Quest(ion)s of Anarchist Power: Rethinking Power-To, Power-Over, and Power-With in the Radical Democratic Praxis of Consensus Decision-Making

In this dissertation I investigate the theory and practice of power in social movement organizations that use consensus decision-making, a form of deliberation that espouses radically democratic and anarchist political ideals. Over the past several decades consensus decision-making has grown popular in anarchist-inspired North American social movements. From the environmental direct action alliances of the 1970s to the recent Occupy Wall Street movements of 2011-2012, the consensus process has often been idolized as the most radically democratic and anarchist method of decision-making, considered as a way to remove or eradicate power from group deliberation. Contrary to this popular discourse, I will argue that we can think more usefully about consensus decision-making as a specific tool of power rather than a general ideal against power, but only if we understand power more carefully as an essentially neutral concept of collective interaction which can never be removed from any human social relations. In todays North American anarchist and radical democratic discourses the meaning of power is commonly divided into three separate concepts: power-to, power-over, and power-with. These three concepts are treated as distinct and opposed phenomena, based on a dichotomous theoretical opposition between the freedom of individual agency and the constraint of social structure. My contention is that power-to, power-over, and power-with should actually be understood as interrelated concepts concerning the dynamics of human collective action systems. Thinking of power as a concept that describes the dynamics of collective action systems, I ask a double question: What can the theory of power teach us about consensus decision-making? And, how can we study consensus decision-making as a way to elucidate the theory of power? Addressing how this double question can help to build a more careful analysis of power in consensus decision-making, I aim ultimately to contribute to the social theory of power as well as to the praxis of anarchist and radical democratic organization.