Power and Legitimacy

When Barnes wrote On the Nature of Power, it was explicitly an exercise in sociological theory as opposed to normative political philosophy. This contrasts with the majority of power theorists for whom analysing the is of power is inextricably tied to the normative ought’. Barnes observes that paradigms, social knowledge and mutually reinforcing rings of reference are the essence of power but, in essence, argues that this constitutes a form of empowerment. He does, of course, make conceptual space for illegitimate power through coercion and divide and rule, but he does not entertain the idea that illegitimacy could be specifically embedded in the cognitive frameworks which also empower. In The Nature of Power, Barnes is working within the consensual tradition and building upon Parsons’s insights but without the handicap of the latter’s structural functionalism, which is replaced by a blend of social theory derived from Durkheim, Kuhn and Rational Choice theory.