Faces of Power Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Faces of Power - Essay Example the destructive power – a structure involving threats and this is clearly depicted by how the defensive forces of any country act, Productive power – structure that entails making and creating e.g. exchange and trade, and the integrative power that involves creating of new relationships that encourage togetherness (Dahl, 1961, 7). Significantly, any face or form of power has its advantages and disadvantages and it is up to the people in power to identify them and weigh on both sides to ensure that negativity does not have a greater impact more than the positive side. The social structures connection with power is seen when for instance; in an organisation the power is distributed among the different employees or in a state where power is divided from the head of state down to the governors or senators (Ball,1992, 5). In such situations, communication and the decision making processes are the core factors required since everything is done through a hierarchical structure . Many political scientists have come up or rather tried to elaborate the different faces of power on the verge of making people comprehend the power structure more and thus due to the different notions and theories sometimes there is a lot of confusion. However, the most common structures of power include; institution of property, nation-state, knowledge structure, financial structure, production structure (Productive power) and the security structure (Susan, 2004, 64). With these many structures, some of which are not related or similar in any way, it is quite hard for most people to lean upon two or three forms/faces of power alone. However, out of all the faces of power established, Lukes’ seem to have had a great impact and they still are today; reflectively, between January 1975 and June 2006, more than 1200 journal articles cited his article, an impressive figure by any standard and surprisingly after this Lukes was asked to do a second edition. It has been over thirty years since the publications and scholars agree that he wrote the articles on other bases and not to make money; concurrently, analysis of both editions provides readers with both recent literature and original insights on power. Basically, in the second edition (2005), the 1974 (1st Edition) essay was not altered but instead a substantive introduction and other two new chapters were added (Power, Freedom and Reason and Three-Dimensional Power); moreover, a little bit more attention was given to some writers like James Scott and Michel Foucault, all of which are also in the social context of power. Power is typically a concept where a ‘first’ person (entity A) exercises power over the ‘second’ person (entity B) when A affects B in a way that is divergent to what the second person wants or would like (Lukes, 2005, 19). In the final edition Lukes discusses three dimensions of power and terms the third one to be as a personal view based on the shortcomings of other people’s views but and a more apposite way on how to evaluate power. First Face of Power (One Dimensional Power) This face of power focuses on behavior when making decisions, particularly on the core issues and fundamentally only in transparently in situations where can make observations; these often take the structure of prejudiced interests like policy preferences that are mainly demonstrated through political power. Through the concept of power individuals are able to modify or change the behavior of others when it comes to the process of making decisions, which is why it is considered to be a behavioral aspect; however, the person in power in different situations prevails in the decision making process. Principally, this first face of power, which is one-dimensional, focuses on behavi