Graph Theoretic Measures of Power

Power is a topic of long-standing interest in sociology, and its nature, causes, and consequences are approached through a variety of theoretical perspectives. A particularly fruitful definition, attributable to Max Weber, treats power as the ability of individuals or collectivities to exercise their will over another, even against the will of the other.

Graph theoretic approaches to explaining and measuring power have attracted significant interest due to their conceptual precision and predictive accuracy in experimental tests. Graph theory is a branch of mathematics that focuses on properties of graphs, which it defines in terms of sets of points and lines, or vertices and edges, respectively. This makes it very useful for the description and analysis of social networks that typically represent social actors (individual or collective) ...