Power

POWER
Ellen Grigsby, Analyzing Politics: An

Introduction to Political Science 4th Edition
(USA: Wadsworth, 2009), 43-56.
• Authority is needed for a government to work which seeks obedience from its
constituents. How power is administered by the electorate?
• If power has to be implied in the activities of the government to implement its
own projects for the total development of every citizen, on what extent it has to be
used?
• In recent past, some government officials were impeached and have been removed
from their offices because of abuse of power that led them to corruption and
further instead their self-vested interest. With the lessons of the past, even the
Constitution has been amended, i.e., 1973 to 1987.
1. Its semantic origin.
• The word power stems from the older Latin term potere, defined as an
ability to affect something else. Thus, for example, a person was said
to possess potere if that person had some attribute allowing him or her
to cause an effect on someone else.
• At its most fundamental level, power is an ability to influence an event
or outcome that allows the agent to achieve an objective and/or to
influence another agent to act in a manner in which the second agent,
on its own, would not choose to act.
2. What are involved in power?
• power reveals that its exercise by an agent

involves volition (will or choice)
• Power can either be held in reserve or deployed.
That is, it can be latent (inactive) or manifest
(active). This is a question on power’s legitimacy
or illegitimacy.
• who gets power,
• what they do with it,
• how legitimate is its exercise,
• and on whom the power is exercised.
3. Types of Power
• Force
• Persuasion
• Manipulation
• Exchange
3.1. Force
• Force is the exercise of power by physical means.
• Force can include acts of physical violence and acts of physical obstruction
• It can be carried out in the form of embargoes and boycotts (which deny
physical access to resources), blockades and barricades (which deny
physical access to a place), or revolutions and riots (which physically
mobilize groups in support of or opposition to a government or policy).
• In sum, whenever people use physical means to pursue power, force is the
term that designates this display of power.
3.2. Persuasion
• Persuasion is a nonphysical type of power in which the agent using power
makes its intentions and desires known to the agent over whom power is
exercised.
• Lobbying, speechmaking, debating writing letters, issuing position papers,
making proclamations in the form of court decisions, executive orders,
laws, and policies are examples of persuasion.
• Persuasion, like other types of power, may fail, but when it works it can
be an impetus to political and social change.
3.3. Manipulation
• Manipulation is the nonphysical use of power in which the agent
exercising power over a second agent conceals the aims and intentions
motivating the exercise of power.
• When manipulation is successful, the agent over whom power is exercised
generally is unaware that power has even been used. If you are persuaded,
you feel it; if you are manipulated, you do not feel it because you do not
know anything has happened.
3.4. Exchange
• Exchange is a type of power involving incentives, in which one agent gives another
agent an item in return for another item.
• A bribe is an example of exchange power, but so is a legally sanctioned
transmission of money or other objects or outcomes in return for a second desired
item/outcome/object.
• The term logrolling refers to a practice in a legislative body in which one person
agrees to vote for a second person’s favored bill if the second person, in exchange,
will vote for the first person’s favored bill. In log-rolling, votes are exchanged as a
means of pursuing desired objectives and altering the behavior of others.
• Power is abused by officials in different manner
and strokes. However, power has to be
understood as delegated by the people for they
were those who elected them and put them into
power. Kinain ng Sistema.
Ticket to go out:
• Make a one sentence position of the types of

power especially their usage in the three branches
of the government; Executive, Legislative and
Judiciary

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POWER

Ellen Grigsby, Analyzing Politics: An

• power reveals that its exercise by an agent

• Make a one sentence position of the types of

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