Power Analysis: Encyclopedia Entries (original) (raw)
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Power Analysis and World Politics: New Trends versus Old Tendencies
World Politics, 1979
Recent refinements in social science thinking about power could be used to revitalize this approach to understanding international relations. The relevance of scholarly work on the causal concept of power is explored with regard to the following topics: potential vs. actual power, interdependence, military power, positive sanctions, the zero-sum model of politics, and the distinction between deterrence and compellence. The tendency to exaggerate the fungibility of power resources, the propensity to treat military power resources as the1 “ultimate” power base, and the emphasis on conflict and negative sanctions at the expense of cooperation and positive sanctions, are still common in international relations scholarship. The most important need is for recognition that the absence of a common denominator of political value in terms of which different scopes of power can be compared is not so much a methodological problem to be solved as it is a real-world constraint to be lived with.
Reconsidering Power in International Relations
Chinese Political Science Review, 2020
This article provides a conceptual and empirical review of power analysis in International Relations. The main objective of this article is to bridge the gap between conceptual and empirical research on power. First, it reviews various definitions of power by focusing specifically on International Relations literature. Second, it identifies and illustrates key measurement issues concerning the national power capacities of major powers. In this article, the Composite Index of National Capabilities for 20 countries for the period between 1991 and 2012 is used to demonstrate the change in power distribution among major powers. Lastly, it introduces diplomatic representation and war proneness as two new variables that enhance the empirical analysis of power by adding a relational dimension while working with tangible and quantifiable data. These two variables are both indicators and sources of national power. The article concludes by suggesting that diplomatic representation, and war proneness of countries, should be taken into consideration analytically if one wants to comprehend the dynamics and effects of power distribution among the most powerful countries in today's world.
power in internationale relations
Power cycle theory discloses and elucidates the uniquely internationalpolitical "perspective of statecraft." The power cycle, the generalized path of a state's relative power change over long time periods, reflects at once the changing structure of the system and the state's rise and decline as a great power. It encompasses each state and the system in a "single dynamic" of changing systemic share. The principles of the power cycle explain what sets the cycles in motion and the peculiar nonlinearities of relative power change. For the researcher confronting long-standing puzzles of concept and historical interpretation, the power cycle is a potent analytic device that serves to unify, simplify, clarify, and correct. To attain such an encompassing perspective, however, the analyst must first confront the full complexities of structural dynamics and the greatest paradox of power itself. In the hour of its greatest achievement, the state is driven onto unexpected paths by the bounds of the system. The tides of history have suddenly and unexpectedly shifted against it.
Journal of political power, 2017
Power and International Relations opens with an account of Robert Dahl's theory of power, followed by an analysis of the implications of this perspective for international relations (IR). The latter constitutes a critique of IR theory, which is criticised for an imprecise usage of power-related terminology. The first two chapters are a clarification of Dahl's position, relative to his various critics, including Bachrach and Baratz, Lukes and Clegg. In chapter three, Baldwin explains the full implications of Dahl's approach to power for social science in general. Chapter four is a general discussion of international relations, chapter five is an engagement with IR realism, six concerns IR constructivism, seven on IR neoliberalism and chapter eight is the conclusion. Baldwin is an outstanding scholar with an in-depth knowledge of the power debates and the IR literature. His erudition and demand for precision structures the book. Unlike many commentators who are quick to jump to conclusions, or who caricature the work of others, Baldwin is meticulous, carefully parsing what others actually write, rather than what is attributed to them. Baldwin makes a convincing case that Dahl's work on power is substantially more nuanced than is generally acknowledged and that it provides excellent conceptual tools for making sense of the most complex theoretical problems in IR. While I think highly of this book, I will conclude by drawing attention to aspects of domination that Dahl's characterisation of power occludes. Baldwin's immediate focus of criticism is (what he terms) the conventional wisdom (Baldwin 2016, p. 3, 20) that Dahl had a primitive one-dimensional view of power, which was superseded by more nuanced and sophisticated second-(Bachrach and Baratz 1962) and third-dimensional perspectives (Lukes 1974). Central to Baldwin's argument is a careful reading of Dahl's 1957 article 'The concept of power' , which contains Dahl's much quoted definition of power: ' A has power over B to the extent that he can get B to do something that B would not otherwise do'. (Dahl 1957, pp. 202-203). As argued by Baldwin, there are three points about this definition that readers either generally overlook, or don't take sufficiently seriously, which, in combination, lead to a mischaracterisation of Dahl's position. First, this is not really a definition in a strong sense that it is often read. Rather, it is a concept that reflects Dahl's 'desire to capture the "central intuitively understood meaning" of power, the "primitive notion that seems to lie behind all" power concepts (e.g. influence, control, authority, etc.)'. (Baldwin 2016, pp. 13-14; internal quotes from Dahl 1957). Second, Dahl states that this concept 'will not be "easy to apply in concrete research problems: and therefore, [that] operational equivalents of the formal definition, designed to meet the needs of a particular research problem, are likely to diverge from another in important ways"' (Baldwin 2016, pp. 13-14-italics added by Baldwin). Third, there is a distinction between a conception of power, which is broad and general, and an operational definition that