Dahl, Robert A. (1915-)

After almost 70 years of publishing, Robert Dahl is one of the most venerable and influential modern political scholars. Born in 1915, Dahl is the Sterling Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Yale University and former president of the American Political Science Association. Dahl published his first article in 1940, and is widely credited with initiating the modern theoretical debate about power and undertaking one of the most thorough early empirical investigations of the topic with his 1961 book Who Governs? Integrally connected to his notion of power, Dahl's theoretical and empirical work on democracy is also widely cited, including his 1989 book Democracy and Its Critics and On Political Equality, published in 2006.

Dahl's first major contribution to discussions of power appears in his 1957 Behavioral Science article “The Concept of Power,” in which he builds and operationalizes a definition of power that forms the basis of his later empirical studies. Though criticized, Dahl's concept of power is still frequently cited as a relevant starting point from which to understand power. For example, in a 2008 review of Dahl's 1957 work, Philip Pettit states Dahl's work is still an effective and valuable tool by which to understand other concepts such as freedom, albeit with some minor adjustments.

In “The Concept of Power,” Dahl famously states, “A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do.” Thus, Dahl understands power as relation between agents, whether these agents are individuals, groups, governments, or nation-states. Dahl suggests any complete understanding of A's power over B must include references to the base from which A's power emanates, the means by which A exerts this power, and the scope and amount of A's power. A power base is an inert cache of resources held by A that may include, for example, a country's ability to wage war or a politician's capacity to bestow patronage, veto legislation, or gain media attention. Means mediate between A's power base and B's response and include threats and promises by A to marshal base resources for or against B. Scope pertains to whether A's power extends to all, many, or a few spheres of influence within the domain in which A operates. Finally, Dahl calculates A's amount of power as the difference between the probability of an event occurring given a certain action by A, and the probability of the given event given no such action by A. Thus, A has power over B to the extent that A can engage a particular tactic to increase the probability that B will do what A wants. This reference to the amount of power and probability is most critical to understanding Dahl's take on power relations.

Dahl consistently backs his theories with empirical research. Following his definitional discussions of power, Dahl moved to empirical power assessments. This empirical work began as a critique of the work of community power theorists such as Floyd Hunter, whose reputational studies of local notables concludes power is unequally distributed in Atlanta, and C. Wright Mills, whose 1956 book The Power Elite posits all decisions of national [Page 164]consequence in the United States are controlled by a small group of 400 people sharing a common culture. Built on his earlier developed concept of power, Dahl's 1958 article “A Critique of the Ruling Elite Model” highlights what he sees as methodological flaws in Mills's and Hunter's studies and elaborates on these flaws to discredit their conclusions.

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