Development actors are increasingly aware of the need to understand and engage with power relations as a means of promoting pro-poor change. So where should they target their efforts and which strategies should they use? This article explores one approach to power analysis, known as the ‘power cube’. If the development community wants to change power relationships to make them more inclusive, it must reflect on power relationships in all of its dimensions. The power cube may represent the first step in making power’s most hidden and invisible forms more visible.
The power cube is a framework for analysing spaces, places and forms of power and their interrelationship. It incorporates three dimensions of power – levels (global, national and local); spaces (closed, invited and claimed/created); and form (hidden, invisible and visible). Much like a Rubik’s cube, the blocks can be rotated in any number of ways.
The power cube has been used in various settings to encourage development actors to reflect on their strategies for change and their own power and position within them:
- In Nigeria, the approach helped to challenge top-down approaches to poverty policy. Donors were removed from local actors and movements. Their agenda for increased participation in the national policy process created a greater sense of exclusion for some other local and social movement actors.
- Reflections using the power cube approach with international Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) helped to see the need and possibilities of greater interconnections between global campaigning and local development work.
- The approach was used with local civil society organisations (CSOs) in Sri Lanka, Uganda and Colombia. They were encouraged to reflect on the kinds of spaces in which they were participating, the strategies they used in each and how they interacted.
- In work with donors, the approach has been used to reflect on what kinds of change donors seek to support. Analysing the strategies they engage with allows a greater understanding of how they themselves become part of the power equation.
The power cube is an analytical device, which can be used – along with other approaches – to reflect on and analyse how strategies for change in turn change power relations:
- Those seeking to challenge power need to build linked strategies in different sequences. Transformative, fundamental change happens when social movements and actors are able to work across the dimensions of the cube simultaneously.
- Officials need to be aware that power spaces, levels and forms are fluid. A change in one area can lead to misalignments in others. For example, linking local-national-global campaigns may be important but may reinforce hidden and invisible forms of power if certain actors are excluded.
- The cube can be used to overcome disconnections between global level campaigners and those working at the local level. There is a growing concern among CSOs about the lack of vertical links between those working at the global and national level.
