The concept of power is a key concept in Political Science, and it became more important in the wake of increasing conflicts in society and the growing need for their resolution. Every society is beset with many diversities and conflicts, ranging from ethnic to religious, from linguistic to geographical, and other diversities. However, the most common source of conflicts is inequality or unequal distribution of wealth.
The main instrument that a state has to resolve these conflicts is the use or threat of force and sanction, this in general called ‘Power’. The state generally uses the reward and punishment mechanism to enforce its decisions. A state or a regime having more legitimacy uses these sanctions less frequently than those regimes having less legitimacy. Hence, David Easton has defined the state and its functions as an ‘authoritative allocation of values’.
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Concept of Power
Power has different meanings but in politics, Power is understood as the capacity to affect or change of behavior of others by the threat of some form of sanctions but is not confused with influence as influence has wider reach and ratifications. Influence denotes a relation among individuals or a group of individuals in which one individual can cause a behavior or response pattern, which otherwise would not have been possible.
It can be perceived in terms of the quantity and quality of the sanctions used, the more sanctions a person or an institution uses reflects its increasing power. So, in general, and political power in particular is to be measured in terms of relationship with other institutions and structures.
For example, if we want to know the power of Parliament, we have to study its functional relationship with other institutions such as the Prime Minister, President, Judiciary, Council of Ministers, etc. That’s why political power is not easy to locate and identify as it is embedded in numerous webs of functional and structural relationships that it is rendered difficult to identify and locate.
Concept of Authority
Authority is based on the acceptance of the right to rule and it is intrinsically related to power. Without authority, it would be difficult to rule, as acceptance of the people is vital for it. Max Webber terms it as ‘legitimacy’. The term authority or consent of rule has found its mention even in Hobbesian scheme of things. Hobbes observed that ‘it is not, therefore, the victory, that giveth the right of dominant over the vanquished, but his covenant. Nor he is obliged because he is conquered, but because he cometh in and submitted to victor’.
Hence, even though Hobbes’s Leviathan had complete control over its subjects, his rule would be based on the consent to rule. Thus, consent or acceptance of the rule is very important for the exercise of authority. The mere use of power does not make the rule acceptable; it must seem to be delivering some good or following some mutually acceptable set of rules and laws, only then does it derive authority to rule.
Thus, authority and power are two important components of the Politics.