ABSTRACT
This evening I wish to invite you to reflect, along with me, on the power of ethics. Power is a concept familiar to all students of development which is, by definition, an eminently political reality. Who can underestimate the importance of the ethics of power which underlies all responsible politics? There exist, of course, many quite different ethics of power, ranging from the morality of revolutionary conquest and use of power, to the exercise of elite rule by planners and politicians bent on channeling social change, to the pervasive economic power of those who control capital and technology. Can it make sense, therefore, in a world ruled by power, and prey to countless ideologies that each provide moral legitimacy to some preferred pattern of power, to reverse the terms and speak, not of the ethics of power, but of the power of ethics?
