Comment: On Issues and Nonissues in the Study of Power

Abstract

This essay attempts to be at once a comment on some of the many significant points raised in Professor Wolfinger's article and a statement of a perspective on the issue of the “nonissue” in community power analysis. It is not, however, intended as another salvo in the “elitist-pluralist controversy.”The dispute between “elitists,” “pluralists,” “neo-elitists,” “neopluralists?” et al. has been much with us. A number of valuable ideas regarding approaches and methods for power analysis have, of course, emerged from the debate, especially in its earlier stages. With them, however, seems to have come a conspicuous friction which, I believe, increasingly impedes research. The main problem, as it strikes this noncombatant, is that each side has been reluctant to grant much to the other, while the language has been painfully polemical at times. To one who has learned from both camps and wants to advance the assault on persistent problems rather than on each other, the quarrel has become unfortunate. Debating points often obfuscate truly important issues for power analysis.