Perspectives on Distribution of Power

We have noted earlier that the liberal view of politics treats power as a means through which authoritative allocation of resources in society is made, conflict is resolved through negotiation and persuasion and influence is exercised. This necessarily involves the question of how is power in a society distributed and how does its distribution affect the conflict resolution and resource distribution? Answer to this gives us the clue as to how decisions are made and in whose favour they are made. Is there any dominant group, which decides or influences decision in its own favour, or is a decision being taken and resource being allocated in general welfare? It also involves the issue of who wields decisive power—various groups in society, or selected elites, or a particular class, or a select group of dominant classes, or males at the cost of women. There are various ways in which distribution of power in society can be viewed and structure of power analysed. Generally, distribution of power in society is related to distribution of various dimensions of power—political, legal, coercive, economic and ideological. Further, distribution is related to functions, power performs for example, political parties require different types of power than the pressure groups and trade unions or industrialists who require power different from political elites. Power distribution defines relations between groups of citizens with the state and political authority. Within the liberal perspective, we have a classical democratic view of power held by the majority, a pluralist view of power diversification, an elitist view of power distribution amongst the top echelons of various fields of society and a corporatist view of power sharing between the state, industrial class and the trade union.²⁹

In the Marxian perspective, distribution of power in a society is related to the class, which owns the means of production and is economically dominant. Though there are varying interpretations about the organic link between the economically dominant class and the exercise of power, there are two interpretations about the same, one as per the orthodox Marxian view of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Miliband and another according to the neo-Marxian view upheld by Poulantzas and others.

The feminist perspective on power distribution includes a variety of streams ranging from demands that seek distribution of political rights based on gender equality to allegations of patriarchy as the normal structure of power distribution in society.

Broadly, there are three perspectives on distribution of power—Liberal, Marxian and Feminist. Within the liberal perspective, there are separate perspectives such as functionalist, elitist, pluralist and corporatists, a refined variant of pluralism. Within the Marxian, we have orthodox Marxian and neo-Marxian perspectives. Within the Feminist perspective, there are liberal, socialist and radical views.³⁰ .