Power,domination and human needs

Power and preferences

Weber, as ever, leads the way. He conceives of power in a manner similar to what later becomes the norm in analytical political philosophy: power is the ability to realize one’s will even against opposition, regardless of what the ability depends on (Weber, 1992: 53). Similarly, for Russell, my power is my ‘ability to get what I want’ (1938: 25–34), as it is for Aron too (1986: 257). In other words, these three otherwise very different thinkers all conceive of power in terms of an individual’s or group’s ability to get what they want, that is, their ability to realize their preferences. This is helpful for understanding one aspect of ‘power’ as it emphasizes one common characteristic of the exercise of power: that it is often used in a direct way to overcome some distinct visible or tangible resistance. The progressive politician, for example, can get his way despite tradition. However, this is far from the whole story. As Lukes has famously argued, power can also be used more indirectly to shape opinions, attitudes, desires and interests, either by making certain practices, institutions and beliefs seem ‘natural’, or by influence, persuasion, sheer coercion or manipulation (Lukes, 1986, 2005).

More specifically, there are four problems with this originally Weberian understanding of power, and all of them rest on a series of unrealistic assumptions regarding human desires, wants and preferences. First, because of the reference to what some human agent wants or wills, power in this sense designates specifically human abilities; yet, I may get what I want or desire without having any ‘power’, in any sense of that term. I may get what I want simply by virtue of my luck rather than ‘my ability to get what I want’ (Barry, 1991). Second, even if we discount luck, the converse is also true: I may have a lot of power without necessarily getting what I want or desire. Think of the powerful husband whose wife and children repeatedly thwart his commands or wishes through the use of subtle wisdom, avoidance or persuasive influence; or Hitler, who despite his power, did not get what he wanted, lasting hegemony over Central Europe (Geuss, 2001: 23–6). It is a mistake, therefore, to think that the powerful person has no or little power because they sometimes do not get what they want; rather their power, at times, can be overcome or avoided, depending on circumstance.

These sorts of mistakes arise because of a strong tendency in the humanities and social sciences to adhere to a Humean (and, latterly, utilitarian and rational choice) way of thinking about human wants and preferences: that human wants are inherently atomistic and only differ from one another in intensity and with respect to a particular object in the external world. In reality, human wants are structured, organized and nested. They are structured in the sense that I desire various things as means to further things; and they are nested in the sense that my wanting them to some extent depends on my having certain beliefs about how they relate to other things I want (Montaigne, 1991: 314–20, 373–80, 1207–69; Sunstein, 1993). This non-atomistic nature of human desire is exemplified both in everyday action and political judgement. I may want to save money in order to live a life of greater ease and happiness, but the very act of doing so and the fluctuations in inflation and interest rates may produce the opposite effect: an unhappy life of miserly abstemiousness and constant frustration in the face of the forces of the market. As is the case with the powerful husband and Hitler, my power is not dependent on whether or not I fail to get what I want; I may have full power over my own financial choices, and yet because my initial desire is linked to a mistaken belief about human nature or the forces of the market, my power does not translate into my achieving what I want – a life of ease and happiness.

The third problem with the preference-based account of power is that all of its proponents assume incorrectly that human agents always have clear, conscious and fully articulated preferences. ³ There may be some situations in which individuals involved in a relation of power do have clear wills, desires or preferences about some state of affairs. Suppose I rule a state with massive military might relative to that of a neighbouring state and I happen to covet their oil deposits; in this instance I may be able to invade them with relative ease and realize my will whatever their resistance. In most cases, however, people involved in a relation of power will have inchoate, contradictory or unformed preferences (Montaigne, 1991: 907–21). And the related, fourth problem is that, although these accounts may fit for situations in which there are two clearly defined individuals, each of which has a clear will, desire or preference, to assume that this will always be the case is to rest one’s account on a crude conception of social and political reality.

Preferences are therefore normally formed within and by a given context of power (Sunstein, 1997: 38). This is true whatever one’s position in the power relation, that is, it is just as true of the powerful as it is of the powerless, and all positions between these extremes. As the ruler of the powerful state just discussed, one of the reasons I covet, that is, develop a preference for, my neighbour’s oil is because I know that I could get my hands on it without too much effort. Or, conversely, too, if I am the weaker party in any relation of power I will tend to adapt my preferences in order to avoid being frustrated or to avoid other related forms of ‘cognitive dissonance’. In both cases, one is involved in adapting one’s preferences to the circumstances, or ‘adaptive preference formation’ (Elster, 1983; Festinger, 1957; Lukes, 1986: 134). ⁴

Moreover, our preferences are also subject to complex hierarchies of preferences and values, variously called ‘second-order preferences’, ‘human needs’ or ‘human rights’. These can be antecedent wishes I have about my desires or ‘first-order preferences’, or they can be what I and other members of my social or political community have intentionally or unintentionally pre-determined will govern future desires, preferences and choices (Frankfurt, 1988; Hamilton, 2003). Humans do this all the time in everyday life and in politics. Constitutions are prime examples: they pre-commit citizens to various choices and values, either by direct preference (explicit consent) or, in most cases, the choices of forebears, enshrined in a legal document that forms the background pre-conditions for subsequent economic and political choices (Holmes, 1995).

The most important point, though, is that even if I was a very unusual human and had fixed, well formed and non-contradictory ‘prima facie preferences’, it seems plausible to suggest that the existence of enduring relations of power may skew these and my ‘all-things-considered preferences’ (Geuss, 2001: 26). This is the case partly because power relations will affect my and my society’s conceptions of our second-order preferences, needs and rights. In other words, power in politics is not only about the direct power that a particular person, group or agency may or may not have over another party. It is also about the effects that perceived power differentials have on the conduct and preference formation of these parties; the capacity these parties may have to resist this direct power; and the extent to which either party may be able to set the agenda, that is, determine what is allowed on to the agenda (Lukes, 2005). In other words, in concrete situations in which I feel powerless, my conception of my needs and rights may significantly determine my various preferences; and in situations in which only certain kinds of needs and preferences, say, are deemed permissible or desirable, it is likely that I will experience these as needs and preferences. Or, in a register more in tune with the work of Foucault, my very subjectivity, the very capacity I have to form preferences and needs emerges from, and depends upon, relations of power; that is, the subject is ‘constituted’ through subjection (assujetissement) to power (Butler, 1997).

This brings us to the Foucauldian account of power, which provides the possibility for a view of power that moves beyond the tendency to think of a power as the property of persons or the intentional action of a human individual or group of human individuals with fixed, atomized and fully articulated preferences (Foucault, 1997: 324; cf. Mill, 2008; Lovett, 2010: 55–123). Foucault’s structural analysis of relations of power is an account of how the exercise of power is a complicated combination of long histories of institutional effects, often unintended, and the conditioned abilities of individuals to do specific things (Foucault, 1991). Related to this, and particularly in later work, he emphasizes the way in which the compliance to power does not require the active ‘exercise’ of power by another individual or agent. Prevailing norms, values and institutions are often sufficient to give individuals good reason to discipline their own actions, such as in the way women practise ‘discipline on and against their bodies’, where their ‘self-surveillance is a form of obedience to patriarchy’ (Bartky, 1990: 80). So, although it is crude to treat power as a single uniform substance or relation irrespective of context and referent (Lukes, 2005: 61–9), by combining Foucault and Lukes, it is possible to identify power as: a) connected to general concepts like ability or capacity to do; b) a relation between rather than a resource or a property of persons; c) the socially-determined abilities of agents to bring about significant effects, by furthering their own interests or affecting the interests of others (Lukes, 2005: 63, 65, 109; Geuss, 2008: 27).

Power and states of domination

Foucault not only departs from the norm as regards power but also with respect to domination. He links domination and its resistance to institutional empowerment. He argues convincingly that power involves structures of agents and actions that mediate between two agents in a power relation. From his Discipline and Punish right through to the third volume of the History of Sexuality, he analyses the emergence of specific techniques or mechanisms of power in certain domains of social life that are particular to the modern era and that affect the everyday action and attitudes of individuals (Foucault, 1980: 39). He emphasizes the fact that power is both repressive and productive, that the practice of confession, for example, produces discourses of sexuality even as it attempts to repress them. In order to understand complex social functions such as punishment and the production of sexuality, he maintains, ‘we must cease once and for all to describe the effects of power in negative terms: it “excludes”, it “represses”, it “censors”, it “abstracts”, it “masks”, it “conceals”. In fact, power produces; it produces reality; it produces domains of objects and rituals of truths’ (Foucault, 1991: 194). This is brought into sharp relief in his discussion of subjection (assujettisement): individuals are both subject to the constraints of social relations of power, that is, subject to a power that is being exercised over them, and simultaneously enabled to take up the position of a subject in and through these constraints or operations of power (Foucault, 1991: 97–8; Butler, 1997). Rather than simply prohibiting, censuring and restricting, power incites, provokes and induces (Allen, 1999: 34). Power therefore simultaneously enables the constitution of subjects and constrains the options, choices and preferences of those same subjects. Foucault’s genealogy of disciplinary power provides an account of how individuals are subjected to normalizing disciplinary practices and are thereby transformed into a certain kind of subject – a docile body (Foucault, 1991: 170). Disciplinary power constrains by enabling, and enables only insofar as it constrains (Allen, 1999: 36).

The repressive and productive aspects of power are re-emphasized in his account of ‘bio-power’, and in the contrast he draws between how, in the classical era, the sovereign wielded the ‘power of life and death’ over his people, while, in the modern era, power as the right of death exists side by side with a ‘life-administering’ power which ‘exerts a positive influence on life’, endeavouring ‘to administer, optimize, and multiply it, subjecting it to precise control and comprehensive regulations’ (Foucault, 1997: 325). Foucault then also shows how this new form of power brings with it its own ‘repressive’ problems. The modern state, he argues, is both ‘individualizing and totalitarian’ (Foucault, 1997: 325). He traces this in the rise of what he calls ‘pastoral power’, the leader as shepherd to his flock, and then later in the form of ‘reason of state’, where control of populations and individual behaviour became vital for the maintenance and strength of the state (Foucault, 1997: 300). The state simultaneously centralizes power for reasons of state, to maintain and strengthen the power of the state, and ‘polices’ the populace to ensure individual well-being, good conduct and so on. So, the central paradox of the modern state is that it has to ‘to develop those elements constitutive of individuals’ lives in such a way that their development also fosters the strength of the state…. This is done by controlling “communication”, that is the common activities of individuals (work, production, exchange, accommodation)’ (Foucault, 1997: 317–23).

Foucault thus provides a distinct account of power to that found within traditional social and political philosophy. Yet it does not follow from the fact he conceives of power as ‘a certain type of relation between individuals’ (Foucault, 1997: 324) that he thereby accepts power relations in all their forms. Even if he thinks that power is omnipresent and a pre-requisite for subjectivity and thus freedom, he distinguishes between different kinds of power relations: ‘Power relations are possible only insofar as the subjects are free … [however] [i]n a great many cases, power relations are fixed in such a way that they are perpetually asymmetrical and allow an extremely limited margin of freedom’ (Foucault, 2000: 292). Thus he distinguishes between different types of power relations, in particular power relations that are more and less enabling of freedom. Or rather, as he puts it, at one extreme there exist power relations that enable freedom and at the other there exist power relations that constitute states of domination; and in between there exist practices or ‘technologies of government’ that often enable or reinforce domination; and ‘[t]he analysis of these techniques is necessary because it is very often through such techniques that states of domination are established and maintained’. There are three levels to his analysis of power: ‘strategic relations, techniques of government, and states of domination’ (Foucault, 2000: 299).

Foucault makes a similar, if slightly more trenchant, claim earlier in his career, when he says, ‘I believe that political power also exercises itself through the mediation of a certain number of institutions which look as if they have nothing in common with the political power, and as if they are independent of it, while they are not.’ For example, the family, the university, all teaching systems, institutions of knowledge and care, such as medicine, particularly psychiatry, ‘are made to maintain a certain social class in power; and to exclude the instruments of power of another social class’. The real political task, then, is to criticize the workings of these institutions ‘in such a manner that the political violence which has always exercised itself obscurely through them will be unmasked, so that one can fight against them’ (Chomsky and Foucault, 1997: 130).

For Foucault, then, this relational and ‘productive’ account of power is proposed both as a better means of understanding power and a more felicitous way of overcoming power relations that generate domination. Yet how is it possible to distinguish ‘power relations understood as strategic games between liberties’, ‘techniques of government’ that can reinforce domination, and ‘states of domination’ themselves? And how are citizens able to resist power relations that generate and maintain domination?

Foucault offers a general answer to the first question. Domination exists where ‘the relations of power are fixed in such a way that they are perpetually asymmetrical and the margin of liberty is very limited…. When an individual or social group succeeds in blocking a field of power relations, immobilizing them and preventing any reversibility of movement by economic, political, or military means, one is faced with what may be called a state of domination’ (Foucault, 2000: 283). Here Foucault is expressing an often forgotten fact of social and political life: there exist different forms and grades of domination. Freedom and domination are part of the same continuum, and normally, on this continuum, they have an inverse relation to one another. So, for example, at one extreme there is the condition of slaves and women in ancient Greece, over whom domination was so pervasive that they scarcely could be said to have the status of ‘subjects’ at all. This is ‘domination as entire, or close to entire, determination’ (Flathman, 2003: 13). And Foucault is clear that we can speak of the ‘freedom’ of those who live under these conditions in only very narrowly circumscribed ways. Most of the time, most of those subject to this form of domination will have little hope of resisting it; in fact, in most cases, they may not even identify the need to resist it. Then, somewhere in the middle of the continuum lies the condition of women under current conditions of patriarchy in the West, where there exists full formal freedom but existing norms and practices maintain a situation in which women often remain dominated. They may in some particular instances be dominated directly by specific men, but normally their state of domination is experienced through the practices by means of which they discipline their own actions and subjectivity in light of existing constraints and expectations.

As regards an answer to the second question, Foucault and many of his followers give one of two kinds of answers, both of which are illuminating and yet inadequate. First, they suggest that because all power relations are both enabling and constraining, that is, they simultaneously constrain options and generate subject-positions from which individuals can resist the very power relations that generated their subjectivity, the space or possibility will always exist for resistance against the disciplining forms of modern power. Or, as Judith Butler puts it, ‘[w]here conditions of subordination make possible the assumption of power, the power assumed remains tied to these conditions, but in an ambivalent way; in fact, the power assumed may at once retain and resist that subordination’ (Butler, 1997: 13). While illuminating in most cases, this is not true of all forms of domination, especially those that are equivalent to entire, or close to entire, determination, as with the case just discussed, women and slaves in Antiquity, who had little or no agency to resist subordination; rather they were near complete ‘objects’ of the actions and agency of others and the laws and institutions of their societies. Although slaves in Antiquity did sometimes resist the domination under which they lived, in the form of revolts and go-slow activities, they did so much less often than we imagine given more modern slave revolts; and, where and when they did revolt, they normally did so in highly circumscribed ways, not normally in opposition to the institution of slavery itself, but simply to free themselves (Patterson, 1991; Rauflaab, 2004). In other words, though they may have resisted or revolted, they did not normally do so in a manner that amounted to re-negotiating the norms and practices of their domination or engaging in ‘performative acts’.

The second answer given by Foucault is helpful but incomplete. Ultimately he falls back into a quasi-stoic conception of ‘care of the self’, in which each of us has an individual responsibility to those with whom we live to take care of ourselves, for if we do we are less likely to abuse the power relations that exist, that is, abuse our potential power over others. As he says explicitly and very optimistically in a late work: ‘If you take proper care of yourself … you cannot abuse your power over others’ (Foucault, 2000: 288). In other words, he suggests that if I look after myself properly I will feel no need to dominate those around me. As is repeatedly reinforced by some of Foucault’s least favourite folk, psychoanalysts, this is very wise counsel. However, it is hardly a recipe for identifying and resisting those institutions, practices and discourses that generate and maintain domination, which, in the rest of his work, he both analysed and exhorted us to resist and overcome. In the same essay, however, he does go on to explain in greater detail what he has in mind here.

I do not think that a society can exist without power relations, if by that one means the strategies by which individuals try to direct and control the conduct of others. The problem, then, is not to try and dissolve them in the utopia of completely transparent communication but to acquire the rules of law, the management techniques, and also the morality, the ēthos, the practices of the self, that will allow us to play these games of power with as little domination as possible…. The problem must be framed in terms of rules of law, rational techniques of government and ēthos, practices of the self and of freedom. (Foucault, 2000: 298–9)

In other words, the ‘care of the self’ is only one part of a broader proposal for how to reduce the potential for domination, one that requires attention to various kinds of power relations at all levels of polity, economy and society.

Foucault therefore keeps ‘power’ central to understanding politics in general and domination in particular. ⁵ This provides fertile ground for a challenging and realistic critique of what is now the best account of domination in the literature: that propounded within Philip Pettit’s account of freedom as non-domination. Domination, Pettit argues, occurs when individuals suffer subordination (or ‘alien control’) whether or not someone actually interferes with or obstructs them (1999: 52, 2008: 102). The mere implicit or explicit threat of ‘arbitrary interference’ is sufficient, where ‘arbitrary’ is defined as any interference that does not comport with the ‘perceived’, ‘expressed’ or ‘common avowable’ interests of individuals (Pettit, 1999: 55, 290–2, 2001: 156–8). This emphasis on arbitrary interference in terms of expressed interests moves us one step away from the language of wants and preferences. However, this is also its downfall, as it assumes that common interests can simply be read off of what people express as their interests; and thereby suggests unrealistically that an expressed interest is somehow free from the power relations within which it must have been formed.

In the alternative, Foucault-inspired account I elaborate in the next section, by contrast, domination is the result of a situation in which power relations are skewed in such a way that some individual or group cannot identify, express or satisfy their needs or interests. In other words, domination here rests on a specific understanding of human needs that focuses on the political and institutional means necessary for their determination and satisfaction. This is the first of three ways in which my account differs from the one proposed by Pettit.

The second is with regard to its emphasis on the practical, institutional means of withstanding domination: I argue that the real means through which citizens can guard against domination by other parties or by governmental actions is ultimately a question of political judgement, not just amongst elites but also amongst ordinary citizens, and that this political judgement is better or worse depending upon the procedural power ordinary citizens have to enforce (via legislation or veto) the satisfaction of their vital and agency needs. Thus, unlike Pettit, it takes seriously the myriad practical forms of domination, the indeterminacy of the concept of ‘domination’ and the associated need to focus on the institutional arrangements that best empower citizens to withstand domination.

Finally, my account is based on scepticism of Pettit’s form of republican theorizing that assumes the existence of a ‘common good’ or ‘common avowable interests’ (cf. Machiavelli, 2003; McCormick, 2011). Given the persistence of power relations in societies of all forms, it counters this drive to consensus or a set of common goods without reference to an individual’s position and power within her or his polity; rather it assumes more realistically that needs and interests will be determined by location, group or class and that there may therefore always exist differences and possible conflict over the determination of needs, and so it builds into its procedural and institutional proposals means through which citizens can have greater power over legislating and vetoing for the satisfaction of their various needs.

I submit that this is best achieved by thinking about these matters in two related ways: a) the extent to which existing institutions enable the free determination and satisfaction of needs (not preferences or avowable interests alone); and b) the political institutions that may be necessary for the empowerment of citizens in these processes.

Domination and human needs

Democratic government responds to the interests of citizens and makes decisions regarding the development of law, physical infrastructure, economic institutions, safety and so on in the light of, amongst other things, existing and future needs, prudence, utility, rights and preferences. Political decisions therefore always involve a mixture of subjectively felt needs and general, abstract needs. As a result of the existence of the latter form of need, philosophers think they can specify a set of unchanging human needs or ‘human functionings’, irrespective of what individual citizens or governments avow (Lukes, 2005: 118, Nussbaum, 2000: 83), seemingly ignoring that fact that, in practice, the decisions depend upon context, circumstance and articulated need (Hamilton, 2003: 21–62). It follows therefore that in order to make good decisions regarding the evaluation and satisfaction of needs, political representatives need to know all the facts regarding existing needs. And it follows from this that efficient, responsive, courageous and far-sighted decisions by government depend upon the existence of political institutions that enable the flow of this information (Hamilton, 2009). Moreover, in order for these institutions to function, the citizenry need to be empowered to make claims in terms of needs (or rights) that really do satisfy their interests and create or block legislation that may or may not do so. In other words, good government will require not just insight into the allegedly ‘true’ needs and interests of the populace found putatively in moral and political philosophy or institutions and practices such as constitutions and human rights, but also actually existing needs and norms within the citizenry.

The way to proceed, therefore, is to accept that although, in theory, there may exist general, universal ‘real’ needs, interests, or functionings, in practice the imposition of these notions will more often than not result in the ‘dictatorship over needs’, especially when associated with political institutions that make judgements irrespective of the expressed needs of the citizenry (Fehér et al., 1983). It is exactly the Foucauldian insight that power relations are part and parcel of our everyday lives and are thus formative of our beliefs, wills, preferences, subjectivity and willingness to consent to domination that allows us to resort to the more subtle language and politics of needs and interests in an account of domination and empowerment. And many of the felt needs and interests are themselves part of this structure of power and domination.

The only way towards objectivity regarding needs and interests under these conditions – and thus a means of identifying the degree of domination in any existing set of power relations – is through inter-subjectivity and genealogy, that is, inter-subjective evaluation of needs and interests informed by genealogical understanding and critique of existing institutions and practices. In order to generate these processes political institutions must empower all citizens to carry out these forms of evaluation, but not by trying to attain the nirvana of neutrality, consensus and common good, but rather by accepting the fact of ineradicable conflict over needs and the omnipresence of power relations; and, as outlined in the next section, generate political institutions that empower citizens of all classes in the determination of needs by, in some instances, representing and empowering only those citizens whose needs are currently ignored by their representative democratic regimes. This requires focus on the effects of institutions and practices on the individual capacity or power to identify, express and evaluate needs and interests.

In this article I cannot give a full account of the inter-subjective nature of needs and how they and their formative institutions may be evaluated using a form of genealogical critique. Suffice to say, though, that in order to give greater weight to the language and politics of needs, and how it may help to overcome dominating power relations, it is best to start with clear distinctions between three kinds of needs: a) vital needs, or the necessary conditions for everyday minimal human functioning, such as sufficient food, adequate shelter, safety, periodic rest, social entertainment and so on; b) agency needs, or the necessary conditions for political agency, that is, the requirements or pre-requisites for the ‘causal power’ necessary for agents to form and carry out intended actions and participate in various political institutions (particularly the ones proposed below), which include inter-subjective recognition, active and creative expression and autonomy; ⁶ and c) particular social needs, or the largely uncontested particular needs that are felt in everyday experience. The latter can be concrete, particular, felt instances of vital and agency needs, subsets of these, wants becoming needs, or wants parading as needs. They are social because they all arise in a social context, and some may form part of social policy, but many may emanate from and be only about the desires, aspirations and concerns of a single citizen or group thereof.

The second thing to note about human needs is that because they are historical, normative and political in nature, the matrices of existing power relations in general and practices and institutions in particular determine their perception and evaluation. And, given this, by peeling back the layers of history manifest in the relevant institutions to identify how and why certain needs have come to be felt and perceived as needs and why other desires have not, genealogical critique enables the determination of the extent of domination in any specific set of power relations. In other words, to determine how best to proceed, citizens need to be able to understand in context how various intellectual and institutional histories have given rise to their needs, desires and preferences. This requires not only greater historical understanding of the rise and causal significance of existing social and political institutions, but a significant shift in our current tendency to think that some needs, desires and preferences are either ‘natural’ or inherently ‘individual’. All are inter-subjective, inter-dependent, but not necessarily common as they often depend on historical, class or group context.

Moreover, given the inter-subjective and political nature of needs, a genealogical critique of existing practices and institutions cannot be undertaken in an objective fashion unless the means exist through which citizens can provide subjective information regarding their needs and be involved in the determination of their future needs. If there still remains the need for a state or coercive authority, which we can assume given the ineradicable presence of moral and political disagreement, its judgements regarding needs and institutions would only be objective and legitimate were it possible to show beyond doubt that they were based in this form of genealogical and inter-subjective critique and evaluation; and, as argued below, under conditions in which all classes and groups of society have meaningful control over the formulation of the relevant legislation. In this way it is possible to identify how the evaluation of needs must be located within a more general analysis of institutions, but can in turn help to justify forms of coercive authority that are directed towards the transformation of social and political practices and institutions that generate or reinforce domination (Sen, 1993; Hamilton, 2003: 63–71; 116–33; 153–70). Thus, pace much contemporary theory, democratic participation does not depend on the existence of fully autonomous individuals, ‘independent’ of the power of anyone else, as if that were possible.

I call this inter-subjective power to identify, express and evaluate needs, interests and their formative practices and institutions the ‘power to determine needs’. The degree to which one lives in a state of domination therefore depends upon the extent and kind of power one has to determine one’s needs. Domination of this kind can take a number of different forms:

The existing power relations may persistently mislead me in my attempts to identify my needs, either through direct coercion (leading me to deny my needs), intentional manipulation (‘persuading’ me, say, that another party’s needs are mine) or as a result of fixed, traditional norms and practices, a good example of which is patriarchy and the continued subordination of women.

The form of domination that exists within this last category creates a situation within which we may be able to claim our rights, avow our preferences and in some instances even identify and express our needs, but we do not have the necessary institutional means either to take part in the evaluation of our needs or properly control the manner in which our political representatives evaluate our needs.

Political institutions against domination

The kinds of political institutions that would be necessary for citizens to have meaningful control over their needs and their representatives would have to give them both the positive power to generate legislation and the negative power to repeal legislation, whilst also enabling their representatives the freedom to legislate. This seemingly paradoxical requirement is possible if we take both the need for representation and participation seriously and thus institutionalize changes at local, legislative and constitutional levels. These changes would empower citizens both to participate periodically in the determination of their needs and their constitution and give them a power of veto or repeal over legislation and a power of recall or impeachment of existing representatives. These proposals combine earlier ideas of mine regarding need evaluation within district assemblies, a revitalized consiliar system (as first articulated in ancient Rome, from whence the term ‘consiliar’) and decennial constitutional plebiscites with Machiavelli’s arguments in support of the Roman Tribunes of the Plebs. For the purposes of this paper I can but list them. They are intended as additions not replacements to existing institutions of representative democracy; and they originate in the insight that all polities are characterized by moral and political conflict and differences of perspective and opportunity determined by existing groups, classes and individuals. The institutions proposed here enable participation while remaining true to the partisan nature of needs and safeguarding less powerful interests in society.

Three main institutional arrangements are therefore likely to keep domination to a minimum.

District Assemblies: local physical sites with five main functions: i) to enable the articulation and evaluation of needs and interests, the substantive outcome of which would then be transferred by the district’s counselor to the national assembly for further debate and, ultimately, legislation; ii) to make available to citizens full accounts of all the legislative activity and results emanating from the national assembly; iii) to provide a forum for the presentation of amendments to existing legislation; iv) to vote on proposals coming from other assemblies; and v) to select counselors for the revitalized consiliar system (Hamilton, 2009; Urbinati, 2008: 207–13).

Conclusion

I have argued here that, while Foucault may do no more than hint at solutions, his account of states of domination in terms of existing power relations steers us towards a more realistic view of how best to overcome domination: a genealogical, inter-subjective evaluation of needs and institutions based upon a set of political procedures and powers that foreground both participation and representation. Needs and interests and the institutional and procedural means to determine them thereby become the link between power, domination and empowerment: the extent to which I live in a state of domination depends on the extent of my partisan power to determine my needs, generate legislation and control my political representatives. This is far from the normal supposition that if we determine the universal nature of power and domination we can rid our polities of them. Rather, it submits that if we remain realistic about power, domination and need and provide ourselves with the means to determine in context where and how they lie, we may be empowered to overcome states of domination.

The liberal and republican notion that negative freedom and non-domination involve the avoidance of alien interference or control are politically unhelpful as they rest on the unrealistic assumption that politics can somehow proceed without representation and power relations. The extent to which citizens can overcome domination does not depend on a normatively grounded theoretical solution but institutions that enable sufficient participative and representative power and critique, that is, real causal power for citizens to determine their needs.