstitutions runs the risk of perpetuating an implicit assumption that power only operateswithin these institutions. This assumption poses two problems for studies of powerful actors.First, powerful actors may not need to operate through the political system as they can workdirectly within society so as to secure their interests. Speaking specifically of the power ofbusiness, Schattschneider (1960, p. 40) warned studies of influence on policy making that ‘itis probably a mistake to assume that pressure politics is the typical or even the most importantrelation between government and business’. Indeed, such a point would hold for many othersocietal actors that are broadly perceived to be powerful – the media, religious organisationsand criminal networks – in that the changes they seek to make do not necessarily need to bepursued through the political system. More importantly, through hidden power and invisiblepower resources, these actors could have secured for themselves an entrenched status quo thatprotects their interests to the extent that they are never effectively challenged within thepolitical arena.

Second, while policy-making studies seek to contribute to understanding the wider politicalsystem, the assumption of power operating through formal political institutions severelylimits the generalisability of the findings concerning the system. If such studies seek tocharacterise how the political system operates from their narrower study of policy making,then they are likely to simply restate their assumption about where power is working.It is circular logic; conclusions about the macro-system are drawn from micro-studies ofthe policy-making process that are based upon an assumption of how the macro-systemoperates.4

However, while it is incorrect to assume that power is operating only in formal politicalinstitutions and the policy-making process, it would be equally problematic to ignore thepolicy-making process when exploring the power of an actor. In most states, the formalpolitical arena is an important location for decision making. As such, what is needed, then, isa focus on how parts of society are shaped over time by decisions, interactions and actions inboth formal political institutions and informal political institutions – to expand considerationfrom policy making to regime evolution.

LUKES RELOADED 5


A ‘regime’ is used here to refer to the formal and informal rules and practices within aparticular part of society. In this usage, then, there is a similarity between the distinctiondrawn here and the distinction drawn between government and governance, with the latterterm including ‘the social and economic, as well as political, processes by which power andinfluence are put into practice, outcomes are shaped and decisions made and implemented,and broad social, political and economic trends managed and controlled by a range of actors’(Cerny, 2014, p. 48).

With a regime evolution approach the emphasis is on understanding the contribution of anactor to formal rules, informal rules and societal outcomes over time. There is thus a muchstronger focus on both the temporal element of power – how the past use of power conditionsfuture use – and on the dialectical interaction between politics, on the one hand, and society,on the other. So, this approach involves exploring the historical evolution of a particular casein order to understand the role of power in the configuration of the status quo, the process ofpolitical policy formulation, the process of policy implementation, the ongoing societalimpacts of policy and societal change outside of formal policy, as power can be operating onany of these stages and, depending on the particular case, could be operating most signifi-cantly (or perhaps even only) on each particular stage.

Consider, for example, the well-established practice of using cost-benefit analysis duringpolicy implementation in the US. Initially started by President Reagan ‘at the behest ofpersistent industry lobbyists, who clearly viewed it as a tool for squelching and delayingregulation’ (Sinden, Kysar and Driesen, 2009, p. 49), cost-benefit analysis has served as alongstanding structural hidden power mechanism of influence for industry ever since. Thereliance on cost-benefit analysis means that policy gets scrutinised on its quantifiable benefitsand costs, but not on its unquantifiable benefits or costs. This procedure has served industryinterests well in several areas, but most notably with environmental regulation due to theinherently unquantifiable value of the environment and unknowable consequences ofclimate change (Ackerman and Heinzerling, 2001). In cases where this occurs, the hiddenpower of corporate actors is operating significantly to alter policy during the implementationstage, most likely after power has operated in previous stages, too.

Similarly, regime evolution is also particularly useful when considering invisible power.Discursive and ideational change is rarely a short-term process, neither is it limited to theformal political arena. So, by investigating political change more holistically and over greatertime it can be possible to chart who puts forward, repeats or challenges certain discourses and,perhaps, the establishment of an idea as accepted truth. Furthermore, in including both thehistory of the status quo and the societal impacts, regime evolution allows a dynamic, dialec-tical system to be modelled whereby changes within society and the formal political arenabuild upon one another and are subject to interactions and feedback mechanisms betweennumerous powerful actors and institutions within society. In this respect, adopting a regimeevolution approach allows the researcher to focus on the outcomes (societal impacts) ratherthan outputs (policy as written) of political action in judging power (Cairney, 2013, p. 284).

Mechanisms of influenceSo, the test of power when considering a particular regime is the extent to which a certainactor has realised their interests within that regime. Yet, such a test can fall in to the trap ofattributing power when there is simple luck (Dowding, 2003). Furthermore, while the formsof power provide a way of understanding what counts as power, they do not define how

6 TERRY HATHAWAY


Hathaway 123

such legitimacy upon them and that empower them. It is likely, however, that the govern-ment will then serve to utilise and protect this authority – they are first structurally empow-ered and then can reshape and use this power, such as by declaring other actors (sub-nationalmilitants, for instance) illegitimate. That said, the discourse could also possibly constrain sucha government’s actions should they step outside the bounds of the discursive grounding oftheir legitimacy (i.e. if they start to act ‘anti-democratically’, or, at least, if opponents can serveto cultivate such a perception).

Where does power work? A case for regime evolutionIn determining the power of different actors many academics have largely adopted a focus onformal political institutions, with Dahl’s (1961) study of New Haven being the paradigmaticexample of this approach. This idea of focusing on policy-making institutions has been anenduring feature of studies seeking to determine the power of different actors (Dur, 2008;Hojnacki et al., 2012) and makes intuitive sense as, if an actor is able to dominate the politicalsystem, they can realise their interests in society. Indeed, this focus on formal politicalinstitutions can be seen in the very first line of Baumgartner et al. (2009)’s Lobbying and PolicyChange which reads ‘Who wins in Washington?’

However, in terms of determining who is powerful, the approach of studying formal politicalinstitutions runs the risk of perpetuating an implicit assumption that power only operateswithin these institutions. This assumption poses two problems for studies of powerful actors.First, powerful actors may not need to operate through the political system as they can workdirectly within society so as to secure their interests. Speaking specifically of the power ofbusiness, Schattschneider (1960, p. 40) warned studies of influence on policy making that ‘itis probably a mistake to assume that pressure politics is the typical or even the most importantrelation between government and business’. Indeed, such a point would hold for many othersocietal actors that are broadly perceived to be powerful – the media, religious organisationsand criminal networks – in that the changes they seek to make do not necessarily need to bepursued through the political system. More importantly, through hidden power and invisiblepower resources, these actors could have secured for themselves an entrenched status quo thatprotects their interests to the extent that they are never effectively challenged within thepolitical arena.

Second, while policy-making studies seek to contribute to understanding the wider politicalsystem, the assumption of power operating through formal political institutions severelylimits the generalisability of the findings concerning the system. If such studies seek tocharacterise how the political system operates from their narrower study of policy making,then they are likely to simply restate their assumption about where power is working.It is circular logic; conclusions about the macro-system are drawn from micro-studies ofthe policy-making process that are based upon an assumption of how the macro-systemoperates.4

However, while it is incorrect to assume that power is operating only in formal politicalinstitutions and the policy-making process, it would be equally problematic to ignore thepolicy-making process when exploring the power of an actor. In most states, the formalpolitical arena is an important location for decision making. As such, what is needed, then, isa focus on how parts of society are shaped over time by decisions, interactions and actions inboth formal political institutions and informal political institutions – to expand considerationfrom policy making to regime evolution.

LUKES RELOADED 5


A ‘regime’ is used here to refer to the formal and informal rules and practices within aparticular part of society. In this usage, then, there is a similarity between the distinctiondrawn here and the distinction drawn between government and governance, with the latterterm including ‘the social and economic, as well as political, processes by which power andinfluence are put into practice, outcomes are shaped and decisions made and implemented,and broad social, political and economic trends managed and controlled by a range of actors’(Cerny, 2014, p. 48).

With a regime evolution approach the emphasis is on understanding the contribution of anactor to formal rules, informal rules and societal outcomes over time. There is thus a muchstronger focus on both the temporal element of power – how the past use of power conditionsfuture use – and on the dialectical interaction between politics, on the one hand, and society,on the other. So, this approach involves exploring the historical evolution of a particular casein order to understand the role of power in the configuration of the status quo, the process ofpolitical policy formulation, the process of policy implementation, the ongoing societalimpacts of policy and societal change outside of formal policy, as power can be operating onany of these stages and, depending on the particular case, could be operating most signifi-cantly (or perhaps even only) on each particular stage.

Consider, for example, the well-established practice of using cost-benefit analysis duringpolicy implementation in the US. Initially started by President Reagan ‘at the behest ofpersistent industry lobbyists, who clearly viewed it as a tool for squelching and delayingregulation’ (Sinden, Kysar and Driesen, 2009, p. 49), cost-benefit analysis has served as alongstanding structural hidden power mechanism of influence for industry ever since. Thereliance on cost-benefit analysis means that policy gets scrutinised on its quantifiable benefitsand costs, but not on its unquantifiable benefits or costs. This procedure has served industryinterests well in several areas, but most notably with environmental regulation due to theinherently unquantifiable value of the environment and unknowable consequences ofclimate change (Ackerman and Heinzerling, 2001). In cases where this occurs, the hiddenpower of corporate actors is operating significantly to alter policy during the implementationstage, most likely after power has operated in previous stages, too.

Similarly, regime evolution is also particularly useful when considering invisible power.Discursive and ideational change is rarely a short-term process, neither is it limited to theformal political arena. So, by investigating political change more holistically and over greatertime it can be possible to chart who puts forward, repeats or challenges certain discourses and,perhaps, the establishment of an idea as accepted truth. Furthermore, in including both thehistory of the status quo and the societal impacts, regime evolution allows a dynamic, dialec-tical system to be modelled whereby changes within society and the formal political arenabuild upon one another and are subject to interactions and feedback mechanisms betweennumerous powerful actors and institutions within society. In this respect, adopting a regimeevolution approach allows the researcher to focus on the outcomes (societal impacts) ratherthan outputs (policy as written) of political action in judging power (Cairney, 2013, p. 284).

Mechanisms of influenceSo, the test of power when considering a particular regime is the extent to which a certainactor has realised their interests within that regime. Yet, such a test can fall in to the trap ofattributing power when there is simple luck (Dowding, 2003). Furthermore, while the formsof power provide a way of understanding what counts as power, they do not define how

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124 Politics 36(2)

power works in concrete terms. This situation is troubling for studies seeking to apply a powerframework to empirical material as the forms of power are not operationalised. The likelyresult of a lack of operationalisation is great difficulty in evaluating the relative importance ofboth different forms of power (broadly) and the different ways in which power manifests itself(specifically).

The way round these problems is to use the forms of power as both a guide to case exploration(Whose decisions are having an impact? Who do procedures benefit, or are made to benefit?What accepted truths are people operating with? Where do these truths come from?) – andas a second level of analysis of how power is working following an exploration of theempirical material. Prior to applying the forms of power as a second level of analysis, theinvestigator should seek to isolate individual mechanisms of influence that can then beclassified within the more abstract power framework. So, for instance, the power of theCatholic Church could generally be seen to come from: (1) visible power mechanisms ofinfluence in the form of a wealth of material resources, control of an independent state in theform of Vatican City and the control of Catholic Church-run schools; (2) hidden powermechanisms of influence such as high-level political connections, political consultation overmoral issues and devout politicians; and (3) invisible power mechanisms such as the claim toGod-given authority and moral monopoly, whereby morality and religious belief are seen asinseparable.5 With these identified mechanisms, and with a judgement on the realisation ofinterests in the regime, the researcher can show that an actor is powerful (they have realisedtheir interests) and how they have realised their interests.

Refining the idea further, within identified mechanisms it may also be worthwhile to distin-guish between direct and indirect mechanisms of influence to aid further clarity and speci-ficity. This point is particularly important as such a distinction allows the capacity to discussboth agential and structural mechanisms of influence concurrently – with structural elementsbecoming more important as we move from visible to invisible power. So, while visible poweris primarily understood as agential, it can, on occasion be structural. For instance, when actorA controls a key resource for actor B, the possibility of A’s decision to withdraw the resourcecan work to structurally constrain B so as to work in the interests of A even in situationswhere A does not actually threaten to withdraw the resource.6

With hidden power, structural issues become increasingly important, although the issue iscomplex. For example, the ‘revolving door’ that many people pass through between govern-ment and business can be a potent hidden power mechanism of influence for corporations.Because the revolving door is not necessarily something wieldable by businesses in that thecorporations do not fundamentally control their ex-staff, in general the revolving doorinvolves a reliance on others working in their interest and thus operates structurally so asindirectly to empower corporations. However, agency can still be seen in instances whereindividuals are strongly incentivised by their corporate employers to pass from business into,and then out from, the revolving door. Finally, this sorting process is particularly useful forinvisible power mechanisms because, as previously mentioned, there will likely be discoursescreated and used by actors directly (agential invisible power) and underlying discourses thatempower the actors (structural invisible power).

One final element worth noting is that categorisation by forms of power should not beconsidered definitive, as how mechanisms operate is not something that is necessarily stableor clear cut. Over time, for instance, a hidden power effort (such as a widely covered, yetfundamentally biased, think tank report) to promote certain values over others could become

LUKES RELOADED 7


part of an established discourse; it could switch from being categorised as a hidden powermechanism of influence to invisible power, as the idea petrifies and becomes accepted.Equally, the direct use of authority in one area of policy making (formulation, for instance)may have indirect agenda-setting effects in another area (such as implementation) and so beclassified as working differently in separate stages of regime evolution.

The purpose, then, of considering mechanisms of influence is to introduce both specificity andclarity in terms of how an actor is powerful. It allows discussion of how types of powermanifest themselves facilitates consideration of structural and agential power, avoids the issueof luck posing as power, and works to operationalise the forms of power in a way thatfacilitates a connection between an abstract concept of power and empirical material. A finalfurther benefit stems from the possible accumulation of different mechanisms of influence;these explorations of power can build up a ‘toolkit’ of the most common mechanisms, therebyestablishing a core of knowledge about how power works in practice and simplifying futureempirical work.

Analysing invisible powerAnalysing invisible power is perhaps the most difficult element of applying a power frame-work as the impact of discourse is rarely obvious, particularly when values are deeplyembedded. In an effort to mitigate this problem, this section details four techniques that maybe used to isolate invisible power mechanisms of influence. These techniques will not beuseful for all invisible power discourses all of the time and many other techniques may beused too, but these techniques offer possible avenues of analysis and exploration, dependentupon the research problem and available data.

First, the most widely applicable technique involves engaging directly with the logic of arecurrent discourse in a particular policy area and considering the subsequent applicability/suitability of the discourse for the policy area. For instance, one popular discourse in energypolicy areas concerns Jevons’ Paradox, whereby increases in the efficiency of an action (i.e. adecrease in the necessary energy input per unit of output) directly result in a decrease in thecosts associated with the action and, subsequently, results in the action occurring more often(Alcott, 2005, p. 11). The paradox occurs, then, when the goal is to reduce the total energyuse as the decrease in costs can lead to an increased demand for a unit of output and thus anoverall rise in total energy use (York, 2006, p. 143). This point is used by opponents of energyefficiency regulation to argue that there is no case for such policies as they are ultimatelyself-defeating. Yet, Jevons’ observed his paradox in the case of steam engines in 1865 – asituation of immature technology adoption. If this discourse were applied to improving theefficiency of vehicles (as it has been extensively in the US, particularly by the automobilecompanies), it would imply that people would increase how far they drove by 100+ per centif engine efficiency was increased 100 per cent, which is a highly unlikely situation consid-ering the degree to which people already drive in developed economies. Demonstrating theinapplicability of a discourse to a particular situation can help identify structural invisiblepower and, if the discourse is repeated by actors who benefit from said discourse, agentialinvisible power.

Second, approaching invisible power mechanisms that operate over the short term caninvolve looking for inconsistencies between the goals people are seeking to attain, thedecisions that they take in aiming to achieve these goals and the degree to which theirdecisions actually allow them to attain their goals. If there is a divergence between the

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Hathaway 125

power works in concrete terms. This situation is troubling for studies seeking to apply a powerframework to empirical material as the forms of power are not operationalised. The likelyresult of a lack of operationalisation is great difficulty in evaluating the relative importance ofboth different forms of power (broadly) and the different ways in which power manifests itself(specifically).

The way round these problems is to use the forms of power as both a guide to case exploration(Whose decisions are having an impact? Who do procedures benefit, or are made to benefit?What accepted truths are people operating with? Where do these truths come from?) – andas a second level of analysis of how power is working following an exploration of theempirical material. Prior to applying the forms of power as a second level of analysis, theinvestigator should seek to isolate individual mechanisms of influence that can then beclassified within the more abstract power framework. So, for instance, the power of theCatholic Church could generally be seen to come from: (1) visible power mechanisms ofinfluence in the form of a wealth of material resources, control of an independent state in theform of Vatican City and the control of Catholic Church-run schools; (2) hidden powermechanisms of influence such as high-level political connections, political consultation overmoral issues and devout politicians; and (3) invisible power mechanisms such as the claim toGod-given authority and moral monopoly, whereby morality and religious belief are seen asinseparable.5 With these identified mechanisms, and with a judgement on the realisation ofinterests in the regime, the researcher can show that an actor is powerful (they have realisedtheir interests) and how they have realised their interests.

Refining the idea further, within identified mechanisms it may also be worthwhile to distin-guish between direct and indirect mechanisms of influence to aid further clarity and speci-ficity. This point is particularly important as such a distinction allows the capacity to discussboth agential and structural mechanisms of influence concurrently – with structural elementsbecoming more important as we move from visible to invisible power. So, while visible poweris primarily understood as agential, it can, on occasion be structural. For instance, when actorA controls a key resource for actor B, the possibility of A’s decision to withdraw the resourcecan work to structurally constrain B so as to work in the interests of A even in situationswhere A does not actually threaten to withdraw the resource.6

With hidden power, structural issues become increasingly important, although the issue iscomplex. For example, the ‘revolving door’ that many people pass through between govern-ment and business can be a potent hidden power mechanism of influence for corporations.Because the revolving door is not necessarily something wieldable by businesses in that thecorporations do not fundamentally control their ex-staff, in general the revolving doorinvolves a reliance on others working in their interest and thus operates structurally so asindirectly to empower corporations. However, agency can still be seen in instances whereindividuals are strongly incentivised by their corporate employers to pass from business into,and then out from, the revolving door. Finally, this sorting process is particularly useful forinvisible power mechanisms because, as previously mentioned, there will likely be discoursescreated and used by actors directly (agential invisible power) and underlying discourses thatempower the actors (structural invisible power).

One final element worth noting is that categorisation by forms of power should not beconsidered definitive, as how mechanisms operate is not something that is necessarily stableor clear cut. Over time, for instance, a hidden power effort (such as a widely covered, yetfundamentally biased, think tank report) to promote certain values over others could become

LUKES RELOADED 7


part of an established discourse; it could switch from being categorised as a hidden powermechanism of influence to invisible power, as the idea petrifies and becomes accepted.Equally, the direct use of authority in one area of policy making (formulation, for instance)may have indirect agenda-setting effects in another area (such as implementation) and so beclassified as working differently in separate stages of regime evolution.

The purpose, then, of considering mechanisms of influence is to introduce both specificity andclarity in terms of how an actor is powerful. It allows discussion of how types of powermanifest themselves facilitates consideration of structural and agential power, avoids the issueof luck posing as power, and works to operationalise the forms of power in a way thatfacilitates a connection between an abstract concept of power and empirical material. A finalfurther benefit stems from the possible accumulation of different mechanisms of influence;these explorations of power can build up a ‘toolkit’ of the most common mechanisms, therebyestablishing a core of knowledge about how power works in practice and simplifying futureempirical work.

Analysing invisible powerAnalysing invisible power is perhaps the most difficult element of applying a power frame-work as the impact of discourse is rarely obvious, particularly when values are deeplyembedded. In an effort to mitigate this problem, this section details four techniques that maybe used to isolate invisible power mechanisms of influence. These techniques will not beuseful for all invisible power discourses all of the time and many other techniques may beused too, but these techniques offer possible avenues of analysis and exploration, dependentupon the research problem and available data.

First, the most widely applicable technique involves engaging directly with the logic of arecurrent discourse in a particular policy area and considering the subsequent applicability/suitability of the discourse for the policy area. For instance, one popular discourse in energypolicy areas concerns Jevons’ Paradox, whereby increases in the efficiency of an action (i.e. adecrease in the necessary energy input per unit of output) directly result in a decrease in thecosts associated with the action and, subsequently, results in the action occurring more often(Alcott, 2005, p. 11). The paradox occurs, then, when the goal is to reduce the total energyuse as the decrease in costs can lead to an increased demand for a unit of output and thus anoverall rise in total energy use (York, 2006, p. 143). This point is used by opponents of energyefficiency regulation to argue that there is no case for such policies as they are ultimatelyself-defeating. Yet, Jevons’ observed his paradox in the case of steam engines in 1865 – asituation of immature technology adoption. If this discourse were applied to improving theefficiency of vehicles (as it has been extensively in the US, particularly by the automobilecompanies), it would imply that people would increase how far they drove by 100+ per centif engine efficiency was increased 100 per cent, which is a highly unlikely situation consid-ering the degree to which people already drive in developed economies. Demonstrating theinapplicability of a discourse to a particular situation can help identify structural invisiblepower and, if the discourse is repeated by actors who benefit from said discourse, agentialinvisible power.

Second, approaching invisible power mechanisms that operate over the short term caninvolve looking for inconsistencies between the goals people are seeking to attain, thedecisions that they take in aiming to achieve these goals and the degree to which theirdecisions actually allow them to attain their goals. If there is a divergence between the

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126 Politics 36(2)

interests people are seeking to realise and the actions they are taking in a situation wherebya prominent discourse supported by particular actors asserts that such actions will realise suchinterests, then these particular actors can be said to be using agential invisible power. That isto say, in the short term, we do not need to assert that people’s interests are fundamentallybeing manipulated, but rather that their understanding of how to realise those interests isbeing manipulated.

Perhaps a good example of this situation is British public support for greater restrictions andpunitive actions with regards to welfare fraud on the grounds that it is seen by voters ascosting the British taxpayer 27 per cent of the entire welfare budget, instead of the 0.7 percent it actually does (TUC, 2013). While a widespread mistaken belief is not necessarilyevidence of invisible power, the congruence between this mistaken belief and the image ofwidespread welfare fraud that the conservative press and right-wing politicians (most recentlythrough ‘personal tax statements’ from the Treasury that, through creative data grouping,make ‘welfare’ appear the largest element of tax spending (Lyall, 2014)) have sought toportray and then act upon is powerful evidence of invisible power being utilised by right-wingpolitical actors. That is to say, for this approach to analysis, a mistaken belief, actions taken toencourage this belief and interests being served by the belief are the three necessary condi-tions for identification of agential invisible power.

Third, in line with the inclusion of historical context in regime evolution, it can be worthwhileto trace the evolution of an influential discourse in a particular policy area. This approach isparticularly useful when agential invisible power is suspected. For instance, in the 1980s and1990s, tobacco companies worked hard to promote the idea of ‘sound science’.7 Part of thiseffort, by Phillip Morris and other tobacco corporations, involved a strategy, nicknamed the‘White Coat’ project, of recruiting scientists to do research that could later be called on incourt. These pro-tobacco scientists then ‘disseminated their results through industry-sponsored, non-peer-reviewed publications that simply summarized industry-sponsored andindustry-organized conferences’ (Friedman, Daynard and Banthin, 2005, s17–s18). Asrevealed in a 2002 leaked memorandum, the use of this discourse was later urged by politicalstrategist Frank Luntz to Republican leaders, who were reminded that:

[T]he most important principle in any discussion of global warming is your commitment tosound science. Americans unanimously believe all environmental rules and regulationsshould be based on sound science and common sense. Similarly, our confidence in theability of science and technology to solve our nation’s ills is second to none. Both percep-tions will work in your favor if properly cultivated. (as quoted in McGarity, 2003, p. 899)

Utilising this third approach then can provide fairly damning evidence of intentional manipu-lation and, perhaps, of the establishment, or reinforcement, of important narratives anddiscourses within a policy area or the political arena.

Finally, invisible power discourses, particularly more structural ones, may be recognised inpeculiar junctions of history when the status quo is disturbed. These historic junctures forcepolitics, or smaller policy areas, to depart from business as usual and thus provide a test ofideas that support the status quo. For instance, George W. Bush’s assertion that, in seeking todeal with the Global Financial Crisis, ‘I have abandoned free market principles to save the freemarket system’ (CNN, 2008) is a good example of how such situations can warp logic. In thesecases, there is a stark disconnect between the values, beliefs and ideas professed by actors and

LUKES RELOADED 9


their actions. This disconnect can be very informative of power relations, particularly shouldthe actors who were favoured by the previous discourse continue to be favoured through newjustifications and discourses.

In general, then, these approaches concern identifying the origin of discourses, the logic ofdiscourses, the flexibility and applicability of discourses, and the interests served by suchdiscourses. Importantly, this approach is not asserting ‘false consciousness’ as there is no single‘true consciousness’ or real interests that such beliefs are being judged against. Instead, thelogical or empirical fitness of a belief that empowers, or is used by, an actor is questioned.Ideational manipulation is occurring then, as seen in the welfare example above, when adiscourse paints a picture of the world at odds with the available evidence and does so to thebenefit of an actor, or group of actors.

On a more practical note, these four techniques for identifying power are increasingly possiblewith the advent of digitised archival material. Services such as Nexis news search are powerfultools for discourse tracing over the past 30 years, as are digitised transcripts of nationallegislative proceedings. Being able to sift through large amounts of material quickly allowseasier identification of key interactions, the temporal emergence of recent discourses and thegrowing extent of discourses than previously – particularly if, as is the case with the soundscience discourse above, an influential discourse has obscure origins. In addition, with morerecent cases, Archive.org’s ‘WayBackMachine’ allows access to older versions of websites andso can highlight changes in discourse used by single groups over time. The WayBackMachinealso has the advantage of potentially having captured material from now-defunct groups thatplayed an important role in a certain policy area.

ConclusionLukes’ three dimensions of power, while offering a widely cited conceptual advancement inour understanding of power, have failed to deliver an established empirical programme ofresearch. This situation is a shame as the enduring appeal of Lukes’ work suggests his ideas onpower have something to them. Moreover, the centrality of power to political studiesdemands engagement with the concept. In part, the failure of Lukes’ work to create anempirical programme stems from problems with the formulations of the framework itself,particularly its actor-centric nature and the entanglement of the identification of power andits critique. However, starting instead from Gaventa’s reformulated three forms of power –visible, hidden and invisible – allows the essence of Lukes’ conceptualisation of power to beretained while avoiding the conceptual traps to which his account falls prey.

Even with a more robust conceptualisation of power established, there are still issues with itsoperationalisation for empirical research, which is in part due to longstanding assumptions ofthe literature and part due to the inherent difficulties of power measurement. First, in orderto avoid restrictive a priori assumptions of where power operates, a regime evolution approachthat includes the dialectical interplay between the formal political arena and society should beadopted. This change means that power is not judged on the degree to which an actor realisestheir interests in political outputs, but in societal outcomes. If power is operating mostmeaningfully in the political arena, then outputs and outcomes will be the same, but if poweris operating elsewhere, then outputs and outcomes will diverge. In both cases, a regimeevolution approach can capture the operation of power, whereas only in the first case canstudies of policy locate power.

10 TERRY HATHAWAY


Hathaway 127

interests people are seeking to realise and the actions they are taking in a situation wherebya prominent discourse supported by particular actors asserts that such actions will realise suchinterests, then these particular actors can be said to be using agential invisible power. That isto say, in the short term, we do not need to assert that people’s interests are fundamentallybeing manipulated, but rather that their understanding of how to realise those interests isbeing manipulated.

Perhaps a good example of this situation is British public support for greater restrictions andpunitive actions with regards to welfare fraud on the grounds that it is seen by voters ascosting the British taxpayer 27 per cent of the entire welfare budget, instead of the 0.7 percent it actually does (TUC, 2013). While a widespread mistaken belief is not necessarilyevidence of invisible power, the congruence between this mistaken belief and the image ofwidespread welfare fraud that the conservative press and right-wing politicians (most recentlythrough ‘personal tax statements’ from the Treasury that, through creative data grouping,make ‘welfare’ appear the largest element of tax spending (Lyall, 2014)) have sought toportray and then act upon is powerful evidence of invisible power being utilised by right-wingpolitical actors. That is to say, for this approach to analysis, a mistaken belief, actions taken toencourage this belief and interests being served by the belief are the three necessary condi-tions for identification of agential invisible power.

Third, in line with the inclusion of historical context in regime evolution, it can be worthwhileto trace the evolution of an influential discourse in a particular policy area. This approach isparticularly useful when agential invisible power is suspected. For instance, in the 1980s and1990s, tobacco companies worked hard to promote the idea of ‘sound science’.7 Part of thiseffort, by Phillip Morris and other tobacco corporations, involved a strategy, nicknamed the‘White Coat’ project, of recruiting scientists to do research that could later be called on incourt. These pro-tobacco scientists then ‘disseminated their results through industry-sponsored, non-peer-reviewed publications that simply summarized industry-sponsored andindustry-organized conferences’ (Friedman, Daynard and Banthin, 2005, s17–s18). Asrevealed in a 2002 leaked memorandum, the use of this discourse was later urged by politicalstrategist Frank Luntz to Republican leaders, who were reminded that:

[T]he most important principle in any discussion of global warming is your commitment tosound science. Americans unanimously believe all environmental rules and regulationsshould be based on sound science and common sense. Similarly, our confidence in theability of science and technology to solve our nation’s ills is second to none. Both percep-tions will work in your favor if properly cultivated. (as quoted in McGarity, 2003, p. 899)

Utilising this third approach then can provide fairly damning evidence of intentional manipu-lation and, perhaps, of the establishment, or reinforcement, of important narratives anddiscourses within a policy area or the political arena.

Finally, invisible power discourses, particularly more structural ones, may be recognised inpeculiar junctions of history when the status quo is disturbed. These historic junctures forcepolitics, or smaller policy areas, to depart from business as usual and thus provide a test ofideas that support the status quo. For instance, George W. Bush’s assertion that, in seeking todeal with the Global Financial Crisis, ‘I have abandoned free market principles to save the freemarket system’ (CNN, 2008) is a good example of how such situations can warp logic. In thesecases, there is a stark disconnect between the values, beliefs and ideas professed by actors and

LUKES RELOADED 9


their actions. This disconnect can be very informative of power relations, particularly shouldthe actors who were favoured by the previous discourse continue to be favoured through newjustifications and discourses.

In general, then, these approaches concern identifying the origin of discourses, the logic ofdiscourses, the flexibility and applicability of discourses, and the interests served by suchdiscourses. Importantly, this approach is not asserting ‘false consciousness’ as there is no single‘true consciousness’ or real interests that such beliefs are being judged against. Instead, thelogical or empirical fitness of a belief that empowers, or is used by, an actor is questioned.Ideational manipulation is occurring then, as seen in the welfare example above, when adiscourse paints a picture of the world at odds with the available evidence and does so to thebenefit of an actor, or group of actors.

On a more practical note, these four techniques for identifying power are increasingly possiblewith the advent of digitised archival material. Services such as Nexis news search are powerfultools for discourse tracing over the past 30 years, as are digitised transcripts of nationallegislative proceedings. Being able to sift through large amounts of material quickly allowseasier identification of key interactions, the temporal emergence of recent discourses and thegrowing extent of discourses than previously – particularly if, as is the case with the soundscience discourse above, an influential discourse has obscure origins. In addition, with morerecent cases, Archive.org’s ‘WayBackMachine’ allows access to older versions of websites andso can highlight changes in discourse used by single groups over time. The WayBackMachinealso has the advantage of potentially having captured material from now-defunct groups thatplayed an important role in a certain policy area.

ConclusionLukes’ three dimensions of power, while offering a widely cited conceptual advancement inour understanding of power, have failed to deliver an established empirical programme ofresearch. This situation is a shame as the enduring appeal of Lukes’ work suggests his ideas onpower have something to them. Moreover, the centrality of power to political studiesdemands engagement with the concept. In part, the failure of Lukes’ work to create anempirical programme stems from problems with the formulations of the framework itself,particularly its actor-centric nature and the entanglement of the identification of power andits critique. However, starting instead from Gaventa’s reformulated three forms of power –visible, hidden and invisible – allows the essence of Lukes’ conceptualisation of power to beretained while avoiding the conceptual traps to which his account falls prey.

Even with a more robust conceptualisation of power established, there are still issues with itsoperationalisation for empirical research, which is in part due to longstanding assumptions ofthe literature and part due to the inherent difficulties of power measurement. First, in orderto avoid restrictive a priori assumptions of where power operates, a regime evolution approachthat includes the dialectical interplay between the formal political arena and society should beadopted. This change means that power is not judged on the degree to which an actor realisestheir interests in political outputs, but in societal outcomes. If power is operating mostmeaningfully in the political arena, then outputs and outcomes will be the same, but if poweris operating elsewhere, then outputs and outcomes will diverge. In both cases, a regimeevolution approach can capture the operation of power, whereas only in the first case canstudies of policy locate power.

10 TERRY HATHAWAY


128 Politics 36(2)

Second, so as to ensure the connections between the conceptual framework and empiricalmaterial and to avoid attributing power when there is luck, the forms of power should beconsidered first, during data collection, as a broad guide to how power can be operating, andsecond, during analysis, as a second level of analysis that help explain how different mecha-nisms of influence work, rather than seeking to apply the conceptualisation of power directlyto the empirical material. Mechanisms of influence are of central importance as through themassessments of power can move beyond saying that such an actor is powerful to how such anactor is powerful.

Finally, due to the difficulty with analysing invisible power, a flexible and varied approachneeds to be adopted, with four different possible techniques outlined above. The emphasis ofthese approaches is not on determining how people are being misled from their real interests,but instead on dealing directly with major ideas and discourses, focusing on how thesediscourses are either used by actors or serve more passively to empower them and the logicalor empirical fitness of such discourses.

The innovations in this article can be used for the study of both formal and informal (politicaland social) actors, but are not intended to be the final word in adapting the forms of powerfor empirical application. Neither does this article serve to offer all possible mechanisms ofinfluence. Instead, through their application and adaption, these ideas offer the possibility ofestablishing power as a central empirical concern for political studies and locating it as acentral political concept once more.

AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank his PhD supervisors, Dr Christine Harlen and Dr CharlieBurns, for their help in formulating the ideas expressed here. He would also like to thank theanonymous reviewers for their comments as they strengthened this work considerably.

Notes1 Foucault could be seen as the main competitor to Lukes in terms of presenting a popular rival view of power. Yet,

Foucault’s focus was not on power – as he himself wrote (Foucault, 1982, p. 777), the purpose of his work ‘has notbeen to analyze the phenomena of power, nor to elaborate the foundations of such an analysis. My objective,instead, has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are madesubjects.’ As such, Foucault offers fragmentary and context-specific ideas of power.

2 A large conceptual literature, of which Hyland, Morriss (2002) and Hay are examples (also see the Journal of PoliticalPower), discussing Lukes’ conceptualisation of power did develop but in spite of the origins of the community powerdebates, extensive empirical applications are rare.

3 In practice, it can be reasonably difficult to analytically separate deception through invocation of certain beliefs andgenuine belief in dominant discourses, although see the final section for possible methods of approaching this issue.

4 Writing in 1976, Dahl and Lindblom note the outcome of this problem in their original pluralist work: ‘In ourdiscussion of pluralism we made another error – and it is a continuing error in social science – in regardingbusinessmen and business groups as playing the same interest-group role as other groups in polyarchal systems,though more powerfully. Businessmen play a distinctive role in polyarchal politics that is qualitatively differentfrom that of any interest group. It is also much more powerful than an interest-group role’ (Dahl and Lindlom,1976, p. xl).

5 This list is not, of course, exhaustive; nor are the mechanisms identified mutually exclusive.

6 Regarding business power, this example would come in the form of the structural dependence of the state on capital.

7 Equally, it can be interesting to look at the construction of particular terms. ‘Sound science’ is a fundamentallyparadoxical construction as it simultaneously suggests deferment to others, or to a body of knowledge, butnecessarily involves a judgement into what counts as ‘sound’; it implies both a value judgement and a lack of valuejudgements.

LUKES RELOADED 11


ReferencesAckerman, F. and Heinzerling, L. (2001) ‘Pricing the Priceless: Cost-Benefit Analysis of Environmental Protection’,

University of Pennsylvania Law Review 150(5), pp. 1553–1584.

Alcott, B. (2005) ‘Jevons’ Paradox’, Ecological Economics 54(1), pp. 9–21.

Bachrach, P. and Baratz, M. (1962) ‘The Two Faces of Power’, American Political Science Review 56(4), pp. 947–952.

Baumgartner, F., Berry, J., Hojnacki, M., Kimball, D. and Leech, B. (2009) Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, WhoLoses and Why, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Bernhagen, P. (2002) Power: Making Sense of an Elusive Concept [Online]. Available from: http://homepages.abdn.ac.uk/p.bernhagen/pages/Power_JPR.pdf [Accessed 5 September 2012].

Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. (2001) ‘Neoliberal Newspeak: Notes on the New Planetary Vulgate’, Radical Philosophy105(1), pp. 1–6.

Cairney, P. (2013) ‘What is Evolutionary Theory and How Does It Inform Policy Studies?’, Policy and Politics 41(2), pp.279–298.

Cerny, P.G. (2014) ‘Transnational Neopluralism and the Process of Governance’ in A. Payne and N. Phillips (eds.),Handbook of the International Political Economy of Governance, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 48–68.

Clegg, S. (1979) The Theory of Power and Organisation, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

CNN (2008) Interview with President Bush [Online]. Available from: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0812/24/se.03.html [Accessed 16 August 2012].

Crenson, M.A. (1971) The Un-Politics of Air Pollution: A Study of Non-Decisionmaking in the Cities, Baltimore, MD: JohnsHopkins University Press.

Dahl, R. (1957) ‘The Concept of Power’, Behavioral Science 2, pp. 201–205.

Dahl, R. (1961) Who Governs? Power and Democracy in an American City, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Dahl, R. and Lindblom, C. (1976) Politics, Economics and Welfare, Chicago: University of Chicago.

Dowding, K. (2003) ‘Resources, Power and Systematic Luck: A Response to Barry’, Politics, Philosophy and Economics2(3), pp. 305–322.

Dur, A. (2008) ‘Measuring Interest Group Influence in the EU: A Note on Methodology’, European Union Politics 9(4),pp. 559–577.

Dür, A. and De Bièvre, D. (2007) ‘The Question of Interest Group Influence’, Journal of Public Policy 37(1), pp. 1–12.

Foucault, M. (1982) ‘The Subject and Power’, Critical Inquiry 8(4), pp. 777–795.

Friedman, L.C., Daynard, R.A. and Banthin, C.N. (2005) ‘How Tobacco-Friendly Science Escapes Scrutiny in theCourtroom’, Journal of Public Health 95(s1), pp. s16–s20.

Fuchs, D. (2005) ‘Commanding Heights? The Strength and Fragility of Business Power in Global Politics’, Paperpresented at the Millennium Annual Conference, London.

Gallie, W. (1955) ‘Essentially Contested Concepts’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56, pp. 167–198.

Gaventa, J. (1980) Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.

Gaventa, J. (2006) ‘Finding the Spaces for Change: A Power Analysis’, IDS Bulletin 37, pp. 6–23.

Hay, C. (1997) ‘State of the Art: Divided by a Common Language – Political Theory and the Concept of Power’, Politics17(1), pp. 45–52.

Hayward, C. and Lukes, S. (2008) ‘Nobody to Shoot? Power, Structure and Agency – A Dialogue’, Journal of Power 1(1),pp. 5–20.

Held, D. and McGrew, A. (2003) The Global Transformations Reader, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Hojnacki, M., Kimball, D.C., Baumgartner, F.R., Berry, J.M. and Leech, B.L. (2012) ‘Studying Organizational Advocacyand Influence: Reexamining Interest Group Research’, Annual Review of Political Science 15, pp. 379–399.

Hyland, J.L. (1995) Democratic Theory: The Philosophical Foundations, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Lindblom, C.E. (1977) Politics and Markets: The World’s Political Economic Systems, New York: Basic Books.

Lukes, S. (1974) Power: A Radical View, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Lukes, S. (2005) Power: A Radical View (2nd edn), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Lyall, S. (2014) What Osborne’s Tax Statements Don’t Tell Us about Welfare [Online]. Available from: http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/entry/what-osbornes-tax-statements-dont-tell-us-about-welfare [Accessed 8January 2015].

12 TERRY HATHAWAY


Hathaway 129

Second, so as to ensure the connections between the conceptual framework and empiricalmaterial and to avoid attributing power when there is luck, the forms of power should beconsidered first, during data collection, as a broad guide to how power can be operating, andsecond, during analysis, as a second level of analysis that help explain how different mecha-nisms of influence work, rather than seeking to apply the conceptualisation of power directlyto the empirical material. Mechanisms of influence are of central importance as through themassessments of power can move beyond saying that such an actor is powerful to how such anactor is powerful.

Finally, due to the difficulty with analysing invisible power, a flexible and varied approachneeds to be adopted, with four different possible techniques outlined above. The emphasis ofthese approaches is not on determining how people are being misled from their real interests,but instead on dealing directly with major ideas and discourses, focusing on how thesediscourses are either used by actors or serve more passively to empower them and the logicalor empirical fitness of such discourses.

The innovations in this article can be used for the study of both formal and informal (politicaland social) actors, but are not intended to be the final word in adapting the forms of powerfor empirical application. Neither does this article serve to offer all possible mechanisms ofinfluence. Instead, through their application and adaption, these ideas offer the possibility ofestablishing power as a central empirical concern for political studies and locating it as acentral political concept once more.

AcknowledgementsThe author would like to thank his PhD supervisors, Dr Christine Harlen and Dr CharlieBurns, for their help in formulating the ideas expressed here. He would also like to thank theanonymous reviewers for their comments as they strengthened this work considerably.

Notes1 Foucault could be seen as the main competitor to Lukes in terms of presenting a popular rival view of power. Yet,

Foucault’s focus was not on power – as he himself wrote (Foucault, 1982, p. 777), the purpose of his work ‘has notbeen to analyze the phenomena of power, nor to elaborate the foundations of such an analysis. My objective,instead, has been to create a history of the different modes by which, in our culture, human beings are madesubjects.’ As such, Foucault offers fragmentary and context-specific ideas of power.

2 A large conceptual literature, of which Hyland, Morriss (2002) and Hay are examples (also see the Journal of PoliticalPower), discussing Lukes’ conceptualisation of power did develop but in spite of the origins of the community powerdebates, extensive empirical applications are rare.

3 In practice, it can be reasonably difficult to analytically separate deception through invocation of certain beliefs andgenuine belief in dominant discourses, although see the final section for possible methods of approaching this issue.

4 Writing in 1976, Dahl and Lindblom note the outcome of this problem in their original pluralist work: ‘In ourdiscussion of pluralism we made another error – and it is a continuing error in social science – in regardingbusinessmen and business groups as playing the same interest-group role as other groups in polyarchal systems,though more powerfully. Businessmen play a distinctive role in polyarchal politics that is qualitatively differentfrom that of any interest group. It is also much more powerful than an interest-group role’ (Dahl and Lindlom,1976, p. xl).

5 This list is not, of course, exhaustive; nor are the mechanisms identified mutually exclusive.

6 Regarding business power, this example would come in the form of the structural dependence of the state on capital.

7 Equally, it can be interesting to look at the construction of particular terms. ‘Sound science’ is a fundamentallyparadoxical construction as it simultaneously suggests deferment to others, or to a body of knowledge, butnecessarily involves a judgement into what counts as ‘sound’; it implies both a value judgement and a lack of valuejudgements.

LUKES RELOADED 11


ReferencesAckerman, F. and Heinzerling, L. (2001) ‘Pricing the Priceless: Cost-Benefit Analysis of Environmental Protection’,

University of Pennsylvania Law Review 150(5), pp. 1553–1584.

Alcott, B. (2005) ‘Jevons’ Paradox’, Ecological Economics 54(1), pp. 9–21.

Bachrach, P. and Baratz, M. (1962) ‘The Two Faces of Power’, American Political Science Review 56(4), pp. 947–952.

Baumgartner, F., Berry, J., Hojnacki, M., Kimball, D. and Leech, B. (2009) Lobbying and Policy Change: Who Wins, WhoLoses and Why, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Bernhagen, P. (2002) Power: Making Sense of an Elusive Concept [Online]. Available from: http://homepages.abdn.ac.uk/p.bernhagen/pages/Power_JPR.pdf [Accessed 5 September 2012].

Bourdieu, P. and Wacquant, L. (2001) ‘Neoliberal Newspeak: Notes on the New Planetary Vulgate’, Radical Philosophy105(1), pp. 1–6.

Cairney, P. (2013) ‘What is Evolutionary Theory and How Does It Inform Policy Studies?’, Policy and Politics 41(2), pp.279–298.

Cerny, P.G. (2014) ‘Transnational Neopluralism and the Process of Governance’ in A. Payne and N. Phillips (eds.),Handbook of the International Political Economy of Governance, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, pp. 48–68.

Clegg, S. (1979) The Theory of Power and Organisation, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

CNN (2008) Interview with President Bush [Online]. Available from: http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0812/24/se.03.html [Accessed 16 August 2012].

Crenson, M.A. (1971) The Un-Politics of Air Pollution: A Study of Non-Decisionmaking in the Cities, Baltimore, MD: JohnsHopkins University Press.

Dahl, R. (1957) ‘The Concept of Power’, Behavioral Science 2, pp. 201–205.

Dahl, R. (1961) Who Governs? Power and Democracy in an American City, New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Dahl, R. and Lindblom, C. (1976) Politics, Economics and Welfare, Chicago: University of Chicago.

Dowding, K. (2003) ‘Resources, Power and Systematic Luck: A Response to Barry’, Politics, Philosophy and Economics2(3), pp. 305–322.

Dur, A. (2008) ‘Measuring Interest Group Influence in the EU: A Note on Methodology’, European Union Politics 9(4),pp. 559–577.

Dür, A. and De Bièvre, D. (2007) ‘The Question of Interest Group Influence’, Journal of Public Policy 37(1), pp. 1–12.

Foucault, M. (1982) ‘The Subject and Power’, Critical Inquiry 8(4), pp. 777–795.

Friedman, L.C., Daynard, R.A. and Banthin, C.N. (2005) ‘How Tobacco-Friendly Science Escapes Scrutiny in theCourtroom’, Journal of Public Health 95(s1), pp. s16–s20.

Fuchs, D. (2005) ‘Commanding Heights? The Strength and Fragility of Business Power in Global Politics’, Paperpresented at the Millennium Annual Conference, London.

Gallie, W. (1955) ‘Essentially Contested Concepts’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 56, pp. 167–198.

Gaventa, J. (1980) Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley, Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress.

Gaventa, J. (2006) ‘Finding the Spaces for Change: A Power Analysis’, IDS Bulletin 37, pp. 6–23.

Hay, C. (1997) ‘State of the Art: Divided by a Common Language – Political Theory and the Concept of Power’, Politics17(1), pp. 45–52.

Hayward, C. and Lukes, S. (2008) ‘Nobody to Shoot? Power, Structure and Agency – A Dialogue’, Journal of Power 1(1),pp. 5–20.

Held, D. and McGrew, A. (2003) The Global Transformations Reader, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Hojnacki, M., Kimball, D.C., Baumgartner, F.R., Berry, J.M. and Leech, B.L. (2012) ‘Studying Organizational Advocacyand Influence: Reexamining Interest Group Research’, Annual Review of Political Science 15, pp. 379–399.

Hyland, J.L. (1995) Democratic Theory: The Philosophical Foundations, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Lindblom, C.E. (1977) Politics and Markets: The World’s Political Economic Systems, New York: Basic Books.

Lukes, S. (1974) Power: A Radical View, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Lukes, S. (2005) Power: A Radical View (2nd edn), Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Lyall, S. (2014) What Osborne’s Tax Statements Don’t Tell Us about Welfare [Online]. Available from: http://www.neweconomics.org/blog/entry/what-osbornes-tax-statements-dont-tell-us-about-welfare [Accessed 8January 2015].

12 TERRY HATHAWAY


http://homepages.abdn.ac.uk/p.bernhagen/pages/Power_JPR.pdf

http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0812/24/se.03.html

130 Politics 36(2)

McFarland, A.S. (2007) ‘Neopluralism’, Annual Review of Political Science 10, pp. 45–66.

McGarity, T.O. (2003) ‘Our Science is Sound Science and Their Science is Junk Science: Science-Based Strategies forAvoiding Accountability and Responsibility for Risk-Producing Products and Activities’, University of Kansas LawReview 52(4), pp. 897–937.

Morriss, P. (2002) Power: A Philosophical Analysis, Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Powercube.net (2012a) Hidden Power [Online]. Available from: http://www.powercube.net/analyse-power/forms-of-power/hidden-power/ [Accessed 12 September 2012].

Powercube.net (2012b) Invisible Power and Hegemony [Online]. Available from: http://www.powercube.net/other-forms-of-power/hegemony-and-invisible-power/ [Accessed 13 September 2012].

Powercube.net (2014) Background to the Powercube [Online]. Available from: http://www.powercube.net/analyse-power/what-is-the-powercube/background-to-the-powercube/ [Accessed 10 February 2014].

Schattschneider, E.E. (1960) The Semisovereign People, Hinsdale, IL: Dryden Press.

Shapiro, I. (2006) ‘On the Second Edition of Lukes’ Third Face’, Political Studies Review 4(2), pp. 146–155.

Sinden, A., Kysar, D.A. and Driesen, D.M. (2009) ‘Cost–Benefit Analysis: New Foundations on Shifting Sand’,Regulation and Governance 3(1), pp. 48–71.

Trade Union Congress (TUC) (2013) Support for Benefit Cuts Dependent on Ignorance, TUC-Commissioned Poll Finds [Online].Available from: http://www.tuc.org.uk/social-issues/child-poverty/welfare-and-benefits/tax-credits/support-benefit-cuts-dependent [Accessed 19 March 2014].

York, R. (2006) ‘Ecological Paradoxes: William Stanley Jevons and the Paperless Office’, Human Ecology Review 13(2),pp. 143–147.

About the authorTerry Hathaway currently works at the University of Sheffield. He finished his PhD at the University of Leeds in 2013.Terry Hathaway, Department of Politics, University of Sheffield, Northumberland Road, Sheffield, S10 2TU, UK. E-mail:[email protected]; Twitter: @Terry_Hathaway

LUKES RELOADED 13


Lukes Reloaded: An Actor-Centred Three Dimensional Power Framework

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