Politics and Power

Power

• The ability to shape actions, behaviour and systems.

• Can be coercive/state focused (wolf)

• But also productive, relational and embedded in social structures (Foucault)

• Critique: too broad, difficult to locate responsibility

Didier Fassin:

• In refugee systems states help migrants

• But also monitor, categorise and control them

• Power shapes behaviour, not just force it

Productive power

• Foucault

• Power produces knowledge norms and behaviour.

Four modes of power:

• Eric Wolf.

• Personal- individual ability

• Interactional- control over others

• Tactical- control over institutions

• Structural- shapes the entire system.

• Power is multi layered but it doesn’t explain legitimacy, why do people accept that power?

Power and responsibility:

• Power is everywhere (Foucault)

• But this makes it difficult to locate

• Who is responsible for inequality? structural flaw

Lauren Berlant:

• People within poverty are not killed

• They are slowly worn down by stress, poor health, inequality

• Suggests society is structurally flawed

Legitimacy

• The state depends on it

• Authority is constructed not natural (Weber, Hobbes)

• e.g. Durkheim: courts, people accept decisions because they believe in the system through ritual (robes etc)

Charisma

• Weber

• Authority from belief that leader is extraordinary, creates loyalty

• But unstable as belief can change

State

• Weber

• State is a monopoly on legitimate violence

• e.g. police v criminal force

• Ignores global/transnational power

State effect:

• Mitchell

• State appears real and unified

• BUT it is produced through everyday practices

• Not a fixed object

State system v state idea:

• State system: actual institutions

• State idea: image of a coherent state

• We confuse the two

State boundary problem:

• No clear boundary between state and society

• Separation is constructed not natural

Bureaucracy

• Weber

• System of rule based on rational-legal authority

• e.g. government departments, rationalised forms of domination

Bureaucracy produces the state:

• Documents, rules, institutions

• Makes the state appear real (mitchell)

Bureaucracy and power:

• Power works through everyday routines

• Not just top down decisions

Sovereignty

• Internal: control within state

• External: independence internationally, supreme authority

• BUT sovereignty is not absolute

• E.g. Palestine appears sovereign as it has govt and territory but lacks full control as borders are controlled by Israel and movement is restricted (Bishara)

Sovereignty as constructed:

• Navaro-Yashin

• Northern Cyprus is not recognised as a real state and is not sovereign

• BUT people have passports, there are laws and it feels like a real state

• Therefore, sovereignty is not just legal recognition but is constructed through experience and belief

Layered sovereignty

• Multiple powers exist at once

• In Palestine there is Palestinian authority, Israeli military controlling borders and NGO’s

• No single authority has full control but the layers are not equal either

• Suggests sovereignty is not absolute

Sovereignty vs reality:

• States may appear powerful

• BUT lack full control e.g. Palestinian authority lacks control, Israeli military have the most power

New power

• Biopower, “make live and let die”

• Optimise life not destroy it

• Foucault: power that manages life and populations

• e.g. healthcare, welfare keep people healthy and increase productivity

Old power

• Sovereign power, the right to kill.

• Power shows itself through death “take life or let live”

• Wat, executions

Necropolitics

• Mbembe

• Power still decides who lives and dies

• e.g. war zones, borders

• But there is an overemphasis on violence

Necro-labour

• Mohammadpour

• In Kurdish border regions, koblers carry goods across mountains

• Dangerous: cold weather, illegal so can get shot/freeze to death

• People are forced to risk death to survive

• Life and death become inseparable

Ambivalent hospitality

• Fassin, european asylum seekers

• States show care but also control

• Refugee camps: you get food shelter and safety but you are being watched and regulated

• Care is not neutral, it is a way of governing people

Slow death

• Berlant

• Gradual deterioration of life over time

• Poverty, labour, exploitation

• Power harms slowly, not just violently