Power Resources in Theory and Practice: Where to Go from Here

Abstract

As we approach the end of another decade, it feels appropriate to pause and consider how the power resources approach (PRA) has evolved alongside labour's real-life evolution as a strategic actor across a range of economic, institutional and societal contexts.Just as the actual strategies and actions of workers have grown more sophisticated over time, so too has the PRA become more sophisticated, as scholars continue to refine the concepts comprising this influential theoretical framework (Schmalz, Ludwig and Webster this issue).One of the PRA's great strengths is its emphasis on labour's agency, countering outmoded portrayals of workers and unions as passive victims of structural forces (Bieler, this issue).Another strength of the PRA is its utility for causal analysis, being broad enough to facilitate useful comparisons across multiple cases yet specific enough to explain why an individual case had the outcome it did.Most important is its practical utility: By defining distinct power resources -such as associational, structural, institutional and societal power -and illustrating how they play out through empirical examples -PRA scholars provide guidance to union leaders and labour activists that is specific enough to steer strategic action on a case-by-case basis yet broad enough to prevent reinvention of the wheel for each new dispute.As this Special Issue's case studies show, unions and their allies are already well into implementing the PRA on the ground.Of course, workers have always exercised power and never needed any academic jargon to do so.What the PRA offers, however, is insight on how to be more conscious of strategy and more precise in the deployment of diverse tactics.Nevertheless, if labour leaders and activists are to further secure workers' rights in an ever more complex global economy, they will need much clearer predictions of when and why specific power resources are effective in any given situation.What scholars can do now is provide such predictions by further developing the PRA.Enhancing the PRA should start with a deeper discussion of the concept at its very corepower.Too often scholarship on workers' power proceeds without a theory of power itself.This matters, because a close examination of what power is reveals two aspects worthy of further inspection: power is relational, and power is a capacity.Greater attention to the relational aspects of power would allow us to map out the specific mechanisms through which workers' actions directly affect the behaviour of employers or other actors, while deeper consideration of power as a capacity helps highlight the conditions under which workers are able to exercise power in the first place.I argue these points below.Power -defined as the capacity of an actor to compel another actor to do something the latter otherwise would not do -is inherently relational (Dahl, 1961;Lukes, 1974Lukes, , 2005;;Gaventa, 1980;Knight, 1992;Piven, 2008).Therefore, it is only meaningful to discuss workers' power with reference to the other actors they are attempting to influence.Most PRA scholars acknowledge this yet rarely go on to systematically theorise the power resources of those with whom workers are in conflict.

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