May 2005

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Gene Sharp's Theory of Power

Brian Martin is associate professor in Science, Technology and Society at the University of Wollongong, Australia. Martin is the author of Nonviolence Speaks: Communicating against Repression and Uprooting War, which, like many of his publications, is available online at www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin. This piece is excerpted from a longer version originally published in the Journal of Peace Research, vol. 26, no. 2, 1989, pp. 213-22. References to works other than Sharp's have been omitted. The full version is available on Martin's website.

Gene Sharp, the world's leading writer on nonviolent action, uses a theory of power based on a division between rulers and subjects and on the withdrawing of consent as the main avenue for effecting political change. From the point of view of structural approaches to the analysis of society, Sharp's picture leaves out much of the complexity of political life, such as the structures of capitalism, patriarchy and bureaucracy - which do not fit well with the ruler-subject picture. As a set of conceptual tools for social activists, however, Sharp's theory of power is far superior to structural approaches.

Gene Sharp's book The Politics of Nonviolent Action (1973) is widely regarded as a classic. Other important works are two collections of essays, Social Power and Political Freedom (1980) and Gandhi as a Political Strategist (1979).

Other writers and activists have made important contributions to the theory and practice of nonviolent action, especially Gandhi. Sharp's key role has been to systematize the field in two ways. First, he has classified methods of nonviolent action and catalogued hundreds of different techniques along with an extensive array of historical examples. This classification has produced conceptual order amongst the scattered experiences detailed in the literature on nonviolent actions. Second, Sharp has elaborated a theory of power which offers a framework for understanding how nonviolent action works.

Sharp's ideas are especially worthy of critical attention because they have been widely adopted by social activists as providing a theoretical underpinning for their own nonviolent actions. Training sessions on nonviolence often include segments on "power theory," which typically is a simplified version of Sharp's ideas, based either directly on his writings or on secondary accounts of them. Yet, compared to the intensive use of his ideas by activists, scholars have devoted little attention to Sharp.

My aim in this paper is to analyze Sharp's theory of power, especially by comparing it to structural approaches to social analysis. Sharp has written that he welcomes critiques. My analysis is done in the spirit of sympathetic criticism.

Sharp's Theory

The essence of Sharp's theory of power is quite simple: people in society may be divided into rulers and subjects; the power of rulers derives from consent by the subjects; nonviolent action is a process of withdrawing consent and thus is a way to challenge the key modern problems of dictatorship, genocide, war, and systems of oppression.

The two key concepts in Sharp's theory of power are, first, the ruler-subject classification and, second, consent. The ruler-subject classification is one that Sharp uses without detailed justification. The "ruler" includes "not only chief executives but also ruling groups and all bodies in command of the State structure" (1980, p. 22). Sharp focuses on the state in his analysis. He spells out the various structures involved in the state, especially the state bureaucracy, police and military, all of which "are under the command of the person or group which occupies the position of 'ruler' at the head of the State" (1980, p. 316). All others besides the rulers are the subjects.

Sharp defines political power, which is one type of social power, as "the totality of means, influences, and pressures - including authority, rewards, and sanctions - available for use to achieve the objectives of the power-holder, especially the institutions of government, the State, and groups opposing either of them" (1980, p. 27). Sharp counterposes his analysis to the common idea that power is a monolithic entity residing in the person or position of a ruler or ruling body. Sharp argues instead that power is pluralistic, residing with a variety of groups and in a diversity of locations, which he calls "loci of power." The loci of power provide a countervailing force against the power of the ruler, especially when the loci are numerous and widely distributed throughout society.

Accepting the argument that power is not intrinsic to rulers, then it must come from somewhere else. Sharp gives the following key sources of power: authority, human resources, skills and knowledge, intangible factors, material resources, and sanctions (1973, pp. 1112). What is the basis for these sources of power? This is Sharp's second key concept. He says that these sources of the ruler's power "depend intimately upon the obedience and cooperation of the subjects" (1973, p. 12). This can be called the consent theory of power. Without the consent of the subjects, either their active support or their passive acquiescence, the ruler would have little power and little basis for rule.

Power for Sharp is always contingent and precarious, requiring cultivation of cooperation and manipulation of potentially antagonistic loci. His consideration of the sources of power thus leads him to obedience as the key: "the most important single quality of any government, without which it would not exist, must be the obedience and submission of its subjects. Obedience is at the heart of political power" (1973, p. 16).

The focus on obedience then leads Sharp to ask "Why do men (sic) obey?" He suggests that there is no single answer, but that important are habit, fear of sanctions, moral obligation, self-interest, psychological identification with the ruler, zones of indifference, and absence of self-confidence among subjects (1973, pp. 16-24).

Nonviolent action constitutes a refusal by subjects to obey. The power of the ruler will collapse if consent is withdrawn in an active way. The "active" here is vital. The ruler will not be threatened by grumbling, alienation, or critical analyses alone. Passivity and submissiveness are of no concern to Sharp; he is interested in activity, challenge, and struggle (1973, p. 65), in particular with nonviolent methods of action.

The account here has abbreviated and simplified Sharp's full exposition, but nevertheless highlights key assumptions made by him. His theory of power is only the beginning of his work on nonviolent action, which leads him through methods of nonviolent action to the "dynamics of nonviolent action," which includes laying the groundwork for action, making challenges, building discipline, building support, and redistributing power. The theory of power is important because it is the theoretical foundation for Sharp's other work.

Structural Approaches

Sharp's approach can be examined and challenged from many different angles. Here I contrast it with a very general approach to social analysis which focuses on social structures or institutions. Structures frequently selected out as significant include capitalism, the state, patriarchy, and bureaucracy.

While social structures are inevitably composed out of numerous social interactions, to focus on the structure is to imply that certain types of social interaction are so regular and entrenched that they take on a dynamic of their own. The Marxist analysis of capitalism is probably the best example of this. Founded on private property, the ownership of the means of production by a small minority of people, and a market on which labor power is purchased and exploited, capitalism appears to behave like a self-regulating system. Whatever the intentions of individual capitalists, if they do not extract surplus labor power from their workers and thus compete successfully in the market, they will be driven to bankruptcy.

Structural approaches hold great power in analyzing social systems, if the structures which are conceptualized happen to capture key ways of organizing human interactions which tend to reproduce themselves. This is an elementary but important point. In principle, there is nothing to stop the employees at a factory from simply leaving their jobs and setting up production on their own in a different location. In practice, if the "different location" were someone else's private property, police would be called in to evict the workers and there would be little support from anyone else in the community. Furthermore, the original company typically would find little difficulty in recruiting new workers. Thus, the system of private property and the market in labor would continue as before. As a shorthand, it could be said that capitalist social relations continued to assert themselves. It took many decades before the strike, a carefully circumscribed withdrawal of labor power, was accepted as legitimate, and it continues to be attacked by employers. Direct challenges to private property, such as squatting and workers' control, are even more difficult to achieve.

The existence of numerous struggles at the borders of what is conceived of as capitalism makes it hard to argue that capitalism is an automatically self-sustaining type of mechanism. Fundamentally involved is the commitment of individuals to the current order. This is where the concept of hegemony enters (Gramsci, 1971). Hegemony refers to the processes by which a given way of organizing social life, in which one class dominates another, becomes accepted as inevitable and desirable by most people. These processes include the mass media, formal education, the family, popular culture, and routines of daily life at work and leisure.

Other concepts of social structure, such as patriarchy and the state, have been elaborated (and disputed) in a fashion similar to capitalism. The power of such concepts is shown when analyzing large-scale developments (the law of uneven development of international capitalism; international politics as struggles between states) and also when understanding social struggles (such as conflicts and accommodation between capitalism and patriarchy in labor history).

One of the major dangers in using such concepts is the reification of categories. Capitalism, for example, is frequently presented as if it operates and evolves independently of the people whose interactions make it up.

Limitations of Sharp's Approach

Structural approaches provide a useful contrast for examining Sharp's theory of power. Sharp's focus on consent is individualistic and voluntaristic in orientation, as shown by his attention to psychological reasons for obedience. An analysis of social structure provides another way to understand consent (Moore, 1978).

An understanding of the power relationships associated with capitalism would seem essential to developing effective nonviolent methods of struggle. While Sharp gives numerous examples of nonviolent action by workers - he devotes an entire chapter of The Politics of Nonviolent Action to 23 types of strikes (l973, pp. 257-284) - he gives no examination of capitalism as a system of power, and misses out on insights provided by Marxist analysts.

While in principle an oppressive ruler can be opposed by workers walking off the job, in practice there are many factors that reduce the likelihood of such strikes. The workers are likely to be divided along lines of status, skill, wages, gender, and ethnicity. The mass media may provide little support or even active disinformation. Certain workers may become tied to the regime by the dispensation of special favors, by receiving the fruits of corruption, or by participating in the repression of minorities. A nationalistic educational system may make it easy for the ruler to raise the spectre of foreign enemies, external agitators, and hurting the national interest.

Furthermore, the "system," whatever its oppressiveness, may still serve to benefit large groups of people in certain ways. Many members of the working class, while exploited by capitalists, at the same time receive wages sufficient to offer a life seen as better than those of their parents. Capitalism as a social system simultaneously oppresses and benefits those who live in it.

Sharp also gives no analysis of the social system of bureaucracy and how its hierarchy, division of labor, and regular procedures serve to enmesh everyone - including top bureaucrats - into patterns of behavior which are hard to escape. Contrary to the usual picture, political struggles do take place within and around bureaucracies (Weinstein, 1979), and since these struggles are almost always nonviolent, Sharp's approach may offer some insights.

But the ruler-subject dichotomy is of limited value here, since in a typical bureaucracy, nearly everyone has both superiors and subordinates. To be of use, the dynamics of nonviolent action would have to be elaborated in light of studies of the dynamics of bureaucracy.

Patriarchy is another system of power which Sharp has not analyzed in detail. The social practices by which males dominate over females can hardly be seen as ones simply of ruler and subject. Complex processes are involved, including upbringing, expectations of characteristic behavior, the gender division of labor, direct discrimination, harassment, rape, and other violence, all of which are linked to other systems of power, including economic structures, the state, trade unions, churches, and the military. In particular, patriarchy is intertwined with the power structures of the state and the military which are the focus of Sharp's analysis. Nonviolent action and the giving or withdrawing of consent by women undoubtedly are important in the maintenance of male domination. But without any analysis of patriarchy as a structured set of social relations which can hardly be "turned off" by the simple withdrawal of consent, Sharp does not provide the basis for studying this power dynamic.

Like any moderately adaptable political theory, Sharp's theory of power can be extended or adapted to cover facets that initially seem to be left out. Indeed, a careful reading of Sharp's work reveals an awareness of many of the points raised here. Touching on issues in a general way, however, is quite different from integrating them into the core concepts. The adaptability of the theory does not remove its central focus, and it is this focus which shapes how the theory is used and who is likely to use it.

The consent picture works best, as theory, when there is an obvious oppressor. It is not by chance that Sharp regularly refers to Stalinism and Nazism. His examples of challenges to authority largely concern situations which are widely perceived as oppressive by contemporary Western political judgment.

This point is clearer in the context of present-day struggles, where the judgment of history has not yet become conventional wisdom in school history classes and bipartisan political rhetoric. How any given nonviolent action is interpreted depends greatly on public attitudes towards the issue at hand. In non-dictatorial societies, much of the public often doesn't perceive protesters as engaging in the valiant struggle of subjects vs. rulers. Those such as the Berrigans who have taken nonviolent direct action against facilities linked to the capacity for nuclear warfare can be interpreted as acting for humanity against evil rulers who are willing to risk mass killing to defend systems of power (for information on the Berrigans and the Ploughshares movement, see www.plowsharesactions.org). But only a minority of people accept this interpretation; in practice, the civil disobedients to the nuclear war machine are engaged in a political struggle to convince people that their concerns should be the concerns of others. These activists have found that the dynamic of nonviolent action does not automatically click into place to generate greater support. Sharp could only agree; he continually stresses that nonviolent action is not guaranteed to succeed. The trouble is that his theory of power does not provide the conceptual tools needed to determine whether direct action against nuclear facilities is a particularly effective way to challenge the current systems of power. How can we effectively challenge current ideologies which mobilize much of the population to support organized violence as "defense" against an "enemy?"

Strengths of Sharp's Approach

Sharp has been taken up as the patron theorist of nonviolent action around the world. His ideas about power are regularly presented in nonviolent action training sessions, his examples of nonviolent action are endlessly re-used in talks and leaflets, and his authority is routinely invoked in support of nonviolence. Arguably, Sharp has a higher profile among grassroots social activists than any other living political theorist.

Sharp's analysis is most applicable to authoritarian regimes which closely approximate the ruler-subject picture. The strength of Sharp's approach is that his core ideas are ideally suited for fostering nonviolent action, whereas the core ideas in structural approaches are better suited for analysis than action.

Starting with Sharp's picture, it is relatively easy, in principle, to "add in" social structures. Rather than assuming a stark ruler-subject dichotomy, a more complex picture of an array of partially supporting and partially antagonistic forces can be developed. The activist aim of withdrawing support then poses the difficult question of which particular intervention will best mobilize support, empower oppressed groups, and lead to lasting change. From the point of view of activists, it should be possible to combine Sharp's insistence on the importance of withdrawing consent with a structural analysis which could help indicate those avenues where nonviolent action would have the most desired effect.

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