Annotated Bibliography of Contra Wight: the Errors of a Premature Writing, the Eighty Years’ Crisis, 1919-1999—Power, and Communism, Fascism and Counter-Revolution in World Politics.
Hirst, P. (1998). The eighty years’ crisis, 1919-1999—power. England: Cambridge University Press.
In this chapter, the author examined and enumerated the different types of power conceptualized during that eight decade gap. Paul Hirst started off with the most dominant concept of power using Bertrand Russell’s “Power: A new social Analysis”(1938) as a direct reference. He explained three main aspects of power in the social sciences; Power as a factor in the relations between actors, power as a simple quantitative capacity thus making it as a competition, and lastly, power as a zero-sum game.
Then he moved on to Hindess’ analysis of power as a simple given quantity. He believed that power can only be achieved by the ruler of a political community if he/she is duly recognized by the citizens as their leader. This has been the central idea of modern international relations thinking. But it is still a part of the capacity-outcome view of power which Hindess is trying to ignore due to its simplicity. He enumerated the reasons why a capacity-outcome view weaken its right as an explanatory device based on Hindess. First is that power is an interaction and one in which the reciprocal action of the parties’ means that each actor’s moves conditions the action of the other, and the different means to exercise ‘power’ are seldom compatible.
The author also mentioned a famous political philosopher and sociologist that touched the topics explaining power relations like Talcott Parsons and Michael Foucault to show their own views of the topic. As a sociologist, Parsons considered power as a property of the social system and it is a medium for mobilizing resources.Still it will end as a zero-sum game and at the same time actors may mutually benefit from the increase of power within the social system. For Focault, power is productive and not merely negative, does not merely compel subjects to submit to the will of another and is applied to transform both the nature
In this chapter, the author examined and enumerated the different types of power conceptualized during that eight decade gap. Paul Hirst started off with the most dominant concept of power using Bertrand Russell’s “Power: A new social Analysis”(1938) as a direct reference. He explained three main aspects of power in the social sciences; Power as a factor in the relations between actors, power as a simple quantitative capacity thus making it as a competition, and lastly, power as a zero-sum game.
Then he moved on to Hindess’ analysis of power as a simple given quantity. He believed that power can only be achieved by the ruler of a political community if he/she is duly recognized by the citizens as their leader. This has been the central idea of modern international relations thinking. But it is still a part of the capacity-outcome view of power which Hindess is trying to ignore due to its simplicity. He enumerated the reasons why a capacity-outcome view weaken its right as an explanatory device based on Hindess. First is that power is an interaction and one in which the reciprocal action of the parties’ means that each actor’s moves conditions the action of the other, and the different means to exercise ‘power’ are seldom compatible.
The author also mentioned a famous political philosopher and sociologist that touched the topics explaining power relations like Talcott Parsons and Michael Foucault to show their own views of the topic. As a sociologist, Parsons considered power as a property of the social system and it is a medium for mobilizing resources.Still it will end as a zero-sum game and at the same time actors may mutually benefit from the increase of power within the social system. For Focault, power is productive and not merely negative, does not merely compel subjects to submit to the will of another and is applied to transform both the nature