11.1 Introduction
Power is the most fundamental concept in the whole of political science. H.D. Lasswell and A. Kaplan: “The concept of power is perhaps the most fundamental in the whole of political science: the political process is the shaping, dissolution and exercise of power.”
Key statements on power’s centrality:
- Machiavelli and Hobbes: power is the central theme of politics. Hobbes: “There is a general inclination of all mankind, a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceased only in death.”
- Frederick Watkins: political science is the investigation of all associations insofar as they exemplify the problem of power.
- William A. Robson: “It is with power in society that political science is primarily concerned — its nature, basis, processes, scope and results.”
Andrew Heywood (Political Theory: An Introduction, 1997) raises the key questions surrounding power:
- Is power widely and evenly distributed, or concentrated in the hands of a “power elite” or “ruling class”?
- Is power essentially benign (enabling people to achieve collective goals) or a form of oppression/domination?
- Fierce controversy surrounds the meaning of power — some suggest there is no single agreed concept but a number of competing ones.
- Power as domination runs into the problem that in political life, power is very commonly exercised through willing obedience — those “in power” are usually thought to have the right to exercise it, not merely the ability. This highlights the distinction between power and authority.
- This leads to the question of legitimacy — the perception that power is exercised in a manner that is rightful, justified, or acceptable. Legitimacy is the basis of stable government — it links to a regime’s capacity to command the allegiance and support of its citizens.
Power theorists: the Federalists, Pareto, Mosca, George Catlin, Charles Merriam, Bertrand Russell, Harold Lasswell, and others.
11.2 Empirical Study of Power
Studying power empirically is never easy. Maurice Cowling (The Nature and Limits of Political Science, 1963): real difficulties exist about access to the centres of power in modern society, even in a democracy. It may be easier to “discover the truth about contemporary power than to publish it.”
Kornhauser (Problems of Power in American Democracy, 1957): difficulties in studying power can be expressed as — “What social scientist are you?”, “What parts of society want what types of knowledge, to be used by whom, towards what end?” Compatible doctrines and models regarding methods and objectives are impossible to establish.
Robert Dahl (Who Governs?): many problems that are almost unyielding over a large area can be relatively easily disposed of on a smaller canvas — Aristotle and Machiavelli, separated by 18 centuries, both witnessed politics on the smaller, more human scale of the city-state.
Most studies on power are simplified reflections of politics outside their own time — not presentations of real contemporary politics. Objective bias in selecting small subjects can lead to methodological conclusions untrue of the “great society.”
11.3 Concepts of Power
Arnold Woofers: power is the ability “to move others or to get them to do what one wants them to do and not to do what one does not want them to do.”
Max Weber (famous formulation, adopted in A Dictionary of Social Sciences): “power signifies any capacity to work one’s will within given social relations even against opposition, independent of what that capacity is based on.”
Power is normally understood as the possession of control, authority, or influence over others. It is associated with honour, deference, respect, and dignity. Key distinctions:
- The power of the man must be distinguished from the power of the office (which guarantees authority and legitimacy).
- The distinction between apparent and real power is important.
- Authority is closely connected with power — it may take political, economic, and ideological forms.
- Morality, ethics, religion, customs, and traditions operate as limitations on power.
- Politics as “authoritative allocation of values” (a reference to Easton’s concept) is deeply interlinked with power and authority.
Maslow on the psychology of power: authoritarians possess a “jungle philosophy” that resists new facts — they are psychologically perverted because what they chase is an illusion.
Starting propositions of most power researchers: (i) in any polity, some people have more power than others; (ii) power is an object of desire — a ‘utility’.
11.4 Power — Marxist and Western Approach
Marxist Approach
Lenin: “The question of power cannot be evaded or brushed aside, because it is the key question determining everything in a revolution’s development, and in its foreign and domestic politics.”
- In Marxist terminology, power = control of state power through revolutions. Lenin: “the passing of state power from one class to another is the first, principal, the basic sign of revolution.”
- Power is expressed in class terms — it is the class will as the basis of power.
- Lenin on politics: “The class struggle becomes real, consistent and developed only when it embraces the sphere of politics.” Marxism recognises class struggle as fully developed only when it embraces “the organisation of state power.”
- Lenin on the distinction between power and state: social power existed before the origin of the state and would continue after the state withers away. The distinguishing feature of the state is not coercive power (which exists in all human communities including tribal systems and families) but “the existence of a separate class of people in whose hands power is concentrated.”
- Fyodor Burlatsky: every expert (natural scientist, philosopher, sociologist, economist, jurist, psychologist) talks about power in different senses — making an explicit universal meaning almost impossible.
Western Approach
- Western sociologists highlight power as an essential factor in all social kinetics; they focus on institutional will (the dominant will of a group or organisation).
- Michel Halbecq: “At present the phenomena of power preoccupy theorists of public law and political scientists.”
- François Bouricaud: in its political form, power possesses the most formidable enigma.
- Crozier: power is present in all processes of social life.
- Maurice Duverger: critical of metaphysical or philosophical views of power; emphasises practical methods by which power commands respect and obtains submission. (Though he himself later engages with philosophical groundings of power — revealing inconsistency.)
- Aristotle (biological/naturalist view): power is a natural condition of society. “From the hour of their birth, some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.” Some western sociologists (George Burdeau) rejected this biologism — power and society were born together.
- John William Lapierre: power is the exclusive attribute of social organisation — a social factor inherent in the social group, deriving from the fact that man belongs to a group.
- Herbert Simon: uses power and influence as synonyms (very narrow definition).
- Gerard Bergeron: reluctant to use “power” — prefers “control” for ideological neutrality. (Limitation: may not provide scientific analysis.)
- Raymond Aron and Crozier: prefer “law” in place of “will” and “direction/influence/control” in place of “domination.”
Intentionalist vs. Structuralist understanding of power:
- Intentionalists: power is an attribute of an identifiable object — political party, social grouping, or interest group.
- Structuralists: power is a form of social system. (Talcott Parsons, Althusser — structuralist school.)
Three Dimensions (Phases) of Power — Steven Lukes (Power: A Radical View, 1974):
| Dimension | Description | Key Thinker(s) |
| First | Ability to influence decision-making — conventional thinking; power is objective and quantifiable | Hobbes (Leviathan, 1651); Robert Dahl (A Critique of the Ruling Elite Model, 1958) |
| Second | Ability to influence political agenda — non-decision making: creating or reinforcing barriers to the public airing of policy conflicts | Bachrach and Baratz (“The Two Phases of Power”, 1962); Schattschneider: “Some issues are organised into politics while others are organised out” |
| Third | Ability to manipulate what people think and want — shaping, influencing, or determining the very thought process of individuals or groups through family, peer groups, schools, churches, mass media, political parties, work environment | Vance Packard (The Hidden Persuaders, 1960); Herbert Marcuse (One Dimensional Man, 1964) — in advanced industrial societies, needs can be manipulated through modern technology, creating “a comfortable, smooth, reasonable democratic unfreedom” |
Summary comparison:
- Western approach: focuses on institutional will; heavily empirical; often refuses philosophical content.
- Marxist approach: relies on class will as the basis of power; power understood in terms of revolutionary seizure of state power.
- Power = “the real ability to implement one’s will in social life”; political power = “the real capacity of a given class, group or individual expressed in politico-legal norms.”
In the 1930s, politics came to be viewed as a system of relationship with respect to power (Catlin, Merriam). Lasswell’s “Theory of Elites” — “distribution of values” as the base point of the political process — made political science the science of power.
11.5 Concept of Authority
C.J. Friedrich: authority implies a root of command to which obedience is rendered without any inducement — a “social fact” and social conduct within an interlinked, independent social structure. Authority is invariably linked with other concepts of social behaviour: morality, customs, law, natural law, contract, expediency, and utility.
Key distinction between Power and Authority:
| Power | Authority |
| Broadly concerned with the ability to influence behaviour | Understood as the right to do so |
| Often identified with persuasion, pressure, threats, coercion, or violence | Has both legal and moral overtones |
| Constitutional overtone is absent | Constitutional overtone is present |
| Based on capacity to reward or punish | Based on acknowledged duty to obey |
Power and authority are intrinsically interlinked — authority is rarely exercised in the absence of power, and power always implies some amount of authority. Empirically, both tend to cross each other’s boundary.
Max Weber (German sociologist): authority is a form of power — “legitimate power.” He analyses it as a matter of people’s belief about its legitimacy. He advocated three ideal-types of authority:
| Type | Basis | Characteristics |
| Traditional | Established customs and traditions; hereditary systems of power and privilege | Associated with pre-modern societies |
| Charismatic | Power of an individual’s personality or “charisma”; sometimes seen as divinely ordained | Can be “manufactured” through media and cult of personality; leads to risk of authoritarianism; has limitations in liberal democracies |
| Legal-Rational | Body of clearly defined rules and procedures; formal powers of an office or post | Significant in modern industrial societies; symbol of large-scale bureaucratic organisations; has darker side — depersonalised and inhuman dimensions |
11.6 Development of the Concept of Authority
The concept of authority has become highly controversial in contemporary political theory, fuelled by the growth of individual rights and liberties, world-wide human rights movements, and the advance of tolerant/permissive social ethics.
Liberal tradition (social contract theories of the 17th–18th centuries): in the absence of established legal authority to ensure order and protect individual liberty, social systems would become imbalanced. Authority can be constrained through legal-rational constitutional provisions — arising from “below,” from consent of the governed.
Conservative tradition: authority is an essential feature of all social institutions — a “natural necessity” for leadership, not a result of consent from the governed (Roger Scruton, 1984).
Conservative ideas became popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries as a reaction against the philosophy of the French Revolution. Two streams emerged:
- Continental Europe: authoritarian and reactionary conservatism — refused any idea of reform.
- Britain and America: more flexible conservatism — preferred “natural change” or “change in order to conserve” through social reforms.
Conservatives perceived society as a moral community and advocated strong government for law and order. They advocated non-ideological and programmatic interactions between state and individual. Conservative reforms were grounded in traditions, history, and experience.
Since the 1970s — New Right challenge to conservatism: believes in economic liberalism (neo-liberalism) and social conservatism. Neo-liberalism = backlash against policies of liberal, socialist, and conservative governments of the 20th century. Believes breakdown of social structures results from liberal and permissive values; favours traditional values, social discipline, and restoration of authority.
Conservative advocates: Edmund Burke, Michael Oakeshott, Irving Kristol.
Hannah Arendt (The Origins of Totalitarianism, 1951): a strong traditional authority is indispensable for the growth of moral and social behaviour and provides a sense of social identity. The decline of traditional values and hierarchies was responsible for the advent of Nazism and Stalinism.
Challenges to the concept of authority:
- Authority has been considered a threat to reason and critical understanding.
- William Reich (The Mass Psychology of Fascism, 1935): damaging repression brought about by domination of fathers in traditional authoritarian families could have been responsible for the origin of Fascism.
- Theodore Adorno et al. (The Authoritarian Personality, 1950): persons having strong deference for authority have fascist tendencies.
- Stanley Milgram (1974): studies on behaviour of guards in Nazi concentration camps and US military during the Vietnam War further strengthened this view.
11.7 Summary (Key Takeaways)
- Power is central to the understanding and practice of politics. It operates on three levels: (i) the ability to make or influence decisions; (ii) the ability to set agenda and prevent decisions being made; (iii) the ability to manipulate what people think and want.
- Power = the ability to influence the behaviour of others, based on the capacity to reward or punish. Authority = the right to influence others, based on their acknowledged duty to obey. Weber’s three kinds of authority: traditional (custom and history), charismatic (power of personality), and legal-rational (formal powers of an office or post).
- Legitimacy = the “rightfulness” of a political system — crucial to stability and long-term survival of a system of rule. It requires conformity to constitutional rules and broad public support; but may also be manufactured through ideological manipulation for the benefit of political or social elites.
- Authority provokes deep ideological disagreements: some regard it as essential to ordered, stable society; others warn that authority tends to be the enemy of liberty and undermines reason and moral responsibility — authority tends to lead to authoritarianism.
- In Cicero’s phrase: “power lies with the people, authority in the Senate” — a neat contrast that becomes blurred as we analyse both concepts across ideological traditions. Contemporary reflections on power and authority are more in tune with grass-root oriented approaches towards human empowerment.
- Marxist approach: power = class will and control of state power through revolution. Western approach: power = institutional will, empirically studied; three dimensions (decision-making, agenda-setting, thought manipulation).
