CONCEPTS OF POWER

• Definition, Forms and Nature of Power

• Sources, Types and Dimensions of Power
• Consequences of Power
• Concepts and Principles of Political
Ideologies
• Modern and Classical Ideologies
 WHAT IS POWER?
• In the very simple language, power is the ability
to get one’s way—even if it is based on bluff. It is
the ability to exercise one’s will over others or,
in other words, power is the ability of individuals
or groups to make their own interests or
concerns count, even when others resist.
 POWER IS THE ABILITY TO MAKE A
DIFFERENCE
• To summarize, it may be said that ‘power is the
ability of groups or individuals to assert
themselves—sometimes, but not always—in
opposition to the desires of others’. Many
decisions are made without opposition because
of the great power decision-makers wield.
 DIFFERENCE BETWEEN POWER AND
AUTHORITY
POWER AUTHORITY

• while power is defined • authority refers to a

as "the ability to influence claim of legitimacy, the
somebody to do justification and right to
something that he/she exercise that power.
would not have done",
 FORMS OF POWER
• Max Weber (1958) believed that there are three
(not one) independent and equally important
orders of power as under.
• However, there are still few FORMS OF POWER
aside from Weber’s.
 ECONOMIC POWER
• Economic power:
For Marx, economic power is the basis of all
power, including political power. It is based upon
an objective relationship to the modes of
production, a group’s condition in the labour
market, and its chances. Economic power refers to
the measurement of the ability to control
events by virtue of material advantage.
 POLITICAL POWER
• Political power:
It is based upon the relationships to the legal
structure, party affiliation and extensive
bureaucracy. Political power is institutionalized in
the form of large-scale government bureaucracies.
One of the persistent ideas has been that they are
controlled by elites, that is, small, select,
privileged groups.
 SOCIAL POWER
• Social power:
It is based upon informal community
opinion, family position, honour, prestige and
patterns of consumption and lifestyles. Weber
placed special emphasis on the importance of
social power, which often takes priority over
economic interest.
 ADDITIONAL FORMS OF POWER
• Knowledge Power
To Foucault (1969), power is intimately
linked with knowledge. Power and knowledge
produce one another. He saw knowledge as a
means of ‘keeping tabs’ on people and controlling
them.
• Military Power
It involves the use of physical coercion.
 ADDITIONAL FORMS OF POWER
• Ideological power:
It involves power over ideas and beliefs, for
example, are communism, fascism and some
varieties of nationalism.
• Distributional power:
It is a power over others. It is the ability of
individuals to get others to help them pursue their
own goals. It is held by individuals.
 ADDITIONAL FORMS OF POWER
• Collective power:
It is exercised by social groups. It may be
exercised by one social group over another.
 NATURE OF POWER
• Power can be defined in many ways. Most
simply, it is the ability to get what you want, or
as scholar Kenneth Boulding said, power is "the
ability to change the future." Some scholars
make a distinction between three kinds of
power-- "power over," "power to" and
"power with.
 SOURCES OF POWER
• Expert Power: When a leader has significant
domain knowledge/skills.
• Positional Power: Comes when a leader has a
legitimately held position of authority.
• Reward Power: Is evident when a leader can
give, or take away, a reward.
• Coercive Power: This is felt when a leader
creates the perception of a threat.
• Personal Power: Influence gained by
persuasion.
 TYPES OF POWER
• Legitimate Power
Legitimate power is also known as positional
power. It's derived from the position a person
holds in an organization's hierarchy. Job
descriptions, for example, require junior workers
to report to managers and give managers the
power to assign duties to their juniors
 TYPES OF POWER
• Expert power
Knowledge is power. Expert power is derived
from possessing knowledge or expertise in a
particular area. Such people are highly valued by
organizations for their problem solving skills.
People who have expert power perform critical
tasks and are therefore deemed indispensable.
 TYPES OF POWER
• Referent Power
Referent power is derived from the
interpersonal relationships that a person
cultivates with other people in the organization.
People possess reference power when others
respect and like them
 TYPES OF POWER
• Coercive Power
Coercive power is derived from a person's
ability to influence others via threats,
punishments or sanctions.
• Reward Power
Reward power arises from the ability of a
person to influence the allocation of
incentives in an organization. These
incentives include salary increments, positive
appraisals and promotions.
FACES/DIMENSIONS OF POWER
Stephen Lukes has
described 'three faces of power'
(also called the 'three
dimensions of power') in his
work studying politics and
society. The basic principle is
that the power and consequent
effectiveness of a group is
based on three distinct aspects.
 ISSUE
• The first face (or dimension), as proposed by
such theorists as Dahl who saw power as a
'relation among people'. It is the ability of one
person to achieve compliance by others who
change how they behave as a result of the power
being exerted.
 AGENDA
• The second face, as proposed by theorists such
as Bachrach and Baratz, adds the more subtle
system of power, where decision is made within
a complex system. In this situation, power is not
just about making decisions, but also about
setting the agenda that leads to decisions.
 MANIPULATION
▫ Lukes adds a third face, that of even more subtle
aspect of manipulating the psychology of anyone
and everyone affected. This can be seen as similar
to the Marxist view of ideological power, where
the ability to control what people think of as being
'right' can lead to acceptance of biased decisions
without question.
 WHAT IS AN IDEOLOGY?
o A definition of 'ideology’ must be neutral: it
must reject the notion that ideologies are 'good'
or 'bad', true or false, or liberating or oppressive.
o The modern, social scientific meaning of the
term, sees ideology as an action-orientated
belief system, an interrelated set of ideas
that in some way guides or inspires
political action.
FIVE MAJOR POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES
o Anarchism
o Absolutism
o Liberalism
o Conservatism
o Socialism
 ANARCHISM
• The English word anarchism; it is said, is
derived from the Greek word anarkhia. Or
anarchia may be the root of anarchism. Anarchy
means “absence of government; disorder
and confusion.”
 ABSOLUTISM
• A number of political philosophers have
advocated absolutism. The Greek philosopher
Plato, for example, firmly believed that the
best government would be run by a
benevolent absolute ruler who would have
the people’s best interests at heart.
 LIBERALISM
•Liberalism was the product of the breakdown of
feudalism and the growth, in its place, of a
market or capitalist society.

•Early liberalism reflected the aspirations of a

rising industrial middle class, and liberalism
and capitalism have been closely linked ever since.
 ELEMENTS OF LIBERALISM
• Individualism: is the core principle of
liberal ideology. It reflects a belief in the
supreme importance of the individual as
opposed to any social group or collective body.
• Freedom: Individual freedom (or liberty) is
the core principle of liberal ideology. It is
given priority over, equality, justice or
authority. This arises naturally from a belief in
the individual and the desire to ensure that each
person is able to act as he or she chooses.
 ELEMENTS OF LIBERALISM
• Constitutionalism: Although liberals see
government as a vital guarantee of order
and stability in society, they are constantly
aware of the danger that government may
become a tyranny against the individual.
CLASSICAL AND MODERN LIBERALISM
CLASSICAL MODERN
• The central theme of classical • Modern liberalism is
liberalism is a commitment to characterized by a more
an extreme form of sympathetic attitude towards
individualism. Human state intervention.
beings are seen as egoistical, Nevertheless, modern liberals'
self-seeking and largely self- support for collective provision
reliant creatures. and government intervention
• Classical liberalism adheres to has always been conditional.
the laissez-faire system where • Modern liberalism is more
no government should open to the idea of the
interfere. government’s interference.
 CONSERVATISM
• Conservative ideas first emerged in the late 18th
and early 19th century. They arose as a reaction
against the growing pace of economic and
political change, which was in many ways
symbolized by the French Revolution.
• As the name implies, one is focused on
conserving something.
 ELEMENTS OF CONSERVATISM
• Tradition: The central theme of conservative
thought, 'the desire to conserve', is closely linked
to the perceived virtues of tradition, respect for
established customs, and institutions that have
endured through time.
• Human Imperfection: The conservative view
of human nature is broadly pessimistic. In this
view, human beings are limited, dependent, and
security-seeking creatures, drawn to the
familiar and the tried and tested.
 ELEMENTS OF CONSERVATISM
• Organicism: Conservatives have traditionally
viewed society as an organic whole, or living
entity.
• Hierarchy: In the conservative view, social
position and status are natural and inevitable in
an organic society. These reflect the differing
roles and responsibilities of, for example,
employers and workers, teachers and pupils, and
parents and children.
 TYPES OF CONSERVATISM
CLASSICAL MODERN
• Characterized as resistant to • Central themes that have been
change, adherent to limited at the core of Modern
human freedom as it chooses American conservatism
to maintain traditional human • Free will and moral authority
values. came from God.
• Political and economic liberty
are essential for the
preservation of free people and
free institutions
 SOCIALISM
• a political and economic theory of social
organization that advocates that the means of
production, distribution, and exchange should
be owned or regulated by the community as a
whole.
• The socialist goal is either the eradication
of economic and social inequalities or
their substantial reduction.
 ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM
• Community: The core of socialism is the vision
of human beings as social creatures linked by
the existence of a common humanity.
• Social equality: Equality is the central
value of socialism.
•In particular, socialists emphasize the importance
of social equality, an equality of outcome as
opposed to equality of opportunity.
 ELEMENTS OF SOCIALISM
• Social class: First, socialists have tended to
analyze society in terms of the distribution of
income or wealth, and they have thus seen class
as a significant (usually the most significant)
social cleavage.
CLASSICAL AND MODERN SOCIALISM
CLASSICAL MODERN
• Is an actual economic system, • It’s an economic philosophy
which was created in that revolves around shared
opposition to capitalism sacrifice and equality for all
• Its goal was to have a and a vital social safety net.
state0run economy that
created goods based upon the
need from the populace than
the need for profit.
 OTHER POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES
• Marxism

MODERN
• Social Democracy
• Third-Way
 MARXISM
• The most influential representative of this brand
of socialism was Karl Marx.
• Marx believed that he had developed a new
brand of socialism that was scientific, in the
sense that it was concerned primarily with
disclosing the nature of social and
historical development rather than with
advancing an essentially ethical critique of
capitalism.
 SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
• Social democracy stands for a balance between
the market and the state, a balance between the
individual and the community.
• At the heart of social democracy, there is a
compromise between, on the one hand, an
acceptance of capitalism as the only reliable
mechanism for generating wealth and, on the
other, a desire to distribute wealth in accordance
with moral, rather than market, principles.
 THIRD-WAY
• The belief that socialism, at least in the form of ‘top-
down’ state intervention, is dead. With this goes a
general acceptance of globalization and the belief
that capitalism has mutated into a ‘knowledge-
economy’, which places a premium on information
technology, individual skills and both labor and
business flexibility.
• that (by contrast with neoliberalism) government is
recognized as having a vital economic and social
role.
 THIRD-WAY
• that it has broken with socialist egalitarianism and
embraces instead the liberal ideas of equality of
opportunity and meritocracy.