Theories of power,Lakatosian research programmes,and dialectical realism: A response to our commentators

We have been honored to present our work as a memorial to Richard Lachmann and his work on elite theory. We extended his work to present a theory of power and social change: as Göçek noted, in summary, we strive to consider all social actors, both elites and nonelites, and we focus on the intersection of expressions of power with mechanisms of power. As Goodwin and Lee noted, we present a relational theory of power; this means that power, and its various forms, refers to both a relationship, and that the actors enmeshed in these relationships are also constituted by them. Accordingly, the power of all social actors, and their existence as actors, is considered in relation to others. We try not to consider elites, nonelites, or power in isolation. As Lee noted, despite the recurrence of rebellion and resistance, nonelites, in particular, are often ignored. Finally, as Goodwin noted, we argued that these expressions and mechanisms of power rarely operate alone: most often they combine to create complex processes.

Perhaps the most common response to our work is a discussion of the categories themselves. We propose six mechanisms of power (organizational, associational, structural, coalitional, ideational, and material resources) and five expressions of power (visibility, formality, depth, consensuality, and directionality). Our interlocutors, both outside and inside of this set of written commentaries, often suggest that perhaps we propose too many categories, and thus, our explanation is not parsimonious. Or perhaps we have not presented enough categories, and we miss fundamental ones. Or perhaps we have mislabeled them, and there are actually other social phenomena instead. We take up these criticisms here.

One of the most common criticisms of our approach is that it “misses” some type of power; for example, why do we not have political power as one of our types? Our answer is that in most cases, the type of power is a combination of what we call expressions and mechanisms of power. For example, political power is usually a complex combination of all of the mechanisms of power and the expressions of power we identify (visibility, formality, depth, consensuality, and directionality; Emigh and Riley, 2024: 21). Thus, it is not that we are missing political power—instead our approach tries to break down complexities of power into intersecting and interlocking parts.

But, how many types of power exist? As Goodwin and Kahn noted, some conceptualizations of power are quite simple, with just a few forms, while some are quite complicated. There are obvious advantages and disadvantages to both, as Kahn noted. Parsimonious explanations are simple, but rarely cover all of social reality, while complicated ones are often difficult to use, though they are much more comprehensive. We have no abstract solution to this issue—it is inherent in social science research. We argue that our conceptualization aims to think of concrete ways that power is constituted socially, with a well-thought-out component parts. As both Goodwin and Kahn noted, our theory is a complex one. Kahn noted that one way to think of our theory is in terms of a thirty-way typology, while Goodwin also noted that the mechanisms and expressions combine in complicated ways. We claim we have a complex, but socially accurate theory.

Goodwin raises a related issue, of whether we have identified the correct mechanisms and expressions. Namely, is there a thinking-feeling mechanism that replaces ideational power? Or is feeling power, that is, emotional power, another mechanism that exists alongside of ideational power? As for the specific point that Goodwin raised, about renaming the ideational mechanism to be the thinking-feeling mechanism, we have no objection, but perhaps it is just a matter of noting that ideology generally does have an emotive aspect. This could have been elucidated in our original paper. Ideology has at least three dimensions, and they are all tightly bundled. Ideologies are partly cognitive frameworks that allow for knowing; they are also forms of emotional investment (as anyone who has tried to produce an argument knows). Finally, they are projects about what is to be done. Some of the confusion here may derive from sense that the word “idea” has in English where it is often held to refer to a viewpoint on an external word. We are more Hegelian in this respect in seeing ideas as entangled with circumstances and embodied in emotionally charged agents. In sum, we agree with Goodwin’s substantive point.

Another issue, though it probably goes beyond just naming, is Rojas Garcia’s point that the correct categories of analysis are the social groups that constitute elites, such as White, Asian, global, etc. We agree with Rojas Garcia that these labels designate, in common parlance, eliteness. However, there is nothing inherent in being called White that makes anyone elite. Whiteness confers privilege because of a set of historical circumstances that gave people who were racialized as White privileges. This racialization was, and is, a social process that confers social status and privilege. This is a social reality, and one that needs investigation. However, it is a separate analytic task from thinking of mechanisms of power. Racialization is itself a power relationship, one that might be understood as composed of mechanisms of ideation, association, and resources, and expressions of visibility and formality.

We are not particularly concerned that we have missed some particular piece or that some particular piece is missing. Nor are we particularly concerned that a component part needs a different label. We think of our work as trying to establish a Lakatosian (Lakatos, 1970: 132) research programme that would develop over time to expand or contract the exact number of component parts based on continued theorization and empirical research. We invite others to investigate it further. If a good case can be made for additional mechanisms and expressions, then they could be added to our typology. However, we stress that additions should be made at the level of the mechanisms and expressions, not at the level of combinations of them (such as political power). Combinations of them can be named in different ways, without adding mechanisms and expressions. We argue that our theory is not so much an exact accounting for the number and names of power but rather a way to understand complexes of power in social reality.

As for Goodwin’s point that mechanisms and expressions are outcomes as well as causes, we generally agree with his point, and we take his point that this was perhaps implicitly not explicitly. We believe, also that we would conceptualize the point in a slightly different way. Goodwin suggests that our mechanisms are themselves determined by power relationships. But this would be a never-ending cycle of mechanisms of mechanisms, etc. Instead, we use our dialectical realist understanding of relations and things (kinds or relata) to think about this. (Emigh et al., 2024: 295). For the purposes of the exposition of power, we think about mechanisms and expressions as things. However, this is of course a shorthand. At another level, they are relations themselves, which can be analyzed as such9. However, they also form social kinds that we can analyze as such. It is in this sense we analyzed them in our essay.

A word is necessary about Bourdieu’s sociology. We are not Bourdieuseans and are probably more skeptical of his overall approach than most US sociologists. In the context of elite theory, the major problem is how limited Bourdieu’s relational approach is. It is true that the French sociologist insists on understanding groups of elites as constituted in antagonistic connection with one another. Yet, because his approach is entirely silent about nonelites and has virtually nothing to say about the connections between elites and nonelites, it is relational in only one, horizontal, dimension.

We also appreciate that Kahn noted our pluralistic approach, and we in general agree with him that our approach can be quite widely applied. However, we are not agnostic—we ourselves think our dialectical realist approach is superior, even though we also believe that elements of our approach are easily adopted into other philosophical frameworks (Riley et al., 2021: 349–350). We argue that this is our take-away point: we have proposed a general theoretical framework that can be widely used, modified, and improved upon by many researchers from a variety of theoretical perspectives, but we also suggest that is extends our own Lakatosian research programme embedded in a dialectical realist perspective. Our commentators suggest that this is possible: Lee reminds our readers of the applications to the study of colonialism and imperialism, and other commentators point to the diversity of the chapters of our edited volume as evidence for the further applicability of our theory. Along these lines, we also appreciate Göçek’s comment that we have developed a critical theory of social change.