Rather than an extended narration I'd like this entry to serve as a touchstone for discussion on the different implements of power. I want to focus specifically on what they do "well" and what how they are vulnerable. I have chosen 5 basic "types" of power:
Thwarting Power
Enforcement Power
Incentive Power
Social Power
Psychological Power
As you will see, they correspond to policy tools that we are familiar with. The military is clearly a part of thwarting power, economics related to incentives etc. But they are more general than "military," "economic" because in a changing world, the relevant categories may change. For example, denial of service internet attacks are thwarting power, but they do not generally come from a military apparatus.
I am not an expert in these areas, so I am tossing things out in the hope that others will follow on with their comments. I do think we will need to formalize this at some point, so we want to keep things general/abstract so they can be applied to new situations.
Hopefully this will make sense...
Thwarting Power
This is the ability to stop someone or something from doing something in a physical sense. It has no mental component whatsoever, meaning it ignores what the other "wills" or chooses. If you blow up an enemy tank, that tank can't fire on you. If you destroy a weapons factory, it can't make weapons.
Strengths: Thwarting power, if possessed, is the most certain power because it does not leave anything to the choice of others, which is unpredictable. Thus, it is good for situations where an outcome cannot be left to chance because negative consequences are almost certain to follow if action is not taken. If enemy battleships are moving toward our shores, we try to destroy them. We do not hope they get close and then turn around, or actually are nice to use once they arrive.
Weaknesses: The problem with thwarting power is that it is expensive/temporary and also messy. By expensive/temporary I mean that it is either one or the other. Thwarting power stops the particular event right now. You destroy the ship or the factory. You have done nothing to alter the likelihood of the ship coming back or the factory being rebuilt. This weakness can be avoided by using thwarting power over and over again. But this is expensive.
Thwarting power is also undermined by its messiness. It is very difficult to use it to only effect the target to be thwarted. Thwarting power usually involves collateral damage, and sometimes this collateral damage undermines your other or longer term objectives.
Enforcement Power
Enforcement power is the power of the threat of thwarting to alter the choices that others will make. It could be a threat to inflict pain on them, but it could also be a threat to simply repeatedly thwart/destroy something they try to do. Patrols by troops or aircraft often serve this function.
Strengths: Enforcement power can be deployed over a long period of time in a "standing" way. You can have a standing police force, a standing aircraft carrier in certain waters etc. It is not as expensive as thwarting because, if done well, a small amount of resources can stretch over a large scope. You don't need a cop on every corner to maintain order, you just need enough to be able to thwart when necessary.
Weaknesses: The problem with enforcement power is that, because it relies on the enemy's perception, it requires careful symbolic management. To work, it has to mean what it is supposed to mean, or at least some equivalent that creates the same effect. In some cases this is no problem, but because enforcement power relies on thwarting power, and thwarting power is messy, enforcement power is weakened by over-use. Basically, the more you use enforcement power, the more confusing the message is. To reduce this risk enforcement power must be converted to thwarting only at precisely the right times. This requires a lot of information, which is expensive and difficult to manage.
For example, thwarting "innocent" actions, even if only accidentally, is likely to be decoded by enemies as aggression rather than enforcement (see relationship between cops and citizens in many inner-cities). Once perceived as aggression, the enforcement principle is lost. Now resistance is increased, which requires more thwarting, which is expensive and messy etc. So a new equilibrium is reached where large amounts of resources are repeatedly deployed to thwart actions because enforcement is not really working.
Incentive Power
Incentive power includes both the ability to reward and punish. Importantly, it is distinguished from material powers (thwarting, enforecment) in that there is no intervention. It relies on mutual choice. It says "if you do A, I will do B, if not I will do C." Obviously, "B" must always be preferable to "C" for the other party, but neither B nor C directly effect the ability to do A, which is why it is not an intervention.
Strengths: Incentive power has the benefit of being relatively inexpensive in the short term. It also has an important benefit of being an option in almost all situations. With at least some use of other powers to change the situation, incentive power can always be brought in. It also does not engender much long term resistance.
Weaknesses: It basically has 4 weaknesses:
1. Valuation -- incentive power can only really be used when the value of alternatives can clearly be seen.
2. Options -- incentive power is easily undermined by the actions of others. This is the competitive market effect. Thus, it is best used when one has either a) unique assets to offer or b) has coordinated the actions of others as part of the deal,
3. Trust -- Incentive power requires some trust. There must be trust between the exchangers as well as between the other actors being coordinated in the deal. Social power is what creates trust (see below), without trust deals fall apart on tiny sticking points, e.g. who will act first.
4. Prices/end games -- The final problem with incentive power is that there is always the chance that you will pay your opponent just slightly more than you are offering. This can get expensive as opportunities for extortion may come about. If not complemented by other forms of power, incentives could be slowly perverted so that one side gets a far better deal than the other but the other has no alternative but to accept.
Social Power
Social power is actually the power we see at work most of the time. On a fundamental level, it is the ability to manipulate the other's position in the social group, including but not limited to the ability to have the other included or excluded entirely. The main idea behind social power is that one's status in the group (of whatever) carries with it large potential but unspecified benefits and costs. Thus, it is difficult to put a concrete value on it, also because it is very long-term focused. Exclusion from the group can set one back decades, if not permanently.
It is related to trust and credibility. It maintains a general set of guidelines for conduct. It works by threatening the imposition of large, long term costs for infractions that are, presumably, easy to avoid (since everyone else avoids them).
Strengths: The strength of social power is that it is inexpensive and works well over the long term. If used well, it minimizes the need for the other kinds of power and can serve as the basis of positive growth over time, that is, the reduction of the need for other forms of power.
Weaknesses: Social power basically brings with it three drawbacks:
1. It requires a social community that is functioning/worth joining
This is self explanatory. It may seem like this is a high bar but in fact it is a low one. Any actor who relies on more than one other actor is part of some kind of a community provided those two others have some access to each other.
2. It requires that you have a credible position in that social community
Basically this means that to wield the power of social norms, one must stay within those norms oneself. It also requires that one consistently support the norms when others try to violate. This is the ongoing cost of social power.
3. It has no power over those who do not wish to be in the community (mortal enemies)
Mortal enemies have no desire to be in the community, thus, they will ignore the prospects of their expulsion and see no reason to conform. Social power has no influence over them.
Psychological Power
Psychological power is basically the ability to manipulate. I'm thinking of two general things that can be manipulated, though there are probably others: truth (or perhaps "information"), ideals (or perhaps "emotions"). Though it may seem similar, this is different from social power in that it actually circumvents the choice of the other. In this way it is like thwarting power, but it does not effect the opponent's ability to do something, it works on their desire to do it, only without them realizing it.
Information can be used as psychological power by changing what is perceived to be truth. If you can control what another believes to be true, you can control their actions. Emotions can be used as psychological power by changing what is perceived to be "good," i.e. ideals. If you can control emotions/ideals, you can control motivations which give some power over actions.
Strengths: This is the most complete form of power in that it has the specificity and short-term immediacy of material intervention but can be deployed more sustainably in the long term, depending on other circumstances.
Weaknesses: Pyschological power has three basic weaknesses.
1. It can be expensive in both the resource and cognitive sense. Depending on the situation, the control over information or emotions in order to achieve specific outcomes can require enormous amounts of analysis and precise actions.
2. Complexity -- even with infinite resources, it is possible that paradoxical or "double-bind" situations occur, where-in the psychological manipulation requires mutually exclusive actions, such as simultaneously sharing and hiding the same information. All kinds of tricks are invented to work around this, but there is a limit to this.
3. Reversals -- Probably the biggest weakness of this kind of power is that, if it is discovered to have been used, it reverses many of its effects. In particular, it motivates deep resentment and mobilization against you -- much deeper than messy thwarting. In the meantime, it totally loses its effectiveness as information is not trusted and attempts at emotional connection are recoiled from. If you blow it with psychological power, you are in big trouble. So basically, if you use this power, you can never let on that you are using it. Try to cloak in one of the others.
