Power

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POWER

The meanings of power, influence, control, and domination are uncertain, shifting, and overlapping. Although two of these words may be interchangeable in one context, in another context one of the words may refer to a genus and another to a species, or one may refer to a cause and another to an effect. To substitute power for influence would not matter much in the sentence "The United States has very great influence in South American politics," but to interchange them would radically change the meaning of the sentence "Colonel House's power derived not from any constitutional authority but from his influence over President Wilson."

Shifts like this account for much of the intractability of problems associated with power. For instance, power is often said to be a relation (Lasswell 1950, Friedrich 1950, Partridge 1963), yet we talk about the distribution of power, about the power of speech, about seeking power as a means to future enjoyment (Hobbes 1946), or about power as "the production of intended effects" (Russell 1938). If power is a relation, between what kind of terms or things does it hold? Does power over men require a minimum of acquiescence, consent, or cooperation (Hume; Friedrich 1956–1957), or can it be analogous to a physical force acting on an otherwise inert object? Is to exercise power always to succeed in what one intends (Russell 1938, Lasswell 1950), or can a man exercise power in ignorance of what he is doing (Dahl 1961, Partridge 1963, Oppenheim 1961), like a ruling elite that neither knows nor cares about the effects of its actions on other classes?

Instead of seeking a single analysis of power, it is more helpful to think of diverse uses of power and of associated words like influence as instances of different members of a family of concepts that do not all share any one particular characteristic but have various relations and resemblances by which they are recognizably kin. One might construct a power paradigm combining as many of these family features as possible. Thus, "A, by his power over B, successfully achieved an intended result r ; he did so by making B do b, which B would not have done but for A 's wishing him to do so; moreover, although B was reluctant, A had a way of overcoming this."

There are five main features of this paradigm: (1) an intention manifest in the exercise of power; (2) the successful achievement of this intention; (3) a relationship between at least two people; (4) the intentional initiation by one of actions by the other; and (5) a conflict of interest or wishes engendering a resistance that the initiator overcomes. Not every feature would be present, of course, in every instance in which we properly speak of power; but we can examine how different instances are related to the paradigm and to one another, and thus throw some light on a few of the questions listed above.

Power and Conflict

Some instances of power do not involve overcoming resistance to an initiative. A charismatic leader's power over his followers consists in being able merely by suggestion to move them to do willingly what he wants, even though their interests might have led them to act differently. The family of power concepts might be arranged along a conflict scale (Partridge 1963): At the end at which conflict is least would lie instances of influence, while at the other end would lie instances of domination, and in between, instances of authority. In the extreme case, exercising influence would not involve overcoming resistance, for to manipulate a man's actions by shaping what he considers to be his interests is not to impose action upon him in the face of his interests. Yet this would still be an instance of power satisfying the first four features of the paradigm.

The limiting case at the end of the scale at which conflict is least would be rational persuasion, for to offer a man good reasons for doing something is not to exercise power over him, although it may influence his decision. One possible difference between influence and power, then, seems to be that power generally implies a difference of standing between the two parties: The one stimulates, the other reacts. Rational persuasion, on the contrary, to the extent that it criticizes and invites criticism, presupposes at least the possibility of a dialogue between equals. To the extent that persuasion is really rational, the influence is not so much that of the persuader as of his arguments; the same arguments from anyone else would do as well. (By contrast, a threat of violence is more effective coming from a strong man than from a weak man.) Of course, if A rationally persuades B to help him, A may get power—not over B, however, but over C or D, or even simply the power to do something he could not otherwise do.

Power, Injury, and Interest

In the case of the man who punishes another for disobedience, conditions (1), (3), and (5) of the paradigm would be satisfied, but not (2) and (4), for the initiative has been refused. Instead, it suffices for an instance of power if the power-holder successfully and intentionally makes the subject suffer for refusing the initiative. And by yet a further extension of meaning, one can exercise power over someone by deliberately making him suffer, whether or not he has refused an initiative. Just as in the limiting case of rational persuasion one could speak of influence but hardly of power, so at the other end of the scale one can talk of power but not of influence, for influence is manifest in what a man is, does, or believes, not in what is simply made to happen to him by another man.

A stoic would probably resist the extension of the concept of power to cover the mere infliction of suffering. By not caring about physical pain or external conditions, he might say, one can remove oneself from the power of another man. So too Martin Luther believed that a true Christian is free because no outer things can touch him at any significant point. It would seem that what characterizes a power situation of this kind is not just the ability to make someone suffer, which after all a dentist possesses, but rather to do him harm—that is, to attack his interests. Thus, by revising the notion of a man's interests, and therefore the notion of harm, the stoic or the Christian can deny the reality of one man's power over another, since nothing that another man can do to me can affect my real interests; I am always free, if once I see what those interests are. This argument is a little odd, because the concept of power generally implies a restriction on choice; but according to the stoic or Christian view, one can always choose to make the restriction insignificant, and therefore one can choose whether to be in the power of another. In that case, there could not be a real restriction, and all power would be illusory. But then, what would power be like if it were real?

The stoic argument demonstrates, however, that whether one man has power over another depends not merely on what he can do to the other but also on the importance to be attached to his action and on whether the subject can reasonably be expected to disregard it. One would not say that X was in Y 's power if one thought that what Y could do to X was trivial—something that X could or should readily ignore.

Again, although threats of real harm are an exercise of power, bribes or promises of reward are not, unless some special feature of character or situation makes them irresistible—that is, unless no one so placed could reasonably be expected to resist them (although some in fact might). This is not to say, of course, that a man cannot exercise power by bribery. However, it need not be power over his hirelings but power over others through them; or it may be power only in the still more general sense of an ability to bring about an intended result. Thus, we speak of power in situations in which a man could either successfully determine another's actions or do him harm. An ability to do him some good is not in itself power over him, although the threat of withholding a good that he has come to count on may well be.

Problems of Power as a Relation

Power may not be a relation between people but between a person and a thing. There is a nonsocial kind of power that is simply an ability to produce an intended result, like a tenor's power to smash a tumbler with a high C. And even in a social context, the financier's power to destroy a government comes very close to this, for in this instance too power is manifest merely in the active achievement of an intended result. Although the financier no doubt works by initiating actions on the part of others, the relation between him and his object (the government) is that which exists between agent and patient. This case can be distinguished both from that in which power is exercised by punishing a subject for noncompliance and from that in which power is used to inflict deliberate injury. For in the present case the object of the exercise may be only to remove an obstacle. The manifestation of power does not consist in the government's being made to suffer, for it would be just as much a manifestation of power if the financier had chosen instead to prop it up or if the government welcomed its downfall as a blessed release from responsibility. Power is manifest simply in that what happens is the result of the financier's intentional action, just as the tenor's power is manifest in his being able to break a glass whenever he likes.

Power is of course relational in a logical sense in that it requires more than one term for a complete statement; and if more than one of the terms is a person, and the relation presupposes institutions, rules, and so forth, power will certainly be a social relation. But writers who stress that power is a relation usually mean that it is an initiative-response relationship of the kind that C. J. Friedrich had in mind when he wrote, "The power seeker must find human beings who value the things [he controls] sufficiently to obey his orders in return" (Constitutional Government and Democracy, p. 12).

Now, Friedrich's point is substantially true in those instances in which power implies a successful initiative and even perhaps in those instances in which power tends to injure its subject. To set about hurting someone, one must know how to get the right kind of response: There is no point in depriving nonsmokers of tobacco. It is not so clear, however, that the financier's power is of this type, for he does not secure a response from the government; he merely makes something happen to it. Although his agents respond to his initiatives, one must distinguish the power he has over them from the power he has over the government. These powers would be of the same kind only if he were able not just to destroy the government, but to use it as he wished. But it is presumably because he cannot do this that he uses his power to destroy it.

This analysis further elucidates the relation between power and consent. We have seen that at one extreme a man may exercise power over another by influencing his desires, or a man may do whatever he is told by another because he believes that he ought to do so, which is an instance of authority. Both cases imply some measure of consent or acquiescence, if not to the particular initiative, then to the right of the initiator to issue it. But in cases in which power depends on threats or on physical coercion, the subject's acquiescence amounts to no more than that he continues to value whatever is being used as a lever against him—an acquiescence that only the stoic, perhaps, would seriously regard as a matter of choice. However, political power cannot be entirely coercive. The few can rule the many because the many believe either that the few are entitled to do so or that they could harm them if they disobeyed. But they would not think that coercion were possible if they did not also believe that most of the people were prepared to obey without coercion. A political power situation, therefore, must almost always contain some elements of acquiescence as well as coercion—almost always because it is at least theoretically possible that a reign of terror might enslave a whole people simply by sowing such mistrust that its opponents could never know their own potential strength.

Power and Intention

Still further from the paradigm is the case in which one says quite generally that a person is powerful, or that he seeks power, without specifying the range of possible intended action or the persons subject to the power. Usually it would not be difficult to supply terms to complete either one or both of these blanks. Political theorists commonly insist that comparisons of power, without reference to its "domain" and "scope," are meaningless (Lasswell and Kaplan 1950, Oppenheim 1961). However, some have tried to generalize the concept by disregarding intentionality. R. A. Dahl defines power as "the difference in probability of an event, given certain actions by A, and the probability of the event given no such action by A " ("The Concept of Power," p. 214). At this level of abstraction, power is freed not only from intentionality but also from achievement and conflict; what remains is a relation between a stimulus and a reaction. Elsewhere (Modern Political Analysis, p. 40), Dahl defines influence as a relation among actors in which one induces others to act in some way in which they would not otherwise act. Dahl would want to purge, if he could, the hint of intentionality in the word induce. Like a field of force in mechanics, power is a potential for creating disturbance, like the potential of a stone cast in a pond for creating ripples. But this has some odd results. Instead of suffering a loss of power, the crashing financier who brings down thousands with him in his fall would be exercising a power that is perhaps greater than ever before. Admittedly, it is a mark of power if a man's actions cause disturbances, even if he is careless or even ignorant of them. Nevertheless, if powerful men cause incidental and unintended disturbances, they do so in the course of getting what they want. (C. Wright Mills's conception of a "power elite" seems to be of this kind.) One would not call someone powerful who, like a careless smoker constantly causing fires, was forever causing disturbances but never achieving anything he intended; nor is it clear that any useful methodological purpose in political science would be served by a definition of power that permitted the production of unintended effects alone to serve as a criterion.

To possess power or to be powerful is, then, to have a generalized potentiality for getting one's own way or for bringing about changes (at least some of which are intended) in other people's actions or conditions. Influence, it is true, is used in a more general sense. If a parent has the unintended influence of stiffening his child's determination to be as different from him as possible, this would not be described as an instance of power: It is more like "the influence of climate on national character." The use of the term influence suggests that there is a causal relationship between the behavior of the parent and that of the child (cf. P. H. Partridge, "Some Notes on the Concept of Power," p. 114). "A writer's influence on succeeding generations" stands somewhere between this case and that of influence by rational persuasion. For a writer may have influence only to the extent that other writers recognize his merits and choose to imitate him. Although such influence may not be intended, still it is not a cause, at least in the sense that climate is a possible cause of national character. In any case, none of these is an instance of an influence in the sense that House had influence with Wilson. "To use one's influence" usually implies actively and intentionally working through or on other people, and one who can do this recurrently "has influence." Of course, people who have power (that is, who can do many things they want and induce many other people to accept their initiative) are likely on that account to influence (that is, to have effects on) other aspects of society in ways that neither they nor their social inferiors necessarily understand. Other classes, envying and admiring them, may imitate their tastes and practices, and in this sense they may be influenced by them. But this influence is not a manifestation of power; it is only one of its effects.

Bibliography

classic theories of political power

Aiken, H. D., ed. Hume's Moral and Political Philosophy. New York: Hafner, 1948.

Hobbes, Thomas. Leviathan, edited by M. Oakeshott. Oxford: Blackwell, 1946.

Hume, David. "Of the First Principles of Government." In Essays Literary, Moral and Political (1741). London, 1963.

Hume, David. Treatise of Human Nature (1740), edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge. Oxford, 1951. Book III.

Plamenatz, John. Man and Society. 2 vols. London: Longmans, 1963. A critical discussion of classic theories.

Spinoza, Benedict de. The Political Works. Translated and edited by A. G. Wernham. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1958.

Spinoza, Benedict de. Tractatus Politicus (1677).

Spinoza, Benedict de. Tractatus Theologico-Politicus. Hamburg, 1670.

general philosophical discussions

Acton, H. B. "Logique et casuistique du pouvoir." In Annales de philosophie politique: Tomes I et II: Le Pouvoir, Vol. II, 69–86. Paris, 1956–1957.

Emmet, Dorothy. "The Concept of Power." PAS 54 (1953–1954): 1–26.

Friedrich, C. J. "Le probleme de pouvoir dans la theorie constitutionnaliste." In Annales de Philosophie Politique: Tomes I et II: Le Pouvoir, Vol. I, 33–51. Paris, 1956–1957.

Jouvenel, Bertrand de. Le pouvoir. Geneva, 1945. Translated by J. F. Huntington as On Power; Its Nature and the History of Its Growth. Boston, 1962.

Jouvenel, Bertrand de. Pure Theory of Politics. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1963.

Partridge, P. H. "Politics and Power." Philosophy 38 (1963): 117–136.

Partridge, P. H. "Some Notes on the Concept of Power." Political Studies 2 (1963): 107–125.

Polin, R. "Sens et fondement du pouvoir chez John Locke." In Annales de Philosophie Politique: Tomes I et II: Le Pouvoir, Vol. I, 53–90. Paris, 1956–1957.

Russell, Bertrand. Power. London: Allen and Unwin, 1938.