THE PROBLEM OF POWER

Michael D. Parsons

Review of Policy Research, 1999, vol. 16, issue 3‐4, 278-310

Abstract: The purpose of this article is to offer a methodological approach for reconstructing and reclaiming power in policy analysis and research. Positivist and post‐positivist researchers have largely abandoned the concept after failing to produce a universal definition of power. Interpretive researchers tend to produce definitions that are a function of the methodology and theory selected to guide the inquiry review earlier efforts to define power before presenting a methodology that was used to guide a study of power in the federal higher education policy arena. The methodology combines several methods with the common thread being interpretation. At the heart of this approach is Callon and Latour's (1981) sociology of translation. The claim made for this approach is that it presents a clearer field of vision unimpeded by a priori interpretations or theories of power. The meaning of power is allowed to emerge from the social setting which is being studied.

Date: 1999
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