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Power in International Relations

Power Politics Theories

In international relations, theories that center around power, known as power politics theories, are central to understanding the reasons for which a state goes to war. Quantitative methods, namely quantitative conflict studies, use empirical means to explain and describe power politics theories. However, this approach is often criticized as being less useful when war involves non-state actors. Power transition theory attempts to address this by involving non-state actors in war studies. Waltz claims that power politics exists when the international order is anarchic and involves the survival of states.

Types of Power

In international relations, power can be considered as hard or soft.

Hard power in international relations involves the achievement of a goal through forceful means. Hard power is measured using a range of factors such as the size of military, area, natural resources, and the comparative economy of a particular state.

Contrarily, as the term suggests, soft power in international relations involves influencing other states through non-coercive means. This may include cultural values, political values, and moral values, as well as institutions. One of the main criticisms of soft power is that it is very subjective and difficult to measure. Another criticism is that the institutions used to reinforce soft power are often lacking in authority. Furthermore, institutions, such as those in the USA, tend to be uncoordinated in their approach, on the other hand, hard power can be easily quantified. Having said this, soft power is becoming increasingly important in a more globalised world and many international relations scholars believe its influence is set to increase.

Power in economics

Game Theory

Game theory relates to the discipline of economics as it involves the analysis of economic agents and how their degree of rationality affects their decision-making. It inextricably links mathematics and economics in order to make such an analysis of behaviour. Nonetheless, this key concept may haveve useful applications in various other disciplines.

Game theory relates to power primarily due to the two branches of game theory which exist: cooperative and noncooperative games. These concepts revolve around competition and, therefore, whether the power lies in one of the economic agent's favour. This distribution of power is critical in producing an outcome favourable to that particular economic agent. Hence, these concepts utilise power as a type of strategy. The issue of power relates primarily to the economic agent’s preferences and motivations. However, it is not always easy to determine an individual’s motivations as they are fluid, but power is key as it a key determinant of decision making.

Power becomes an issue as there are multiple ways to play such as simultaneously or subsequently, allowing the power dynamic to shift in one’s favour. Asymmetric information would destabilise any power equilibrium in favour of one economic agent, but this may be reduced by aims such as altruism due to social preferences ensuring a fair split. Playing a dominant strategy would cause the power to lie in that players favour as a result of their aims to benefit themselves

The extent that notorious games such as the prisoner’s dilemma would be affected by the issue of power dependent upon the individual's preferences possibly resulting in a Nash equilibrium or an alternative outcome.

Knowledge production and power

Collaboration and the power of knowledge produced

In disciplines which utilise the scientific method, knowledge power is understood as the ability to confirm the researchers' experimental hypotheses in scientific investigations (which may lead to the production of further knowledge), and answer questions of interest in the world. Collaborative knowledge production allows academics to increase the power of the knowledge produced, particularly in such disciplines as psychology. In his analysis, Paul Thagard recorded that 75% of all research in the Cognitive Psychology Journal was the result of a collaborative effort, indicating the power of knowledge which may arise out of group investigations in comparison to independent research. Collaborative knowledge may be more powerful in psychology, as its production uses distributed cognition- a manner in which knowledge offloads between a collection of individuals who substantiate new information in their interactions- in the pursuit of knowledge. This may give rise to powerful interdisciplinary theories, seen in the creation of Prospect Theory, in Psychology. The theory explains the irrationality and judgement errors which occur as individuals make decisions, based on perceived prospective gains or potential losses. The concepts may apply both to everyday life and economic settings. The theory posits that, when presented with information in decision-making, individuals focus on the minor possibilities of loss, which they aim to avert, rather than maximising gains (loss aversion).

Prospect Theory is a highly influential and powerful theory in both economic and social psychology. It was the product of a collaboration between Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky, two individuals with distinct academic backgrounds and approaches to psychological research. Tversky was an optimistic mathematical psychologist who relied on models to explain decision-making processes. On the other hand, Kahneman was a conscientious, neurotic psychologist whose research centred around vision. In research, the duo's contrasting personalities and methodologies increased the power of the knowledge produced. For example, Michael Lewis comments that Kahneman often pointed out possible flaws in their work, which were proactively addressed by Tversky. The power in the resulting theory increased due to these distinct approaches towards psychological research, enabling them to communicate, inspire and learn from one another. The researchers found a common language in their work, which helped them to create a powerful theory in economic and social psychology. The creation of Prospect Theory highlights the importance of using collaboration to produce powerful knowledge that could not have otherwise been produced solely by an individual.

Power in Medicine

The possession of power by institutions and those who make up these institutions dictates what becomes knowledge. This is commonly referred to as “power-knowledge”. The term coined by Foucault can then be applied when discussing the production of medical knowledge by scientific/ medicinal institutions. Institutions hold power as the knowledge they create can affect individuals which contributes to the marginalisation of different groups of people. The theory plays a part in the social construction of medicine and the medicalisation of bodies and the experiences of individuals suffering from disease. The normalisation of medical issues and diseases is a form of power-knowledge and has adverse effects on the approaches to diseases and furthermore the individual’s experience, which filters the knowledge produced about and for the disease.

An example of how institutional power can influence the production of medical knowledge is that of breast cancer in women. The lack of contextualisation of the histories on the individual's experience has lead to the marginalisation of women in their experiences of breast cancer, as until now the 'normal' and the 'deviant' have been ingrained in the formation of knowledge in medicine. Institutions that produced knowledge in order to understand this disease contained positions primarily obtained by men. Scientific institutions lead research with the understanding that empiricism meant objective which negated the individual experience. As this continued, the predominantly white male populous of these institutions did not see medicine as something that required contextualisation for understanding. Women with breast cancer were no longer individuals but became objects of study, taking away their individuality and removing their own relationships with the disease. The medicalisation of bodies demonstrates the power of institutions on the individual, the body, and the collective group (women who experience breast cancer). This positionality of men caused a predetermined idea of normality which in turn created a specific knowledge framework, confining the individual experiences of women as they became stigmatised whilst their bodies became altered by medical experiences.

Power in Media

The notion of power in media can play a key role in establishing the patterns of access to the mass media: who will be interviewed, who will be featured and quoted and in news reports, and whose opinions will have an impact on the general public. Through access to the mass media, dominant groups also may have access to and partial control over the public. The shaping of one's reality or perception is based on three elements including experienced reality, symbolic reality, and socially constructed reality. Individuals make assumptions on the world based on what their media tells them. The media is a hegemonic form of power that maintains its significance, not by physical imposition of force, but rather through developing and elaborating on a particular point of view, system, idealogy, which eventually is incorporated into everyday practices of the general public.

Socially constructed reality

The values we hold, the beliefs we gather and the decisions we make are based on our assumptions, our experiences and the education we have received. Social construct allows us to rely on mass media for the current news and facts about what is crucial and what we should be aware of. We trust the media as an authority for news, information, education and entertainment. Hence, thanks to this established emotional response (trust) towards media, the society is more susceptible to its suggestions and implications.

Experienced reality

Experienced reality is that reality which is achieved through senses and intuition. It underlies all of our cognitive efforts. Because direct experience is mainly sensory, automatic and constant, we pay less attention to it than the reality we have to work at to construct. Experiences reality initiates the idea that modern society needs to see in order to believe - big media conglomerates use this notion to create cultural bias towards our experiences.

Symbolic reality

Symbols are prominently used to exercise a sort of power due to their importance in the society - it's a universal language understood by a particular group of people. Every society has evolved a unique system of symbols that reflects a specific cultural logic, and every symbolism functions to communicate in a much subtler way than conventional language. Due to symbolism's social and cultural prominence and universality, it is often used by media to channel their take on a discussed matter.

Power in Development Studies

Case study: Guinean forest history

Studies on the history of the vegetation in Kissigoudou, West Guinea (savanna patched with forest islands), expose radically diverse conclusions that inspire very different policies.

The degraded forest "narrative"

Many observations conducted in the colonial period and during the first Republic that followed it assumed that the landscape used to be covered in trees and got recently degraded due to local people behaviour (farming, fire pratices) and population growth. They state that the loss of traditional practices and changes in behaviour such as commercialisation in the rural milieu strongly impacted the state of forests. Another factor in the loss of forest cover is said to be a rapid population growth, which encouraged villagers to exploit more land. These assumptions, which mainly blame population land use, were followed by policies that regulate local practices: delimitation of areas to be farmed, regulation of fires through prohibitions and practices such as early burning, plantation of trees in savanna areas... and many other measures that weakened villagers' control over resources. We then see the power of social scientists and how their observations can shape policies.

The "counternarrative"

Another view of the evolution of Kissigidou's vegetation is that the landscape never had more trees in the past, may even be more tree dense today, and that the past locals generations enriched the vegetation by planting trees around their settlments. This side of the story qualifies the previously mentionned point of view as a "narratives" -stories that seem obvious and justify development action- that "once dissected from the reality they seek to construct, (...) reveal instead how the applied social sciences can be used to lend weight to popular Western perceptions about African society and environment." Searchers on this side criticize past social scientists for idealizing a harmonious, better past, that neglects observations in different times that prove otherwise, and argue that today's practices are degrading, which results in repressive policies. They also argue taht more population means more people to control fires and can help densify forests, and they advocate for more inclusive policies that support local practices.