Power Comparability
“A (actor) has power over B (respondent) to the extent that he can get
B to do something that B would not otherwise do.” (Dahl, 1957,
p.202-03)
Dahl (1957) suggested that there are at least five factors that to be
included in the comparison of two individuals: 1) basis of their power,
2) means of employing the basis, 3) scope of their power, in type of
response evoked, 4) number of comparable respondents, and 5) change in
probabilities, or amount of power. (Dahl, 1957, p. 205-206) The first
two are the differences in properties of the actors exercising power,
and the last three are the differences in the responses of the
respondents. Thus he formulated these and we use the power relations of
a school board, a school head and parents as an example:
M1: Amount of power of School Board = (the probability that Parents will
agree to increase tuition fees if School Board increases places for
scholarships) - (the probability that Parents will agree to increase
tuition fees if School Board does nothing)
M2: Amount of power of School Head = (the probability that Parents will
agree to increase tuition fees if School Head increases places for
scholarships) - (the probability that Parents will agree to increase
tuition fees if School Head does nothing)
If M1 > M2, theoretically this ranks the amount of power
the actors, i.e. school board and school head posse and the actor with
the highest probability of securing the response is the more powerful
(Dahl, 1957, p.208). However, Dahl saw his formula not practical unless
researchers “consider carefully the goals and substance of a particular
piece of research in view of the theoretical constructs one has in
mind” and “define the meaning of comparability”. He suggested that
the concept of power has to be defined by operational criteria according
to different research settings which “power would appear to be many
different concepts.” (Dahl, 1957, p. 214)
An example is the EDB’s research on the local demand for international
school places (Policy 21 Limited, 2012). A part of the research aims to
understand local demand for international schools. The report defined
local students as “those who are Hong Kong permanent residents and do
not have any foreign passport” (Policy 21 Limited, 2012, p.27).
However, the grouping had indeed ignored the fact that many Hong Kong
permanent residents have an overseas passport and have been living in
Hong Kong since they were born. Grouping these students as international
students, ignoring them from the research to understand the local demand
is indeed wrongly estimating, or even ignoring the group’s influence to
the sector.
Ragin (1987)’s concept on comparative analysis gave a more detailed
explanation. He distinguished two meanings of unit of analysis —
observational and explanatory. Using the above example, the actors (i.e.
the school board, the school head and parents) are observational as they
are “the units used in data collection and analysis” (Manzon, 2014,
p.98), and their votes in school decisions and degree of participation
in school activities are explanatory units that can be “used to account
for the pattern of results obtained” (Manzon, 2014, p.98).
Considering various units of analysis of control in education, can we
specific some world standards that insure power comparability? No. The
concept of power is still undefined, the weight on each standard
involves value and cultural judgements which make cross-national
comparison questionable, and the amount of power is not stagnated over
time.
The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development attempted to
rank nation-states by the levels of decision-making for public lower
secondary education (OCED, 2008) and the United Nations Development
Programme (1995) tried to show the measurement of power in three
domains. However these rankings did not recognise the difference in
significance between the measurements. Bray (2003) pointed out the
problem when he discussed the complexities to measure control involved
in centralisation and decentralisation. He provided an example — the
power to determine the structure of school systems might be more
important than the power to hire school cleaners.