Dynamics of Political Power and Social Relations

The study of political power and social relations examines how authority is produced, maintained and contested across institutional and everyday contexts. Contemporary research emphasises that power is neither a monolithic force nor solely top-down coercion; instead, it emerges through the continuous interplay of individual agency and broader structural constraints. This perspective highlights that social actors both shape and are shaped by networks of norms, resources and knowledge. Analyses of power now routinely integrate dimensions of social epistemology—how knowledge claims bolster or challenge authority—and social ontology—the ways in which shared understandings of being-in-the-world underpin relations of inclusion or exclusion. Across domains as varied as education, governance of global commons and deliberative forums, scholars trace how power circulates through discourse, institutional design and material practices. Foundational debates revisit classic conceptions of authority and coercion, while recent work explores dynamic ideal types such as kleptocracy, authoritarianism and democracy, illustrating how legitimacy, belief systems and resource distribution co-produce divergent power regimes. Empirical studies further demonstrate that effective governance of complex “wicked” problems—from climate change to public health crises—depends on adaptive institutions capable of embracing failure, reconfiguring alliances and ensuring meaningful participation. Taken together, this body of work underscores the global significance of power as both constraint and enabler, with practical applications in policymaking, organisational reform and the promotion of inclusive social relations.

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Dynamics of Political Power and Social Relations publication trend

The graph below shows the total number of articles in dynamics of political power and social relations across all publications each year (not limited to Nature Index journals).

Technical terms

Agency: The capacity of individuals or groups to act independently and shape social structures.

Structural power: The enduring patterns, institutions and norms that constrain or enable actors’ choices.

Social epistemology: The study of how knowledge production and validation processes influence power relations.

Social ontology: The examination of shared categories and meanings that constitute social reality and underpin authority.

References

1. Evaporating Metacognitive Talk: School Inclusion, Power, and the Interplay of Structure and Agency. Education Sciences (2024).
2. After COVID-19: What can we learn about wicked problem governance?. Social Sciences & Humanities Open (2021).
3. Power and Citizen Deliberation: The Contingent Impacts of Interests, Ideology, and Status Differences. Journal of Deliberative Democracy (2019).
4. The use of influential power in ocean governance. Frontiers in Marine Science (2023).
5. Foucault and Power: A Critique and Retheorization. Critical Review (2022).
6. Kleptocracy, authoritarianism and democracy as ideal types of political power. Journal of Political Power (2023).
7. Social Power and Non-cooperative Game Theory. Journal of Theoretical Politics (2022).