Relational, structural and systemic forms of power: the ‘right to justification’ confronting three types of domination

This article investigates the nature of intellectual critique and social criticism Rainer Forst’s critical theory of

justification enables. I introduce a taxonomy of three forms of power – namely, ‘relational’, ‘structural’ and

‘systemic’ – and related to them types of domination, and assess the capacity of Forst’s conceptual

framework to address each of them. I argue that the right to justification is a potent tool for emancipation

from structural and relational forms of domination, but claim that Forst’s particular conceptualisation of

power prevents him from addressing injustices generated by ‘systemic domination’ – the subjection of all

actors to the functional imperatives of the system of social relations.