1. Power

2. Power
O The measure of the ability to control the
environment or entities within the
environment
O Thomas Hobbes
O Power is man‟s “present means to obtain
some future apparent good”
O Politics
O The study of power

4. The Types of Legitimate
Domination
O Domination
O “The probability that certain specific
commands (or all commands) will be
obeyed by a given group of persons”

5. The Types of Legitimate
Domination
O “Normally the rule over a considerable
number of persons requires a staff, that
is, a special group which can normally be
trusted to execute the general policy as
well as the specific commands”
O Bound to obedience to their superior by
customs, affectual ties, material interests
or ideal motives
O Purely material ties results in an unstable
situation

6. The Types of Legitimate
Domination
O Legitimacy
O “Every such system
attempts to
establish and to
cultivate a belief in
its legitimacy.”

7. “The validity of the claims to
legitimacy may be based on:”
O Rational grounds (legal authority)
O Belief in the legality of rule and the right of
the ruler to be in his position
O Traditional grounds (traditional authority)
O Belief in the sanctity of traditions and those
exercising authority according to them
O Charismatic grounds (charismatic
authority)
O “Resting on devotion to the exceptional
sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of
an individual person.”

9. Three Types of Power
O Condign power
O Based on force
O Submission is attained through making
alternatives too painful
O Compensatory power
O Through the use of various resources
O Submission is bought
O Conditioned power
O The result of persuasion

10. Three Sources of Power
O Personality
O Comes from the individual
O Property
O Comes from material resources
O Organizational
O Comes from hierarchy

12. First Dimension
O Focuses on behavior in decision making
O Mainly focued on key issues and in
blatantly observable situations
O Power is exercised in formal institutions
O Power is measured by the outcomes of
decisions

13. Second Dimension
O Decision making, non-decision making
and agenda setting
O Institutions and informal influences
O Includes influence, inducement,
persuasion, authority, coercion and direct
force
O Measured by the extent of informal
influences

14. Third Dimension
O Shapes preferences via values, norms
and ideologies
O Not measurable

15. Antonio Gramsci - Hegemony
O Values of the ruling
class become the
“common sense”
values of us all
O Used to explain why
a Marxist revolution
never happened

16. Hegemony
O Helps to maintain a status quo
O Cultural hegemony
O Rule is attained through manipulating the
culture of a society so that ruling class
views become the norm and are accepted
as valid ideology beneficial to all members
of society

17. Feminism
O Unmarked categories of power
O The unmarked category forms the identify
mark of the powerful
O Unmarked category is the norm, other
categories are deviant

19. The Power Elite
O “The powers of ordinary men are
circumscribed by the everyday worlds in
which they live, yet even in these rounds of
job, family, and neighborhood they often seem
driven by forces they can neither understand
nor govern. „Great changes‟ are beyond their
control, but affect their conduct and outlook
nonetheless. The very framework of modern
society confines them to projects not their
own, but from every side, such changes now
press upon the men and women of the mass
society, who accordingly feel that they are
without purpose in an epoch in which they are
without power.”

20. The Power Elite
O “They know that they live in a time of big
decisions; they know that they are not
making any.”

21. The Power Elite
O “The power elite is composed of men
whose positions enable them to transcend
the ordinary environments of ordinary men
and women; they are in positions to make
decisions having major consequences.”
O Doesn‟t matter if they actually DO make
such decisions
O “No matter how great their actual
power, they tend to be less acutely aware
of it than of the resistance of others to its
use.”

22. The Power Elite
O “The elite are simply those who have the most
of what there is to have, which is generally
held to include money, power and prestige –
as well as all the ways of life to which these
lead. But the elite are not simply those who
have the most, for they could not „have the
most‟ were it not for their positions in the great
institutions. For such institutions are the
necessary bases of power, of wealth, and of
prestige, and at the same time, the chief
means of exercising power, of acquiring and
retaining wealth, and of cashing in the higher
claims for prestige.”

23. The Power Elite
O Today individuals are not as powerful as
institutions, particularly the
economic, political and military domains
O “By the powerful we mean, of
course, those who are able to realize their
will, even if others resist it. No
one, accordingly, can be truly powerful
unless he has access to the command of
major institutions.”

24. The Power Elite
Political

25. The Power Elite
O “The elite…feel themselves to be, and are
felt by others to be, the inner circle of „the
upper social classes.‟”

26. Dealing with Power
O Recognize it
O Fighting power with power does NOT
work in the end
O Parody
O Political change
O THINK!