Seguramente el texto no es de fácil lectura porque se inscribe en la línea del posmodernismo (Foucault, Derrida, Habermas, etc). el 'poder de influencia' (la 'autoridad' para tomar decisiones o influir en la toma de decisiones de los otros) es un concepto clave en la crítica posmodernista.



Recent planning praxis in the Western world advocates processes of dialogic democracy,
incorporating difference and oppositional views and representations into policy decision-
making, trying to find some common ground as a basis for negotiation.(...)
My research to date has concentrated on empirical critique and refinement of
Habermasian-influenced communicative action as a normative basis for participatory
decisionmaking in local pla-nning.(...)
In negotiated planning decisions, there may well be
intractable opposition and the use of strength, organisation, strategy, political contacts,
and influence outside of the formal participation process, tactics which favour the
articulate, well-connected, and wealthy over more marginalised groups.(..)
Mulgan (1997, page 20) comments that the ``defining feature of this world is con-
nexity''. The potential decision influence of interrelated networks of actors is receiving
a resurgence of attention (although without the closed-system limitations of its heyday
in the early 1970s), drawing particularly on research from disciplines such as anthro-
pology, sociology, and social work (see, for example, Willmott, 1986; Mulgan and
Landry, 1995; Burns and Taylor, 1997) and recognition of the importance of the
networks which people call upon as part of their coping strategies in `everyday life' (..)
Power is integral to planning decisions. Knowledge and power
are intrinsically interrelated. The forms of power at work in society are embedded
with knowledgeöboth of substance (what) and process (how), and equally those forms
of knowledge are embedded with power relations.
http://www.envplan.com/epa/fulltext/a32/a321.pdf