Power As A Relation Among People
Dahl drew on the fact that some people have more power than others and defined ‘power’ as: “Power is here defined in terms of a relation between people” (1957, p.203). As illustrated in the above examples, the actors and respondents in the power relationship in an education system can be the school board, the school head, parents and any related stakeholders as long as there are connections between them. In Dahl’s (1957, p.204) words: “One must always find out whether there is a connection, or an opportunity for a connection, and if there is not, then one need proceed no further.”
Cribb and Gewirtz (2007) organised actors and respondents as ‘agents’ in three categories — individual, collective and institutional. For example, individual agents are individual parents and teachers; collective agents are associations and groups, such as the International School Council and the Hong Kong Professional Teachers’ Union; and institutional agents include central government bureaux such as the EDB, schools and examination boards. The agents can be further differentiated by such as demographic segmentations including locations, races, year groups and etc.
The locus of control sometimes is not clearly situated and the agents being controlled may have the chance to control. Cribb and Gewirtz (2007) explained:
“Control is not always exercised self-consciously and deliberately by specific agents. It can also be the product of apparently impersonal processes (e.g. markets, consumer cultures). In so far as we are interested in control then we are likely to be focusing on who lies behind or could lie behind these processes.” (2007, p. 205)