Power

- Capacity to effect (or cause) outcomes (Sodaro)

- Control over outcomes

- ability of A to get B to do something that B would not otherwise do (R. Dahl)

Does power along these lines capture elements of manipulation or persuasion?

How do we know what B would otherwise do?

How does B know what B would otherwise do?

Politics

- “process by which communities pursue collective goals and deal with their conflicts authoritatively” (Sodaro)

vs.

- rules and arrangements which shape associations of humans (M. Oakeshott)

Political power

- Sodaro’s stated: power to effect outcomes by controlling or influencing the state

- Sodaro’s actual: power to effect “process by which communities pursue collective goals and deal with their conflicts authoritatively”

What is the state?

“totality of a country’s governmental institutions and officials, together with the laws and procedures that structure their actitvies” (Sodaro)

“… a state is a human community that (successfully) claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory” (Weber)

“Coercion-wielding organizations that are distinct from households and kinship groups and that exercise clear priority in some respects over all other organizations within substantial territories” (Tilly)

Features of the State

- Sovereignty

- Legitimacy

- Autonomy

- Capacity

- Purpose