Introduction

Power is very much at the heart of contemporary debate about the encounter between state and citizen. Nowadays, whether you are a researcher, lecturer, practitioner or the head of an institution, you are required to reflect on the forms of power that come into play when citizens encounter the institutions of the state. On the one hand, you are required to reflect on how to place certain limits on the scope of power exercised by the state and its institutions vis-à-vis individuals and groups whose autonomy must be maintained and respected. Such reflections on the limits of power are accompanied by forms of governing that are often presented to citizens as attractive offers, using positive terms such as empowerment, coaching, self-realisation and partnership. One example of this is when social work and health care use dialogue-based initiatives designed to make clients’ and patients’ own words and values the basis for interventions. The aim of dialogue-based initiatives is, in this case, to avoid welfare institutions imposing goals and values on people that do not stem “from within”, in other words from the individual’s own free will (Karlsen & Villadsen 2008). A widely held conviction in public policy debates is that welfare institutions must avoid the conventional action plans and expert targets that too readily lead to accusations of “clientisation”, “learned helplessness” and “hospitalisation”. The ideal often voiced to avoid this risk is a form of power that promotes and increases the individual’s capacity for self-government or taking up an “active citizenship”. On the other hand, we witness, in contemporary welfare policy, trends towards an increasing use of sovereign, paternalistic power in relation to specific individuals and in specific contexts.