Name: Kashish Gupta

PRN: 19060322050

Course: Western Political Thought

Term Paper
Power: An Institutional Approach or a Behavouralist Approach?

Power, for Aristotle, formed the basis for distinguishing between different constitutions whereas
Hobbes defined it as the ability to obtain some future apparent Good. Early western political
philosophers presumed that terms such as power and authority did not need elaboration and an
understanding of these terms was standard and common to all. They often discussed power in
terms of power relations and referred to it as an abstract concept rather than a real, self-contained
concept. The question of the ruler and the ruled, the governor and the governed, the source of
power and the subjects of power had long been central to political thought; however, the concept
of power as an independent theme emerged far later in the history of western political thought.
The idea of power became a subject of discussion towards the end of the nineteenth and
beginning of the twentieth centuries. The discourse began with an institutional approach to
exploring the concept of power; but, as the century progressed, the focus of the discussion
shifted to a behaviouralist approach. In this paper, we will examine various theories of power
proposed by western political theorists, noting the incremental shift from an institutionalist to a
behaviouralist perspective as we progress from Ernest Baker's understanding of power to
Foucault's conception of power and knowledge.

Ernest Baker, an English political theorist who taught at Oxford, Cambridge, and the University
of London, was a pluralist who opposed the concept of an absolute state and believed in
empowering different communities and organisations in society to operate openly and
independently. His work revolved around analysing the relations between the state and the
private society and the place of the individual within that power-dynamic. His view of this power
dynamic stemmed from his understanding of Christianity. In spite of criticising and debunking an
absolutist view of the state, Barker recognised the state as the only entity that could wield the
power of maintaining law and order in the society. He maintained that the state has the power to
serve as the protector of the individuals, act as a mediator between the groups and as an agent of
the community however the personality of the individuals and the groups shall not be subservient
to that of the state.

Harold Laski, an English political theorist and economist, emphasised the value of the citizen,
believing that the conscience of individuals within the state was the foundation on which the
state exerted its power. According to him, the state's power can be suspended if citizens believe
the government is not behaving in accordance with the purpose of the state. However, this power
that has been bestowed upon the individuals comes with the duty of actively scrutinising the
government. Laski maintains that unlike the Hobbesian view of absolute sovereign authority in
return for peace and security, no individual surrenders his whole being to the state. He believed
that for the state to lay claim over the power of maintaining law and order within the state, the
state needed to be at a higher moral position than the individuals and the society. He advocated
for decentralisation of power, as in a federal government, and he based his discussion of power
on the role of power in the modern state.

Max Weber, a German political theorist, formulated a novel theory of power based on the state's
use of it. He argues that the state is the only authority with the legal authority to use violence as a
form of regulatory control. According to Weber, the validity of a state is determined by the
likelihood of citizens seeing it as a source of authority and therefore obeying its orders. He
argues that citizens follow the state's commands because the state, as an agent, assists individuals
in achieving their personal goals and satisfying their ulterior motives by granting their wants. He
argues that people accept the state's power out of habit, loyalty, and the benefits they obtain in
return, and he compares the relationship between individuals and the state to that between an
employer and an employee. He claims that the state distributes power to certain groups in
society, but that this power and its enforcement are limited to the degree that the state deems it
necessary. He defines the state as a human community that witnesses a constant struggle for
dominance between those who wield power and the ones who are subjected to it.
Weber characterises authority into three distinct types: traditional authority, charismatic
leadership and rational-legal authority. Firstly, the state asserts its legitimacy as the sole source of
authority over the population by citing history, claiming that the state has been a reliable source
of power for centuries and that the state's norms are enforceable since they have stood the test of
time. Secondly, he states that the people accept the state’s power to command also because of the
charisma and charm of the leader who aligns his interests and ambitions in tandem with the
population and is therefore perceived by the populace as virtuous and worthy of their obedience.
Thirdly, the state exercises rational legal authority when it bases its power to command on
reason, order, and law by systematically distributing power and responsibilities in a hierarchical
state apparatus. This type of authority ensures that no one person or group has complete control
over the system by lawfully limiting the power possessed by each component.

The first of many works that focussed its attention specifically on the concept of power was
Bertrand Russell’s book, ‘Power: A New Social Analysis’. Following that the physical sciences
can be explained through the laws of physics, Russell hypothesized that social sciences could be
explained through laws of social dynamics. Through his book, Russell hoped to create a
framework that could explain when, where, and how power transformed from one form to
another, similar to the laws of physics, which serve as a robust mechanism for explaining the
transition of energy into different forms. He wrote this book at a time when geopolitics was in
the clutches of various power structures each of which struggled to attain dominance over the
other. His book, which was published a month after the signing of the Munich Agreement in
1938 sought to explain the origin and rise of various structures and forms of power, the
manifestation of this power and its effect on other concepts of political thought. This was a time
when charismatic and dictatorial leaders such as Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin were on the rise and
Russell failed to understand such behaviour and claimed that there was no theory which could
systematically explain this hunger for power or provide a way to limit it. Although Marx claimed
that economic dominance motivates people to seek power, Russell dismissed Marx's theory as
insufficient because he couldn't understand why people or groups wanted to seek power after
their economic needs had been satisfied.
Russell starts by examining the need for people to obtain power, and then theorises by
identifying power as a trait shared by those who seek it. He observes that in an egalitarian
society, those who deliberately seek power are likely to become the source of authority. He
contradicts Nietzsche's master-slave theory, arguing that society enables such individuals to
wield and command power because they see their rule or leadership as a means of achieving their
personal desires and ambitions. Russell attempts to describe power by placing it in various
historical contexts, after which he goes on to investigate the role of power in the functioning of
various systems of government, the various forms of power, and the transition of power from one
form to another, the impact of organised power on the rights of the populace and their freedom of
speech and expression and ultimately talks about how the arbitrary power thus possessed by
individuals and organisations can be tamed and made beneficial.

Russell identifies three distinct types of power: traditional power, naked power, and
revolutionary power. Traditional power, such as kingly or priestly power, Russell argues,
imposes its validity by appealing to people's natural tendency to obey it. It is a strategic attack on
people 's psyches which leaders exploit by claiming that they have the power to make their state
supreme or that they have the virtue to lead or rule their state in a way that promotes the
well-being of all.It is distinct from Max Weber’s understanding of traditional power in so far that
this form of traditional power is more psychological than historical. A transformation from
traditional power to naked power, according to Russell, occurs when traditional power is
dethroned without the establishment or appearance of a new power. He describes naked power as
dictatorial and abusive in nature, requiring no legitimacy or approval from the people. He
believes that naked power is normally destabilised by foreign intervention or the advent of a new
religion. In contrast to naked power, revolutionary power is based on the support of a passionate
and ambitious people and results in a radical shift in the nature of the society in which it
happens, and quotes examples such as the French revolution or the Reformation, which gave a
boost to concepts like liberalism, individualism, and nationalism.
Bertrand Russell then shifts his focus to other forms of power and he begins to investigate
whether these forms of power can exist independently. He believes that economic power cannot
alone guide the state of affairs in a country and is dependent on other forms of power such as the
law or public opinion for its enforcement. He claims that creditors keep the influence of
economic power in check, and that it can only become an autonomous source of power if it can
get rid of its creditors. While the world was at the brink of a communist revolution, Russell
debunks Marx’s argument about economic power guiding an individual’s pursuit of power.
Since, this was a time when the dictatorial regimes of fanatic leaders such as Hitler and Stalin
were on the rise, Russell could not overlook this form of power. He theorized that regimes
guided by unified fanaticism are short-lived and susceptible to anarchism.

Russell suggests three ways in which power may be made advantageous because he claims
political philosophy falls short of understanding the rise in power of individuals such as Hitler
and Mussolini and lacks a solution on how to curb such power. According to him, the love of
power supersedes all other factors that guide the pursuit of power and for this love of power to
be made beneficial the end of one’s pursuit of power should be the attainment of a desire that is
not power, this power should foster the fulfillment of the desires of the populace and the negative
means employed to attain this power should not affect the positive outcome of the end thus
achieved. Russell also identifies four different settings, including economic competition, political
rule, psychological life, and propagandistic rule, that require collective action rather than
arbitrary rule, and suggests ways for the populace to ensure that arbitrary use of power is tamed
and diffused collective action is promoted.

Although western political theorists have traditionally used an institutional approach to define
power, Weber and Russell are the first to situate power in a tradition where it could be studied as
a concept guided by a leader's charisma or the psyche of the people, making it a more
behaviouralist phenomenon.While Ernest Baker takes a pluralist approach, Harold Laski takes an
individualist approach, Max Weber shifts the focus by emphasizing on the state's power and
charisma of an individual, and Russell is the first western political theorist to set out a framework
for understanding the concept of power from both an institutional and a behaviouralist
perspective. This gives rise to a tradition of political theorists attempting to develop theories that
describe the behavioural aspects of power rather than the institutional aspects.

Robert Dahl, a political theorist and professor at the Yale University was a critique of elite-power
theory and coined the term polyarchy to describe such political systems that were inclusive and
competitive in nature and were formed of various groups each of which wielded a certain power
of its own such as the American political system. Robert Dahl's understanding of power
encapsulates the entire essence of this paper which is: power cannot be interpreted in a single
way, and there can be no single, unifying "Theory of Power." Power can only be studied and
defined in limited terms, depending on the context and dynamics that it seeks to define. Dahl
sees power as a relation among people, then goes on to describe the properties of that relation,
and further lays down a framework which could be used to compare power between two or more
entities. Dahl’s intuitive understanding of power is “A has power over B to the extent that A can
get B to do something that B would not otherwise do.” (Dahl, 1957).

Dahl begins by arguing that while power can be exerted over inanimate objects or animals, from
the perspective of a social theory it is essential to restrict its understanding to the limited
relationship shared between two or more entities such as individuals, governments, corporations,
nation-states and the like. He propounds that to simply say that A has power over B is an
inadequate statement and must be looked at from four viewpoints: the source of A’s power, the
extent of A’s power over B, the means employed by A to exert this power and the scope of A’s
power, that is, the area over which it exerts this power which also includes the B’s response to
A’s use of power. He then moves on to lay down the characteristic properties of this power
relation. According to Dahl, for there to be a power relation there must be a time gap between
A’s attempt to exert power and B’s response to it. Secondly, for a power relation to exist between
two or more entities there must be a connection between them that forms the basis for a flow of
power. Thirdly, the amount of power thus exerted by A will only bear consequence and be valid
when it arouses a response from B and its outcome according to Dahl can be explained by
employing the rules of probability. Finally, Dahl proposes five factors that need to be taken in
consideration when comparing the power possessed or exerted by two entities. The five factors
include the difference in the source of the power, the extent to which it is exerted, its scope of
influence, the number of respondents and the change in probabilities once the power is exerted.
Therefore, we see that Robert Dahl through his work has tried to lay down a method that could
be employed by political theorists to unravel and decipher the questions that surrounded the
understanding of power. In his analysis of power, we see Robert Dahl explaining an institutional
phenomena through a behaviouralist perspective.

Finally, Michel Foucault, a French political theorist and a historian of ideas, changes the
discourse on power and proposes hypotheses about the relationship between power and
knowledge, as well as how the state employs this combination of principles to exercise its control
over the people. He believes that human knowledge is inextricably entwined with power. As
Foucault himself writes in the opening chapter to his book ‘Discipline and Punish’, “There is no
power relation without the correlative constitution of a field of knowledge, nor any knowledge
that does not presuppose and constitute at the same time power relations’. He argues that the
knowledge that exists at any given time and the discoveries that are made based on that
knowledge are heavily influenced by that same era’s power relations.

Power in Foucault's work is very rarely a matter of representative politics, the state or economy
and tends to be a question of how it is employed by the state to drive discourse. Foucault argues
that the state as a source of power uses the legitimacy of the law to influence what the society
considers normal. The state uses institutions such as prisons, schools, rehabilitation centres, and
workplaces to normalise its oppressive and disciplinary activities, and it uses the information and
data gathered from these institutions, which it says are apolitical, to prosecute those who disobey
it, thereby using knowledge as a means of power to suppress dissent and to discipline those who
come under the ambit of its control. The state thus creates the knowledge that people absorb,
which shapes their behaviours, thoughts, and actions, allowing the state to assert control over the
population through knowledge. The state's power is heavily dependent on the establishment of
fields of knowledge that provide the state with the truth it needs to maintain influence. The
discovery of the truth empowers both the governor and the governed through a process of
assimilation, circulation, and dissemination of knowledge.
Through this paper, we attempted to trace the intellectual history of the concept of power as
found in western political thought and study a history of ideas that revolved around the
discourses regarding power which ranged from institutionalist viewpoints offered by Ernest
Baker, Harold Laski and Max Weber and a behavouralist approach as propounded by Bertrand
Russell, Robert Dahl and Michel Foucault. We looked at different hypotheses on what motivates
people to seek power and how arbitrary power can be tamed and rendered effective so that it
serves the greater good rather than the interests of a particular individual. We discovered that the
understanding of power is not limited to how the population perceives power and responds to it,
but also how the state can shape our perception of power by using knowledge as a tool to
manipulate our understanding of the world around us. We inferred from this paper that power is
relational and can exist in both tangible and intangible forms, that it is both an abstract and
concrete concept, and can be studied from a spectrum of disciplines including economic,
political, historical, cultural, and psychological.

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