Political power : a reader in theory and research

By:

Bell, Roderick

Contributor(s):

Material type: Text

TextPublication details: New York; free Press; 1969Description: 400pSubject(s):

Political science

DDC classification:

320.4 BEL

Summary: This collection of articles originated in a seminar on political power which the three of us taught together during the spring of 1968. We all shared an interest in the problems of theory and methodology in political science, and the literature on power seemed to provide a good opportunity to confront these problems in a concrete way. It seemed likely to us that this literature exemplified three of the central problems of scientific method in political science concept formation, theory construction, and measurement-in a way which emphasized both the distinctive concerns of the discipline and its underlying unity. These expectations were fulfilled, and they provide the main justification for this volume. But they were fulfilled in an unexpected way, which accounts for the particular form this volume has taken. To state the matter briefly, we concluded that much of the literature on political power suffered from an overemphasis on the definition of concepts and measurement techniques, and an underemphasis of theory. Yet it seems to us that these three tasks must be pursued simultaneously if any of them are to serve any useful scientific purpose. If a collection of readings can have any unifying theme, that is the central theme of this book. The essays by Wagner and Bell argue for this point directly, the first in the course of an examination of the concept, and the second in the course of a discussion of the relationship between theory and measurement. And the readings are organized in such a way as to emphasize these problems. The articles collected in Section II seem to us to exemplify the concerns of students of politics which lead one to think seriously about the concept of power in the first place. The presumption that the distribution of power is the key to many other properties of political systems is shared by students of all forms of politics from the local to the inter- national level. But it is notoriously difficult to answer the questions posed by this presumption in a noncontroversial way.

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Holdings
Item type	Current library	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Books	Gandhi Smriti Library	320.4 BEL (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Available		14255

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This collection of articles originated in a seminar on political power which the three of us
taught together during the spring of 1968. We all shared an interest in the problems of
theory and methodology in political science, and the literature on power seemed to provide
a good opportunity to confront these problems in a concrete way. It seemed likely to us
that this literature exemplified three of the central problems of scientific method in political
science concept formation, theory construction, and measurement-in a way which
emphasized both the distinctive concerns of the discipline and its underlying unity. These
expectations were fulfilled, and they provide the main justification for this volume. But they
were fulfilled in an unexpected way, which accounts for the particular form this volume has
taken.
To state the matter briefly, we concluded that much of the literature on political power
suffered from an overemphasis on the definition of concepts and measurement techniques,
and an underemphasis of theory. Yet it seems to us that these three tasks must be pursued
simultaneously if any of them are to serve any useful scientific purpose. If a collection of
readings can have any unifying theme, that is the central theme of this book. The essays
by Wagner and Bell argue for this point directly, the first in the course of an examination
of the concept, and the second in the course of a discussion of the relationship between theory
and measurement. And the readings are organized in such a way as to emphasize these
problems.
The articles collected in Section II seem to us to exemplify the concerns of students of
politics which lead one to think seriously about the concept of power in the first place.
The presumption that the distribution of power is the key to many other properties of
political systems is shared by students of all forms of politics from the local to the inter-
national level. But it is notoriously difficult to answer the questions posed by this presumption
in a noncontroversial way.

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