Power, Politics

• Concepts

• Systems

• Theories

Concepts: power

The ability of groups or individuals to have their way, even if resisted

Concepts: authority

Legitimate power

4

• Traditional Authority

– Custom, culture; often inherited

• Rational-Legal Authority

– Written rules; often bureaucratic

• Charismatic Authority

– Based on personal qualities, attraction

– Often transitional, crisis

Types of authority (Weber)Types of authority (Weber)

Relationship between power and authority:

• Power can be coercive—based on the threat or use of force

• Authority rests in the receiver—e.g., “consent of the governed”

• Ever gotten “pulled over?”

• Ever had a gun to your head?

Concepts: government

Process whereby officials form policies, make decisions, and exercise

state power

Concepts: politics

Use of power; usually to affect the scope and content of government

Concepts: state

• Definition (Giddens & Duneier: 2000): “a political apparatus of government…ruling over a given territory, whose authority is backed by a legal system and by the capacity to use military force to implement its policies.”

• Weber: monopoly over the legitimate means of violence

Concepts: nationalism

• A set of symbols and beliefs providing the sense of being part of a single political community (nationality)

• Arose with the modern nation-state

Concepts: citizenship

Rights of a person based on birth and/or residence within a nation-state

Concepts: nation-state

• Characteristics:– Sovereignty (specific territories)– Formal codes of law, including citizenship

• Citizens identify: nationalism

• Citizenship rights

Forms of state

Power masses centralized

Participatory (direct) democracy

Representative (liberal) democracy

Constitutional monarchy

Autocracy (dictatorship)

Democratic centralism (communism)

Theories of democracy

• Democratic elitism

• Pluralism

• Power elite

• Fiscal crisis

• Legitimation crisis

• The Third Way

Pluralism (functionalist)

• Individuals have little direct influence over government

• Interest groups give us indirect influence

• Government is a compromise

Power elite• Mills: a concentration of power among

socially allied members of three key sectors:

• Directors & officers of large corporations

• Key positions in the federal government

• Top officers in the military

• Power elite dominates; interest groups and masses below have lost power

• Domhoff updates: corporate, social, policy

Legitimation crisis

• Jurgen Habermas, 1975• Fiscal crisis (see O’Connor) can be

managed by the state, as long as people have– illusion of participation, – or distracting issues

• If public becomes disillusioned, state loses its legitimacy (authority)