Political Power. Power: the ability of one person to get another person to act in accordance with...
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Transcript of Political Power. Power: the ability of one person to get another person to act in accordance with...
Political Power
Power: the ability of one person to get another person to act in accordance with the first person’s intentions.
Authority: the right to use power.
Legitimacy: political authority conferred by law or by a state or national constitution.
Who Has All 3 Aspects?
Direct Democracy
All or most citizens participate directly.
Representative Democracy
Leaders make decisions by winning a competitive struggle for the popular vote
There are 4 views of who governs…
• The Marxist View
• The Power Elite View
• The Bureaucratic View
• The Pluralist View
Marxism
• Karl Marx
• Government is a reflection of underlying economic forces.
• Capitalists vs. workers
• In the U.S. large corporations hold power.
Power Elite
• C. Wright Mills
• Control emanates from elites – a group of people who possess a disproportionate share of a valuable resource.
• Corporate leaders, top military officers, handful of elected officials, major media chiefs, top labor union officials, heads of various special interest groups.
Bureaucratic View
• Max Weber
• It doesn’t matter who makes the laws, large government agencies and the people who work there actually operate the government on a daily basis.
Pluralism• No single founder.
• Political resources (money, prestige, expertise, organizational position, access to the media) are so scattered that no single group of elites has a monopoly on them.
• These resources are distributed unequally.
• There are so many different government institutions at every level of government that no single group could dominate the entire political process.