Bringing States Back In

There is little of value to be said about the concept of power as such. The term itself is best seen as invoking the ‘total structure of actions brought to bear’ by some on the actions of others. What is of interest, then, is not power as such but rather the special cases in which relatively stable configurations of power can be identified. Lukes’ focus on domination obscures the significance of other configurations. One is the political power of the state, which Lukes simply takes for granted, focusing instead on the question of who has control over its use. Another, which overlaps with political power but is not reducible to it, is government of the state. The system of states is the site of a third major limitation in PRV's discussion, which is the point of the plural, states, in my title. Neither the American debate to which PRV made an influential late contribution nor Lukes’ expanded discussion have much to say about the role of these configurations of power in the world today. A view of power that simply ignores them may be radical in certain respects but it is blinkered in others.