Meaning and definitions of Power

Ask five people what power means and you will get five different answers — money, muscle, votes, guns, influence. Political science has the same problem, and has dealt with it the way lawyers deal with a disputed term: by collecting the leading definitions, seeing what each one captures, and building a working sense of the concept out of their disagreement.

In two minutes

There is no single agreed definition of power in political science; the standard exam answer works through several leading formulations — behavioural, relational and structural — and shows what each adds to, or leaves out of, the others.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Political Science – II: Foundations of Political Obligation on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.