Democratic Dilemmas: Joint Work, Education Politics, and Community

2 Participation and Power

A primary virtue of a deliberative model of democracy . . . is that it promotes a conception of reason over power in politics. Policies ought to be adopted not because the most powerful interests win but because the citizens or their representatives together determine their rightness after hearing and criticizing reasons.1 The participants are substantively equal in that the existing distribution of power and resources does not shape their chances to contribute to deliberation, nor does the distribution play an authoritative role in their deliberation.2 AS THE ABOVE statements suggest, in an ideal, deliberative democracy, participants have equal standing. That is, the status, resources, and cultural capital participants bring to the table—be it their gender, positional authority, access to information, or skills—should not affect their ability to participate in and influence the conversation and decisions. Although theoretically power should not play a significant role, the experiences in Highland and Mid Valley reveal the difficulty of keeping power out of the deliberative arena. An examination of who spoke and did not speak, how frequently they spoke, the quality and content of deliberation, and the perceptions of influence over decision making uncover common tensions around power dynamics—tensions that proved to be more debilitating in Mid Valley than in Highland. In this chapter I analyze these participation patterns and explain why the power imbalances were more acute in Mid Valley. This investigation also reveals insights into the concept of representation in a deliberative context—a topic revisited throughout the remaining chapters. 59 TWO Participation and Power POWER AND ITS MANY FACES Conceptions of power in both political science and sociology are particularly useful to an examination of influence dynamics in deliberative decision making . Decades of work in political theory have yielded a much-debated, multifaceted understanding of power as having many dimensions or “faces”: • The first, often associated with Robert Dahl, refers to power as making decisions that affect another person: “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do.”3 • The second face of power, associated with Peter Bachrach and Morton Baratz, considers the mobilization of bias in the “non-decision making” realm. In other words, power manifests when issues are prevented from surfacing or being raised—for example, when a leader does not make a proposal or does not put an issue on the agenda because he/she anticipates that there would be opposition or sanctions resulting from such action. Thus, “A devotes his energies to creating or reinforcing social and political values and institutional practices that limit the scope of the political process to public consideration of only those issues which are comparatively innocuous to A.”4 • The third face of power—considered a radical conception of power and articulated by Steven Lukes—pertains to situations when an individual’s or group’s desires and needs are intentionally or unintentionally manipulated. In other words, “A exercises power over B when A affects B in a manner contrary to B’s interests.”5 In this third form, power may be exercised without the oppressed individual being conscious of what has occurred and can occur in the absence of an observable, actual conflict. As this chapter explores, the many faces of power asserted themselves at various times throughout the collaborative process—from agenda setting and date setting, to reason giving and discussion, to final decision making. While the first two faces of power were more obvious and measurable, the third face was nevertheless relevant and potentially evident in both cases.6 Organizational theory helps flesh out these notions of power and suggests possible indicators or types of evidence one might look for to measure its presence or absence. Such an understanding of power relies on relational attributes : one who possesses more cultural capital or resources relative to others at the table is considered powerful. Cultural capital or resources might include positional authority, expertise, access to information, and verbal skills. As one theorist notes, “Power in informal groups is based on the characteristics and relations of individuals—differences that can function as resources allowing some to reward and punish others.”7 In formal organizations, power is said to be determined at least in part by design (e.g., a hierarchy determines that DEMOCRATIC DILEMMAS 60 one position controls another). Given the quasiformal status of joint work in district settings—it is often a new entity...