Finding the Spaces for Change: a Power Analysis
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Finding the Spaces for Change: A Power Analysis John Gaventa* 1 Introduction governance’ challenge our traditional categories of Around the world, new spaces and opportunities are the rulers and the ruled, the policymakers and the emerging for citizen engagement in policy processes, public. The use of terms such as ‘partnership’ and from local to global levels. Policy instruments, legal ‘shared ownership’ by large, powerful actors like the frameworks and support programmes for promoting World Bank and the International Monetary Fund them abound. Yet, despite the widespread rhetorical (IMF) invite engagement on a ‘level playing field’ but acceptance, it is also becoming clear that simply obscures inequalities of resources and power. The creating new institutional arrangements will not adoption by multinational corporate actors of necessarily result in greater inclusion or pro-poor notions of ‘corporate citizenship’, blurs traditional ‘us’ policy change. Rather, much depends on the nature and ‘them’ distinctions between economic power of the power relations which surround and imbue holders and those who might negatively be affected these new, potentially more democratic, spaces. by their corporate practices. And in the midst of all of this changing language and discourse, rapid Critical questions are to be asked. Does this new processes of globalisation challenge ideas of terrain represent a real shift in power? Does it really ‘community’ and the ‘nation-state’, reconfiguring the open up spaces where participation and citizen voice spatial dynamics of power, and changing the can have an influence? Will increased engagement assumptions about the entry points for citizen within them risk simply re-legitimating the status action. quo, or will it contribute to transforming patterns of exclusion and social injustice and to challenging All of these changes point to the need for activists, power relationships? In a world where the local and researchers, policymakers and donors who are the global are so interrelated, where patterns of concerned about development and change to turn governance and decision making are changing so our attention to how to analyse and understand the quickly, how can those seeking pro-poor change changing configurations of power. If we want to decide where best to put their efforts and what change power relationships, e.g. to make them more strategies do they use? inclusive, just or pro-poor, we must understand more about where and how to engage. This article shares Whether concerned with participation and inclusion, one approach to power analysis; an approach which realising rights or changing policies, more and more has come to be known as the ‘power cube’ and development actors seeking change are also provides some reflections and examples of how this becoming aware of the need to engage with and approach has been applied in differing contexts. understand this phenomenon called power. Yet simultaneously, the nature and expressions of power 2 Reflecting on power analysis are also rapidly changing. The very spread and Though everyone possesses and is affected by power, adoption by powerful actors of the language and the meanings of power – and how to understand it discourse of participation and inclusion confuses – are diverse and often contentious (as the articles in boundaries of who has authority and who does not, this IDS Bulletin illustrate). Some see power as held who should be on the ‘inside’ and who is on the by actors, some of whom are powerful while others ‘outside’ of decision-making and policymaking are relatively powerless. Others see it as more arenas. Changing governance arrangements, which pervasive, embodied in a web of relationships and call for ‘co-governance’ and ‘participatory discourses which affect everyone, but which no IDS Bulletin Volume 37 Number 6 November 2006 © Institute of Development Studies 23 single actor holds. Some see power as a ‘zero-sum’ grassroots empowerment, the Highlander Center concept – to gain power for one set of actors means based in southern USA. Much of our approach that others must give up some power. Since rarely involved finding ways to strengthen the capacity of do the powerful give up their power easily, this often ordinary citizens and to analyse and challenge the involves conflict and ‘power struggles’. Others see inequalities of power which affected their lives. power as more fluid and accumulative. Power is not a finite resource; it can be used, shared or created by After joining the Institute for Development Studies actors and their networks in many multiple ways. (IDS) in the mid-1990s, I continued to work on Some see power as a ‘negative’ trait – to hold processes of citizen participation and engagement in power is to exercise control over others. Others see other parts of the world. In the international power to be about capacity and agency to be development field, I discovered a host of approaches wielded for positive action. for participation in research and learning, advocacy and community mobilisation, poverty assessments Power is often used with other descriptive words. and policy processes, local governance and Power ‘over’ refers to the ability of the powerful to decentralisation, and rights-based and citizenship- affect the actions and thought of the powerless. The building approaches. At the same time, with their power ‘to’ is important for the capacity to act; to increasing acceptance in mainstream development exercise agency and to realise the potential of rights, discourse, many of these approaches risked citizenship or voice. Power ‘within’ often refers to becoming techniques which did not pay sufficient gaining the sense of self-identity, confidence and attention to the power relations within and awareness that is a precondition for action. Power surrounding their use. Increasingly, the work of the ‘with’ refers to the synergy which can emerge through Participation Group at IDS and many of our partnerships and collaboration with others, or through associates began to look for approaches which put processes of collective action and alliance building.1 an understanding of power back in the centre of our understanding of the concepts and practices of My own view of power was shaped by my own participation. history of engaging with power relations in a particular context. As a young graduate in political My own work focused mainly on the intersection of science, I began working with grassroots citizens in a power with processes of citizen engagement in remote mining valley of one of the poorest parts of governance at the local, national and global levels. the USA in their efforts to claim political, economic Work with Anne Marie Goetz asked questions about and social rights vis-à-vis government and a London- the most important spaces in which citizens could based corporate mine owner. The conventional views effectively engage, and how to move citizen voice of democracy and power in the USA which I had from access, to presence, to influence (Goetz and learned in my studies failed to explain the reality I Gaventa 2001). Work with other colleagues encountered. Though violations of democratic rights, examined how citizens participated in policy spaces enormous inequalities in wealth and appalling surrounding poverty reduction, and concluded with a environmental living conditions were to be found call for moving from ‘from policy to power’ (Brock et everywhere, there was little visible conflict or action al. 2004). Through the Development Research for change. Centre on Citizenship, Participation and Accountability, I worked and learned with a research There was something about power which had led team, led by Andrea Cornwall and Vera Coehlo, not only to defeat where voices had been raised, but which was examining the spaces and dynamics of also, somehow, over time, the voices had been citizen participation (Cornwall and Coehlo 2004; silenced altogether.2 Much of my work then shifted 2006). Some work, through LogoLink,3 focused on to how citizens recovered a sense of their capacity to citizen participation at the local level. Other work act, and how they mobilised to get their issues heard focused on global citizen action (Edwards and and responded to in the public agenda. For almost Gaventa 2001). In all of these areas, the issues of 20 years, from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, power and its links with processes of citizen while also teaching and researching at the University engagement, participation and deepening forms of of Tennessee, I was practically engaged with a non- democracy were always lurking somewhere close to governmental organisation (NGO) working for the surface. 24 Gaventa Finding the Spaces for Change: A Power Analysis Figure 1 The ‘power cube': the levels, spaces and forms of power LEVELS Global National FORMS Local Invisible Closed Hidden Invited Visible Claimed/ SPACES Created Increasingly, we began to search for approaches within developing countries, and to encourage self- which could make the implicit power perspective reflection on the power which they as donor agencies more explicit, and which would help to examine the exercise (Development Research Centre 2003). I have interrelationships of the forms of power which we shared it in a workshop on political capacity building were encountering in different political spaces and with NGOs in Indonesia, especially to analyse and settings. Building on my previous work based on the reflect on the ways in which they move from working ‘three dimensions’ of power developed