The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics (98 page)

A voter who does not vote consistently for one or other of the political parties but ‘floats’ between them. When, in the 1930s, research began on voting behaviour, it was found that large blocks of voters remained wedded to particular parties for election after election on the basis of their social group memberships, and that relatively few switched their vote. But these few ‘floating voters’, it was thought, corresponded to an ideal type of democratic voter in so far as they were informed and open-minded in making their choices. Such voters were widely considered by politicians and political analysts to hold the balance between the ‘blocks’ of committed partisans, and their support was seen as the key to political power. Subsequent research suggested that habitual ‘floaters’ were, in fact, less involved and informed about issues than others, and more inclined to vote on whimsical grounds.
ST 

 
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See
majority/minority leader
.

 
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A term, in German
Produktivkräfte
, that is part of the technical jargon of the theory of
historical materialism
, as first formulated by
Marx
and
Engels
in
The German Ideology
of 1845–6, which can be translated both as productive forces and as productive powers. Unfortunately, Marx and Engels nowhere provide a list of these forces or powers and a certain ambiguity still persists about the significance and correct usage of the term. In general, forces of production refers to means of production and labour power. And the term itself should be restricted to what materially facilitates the process of production. In itself, of course, this does not resolve the more difficult and interesting question of whether historical materialism should be read as a theory of technological determinism. Nor does it fully explain why a contradiction between the forces of production and the
relations of production
is the dynamic of the historical process.
JH 

 
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A term popularized in political science by the Sardinian Marxist Antonio
Gramsci
in the early 1930s. Gramsci focused on the extent to which new American production techniques (in particular, moving assembly-lines and product standardization) and their attendant social relations, pioneered by Henry Ford , signalled the beginning of a new epoch in capitalist development. These techniques of ‘scientific management’ are sometimes called ‘Taylorism’ after a leading early twentieth-century American exponent of them. In the early 1980s, under the influence of Marxist regulation theory, the term ‘fordism’ was used to describe a ‘regime of accumulation’ (said to exist in varying degrees in Western Europe between 1945 and 1973) in which mass production was linked to mass consumption, trade unions participated in tripartite negotiation with capital and the state ( see
corporatism
), a social and political consensus fostered increases in real wages and the consolidation of a welfare state, governments committed to full employment followed Keynesian demand management policies, and the
Bretton Woods
agreements regulated international economic relations. The widespread introduction of flexible specialization, small-batch production, niche consumption, just-in-time management strategies, and the popularity of monetarist ideologies among governments, is said to signal the introduction in the 1980s of ‘post-fordism’.
PBm 

 
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(1926–84)
French philosopher. Born in Poitiers, Foucault studied at the école Normale Supérieure and the Sorbonne. In 1970 Foucault was appointed to the chair of Professor of the History of Systems of Thought at the Collège de France. During his lifetime, Foucault produced an influential body of work that ranges widely across many disciplines and deals with many topics, both contemporary and historical. Foucault did not believe that there could be a single, unified history. This immediately differentiates Foucault from historicists such as
Hegel
and
Marx
, although Foucault's relationship with Marx is complex and subtle. Reductionist explanatory devices such as ‘class struggle’ and ‘reason’ were eschewed by Foucault, for whom history is characterized by discontinuity, rupture, and arbitrariness. He does not deny that we can give explanations of certain events, and indeed offers his own explanations of fundamental shifts in what he calls ‘discursive formations’ (what others might call ‘epochs’). But the kind of explanation he gives avoids as far as possible the totalizing explanatory frameworks of other historical thinkers. He denies that historians can make universal claims based on a reading of history.
What Foucault's historical researches establish, he argues, is the existence of discourses, or discursive formations. These are not structures in the sense employed by structuralist writers such as Lévy-Strauss or
Althusser
. In denying rigidly deterministic structures, Foucault creates a space in which political actors can act. Discourses for Foucault are spaces within which a variety of determinations both create and restrict both human self-conceptions and human actions. This leads us to Foucault's concept of
power
.
According to Foucault, power is not merely something that individuals, groups, or classes exercise, though of course it can be this. Foucault argues that discursive formations are networks of power within which we are all enmeshed. As he claimed on several occasions, power is everywhere and everything, and is therefore ‘dangerous’. However, power, he argues, can be positive as well as negative, productive as well as repressive. What is more, he insists that every instance of power brings with it an instance of resistance to power. Foucault's concept of power has been criticized for its vagueness and its generality. However, his own historical writings provide illustrations of his understanding of power and its relationship to discursive formations.
Foucault's most important works include
Madness and Civilization
(1961),
Discipline and Punish
(1975), and his
History of Sexuality
, of which there are three published volumes (
An Introduction
(1976),
The Use of Pleasure
(1984), and
The Care of the Self
(1984)).
AA