Power has become a central concept as far as international relations are concerned with many scholars unable reach a consensus on the most appropriate meaning that should be used in formal discussions. This is mainly because it is a new concept that had not received much attention from international relations scholars. This concept has predominantly been understood as the control that a nation has over another in terms of military resources, economic superiority, and technology capabilities. However, recent scholars such as Duvall and Barnet have come up with a new characterization of power as a result of production that occurs through social relations to outline the capabilities of the actors in determining their situations and fate. The authors are explicitly critical of the primary attachment of power to realism and in particular to how a nation or an individual uses material possessions to force another to carry out something they otherwise are unwilling to do. The objective of this article is to examine how power in the international relations domain can be understood from the perspective of gender and age discussion in normal life.
Barnett and Duvall through in their work generate four-fold taxonomy through which power can be explained which are compulsory, institutional, structural and productive (Barnett and Duvall, 2005, p. 48). The theoretical engagement in the study of each dimension depends on the interests and concerns which motivate the study of each domain of power. All these dimensions are not in competition with one another and operate through social relations and actors. To this end, social relationships such as age and gender become an important dimension through which each of the four power aspects as suggested by Brunette and Duvall can be examined from. Age factor as understood in the social circles means that the society has varied members of different age years and this alone acts as a distinction in the power they possess and how they use it. The older members of the society who are primarily the adults exercise their power over the younger members of the society primarily the children and hence become superior and authoritative given this relationship. This is also true in the society where the male sex has primary authority over the female gender given the social relationship that exists. This relationship can be transferred in understanding how international relations power domain functions.
Structural power is concerned with the constitution of the capacities of the subjects in direct structure relations. Here the focus shifts from the particular actors who exert control directly or indirectly over others to social relations that act as a constitution. In this approach, the social structure shapes the understanding and subjective interests. These structures though unrecognizable by the actors of their domination makes them have the ability to reproduce rather than resists given their differential capacities and privilege the possess form the structure (Barnett and Duvall, 2005, p53). The actors have resources which shape ideologies that make reproduction rather than transformation of the society.
As explained by Barnett and Duvall, coercive power entails the use of normative resources at the expense of material resources in influencing another party. In international front, civil societies and NGO’s use tools shaming tactics and tools so as to force states to comply with norms and values that they are advocating for. This is especially when such actors have legitimacy inform of moral authority. The less powerful nations in the world during international meetings have to leverage their legal norms through the normative influence of the powerful members (Barnett and Duvall, 2005, p. 50). The powerful nations use their normative authority to effect change through rules and procedures that define social and legal institutions. This comprehension of how control occurs international relations can be understood further by considering social institutional arrangements that exist in the society based on divisions of labor, lines of responsibility and social constitution. In the case of age, the adults use their power and influence to effect change in children through the use of reward systems to preserve how the society operates any child who does not obey certain social norms are punished or threatened. Gender roles which as social constitution are also another example of how unconscious division of labor helps the society to remain in the same through ages without changing. Age and gender preserve social institutions just as normative resources are used in international relations.
References
Barnett, M. and Duvall, R., 2005. Power in international politics. International organization, 59(1), pp.39-75.
