According to NYU professor Steven Lukes, power is the capacity to bring about consequences. In a social context, there are 3 faces or dimensions of power:
1 Overt Power is the power to make decisions during conflict.
2) Covert Power is the power to control the agenda, by deciding to ignore or deflect existing grievances. It is the power to transform potential challenges about inequitable outcomes into non-decisions. This is maintained by a ‘mobilization of bias” – a dominant set of beliefs, values, and institutional processes and procedures that privilege some groups in relation to others.
3) Ideological power is the power to shape desires and beliefs, making people want things opposed to their own self-interest and thereby averting open conflict and grievances. It is the power to transform inequities into non-issues. It can be at work despite apparent consensus between the powerful and the powerless.
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