POL208Y1 Lecture 6: Power — How it is Used, What Actors it Creates and What Are Its Limits
Document Summary
Power how it is used, what actors it creates and what are its limits. Power and authority are not mutually exclusive: power = acquiring what one wants and/or getting others to do what one wants, authority = having legitimacy to getting others to do what one wants. If something is attributional, power can be exercised against others regardless of context. If something is relational, then the exercise of power is restricted according to certain contexts. Under all circumstances, power must have limits. There are also challenges of maintaining power, such as costs, upstarts and/or alternative views. Traditionally, the study of power relegated itself to states and changes within them: in contemporary times however, the study of power has expanded to focus on the role(s) non-state actors have in global politics. Hegemon = the most powerful actor (usually state) in a system: hegemons yield disproportionate in uence in the state system, usually to the point of dominance.
