A Tacit Understanding of Power? Perhaps and Almost

In my last post, I expressed the hope that I would not have to turn the numerous policies we’ve found related to community power into a tidy 3×3. 

My hopes have been dashed. 

But the process hasn’t been bad. In fact, it’s been quite interesting. 

On the horizontal axis of our 3×3, are the three faces of power (decision-making, agenda-setting and worldviews). We remain of the view that if these policies are about power we have to be able to map them to one or more of the faces otherwise they’re not – by definition – about power. 

The vertical axis has been a little tricker. My partner in crime, Ollie Smith, my window into the minds of time-poor policy wonks, feels we need to group the policies on the basis of things policymakers can get behind. His suggestion is shared spaces, capacity & skills, and deepening participation. His contention is that these things ‘make sense’ to policymakers, they can see their role is writing policies that speak to them. 

Ollie calls these three ‘the enablers’ – policies in these three areas have the potential to enable community power across its three faces. It’s tidy but does it work? 

Our current answer is we think so. So far, we’ve found 59 policies and, although not all fit neatly into the 3×3, they fit well enough. So well, in fact, that there is actually quite an even distribution across the three faces. 

I find that even distribution interesting. From what I have seen to date, think tanks in the UK are banding about the term ‘power’ without a clear definition of what it is. And yet the spread of their policies seems to speak to all the faces of power. That suggests that across the think tanks there is a collective sense of what power is, even though not one of them has defined it clearly. 

Perhaps this is the wisdom of crowds at play. 

Although this is an encouraging finding, it’s quite a fragile one. It’s based on how Ollie and I mapped the policies to the faces and there was considerable debate and compromise in the process. It’s not high science; this is me and Ollie fighting about what we think the think tanks have proposed (it’s not always clear) and debating where they map to. 

But we had that fight without looking at the totals-per-face and the result is quite interesting. 

Unfortunately, however, we had to acknowledge that the world does not fit into our tidy 3×3. It’s one thing to see how a policy might enable power to form and build but it’s quite another for that power to be wielded effectively. Informed by the work of Paul Speer, a former organiser turned academic, we define ‘effectively’ as being able to bring about structural change that has the potential to change the distribution of resources and opportunities in society. 

So, we had to make a fourth column, which we’ve called ‘the organising of power’. We found only six policies that spoke to that. And so, while there might be a tacit understanding across the think tank community of what power is, there is not a comparable understanding of how that power might be wielded. 

For me, that’s consistent with the rhetoric in the reports from which we’ve pulled the 65 policies (59 on building power and six on how it can be wielded). Only a few are clear that much of the disparities in outcomes, such as in education or health, are due to unfair and unjust structures – and hence are inequities. Nor are they clear that inequities in outcomes reflect inequities in power. 

There is a little too much politeness out there in Think Tank Land, a little too much dancing around the issue without really talking about it. 

Building power is about justice.

Powerful communities can help co-design local services, as so many think tanks seem obsessed with. That’s a good thing, yes, but it’s not the thing. The thing is justice. 

The question that goes through my head all the time is whether the Prime Minister really wants to work in partnership with civil society, as he claimed before winning the election. Is his government really ready to work with a powerful civil society when that will mean responding to demands for a more just society?

Only time will tell. 

See you in two weeks. 

Pritpal S Tamber

The image behind the title is by Gary Waters / Ikon Images.

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