ABSTRACT
Power is a fundamental concept within both the realist and postmodern
perspectives, and both characterise power in essentially negative terms, with
realists describing it as coercive and postmodernists describing it as
disciplinary.1 Yet beyond this, there is little common ground. For realists,
power is something that is accumulated and possessed, usually by nation-
states. It may be measured with comparative indicators, such as military
hardware and gross national product (GNP), and it is used to force others,
typically other nation-states and international entities, to do something they would otherwise not do. Power is seen by realists to work on the surface.
For postmodernists, however, power operates beneath the surface. It is a
web that permeates all relationships, institutions and bodies of knowledge.
It manifests itself in hegemonic discourses that impose particular meanings
as truth and marginalise alternatives. It cannot be measured in a positivist
sense, but it can be revealed by examining the marginalised silences on the
borders of the hegemonic (Westphalian) discourse.
