Power

Within human governance, power refers to the ability of a given individual, corporate body, political organization, or political system (broadly defined) to further interests, shape behaviors (positively and negatively), and inform strategies for action. Often improperly taken as a synonym for authority or control, the term is more closely tied to influence. As such, power is relational, existing only among sets of actors: everything from the family to interstate conflict and cooperation. The nature of these relationships may vary in strength, duration, and complexity, but power is a causal factor in all interactions. While omnipresent, the myriad of divergent and occasionally intangible forms in which power is realized makes it all but impossible to develop a universal definition for the term that is precise and measurable. Faced with these challenges, the following discussion generally outlines the dimensions and manifestations of power so that it may be identified, disaggregated, and meaningfully analyzed.

The first step to understanding power's empirical manifestations comes by appreciating the three ways in which the term is typically employed in discussions of social, economic, and political relations. While useful for illustrative purposes, in practice, the distinctions between these three manifestations of power are frequently blurred or indistinguishable.

The first view takes power as something possessed by an organization, group, or individual due to personal characteristics or from being associated with an office or social role. The powers of a political office are one example. The focus here is on direct influence over others, although inscribed forms of power can exist even when commands are not made. For this reason, state leaders retain the power to make decisions affecting others (granting pardons, for example) even when they choose not to do so. Moreover, they may indirectly discourage others from contesting issues.

The second perspective takes power as a resource that can be used at will. The focus here is less on direct influence over others, but rather evaluates power as the ability of an actor (again, a group, individual, organization, or state) to achieve a consciously defined objective. In the final conception, power is taken to be a system of strategies, practices, and techniques. The latter view does not deny that power takes on the forms previously described, but rather, demands a relational perspective that explicitly recognizes how the exercise of power depends on the institutional and social contexts. More important, it illustrates how with others' individual actors' strategies and techniques interact to create forms of power that at once comprise actors, but outside of direct individual and collective control. As discussed further in the following paragraphs, these more amorphous manifestations of power are critical to understanding the complexity of power and governance in contemporary societies.

All three perspectives previously outlined describe the exercise of power without identifying the means that endow actors, however defined, with the ability to pursue their objectives or influence others. Amitai Etzioni's neo-Weberian study of compliance within formal organizations addresses this paucity by identifying three primary sources of power, each corresponding to a critical concept in Weber's own writing: coercion or violence (power, for Weber), material resources (class), and values and identity (status).

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