Infrastructural power
Encyclopedia
Infrastructural power is the capacity of the state
to penetrate civil society
and to use this penetration to enforce policy throughout its entire territory.
The concept of infrastructural power was introduced by sociologist Michael Mann
in his article "The Autonomous Power of the State: its Origins, Mechanisms, and Results," which appeared in the European Journal of Sociology in 1984. This work has been the foundation for the study of infrastructural power and its companion, despotic power.
In other words, an improvement of the quality and quantity of state interaction with social life leads to an increase in infrastructural power.
The simplest differentiation between Mann's two types of state power is that despotic power is power over society, while infrastructural power is power through society. While infrastructural power entails a cooperative relationship between citizens and their government, despotic power requires only that an elite class can impose its will on society
.
States do not utilize only infrastructural or only despotic power. The two types of power coexist within a state, though not always harmoniously. In 1993 Mann clarified his definition of infrastructural power to include the fact that despotic states
also rely on infrastructural power as they attempt to control their entire bounded territory. In fact, the goal of an authoritarian state is to combine despotic and infrastructural power in a way that allows it the maximum influence over social life. There is also a tension between the two types of power in weak states; infrastructural power requires a level of cooperation and compromise between institutions that generally undermines despotic power.
A state whose power is primarily infrastructural can provide services throughout its entire territorial space, which decreases its likelihood of becoming a weak or failed state
. Conversely, a weak or collapsed state has little chance of providing the type of infrastructure
needed to ensure infrastructural power. In such cases, a state may rely on despotic power, or the power of elites over society, to gain control.
and French Revolution
s. As civil society gained political authority in Western states
, despotic power became less acceptable among civilian populations. As such, infrastructural power is now considered a “positive” type of power ; it is a source of legitimacy derived directly from civil society and therefore, at least in theory, directly from the people
. Infrastructural power is fortified by the state’s ability to perform the services its constituents
demand.
Imperial state
s and feudal states, both low in infrastructural power, belong to a past that depended on the despotic rule of an elite
class for societal order. Monarchs and emperors of the past could not extend their direct rule to every aspect of social life without the aid of modern technology. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution
, the infrastructural power of developed states rose rapidly. In the present era, developed states can monitor their populations; provide employment, health care and welfare; impact all levels of the economy; and more. In this way, they are continuously escalating their infrastructural power.
The modern state system is more conducive to infrastructural power than past systems have been: today, states have bounded
areas for which to provide services and the domestic sovereignty
needed to provide these services without foreign intrusion. Mann argues that because states are territorially bounded and centrally organized, they have an advantage in power over other elements of society. As such, the autonomous powers of the state originate from its status as a bounded place.
According to Mann , the two governmental systems highest in infrastructural power are bureaucratic states, such as the United States of America
, and authoritarian states
, such as China
.
Nineteenth-century political scholar Max Weber
outlined the characteristics of the bureaucratic state in his "Economy and Society
." In this work, Weber emphasizes the benefits of an even distribution of duties and power, the hiring of only qualified officials, a hierarchy
of authority, and a written set of rules that can be universally learned and followed. The methods by which a state builds infrastructural power mesh perfectly with the establishment of a bureaucracy
: literacy allows for a widespread comprehension of the written rules; a standard set of measurements and efficient systems of transportation and communication allow for greater efficiency in the distribution of authority; and a division of labor ensures that qualified officials in each field can take full advantage of their expertise.
Michael Mann points out that in the modern bureaucratic state, the government
can "assess and tax our income
and wealth at source, without our consent…; it stores and can recall immediately a massive amount of information about all of us; it can enforce its will within the day almost anywhere in its domains; its influence on the overall economy is enormous; it even directly provides the subsistence of most of us (in state employment, in pensions, in family allowances, etc.).” Without industrialization and the modern bureaucratic division of labor, the state would not be efficient enough to protect its own interests
in these areas.
The United States of America is an example of a highly bureaucratic state in which the infrastructural power of the government drastically outweighs the despotic power. Mann attributes this fact to the status of the U.S. as a modern, industrialized state. As a capitalist
democracy
, it has the advantages of an active civil society and a system of taxation; each provide means for increasing infrastructural capacity.
Increased infrastructural capacity allows the government to provide services throughout the entire U.S. territory. As a result, the state is more stable, both politically and economically. In general, citizens have more time to concentrate on political and social activities because they do not have to worry about daily subsistence. Thus, civil society has a strong presence in the United States and provides an arena through which the government can affect daily life.
In the United States, politicians obtain legitimacy
from sources outside the government, such as voters, financial donors, and interest groups. Politicians are also required to operate within state law. With these guidelines in place, civil society has the ability to keep a check on the power of government officials. Ideally, then, the government cannot make decisions without some form of consent from the public. This translates into the power of civil society over the bureaucracy. As Mann puts it, “The secret decisions of politicians and bureaucrats penetrate our everyday lives in an often infuriating way, deciding we are not eligible for this or that benefit, including, for some persons, citizenship
itself. But their power to change the fundamental rules and overturn the distribution of power within civil society is feeble."
Therefore, while the United States and other modern bureaucratic systems experience some aspects of despotic power, such as sporadic corruption
and opacity, a healthy economy and political participation greatly increase the level of infrastructural power.
In an authoritarian state, just as in a bureaucratic state, infrastructural power exists through civil society. However, in the authoritarian state, the competing interest groups that compose this civil society often fight for complete control of the government rather than simply to attain political goals.
As a politically repressive state with an active bureaucracy and a strong economy, China is an example of a state high in both infrastructural and despotic power.
, the various forms of the Chinese nation have relied greatly on despotic power. However, a growing state bureaucracy has added to the infrastructural strength of the government over time. According to the U.S. Department of State, successive Chinese dynasties created and developed, over thousands of years, “a system of bureaucratic control that gave the agrarian-based Chinese an advantage over neighboring nomadic and hill cultures.” While securing geopolitical strength in this manner, the Chinese bureaucracy also guaranteed a domestically powerful state. With the establishment of a state-wide Confucian ideology and a common written language
, the government further infiltrated the social life of the population.
Mao Zedong
established the communist, autocratic People’s Republic of China in 1949. The regime was high in despotic power, but as the state became more involved in the lives of the people, it become infrastructurally powerful as well. The state system closely resembled that of the Soviet Union
, another authoritarian state that had always prioritized infrastructural power. The military, the Party
, and mass labor and women's organizations comprised a strong civil society that provided infrastructural power in support of the despotic power of the state. The government was thus inextricably tied to civil society, an illustration of Michael Mann's comments on the infrastructural power of authoritarian regimes:
"Authoritarian is meant to suggest a more institutionalized form of state despotism, in which competing power groupings cannot evade the infrastructural reach of the state, nor are they structurally separate from the state (as they are in the bureaucratic type). All significant social power must go through the authoritative command structure of the state."
After the Communist takeover, the state also instituted a strict control over social life, including a ban of religion and a law that limited family size to one child. These are examples of a government seizing control over the most personal aspects of day-to-day life. These policies can be declared despotically, but enforced only through a strong infrastructural presence.
In 1989, a protest in Tiananmen Square
turned into a tragic manifestation of the combination of infrastructural and despotic power. The Chinese government sent in the military, a vital part of the state infrastructure, to end a protest of the oppressive nature of the regime
. In this case, the government relied on its infrastructural power to protect its despotic power.
In recent years, China has further opened to the international community
. Since then, economic growth and assistance from international financial institutions
such as the World Bank
have allowed for infrastructural development. As more development occurs, infrastructural power remains on the rise.
State (polity)
A state is an organized political community, living under a government. States may be sovereign and may enjoy a monopoly on the legal initiation of force and are not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. Many states are federated states which participate in a federal union...
to penetrate civil society
Civil society
Civil society is composed of the totality of many voluntary social relationships, civic and social organizations, and institutions that form the basis of a functioning society, as distinct from the force-backed structures of a state , the commercial institutions of the market, and private criminal...
and to use this penetration to enforce policy throughout its entire territory.
The concept of infrastructural power was introduced by sociologist Michael Mann
Michael Mann (sociologist)
Michael Mann is a British-born professor of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles and Visiting Research Professor at Queen's University Belfast. Mann holds dual British and US citizenships. He received his B.A. in Modern History from the University of Oxford in 1963 and his...
in his article "The Autonomous Power of the State: its Origins, Mechanisms, and Results," which appeared in the European Journal of Sociology in 1984. This work has been the foundation for the study of infrastructural power and its companion, despotic power.
Building infrastructural power
Mann lays out four techniques by which the state gains infrastructural power. Together these factors aid in the state’s infiltration of civil society by increasing both the amount of contact citizens have with the state and the benefits derived from this contact. To increase its infrastructural power, the state must:- Provide centrally-organized services that are carried out through a division of labor. This distribution of authority improves the efficiency of the infrastructureInfrastructureInfrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...
. - Ensure the literacyLiteracyLiteracy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
of the populationPopulationA population is all the organisms that both belong to the same group or species and live in the same geographical area. The area that is used to define a sexual population is such that inter-breeding is possible between any pair within the area and more probable than cross-breeding with individuals...
, which provides a means of codifying state laws and allows for a collective awareness of state power. - Produce a system of weights and measures and a currencyCurrencyIn economics, currency refers to a generally accepted medium of exchange. These are usually the coins and banknotes of a particular government, which comprise the physical aspects of a nation's money supply...
to facilitate the exchangeTradeTrade is the transfer of ownership of goods and services from one person or entity to another. Trade is sometimes loosely called commerce or financial transaction or barter. A network that allows trade is called a market. The original form of trade was barter, the direct exchange of goods and...
of goods. The state must be able to guarantee that these goods ultimately have valueValue (economics)An economic value is the worth of a good or service as determined by the market.The economic value of a good or service has puzzled economists since the beginning of the discipline. First, economists tried to estimate the value of a good to an individual alone, and extend that definition to goods...
. - Provide effective and rapid systems of communicationCommunicationCommunication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
and transportation.
In other words, an improvement of the quality and quantity of state interaction with social life leads to an increase in infrastructural power.
The differences between infrastructural and despotic power
The terms infrastructural and despotic have been used “to identify the two different ways in which a governmental apparatus acquires and uses centralized power.”The simplest differentiation between Mann's two types of state power is that despotic power is power over society, while infrastructural power is power through society. While infrastructural power entails a cooperative relationship between citizens and their government, despotic power requires only that an elite class can impose its will on society
Society
A society, or a human society, is a group of people related to each other through persistent relations, or a large social grouping sharing the same geographical or virtual territory, subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations...
.
States do not utilize only infrastructural or only despotic power. The two types of power coexist within a state, though not always harmoniously. In 1993 Mann clarified his definition of infrastructural power to include the fact that despotic states
Despotism
Despotism is a form of government in which a single entity rules with absolute power. That entity may be an individual, as in an autocracy, or it may be a group, as in an oligarchy...
also rely on infrastructural power as they attempt to control their entire bounded territory. In fact, the goal of an authoritarian state is to combine despotic and infrastructural power in a way that allows it the maximum influence over social life. There is also a tension between the two types of power in weak states; infrastructural power requires a level of cooperation and compromise between institutions that generally undermines despotic power.
A state whose power is primarily infrastructural can provide services throughout its entire territorial space, which decreases its likelihood of becoming a weak or failed state
Failed state
The term failed state is often used by political commentators and journalists to describe a state perceived as having failed at some of the basic conditions and responsibilities of a sovereign government...
. Conversely, a weak or collapsed state has little chance of providing the type of infrastructure
Infrastructure
Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function...
needed to ensure infrastructural power. In such cases, a state may rely on despotic power, or the power of elites over society, to gain control.
Infrastructural power and the modern territorial state
Infrastructural power has become more important since the time of the AmericanAmerican Revolution
The American Revolution was the political upheaval during the last half of the 18th century in which thirteen colonies in North America joined together to break free from the British Empire, combining to become the United States of America...
and French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
s. As civil society gained political authority in Western states
Western world
The Western world, also known as the West and the Occident , is a term referring to the countries of Western Europe , the countries of the Americas, as well all countries of Northern and Central Europe, Australia and New Zealand...
, despotic power became less acceptable among civilian populations. As such, infrastructural power is now considered a “positive” type of power ; it is a source of legitimacy derived directly from civil society and therefore, at least in theory, directly from the people
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
. Infrastructural power is fortified by the state’s ability to perform the services its constituents
Electoral district
An electoral district is a distinct territorial subdivision for holding a separate election for one or more seats in a legislative body...
demand.
Imperial state
Imperial State
An Imperial State or Imperial Estate was an entity in the Holy Roman Empire with a vote in the Imperial Diet assemblies. Several territories of the Empire were not represented, while some officials were non-voting members; neither qualified as Imperial States.Rulers of Imperial States were...
s and feudal states, both low in infrastructural power, belong to a past that depended on the despotic rule of an elite
Elite
Elite refers to an exceptional or privileged group that wields considerable power within its sphere of influence...
class for societal order. Monarchs and emperors of the past could not extend their direct rule to every aspect of social life without the aid of modern technology. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution
Industrial Revolution
The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...
, the infrastructural power of developed states rose rapidly. In the present era, developed states can monitor their populations; provide employment, health care and welfare; impact all levels of the economy; and more. In this way, they are continuously escalating their infrastructural power.
The modern state system is more conducive to infrastructural power than past systems have been: today, states have bounded
Border
Borders define geographic boundaries of political entities or legal jurisdictions, such as governments, sovereign states, federated states and other subnational entities. Some borders—such as a state's internal administrative borders, or inter-state borders within the Schengen Area—are open and...
areas for which to provide services and the domestic sovereignty
Sovereignty
Sovereignty is the quality of having supreme, independent authority over a geographic area, such as a territory. It can be found in a power to rule and make law that rests on a political fact for which no purely legal explanation can be provided...
needed to provide these services without foreign intrusion. Mann argues that because states are territorially bounded and centrally organized, they have an advantage in power over other elements of society. As such, the autonomous powers of the state originate from its status as a bounded place.
According to Mann , the two governmental systems highest in infrastructural power are bureaucratic states, such as the United States of America
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, and authoritarian states
Authoritarianism
Authoritarianism is a form of social organization characterized by submission to authority. It is usually opposed to individualism and democracy...
, such as China
China
Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...
.
Bureaucratic states
- “When people in the West today complain of the growing power of the state, they cannot be referring sensibly to the despotic powers of the state elite itself, for if anything these are still declining. But the complaint is more justly leveled against the state’s infrastructural encroachments. These powers are now immense.”
Nineteenth-century political scholar Max Weber
Max Weber
Karl Emil Maximilian "Max" Weber was a German sociologist and political economist who profoundly influenced social theory, social research, and the discipline of sociology itself...
outlined the characteristics of the bureaucratic state in his "Economy and Society
Economy and Society
Economy and Society is a book by political economist and sociologist Max Weber, published posthumously in Germany in 1922 by his wife Marianne. Alongside The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, it is considered to be one of Weber's most important works...
." In this work, Weber emphasizes the benefits of an even distribution of duties and power, the hiring of only qualified officials, a hierarchy
Hierarchy
A hierarchy is an arrangement of items in which the items are represented as being "above," "below," or "at the same level as" one another...
of authority, and a written set of rules that can be universally learned and followed. The methods by which a state builds infrastructural power mesh perfectly with the establishment of a bureaucracy
Bureaucracy
A bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials of a governmental or organization who implement the rules, laws, and functions of their institution, and are occasionally characterized by officialism and red tape.-Weberian bureaucracy:...
: literacy allows for a widespread comprehension of the written rules; a standard set of measurements and efficient systems of transportation and communication allow for greater efficiency in the distribution of authority; and a division of labor ensures that qualified officials in each field can take full advantage of their expertise.
Michael Mann points out that in the modern bureaucratic state, the government
Government
Government refers to the legislators, administrators, and arbitrators in the administrative bureaucracy who control a state at a given time, and to the system of government by which they are organized...
can "assess and tax our income
Income
Income is the consumption and savings opportunity gained by an entity within a specified time frame, which is generally expressed in monetary terms. However, for households and individuals, "income is the sum of all the wages, salaries, profits, interests payments, rents and other forms of earnings...
and wealth at source, without our consent…; it stores and can recall immediately a massive amount of information about all of us; it can enforce its will within the day almost anywhere in its domains; its influence on the overall economy is enormous; it even directly provides the subsistence of most of us (in state employment, in pensions, in family allowances, etc.).” Without industrialization and the modern bureaucratic division of labor, the state would not be efficient enough to protect its own interests
National interest
The national interest, often referred to by the French expression raison d'État , is a country's goals and ambitions whether economic, military, or cultural. The concept is an important one in international relations where pursuit of the national interest is the foundation of the realist...
in these areas.
Infrastructural power in the United States
- “From Alaska to Florida, … there is no hiding place from the infrastructural reach of the modern state."
The United States of America is an example of a highly bureaucratic state in which the infrastructural power of the government drastically outweighs the despotic power. Mann attributes this fact to the status of the U.S. as a modern, industrialized state. As a capitalist
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
democracy
Democracy
Democracy is generally defined as a form of government in which all adult citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Ideally, this includes equal participation in the proposal, development and passage of legislation into law...
, it has the advantages of an active civil society and a system of taxation; each provide means for increasing infrastructural capacity.
Increased infrastructural capacity allows the government to provide services throughout the entire U.S. territory. As a result, the state is more stable, both politically and economically. In general, citizens have more time to concentrate on political and social activities because they do not have to worry about daily subsistence. Thus, civil society has a strong presence in the United States and provides an arena through which the government can affect daily life.
In the United States, politicians obtain legitimacy
Legitimacy (political science)
In political science, legitimacy is the popular acceptance of a governing law or régime as an authority. Whereas “authority” denotes a specific position in an established government, the term “legitimacy” denotes a system of government — wherein “government” denotes “sphere of influence”...
from sources outside the government, such as voters, financial donors, and interest groups. Politicians are also required to operate within state law. With these guidelines in place, civil society has the ability to keep a check on the power of government officials. Ideally, then, the government cannot make decisions without some form of consent from the public. This translates into the power of civil society over the bureaucracy. As Mann puts it, “The secret decisions of politicians and bureaucrats penetrate our everyday lives in an often infuriating way, deciding we are not eligible for this or that benefit, including, for some persons, citizenship
Citizenship
Citizenship is the state of being a citizen of a particular social, political, national, or human resource community. Citizenship status, under social contract theory, carries with it both rights and responsibilities...
itself. But their power to change the fundamental rules and overturn the distribution of power within civil society is feeble."
Therefore, while the United States and other modern bureaucratic systems experience some aspects of despotic power, such as sporadic corruption
Political corruption
Political corruption is the use of legislated powers by government officials for illegitimate private gain. Misuse of government power for other purposes, such as repression of political opponents and general police brutality, is not considered political corruption. Neither are illegal acts by...
and opacity, a healthy economy and political participation greatly increase the level of infrastructural power.
Authoritarian states
Authoritarian states are high in both despotic power and infrastructural power because they can enforce infrastructurally the decisions made despotically.In an authoritarian state, just as in a bureaucratic state, infrastructural power exists through civil society. However, in the authoritarian state, the competing interest groups that compose this civil society often fight for complete control of the government rather than simply to attain political goals.
As a politically repressive state with an active bureaucracy and a strong economy, China is an example of a state high in both infrastructural and despotic power.
Development of infrastructural power in China
Throughout the region’s long historyHistory of China
Chinese civilization originated in various regional centers along both the Yellow River and the Yangtze River valleys in the Neolithic era, but the Yellow River is said to be the Cradle of Chinese Civilization. With thousands of years of continuous history, China is one of the world's oldest...
, the various forms of the Chinese nation have relied greatly on despotic power. However, a growing state bureaucracy has added to the infrastructural strength of the government over time. According to the U.S. Department of State, successive Chinese dynasties created and developed, over thousands of years, “a system of bureaucratic control that gave the agrarian-based Chinese an advantage over neighboring nomadic and hill cultures.” While securing geopolitical strength in this manner, the Chinese bureaucracy also guaranteed a domestically powerful state. With the establishment of a state-wide Confucian ideology and a common written language
Written language
A written language is the representation of a language by means of a writing system. Written language is an invention in that it must be taught to children, who will instinctively learn or create spoken or gestural languages....
, the government further infiltrated the social life of the population.
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong
Mao Zedong, also transliterated as Mao Tse-tung , and commonly referred to as Chairman Mao , was a Chinese Communist revolutionary, guerrilla warfare strategist, Marxist political philosopher, and leader of the Chinese Revolution...
established the communist, autocratic People’s Republic of China in 1949. The regime was high in despotic power, but as the state became more involved in the lives of the people, it become infrastructurally powerful as well. The state system closely resembled that of the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, another authoritarian state that had always prioritized infrastructural power. The military, the Party
Communist Party of China
The Communist Party of China , also known as the Chinese Communist Party , is the founding and ruling political party of the People's Republic of China...
, and mass labor and women's organizations comprised a strong civil society that provided infrastructural power in support of the despotic power of the state. The government was thus inextricably tied to civil society, an illustration of Michael Mann's comments on the infrastructural power of authoritarian regimes:
"Authoritarian is meant to suggest a more institutionalized form of state despotism, in which competing power groupings cannot evade the infrastructural reach of the state, nor are they structurally separate from the state (as they are in the bureaucratic type). All significant social power must go through the authoritative command structure of the state."
After the Communist takeover, the state also instituted a strict control over social life, including a ban of religion and a law that limited family size to one child. These are examples of a government seizing control over the most personal aspects of day-to-day life. These policies can be declared despotically, but enforced only through a strong infrastructural presence.
In 1989, a protest in Tiananmen Square
Tiananmen Square
Tiananmen Square is a large city square in the center of Beijing, China, named after the Tiananmen Gate located to its North, separating it from the Forbidden City. Tiananmen Square is the third largest city square in the world...
turned into a tragic manifestation of the combination of infrastructural and despotic power. The Chinese government sent in the military, a vital part of the state infrastructure, to end a protest of the oppressive nature of the regime
Regime
The word regime refers to a set of conditions, most often of a political nature.-Politics:...
. In this case, the government relied on its infrastructural power to protect its despotic power.
In recent years, China has further opened to the international community
International community
The international community is a term used in international relations to refer to all peoples, cultures and governments of the world or to a group of them. The term is used to imply the existence of common duties and obligations between them...
. Since then, economic growth and assistance from international financial institutions
International financial institutions
International financial institutions are financial institutions that have been established by more than one country, and hence are subjects of international law. Their owners or shareholders are generally national governments, although other international institutions and other organisations...
such as the World Bank
World Bank
The World Bank is an international financial institution that provides loans to developing countries for capital programmes.The World Bank's official goal is the reduction of poverty...
have allowed for infrastructural development. As more development occurs, infrastructural power remains on the rise.