XIV April International Academic Conference on Economic and Social Development, Moscow, 2013
Mark Haugaard (National University of Ireland, Galway) re-interprets the three-dimensional power debate through the lens of Arendt’s concept of concerted power (“Power over and democracy”). He argues that power (power over) constitutes a duality whereby the very same process which leads to domination, also constitutes conditions of possibility for democracy, thus normatively desirable. If power over is not purely coercive but based on structural constraints that support democratic practices (concerted power) it should not be explained in terms of violence, domination and zero-sum game. Structural content of concerted power entails that the subject of power is not a means to…