Revision summary
Power models: class, elite, pluralism, Lukes’s three faces, Foucault, and gender order. Advanced industrial societies concentrate corporate-state elites, as Mills argued. Pluralism fits some issue areas, not the core. Lukes adds agenda and preference shaping. Foucault fits audit and surveillance. A Mills–Lukes bundle is the most applicable, not a single saint.
Model answer
Copper italics in this answer — like this — are the key facts. Each one is unpacked in the Facts & figures rail.
Introduction
Societal power is the capacity to shape outcomes against resistance and to set the agenda. Models disagree on who holds it: a ruling class, competing elites, a plural field, or a capillary discipline. Advanced industrial societies fit a mix, with elite-institutional and agenda models doing the most work.
Body
Marxist and neo-Marxist models
- Karl Marx located power in class ownership and the state as a committee of capital in the strong reading.
- Antonio Gramsci added hegemony in civil society. Nicos Poulantzas stressed the state’s relative autonomy.
Elite models
- Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, and Robert Michels saw organised minorities. C. Wright Mills’s power elite fused corporation, military, and political directorates in the United States.
Pluralist and elite-pluralist
- Robert Dahl’s polyarchy pictured shifting veto groups. Critics said this ignored non-decisions.
Steven Lukes and Foucault
- Lukes’s three dimensions: visible conflict, agenda-setting, and preference-shaping.
- Michel Foucault’s disciplinary and later governmentality models disperse power into experts, clinics, and the self.
Feminist models
- Sylvia Walby and R. W. Connell treat gender order as societal power, not a private leftover.
Applicability in advanced industrial societies
- Pure pluralism under-describes concentrated corporate and state power, which Mills still illuminates.
- Pure class reduction misses status, parties, and expert rule, which Max Weber and Bourdieu’s fields capture.
- Lukes plus a Millsian elite core is most applicable: visible elections, hidden agendas, and institutional fusion.
- Foucault explains surveillance and audit culture in firms and welfare states, not the whole of capital.
- Gendered power remains structural in care and pay gaps, as labour-force files show.
Verdict
- No single classic model is enough.
- The most applicable bundle is elite-institutional power with Lukes’s quiet dimensions, checked by residual pluralism in some issue areas.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD M[Marx class] --> P[Societal power] E[Mills elite] --> P PL[Dahl pluralism] --> P L[Lukes dimensions] --> P F[Foucault discipline] --> P ADV[Advanced industrial] --> E ADV[ADV] --> L[L]
Conclusion
Models of societal power run from Marx’s class to Mills’s elite, Dahl’s pluralism, Lukes’s faces, and Foucault’s discipline. Advanced industrial societies are not town-meeting polyarchies. Mills and Lukes travel best, with Gramsci and feminist theory for consent and gender. Use Foucault for the office, not as a replacement for who owns the office.
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