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In this chapter, I have reviewed the power literature in order to answer the question: what conceptual tools can power theory provide for researching and rethinking power in participatory planning?
Drawing on the work of Haugaard (2010a) and Wittgenstein (1967), I started out by proposing that it is useful to treat power as a family resemblance concept in participatory planning. This plural view of power means that power is seen as a cluster of overlapping concepts, which are all related to the reproduction of social order, but not necessarily united by one common feature. I argued that this view of power carries potential for researching and rethinking notions of power in planning theory, policy and practice.
Next, I substantiated this claim by developing the family of four power concepts which is displayed in Table 7.
Table 7. The power family in participatory planning Concept Definition
Power to The ability to act derived from social order.
Power with Actors engage in concerted action towards shared goals.
Illegitimate power over Actors get other actors to do what they otherwise would not have done, in a manner that is seen as unacceptable.
Legitimate power over Actors get other actors to do what they otherwise would not have done, in a manner that is seen as acceptable.
Power to explicates notions of power as constitutive and productive. In my power family, power to is seen as a dispositional ability, which can be exercised by planning actors episodically. When the ability to act, the power to, is exercised, normative questions come forth. The legitimacy of power in participatory planning is situated in a specific context and frequently contested.
Legitimacy can be approached with sociological interest or normative interest and can be concerned with process and/or outcome of an planning episode.
Normative notions of power are, in the power family, conceptualised through the family members power with, legitimate power over and illegitimate power over. Notably, I thereby correct the mistaken idea that power over is equated with domination and instead distinguish two kinds of power over.
In line with the interpretative research design of this thesis (see Chapter 3), the concepts in the power family are not intended to signify the essence of power, rather they are ideal typical conceptualisations of alternative notions of power, which can potentially enable reflective practice.
Some might critique the family of power concepts for having a bias towards specific notions of power. To them I would first respond that agent-specific notions are important in planning practice, since they stress both the responsibility and possibility for planners and other actors to make a difference.
Secondly, I would point to how systemic, “faceless” notions of power, are included within power to as well as in illegitimate and legitimate power over.
Within power to I have included Haugaard’s (2003) theory of power creation, which synthesises the work of key contributors to the less agent-specific views of power. My discussion of the two forms of power over includes Lukes’ (1974, 2005) third dimension as well as Haugaard´s (2012) rethinking of it.
I would also like to explicitly acknowledge that notions of power in actor network theory and similar “post human” theories (Callon and Latour, 1981;
Latour et al., 1988), which are increasingly influential in planning thought related to power (e.g. Metzger et al., 2016), have not been included in the power family. This is not because I find them irrelevant for participatory planning practice. Instead I have, for reasons of feasibility, decided to leave this body of
theory outside of the family of power concepts. I recognise the future need to include these kinds of sophisticated tools for power analysis in attempts to further broaden the conceptual support for reflective practice.
Some scholars might fault me for merely including one concept of unacceptable power in the family, illegitimate power over. Let me therefore explain that this choice does not mean that I assume that power with and power to are legitimate by definition. Crucially, I define power to as dispositional. I find it logical to argue that the need to assess if this kind of power is legitimate arises only when it is exercised, which I conceptually cover with the other members in the family. Regarding power with, it is important to acknowledge that this form of power can lead to the exercise of illegitimate power over by one group over another group(s).
Finally, it is crucial to understand that the four members of the power family are ideal types. In any real world interaction, the concepts might be useful for distinguishing features of a situation, but this does not exclude the possibility that all four forms of power might be present in the same situation and that actors might come to alternative sociological and normative conclusions about what is actually “going on with power” (cf. Allen, 1998; Flyvbjerg, 2004).
In the following chapters, the power family will first be applied and tested through investigations of the treatment of power in communicative planning theory and Swedish participatory planning policy and practice (Chapters 5-7).
Then, in the concluding Chapter 8, I will synthesise the findings in view of validating the usefulness of the power family.
In a world of conflicting interestsʊdefined along lines of class, place, gender, organization, or individualsʊhow are planners to make their way? (Forester, 1989, p. 5) […] in the fine grain of planning practice, planners not only bring power relations into being, […] they also have the choice to change them. (Healey, 2003: 117)
[Habermas] focuses his attention on the development of critical or emancipatory ways of knowing that are designed to get past the embedded power relations in a society.
These ideas are attractive to planners. (Innes, 1995, p. 186)
This chapter presents the findings from a frame analysis of the notions of power in communicative planning theory. The findings feed into answering Research Questions 2 and 3: which basic notions of power are embedded in participatory planning? To what extent are these notions enabling reflective practice? The findings presented in this chapter pertain to the notions of power in the communicative planning theory, which underpins participatory planning. While notions of power in Swedish participatory planning policy and practice are clarified and assessed through separate investigations presented in Chapters 6 and 7.
The first section presents and discusses the analysis of the work of three leading communicative planning scholars: John Forester, Judith Innes and Patsy Healey. A consensual process frame is identified as informing all three scholars’
approaches to power. In contrast, the scholars’ framing of the planners’ roles in power relations is more diverse. Here the analysis finds three alternative identity frames: the facilitator, the critically pragmatic planner and the reflexive planner.
It is thereby revealed how communicative planning theory has more to offer than some of its critiques acknowledge. Yet, it is also demonstrated how the treatment of power in this theory suffers from a lack of attention to productive and constitutive notions of power to and a conflation of power over with domination.