Power

Concept of power
Elements of National Power
Balance of Power
• Most scholars of IR as well as political
practitioners agree that “power is the
platinum coin of the international realm, and
that little or nothing can be accomplished
without it.” While “the concept of power is
central to international relations”,
 Power Definition
• the ability or capacity to do something or act in a
particular way. Ability to control people and events:
th e amount of political control a person or group
has in a country
• power in interstate relations maybe defined as a
state’s ability to control, or at least influence, other
states or the outcome of events. (Key Concepts of IR)
• According to Weber, power is a zero-sum
game and is an attribute that derives from the
qualities, resources and capabilities of one
subject
 Indicator of national power
• David Baldwin (British historian and author describe
power in IR )
Elements of national power approach which
depicts power as resources
  National power approach equate power with
possession of specific resources. The resources that are
most often used as an indicator of national power
include the level of military expenditure, economy, size
of the armed forces, size of the territory and
population.
• E. H. Carr divided power into three categories:
military power
• economic power
• power over opinion.
• For E H Carr militarypower was the most
important form of power in international
politics
 Elements of National Power
• Hans J. Morgenthau ―International Politics is a struggle for power: (American
scholar died in 1980)

• Elements of Power
1: Tangibles include; Population, Territory, Natural Resources and Industrial
Capacity, Agricultural capacity and Military Strength.
2: Intangibles include; Leadership and Personality, Bureaucratic Organization
Efficiency, Type of Government, Social Cohesiveness, Reputation, Foreign
Support

• Morgenthau signaled out the quality ofdiplomacy as the most important factor
contributing to the power of a nation. According to Morgenthau, ―the conduct
of a nation’s foreign affairs by its diplomats is for national power in peace what
military strategy and tactics by its military leaders are for national power in war‖
 Balance of Power
• Balance of power, in international relations, the posture and
policy of a nation or group of nations protecting itself against
another nation or group of nations by matching its power
against the power of the other side. States can pursue a
policy of balance of power in two ways:
1: by increasing their own power, as when engaging in an
armaments race or in the competitive acquisition of territory;
2: by adding to their own power that of other states, as
when embarking upon a policy of alliances.
• But World War I and its attendant political alignments
triggered a process that eventually culminated in the 
integration of most of the world’s nations into a single
balance-of-power system. This integration began with the
World War I alliance of Britain, France, Russia, and the United
States against Germany and Austria-Hungary.
• The integration continued in World War II,nations of
Germany, Japan, and Italy were opposed by a global alliance
of the Soviet Union, the United States, Britain, and China.
World War II ended with the major weights in the balance of
power having shifted from Europe to just two non-European
ones: the United States and the Soviet Union.
• The result was a bipolar balance of power across
the northern half of the globe that pitted the free-
market democracies of the West against the
communist one-party states of eastern Europe.
More specifically, the nations of western Europe
sided with the United States in the NATO military
alliance, while the Soviet Union’s satellite-allies
in central and eastern Europe became unified
under Soviet leadership in the Warsaw Pact.
 Hard and soft power
• Joseph Nye, Jr. (Harvard uni professor and liberal)
• Hard and Soft Power
• Power is the ability to influence the behavior of others
to get a desired outcome.
Hard power enables countries to wield carrots and
sticks to get what they want. The UnitedStates has the
world’s largest economy, and more than a third of the
top 500 global companies are American. There is no
other global power, and yet American hard power does
not always translate into influence.
• Hard power is deployed in the form of coercion:
using force, the threat of force, economic
sanctions, or inducements of payment.
• Economic sanctions.
• Trade restriction.
• military intervention.
• The actual threat of military or economic force.
• Soft power is the ability to shape the
preferences of others through appeal and
attraction. A defining feature of soft power is
that it is non-coercive; the currency of soft
power is culture, political values, and foreign
policies.
• Smart Power is neither hard nor soft—it is the
skilful combination of both. Smart power
means developing an integrated strategy,
resource base, and tool kit to achieve
American objectives, drawing on both hard
and soft power.
• Smart power is defined as the ability to
combine hard- and soft-power resources into
effective strategies