Community Power Debates: Themes, Issues and Remaining Dilemmas: Fid-Bau Portal

Community Power Debates: Themes, Issues and Remaining Dilemmas

Wanna, John

The study of the relative access to power within communities (known as ‘community power studies’ in political science) is largely undeveloped in Australia. This article, as part of an Australian-based community power study, examines the limitations and insights of the many available literatures relevant to the study of power and policy-making within a city community.

Overseas community power debates (especially the pluralist versus elite, behavioural versus structural, arguments) have had a marked influence on the way we conceptualise and measure power. But, in application to a local community, these theoretical debates reached an impasse while they continued to focus on the issue of ‘who rules’. Meanwhile in policy studies attention was increasingly turning to assessments of the impact of policy and the ways in which policy-makers and community needs were related. The very different concerns and insights of the power theorists and policy impact researchers can be combined in the analysis of the economic development of cities as local communities. The structural importance of ‘growth’ cultures (both among ‘elites’ and ‘non-elites’) underlines the significance of selective mechanisms that favour economic preferences or the interests of business leaders over other interests. This survey concludes by examining in what ways a more sophisticated theoretical and research framework is feasible. An extensive bibliography is included with the article as a reference point for future students of community power.