Understanding Power and Politics in Society

Power and Politics

Politics is an activity by which people are socially organized, creating and modifying rules of coexistence that seek common objectives for all members of the community. Therefore, politics seeks to understand the ideal of life.

The Concept of Power

Power is the ability to change the behavior of others to impose one's will, even against their resistance. This influence can be exercised because it makes those who obey under threat or has been manipulated.

Levels of Power

• Firstly, power is the individual capacity or the strength we need to act. This is in order to make something.
• Secondly, at the interpersonal level: Power is the ability of someone to change the behavior of another person.

Power can be understood as a tactic or strategy to control the context of others' actions, limiting their possibilities. In a more abstract sense, power can be interpreted from a structural point of view, defining the chance to act. For example, a fork and spoon cannot click.

Perspectives on Power

This has been addressed from different fields of knowledge:

• Sociology: A key concept that studies how a social group or individual can impose their interests.
• Political Science: Represents the central object of study, along with political interaction.
• Psychology: Focuses on the analysis of interpersonal power relations.
• History: Analyzes power from its own perspective, looking at who it served and how it has been used over time.
• Philosophy: From a philosophical point of view, both ethics and political philosophy analyze the control mechanisms that power uses and how it is exercised on social groups, as well as the ideologies that claim and justify specific political forms such as states, parties, institutions, and social groups.

Types of Power

• Coercive power: The ability to force someone to act in a certain way, using violence or threats.
• Reward power: Depends on awarding material goods or services and the willingness of someone to change their behavior to fulfill the will of others.
• Persuasive power: The ability to become a benchmark for others. Using this type of power, members of a particular community identify with a subject.
• Legitimate power: Power protected by law and public opinion, which becomes an authority.

Political Power: Origin and Legitimacy

Power has been understood in many different ways: as an ability one has or does not have, as a characteristic of the different relationships established in a community, or as the consent of those on whom it is exercised. This last understanding forms the basis of political power.

Definitions of Political Power

• Hobbes: Power is the availability of resources for good.
• Weber: Power is the ability to obtain compliance in a group.
• Marx: The ability of one social class to impose their interests over the whole of society.
• Lasswell: Power is the ability to intervene in decision-making processes.
• Dahl: Power is the relationship in which an individual or group pushes another to take an action they otherwise would not.

Kinds of Power

• Immediate: Applies to everyone but is exercised by no one.
• Individual: A de facto power, such as that of parents over children.
• Institutionalized: Coincides with political power. It is a power of law.

Other Legitimate Political Power

The legitimacy of power is given not by laws but by accepting the term without coercion. According to Weber, there are three types of legitimation of power:

• Charisma: A personal gift.
• Tradition: Present in some cultures.
• Rationality: Following election rules and recruitment.