Governance and Power

Perspectives on Political Science, 2010

The concept of governance has provided many ways to theorise the shifting power relations between the state, interest groups and civil society over the last 30 years. Theorisations have culminated in 'spatial imaginaries' for visualising new governing practices and their associated power relations. By paying attention to these imaginaries, it is possible to see how each theory of governance brings particular spatialities of power to the fore, while necessarily foreclosing others.This foreclosure stems from a failure to visualise diverse and multiple modes of power in governance models and to take in power as a relative and spatially contingent property. This is not only theoretically significant, however; it also has important practical consequences for how we govern effectively in practice. I argue that rather than starting our analyses of governance arrangements with theoretical models which appear to predetermine our understanding of the spatial workings of power, we should instead remain open and attuned to the complex geographies of power that might actually operate in practices of governance on the ground. I suggest that by deploying John Allen's topological approach to power we can achieve a more relational and spatially contingent account of power in practice under the turn to governance. This will give us greater insight into actual governance arrangements and their limitations, exclusions and unevenness.

This paper is devoted to trace the emergence of governance. Then, paper will reflect on the meaning of governance in the context of global, national and local governance. The discussion will be centered on power and relation that governance arises from lack of capacity to one acting alone to effect desired changes at global, national and local level. Finally, the paper concludes with a brief justification on power and power relation in different context.

Journal of Public and Nonprofit Affairs

Power is an important concept in understanding collaborative governance, however, the existing research is largely dominated by the functional and critical perspectives of power. Aided by a conceptual content analysis of power used in collaborative governance literature in the top public administration journals, we viewed power as a family resemblance concept that should be conceptualized through four perspectives: functional, critical, social construction, and pragmatic. We provide elaboration of each of these four perspectives and propose counterarguments to assumptions that have arisen due to the reliance on a functional or critical perspective of power. We conclude that viewing power as a family resemblance concept with at least four perspectives offers collaborative governance researchers the ability to adopt the best perspective that is the most useful for their analysis and most helpful for public administrators to understand power in their collaborative efforts.

2006

2010

Power and governance: lessons and challenges dr cathy shutt, consultant to christian aid april 2010 GTF governance and TransParency Fund Funded by UKaid Poverty is an outrage against humanity. It robs people of dignity, freedom and hope, of power over their own lives. Christian Aid has a vision-an end to poverty-and we believe that vision can become a reality. We urge you to join us. www.christianaid.org.uk 'Power to the People': Christian Aid's Governance and Transparency Fund programme 'Power to the People: making governance work for marginalised groups' is a five-year multi-country programme aiming to assist groups who have been pushed to the margins of society and left out of decisions to successfully demand better governance. Funded by the UK's Department for International Development through its Governance and Transparency Fund, the programme works with 17 local organisations based in Brazil,

Human Systems Management

This article aims at contributing to governance conceptualization and its application to case study analyses. Two of the challenges which the theoretical and empirical work in the present article address concern a specification of universal dimensions of governance systems and an identification of selected mechanisms of governance formation and transformation – specifying a few key drivers that explain how governance systems are established, maintained or changed through power, knowledge, and contestation/conflict processes. These tools are applied to empirical cases of governance structures as well as cases of governance transformation.

West/International, 2003

This is a chapter about power in groups and organizations. In the following pages, we suggest that the analysis and exploration of the complexities of organizational power by managers and workers is both necessary and useful. We begin by discussing three of the prominent theoretical perspectives on power from the literatures of social and organizational psychology and critical management studies. We then outline some of the dilemmas and challenges faced by executives, managers and workers around empowerment, disempowerment and organizational democracy. Then, building on the seminal works of Follet, Deutsch, Tjosvold, Clegg, Mumby and others, we offer a framework of organizational power which views power as a multifaceted phenomenon; as thoughts, words and deeds which are both embedded within and determining of a complex network of relations, structures and meaning-making processes at different levels of organizational and community life. Such a framework enables us to understand the relational aspects of power and authority within the context of the macro structures and ideologies that give them meaning. It can also help identify those domains in organizations where the potential for sharing cooperative power is, in fact, not disempowering, but genuinely empowering for all concerned. The chapter concludes with a set of practical recommendations for managers that emphasize the benefits of multiple emancipatory initiatives within organizations when implemented with respect to the paradoxes of power.

Sustainability Science, 2022

The concept of commoning is continuing to gain scholarly interest, with multiple definitions and interpretations across different research communities. In this article, we define commoning as the actions by groups with shared interests towards creating shared social and relational processes as the basis of governance strategy. Perhaps it can be more simply defined as collective ways of relating and governing. This article addresses two specific gaps in the commoning literature: (1) to bridge disparate strands of literature on commoning by briefly reviewing each and arguing for integration through epistemic pluralism, and (2) to explicitly examine how power is manifest in commoning processes by bringing in a framework on power (i.e., power over, power with, power to, power within) to understand the links between power and commoning governance processes in two case studies. The two cases are tourism governance on Gili Trawangan, Indonesia and aquatic food production systems in Bulacan, Philippines. We preface this analysis with the argument that power is an integral part of the commoning concept, but that it has yet to be analytically integrated to applications of the broader institutional analysis and development framework or within the networks of action situations approach. We argue that by making explicit how an analysis of power can be coupled to a network of action situations analysis in a qualitative way, we are advancing a key feature of the commoning concept, which we introduce as rooted in epistemic and analytical pluralism in the analysis of governance. In the discussion, we expand on how each case study reveals each of the four power dynamics, and how they improve the understanding of commoning as a pluralistic and perhaps bridging analytical concept.

While cross-sector partnerships are sometimes depicted as a pragmatic problem solving arrangements devoid of politics and power, they are often characterized by power dynamics. Asymmetries in power can have a range of undesirable consequences as low-power actors may be co-opted, ignored, overruled , or excluded by dominant parties. As of yet, there has been relatively little conceptual work on the power strategies that actors in cross-sector partnerships deploy to shape collective decisions to their own advantage. Insights from across the literatures on multiparty collaboration, cross-sector partnerships, interactive governance, collaborative governance, and network governance, are integrated into a theoretical framework for empirically analyzing power sources (resources, discursive legitimacy, authority) and power strategies (power over and power in cross-sector partnerships). Three interrelated claims are central to our argument: (1) the intersection between the issue field addressed in the partnership and an actor's institutional field shape the power sources available to an actor; (2) an actor can mobilize these power sources directly in strategies to achieve power in cross-sector partnerships; and, (3) an actor can also mobilize these power sources indirectly, through setting the rules of the game, to achieve power over partnerships. The framework analytically connects power dynamics to their broader institutional setting and allows for spelling out how sources of power are used in direct and indirect power strategies that steer the course of cross-sector partnerships. The resulting conceptual framework provides the groundwork for pursuing new lines of empirical inquiry into power dynamics in cross-sector partnerships.