Policy Processes: An Integrated Approach

In my discussion of policy processes in chapter 5, I employ a conceptualisation of policy that integrates the discussion in the previous sections on network and process views of policy. I utilise the concept of a policy network, consisting of a policy community and multiple discourse coalitions, made up of groups of actors linked by policy narratives and vying for policy space and discursive institutionalisation. I adopt a policy as discourse view that contends that “policy does not move neatly from stages of agenda-setting and decision-making to implementation: policy is often contested, substantially re-shaped or even initiated from a range of places...it is this complexity and dynamism...that may allow for the assertion

41 of alternative story lines and practices, which, in turn, can gradually result in substantial challenges or shifts in knowledge and practices associated with previously dominant discourses” (Keeley and Scoones, 2003: 22). In chapter 5, I use this framing of policy to investigate the process of policy reform to introduce CBNRM, and the characteristics of the policy network, including the policy community, discourse coalitions and policy entrepreneurs in the shaping of policy. In chapter 5 I also examine the role of the local level, and specifically pilot projects, in policy processes through the construction of policy space and position within the policy network.

Incorporating theories of policy as discourse necessitates the “analysis of webs of power underlying the actions of different actors in policy processes, as well as practices invested in policy negotiation or contest” (Keeley and Scoones, 2003: 24). I draw on this positioning of power at the centre of policy processes, conceptualising them as a “reflection of structured political interests, the product of agency of actors engaged in a policy area, and also part of over-arching power-knowledge relations that discursively frame practice in different ways”

(Keeley and Scoones, 2003: 38). It is to the theorisation of power, and its integration in to both the study of policy processes and the power struggles taking place within CBNRM that this chapter turns next.

2.3 Power

Issues of power have become central to the study of policy and, whilst policies are obviously political phenomena, the politics of policy processes, and the power relations involved, are often “disguised by the objective, neutral, legal-rational idioms in which they are portrayed”

(Shore and Wright, 1997: 8). This is what Ferguson (1990) referred to as the ‘anti-politics machine’. Hidden beneath apolitical discourses of participation, empowerment and neoliberal win-win scenarios, the crisis surrounding CBNRM is one of socio-politics and governance issues which drive inequalities, re-shape CBNRM according to actors’ own interests and produce unexpected results. Placing power at the centre of these politics and processes requires careful thought however.

Power is a term that has occupied the minds of social scientists for many years and in many ways. The debates surrounding power operate across the realms of political science (Haugaard, 2002), policy studies (Keeley and Scoones, 2003), anthropology (Shore and Wright, 1997) and sociology (Foucault, 1975; Foucault, 1982; Clegg, 1989). Whilst concepts

42 and theories of social power abound, highlighting what Clegg & Haugaard (2009) refer to as the many ‘faces’ of power, it is important to acknowledge that there is not one single type of power, and no single explanatory mechanism for it. It is social power, “based upon knowledge and membership of social systems” (Barnes, 1988; Haugaard, 2002: 113), rather than natural power (such as the power to move and object) that has interested social scientists (see Lukes, 2005).

Scott (2001) argued that studies of social power form two distinct streams: a mainstream view concerned with the exercise of power and an alternative stream which conceptualises power as a dispositional capacity, without necessarily exercising it. Traditional concepts of power focused upon the first of these streams, describing it as ‘power over’ (Göhler, 2009).

For example, this was famously discussed as sovereign power in Hobbes’ Leviathan and Machiavelli’s The Prince (Clegg and Haugaard, 2009). This classical view conceptualises power as ‘zero-sum’, asymmetrical and hierarchical, leading to the concentration of power in the hands of an (individual or group) elite (Scott, 2001). Whilst the classical views of power have been reinterpreted over time, generating different schools of thought and conceptualisations of power, the power debate that gripped the social sciences in the latter half of the 20^th century took its starting point from the ideas of elite control of power within this first stream. The debate is often traced back to the work of Mills who, in the 1950s, published two seminal works concerning the power elite and community power structures (Haugaard, 2002). These were famously criticised in behaviouralist or pluralist views of power which argued that different actors and interests dominate over different issues (Dahl, 1961). In the 1970s, these ideas were further expanded, particularly by Bachrach & Baratz’s (1962) study of a second face of power. This key work introduced the idea that power was exercised not only in the outcomes of decision-making, but in the agenda setting created by the ‘organisation of bias’ that led to dominant groups “limit[ing] decision-making to non-controversial matters, by influencing community values and political procedures and rituals, notwithstanding that there are in the community serious but latent power issues” (Lukes, 2005: 5). Schrattschneider referred to this process as the way “some issues are organised into politics, others are organised out” (in Lukes, 2005: 7). These works opened up the study of power beyond sovereign power and to more subtle forms such as authority, coercion, manipulation and influence (see Lukes, 2005), and raised questions about whether conflict was a necessary condition for the exercise of power.

43 The power debate has developed into a second stream of theory identified by Scott (2001): an exploration of power not just as ‘power over’ but as ‘power to’. Parsons (1963) contributed greatly to these theoretical developments with his argument that power is not present only in its exercise, but also as a capacity that is socially produced (Haugaard, 1997). In this thesis, I employ a view of power that draws on this second stream, defining it as “the ability to achieve a desired outcome in competition with other actors who lay claim to the same resources needed to produce that outcome” (Hyden, 2008: 11). I argue that power is both exercised and is a dispositional capacity, therefore. As sociologists and political scientists turned their attention to more subtle forms of power, Lukes (1974; 2005) published a ‘radical view’ that extended these debates into a third dimension; ‘false consciousness’ as a way in which power is working in unconscious ways, affecting people’s values through processes of internalisation (Scott, 2001; Lukes, 2005). This third dimension of power was used by Gaventa (1982) in his study of mining communities in an Appalachian valley, where he argued that quiescence of the dominated community could be attributed to power relations and specifically the influence of consciousness created by information control and socialisation and indirect means, such as anticipated defeat. These ideas linked debates back to Gramsci’s ideas of hegemony, and to the later work of Pierre Bourdieu, who described how “social agents are endowed with habitus, inscribed in their bodies by past experiences:

social norms and conventions of the various fields²⁰ are incorporated or inscribed into their bodies, thereby generating a permanent disposition, a durable way of standing, speaking, walking, and thereby of feeling and thinking” (Bourdieu, 1990 in Lukes, 2005: 141).

Bourdieu’s idea of habitus is conceptualised as “below the level of consciousness [and, unlike hegemony]...resistant to articulation, critical reflection and conscious manipulation”, which he described as ‘symbolic violence’ (Bourdieu, 2001 in Lukes, 2005: 140). What both these major players in social theory point to is the movement of the consideration of power beyond that of the exercise of ‘power over’ to more complex forms of the internalisation of values that represent the dominant. This raises questions (and has been the basis for myriad theories) as to how this is achieved, what this tells us about power and whether it is necessarily undesirable.

The internalisation of socially-constructed power forms a key element of the research project, which attempts to understand the power systems within which CBNRM is operating and

20 “stratified social spaces within which individuals struggle for unequally distributed resources or capital” (Bourdieu, 1990 in Lukes, 2005: 141).

44 specifically, how powerful actors within this are able to negotiate the system, manipulating it for their own ends. In this thesis, I explore the axes of power present within Tanzanian CBNRM therefore, and investigate the internalisation of values that legitimise and support the power systems. I argue that a conceptualisation of power must address debates that have been taking place within power literatures, but also more broadly across the social scientists and address the issue of structure and agency. In addressing the questions of both the internalisation of values and how actors seek to exert power and control over each other and the environment, it is crucial to address the issue of how this takes place, where and how this power is created, and whether it is structurally or socially derived.