Power

In its broadest sense, power refers to the capacity to produce effects on the world, to bring about changes in it. The entity or agent possessing this capacity may be natural, organic, or human. Thus, we speak of the power of wind-storms, electric grids, and animals, including human beings. Both Thomas Hobbes's definition of power as “man's present means to any future apparent good” and Bertrand Russell's as “the production of intended effects” refer solely to humans and are therefore relevant to the social sciences, Russell's on the assumption that humans alone are capable of full intentionality, that is, of conscious purposive action. Hobbes identified power with the possession of “means” to achieve desired ends (or “goods”), whether they are employed to that effect or not, but like Russell he restricted power, at least implicitly, to intended action. Russell's definition by contrast specifies only the actual exercise of power rather than regarding power as a capacity or potential when not exercised. These limits are overcome by defining human power broadly as any capacity for action that produces effects or outcomes and then proceeding to enumerate the diverse forms it may take. Such a definition recognizes the possession, or latent existence, of power when it is not actually being exercised, nor does it exclude the unintended effects of an action. These may on occasion be more consequential than those intended, although since most human conduct involves intended action, unintended effects are often one of its by-products.

Power as the production of effects by some persons on others clearly includes social interaction with at least a minimal mutuality or reciprocity of influence, which indeed defines social interaction. “Power” and “influence” are here synonymous. Asymmetrical power “over” other people exists when an actor regularly produces more and greater effects on others than the reverse, although so long as there is some reciprocal response by the subordinate party, it is a social rather than a physical relation affecting only a person's body, as in bodily obstruction or confinement or violence and the infliction of pain. Such regular social power relations are clearly a primary concern of the social sciences.

Power may be exercised over few or many persons; its scope, the spheres of life and range of actions of the power subject it governs, may be narrow or comprehensive; it may be limited or intensive in its effects, that is, relatively unrestricted in the kinds of effects it produces from life-and-death concerns to minor adjustments of behavior. Power described as “absolute” is highly comprehensive and intensive but is likely to be low in extensiveness, even limited to a single person, as in the power of a master over a slave (Aristotle's original example of unrestricted power), a parent over an infant or small child, or a jailer over a prison inmate, although such dyadic power relations are usually regulated by law and custom. The extremely comprehensive, intensive, and extensive power exercised in the twentieth century by several states with large populations, notably Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, came to be described as “totalitarian” and was regarded as identifying a new and altogether unprecedented kind of political regime dependent [Page 593]on recently invented technologies of surveillance and communication able to penetrate and intervene in the private lives of its subjects. The enforcement of ritual affirmations of such regimes (as in “Heil Hitler” salutes) by all citizens had the effect of cowing potential dissidents into silence and the appearance of passive acquiescence.

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