¹ Wolfinger, Raymond E., “Nondecisions and the Study of Local Politics,” American Political Science Review, 65 (December, 1971)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The rest of my discussion assumes familiarity with Wolfinger's article. Further references to it will not be provided.

² Dahl, Robert A., “Further Reflections on ‘The Elitist Theory of Democracy,’” American Political Science Review, 60 (June, 1966), 297–298, n. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³ Bachrach, Peter and Baratz, Morton S., “Two Faces of Power,” American Political Science Review, 56 (December, 1962), 947–952CrossRefGoogle Scholar; “Decisions and Nondecisions: An Analytical Framework,” American Political Science Review, 57 (September, 1963), 632–642CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Power and Poverty: Theory and Practice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970)Google Scholar.

⁴ Minimally, a power relationship has five essential aspects: an influencer, an influencee, an influential behavior by the influencer, a scope (or response) by the influencee, and a setting in which the relationship occurs. Scope can be defined as the alteration in the state of the influencee produced, at least in part, by the influencer. The concept was first suggested by Lasswell, Harold D. and Kaplan, Abraham, Power and Society (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), p. 77Google Scholar. Incidentally, the relationship between “scope” and “issue” or “issue-area” is frequently quite complicated. The latter two notions usually involve a complex pattern of scopes and influential behaviors.

Summary descriptions of much basic conceptualization for power analysis can be found in Dahl, Robert A., “Power,” in Sills, David L., ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan and The Free Press, 1968), Vol. 12, 405–415Google Scholar; Cartwright, Dorwin, “Influence, Leadership, Control,” in March, James G., ed., Handbook of Organizations (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1965), pp. 1–47Google Scholar; and Frey, Frederick W., “Developmental Aspects of Administration,” in Leagens, J. P. and Loomis, C. P., eds., Behavioral Change in Agriculture (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971), Chapter 7Google Scholar; Frey, , “Political Science, Education, and Development,” in Fischer, Joseph, ed., The Social Sciences and the Comparative Study of Educational Systems (Scranton: International Textbook, 1970), pp. 349–408Google Scholar

⁵ It follows that one criterion for evaluating techniques for locating and measuring power relations is consideration of how many and what kinds of scopes (activities, issues, decisions) they enable one to examine, at specified costs. Though it has many advantages, a disadvantage of reconstructive decisional analysis is that it tends to be so expensive in time and skilled labor that very few issues can be considered. For various reasons, the same tends to be true for direct observation, opinion change, and several other power measurement techniques. A more general and systematic comparison of the main devices for locating power is presented in Frederick W. Frey, “The Determination and Location of Elites: A Critical Analysis,” paper presented at the 66th Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Los Angeles, California, September, 1970.

⁶ For example, see Wolfinger, Raymond E., “Reputation and Reality in the Study of ‘Community Power,’” American Sociological Review, 25 (October, 1960), 636–644CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Kaufman, Herbert and Jones, Victor, “The Mystery of Power,” Public Administration Review, 14 (Summer, 1954), 205–212CrossRefGoogle Scholar. There have been several attempts to evaluate empirically the unspecified and specified scope approaches, e.g., Patchen, Martin, “Alternative Questionnaire Approaches to the Measurement of Influence in Organizations,” American Journal of Sociology, 69 (July, 1963), 41–52CrossRefGoogle Scholar, or Agger, Robert E., “Power Attributions in the Local Community: Theoretical and Research Considerations,” Social Forces, 34 (May, 1956), 322–331CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ This categorization and, to the best of my knowledge, the first explicit discussion of the problem were presented in Polsby, Nelson, Community Power and Political Theory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963), pp. 95–97Google Scholar.

⁸ Polsby, , Community Power …, p. 96Google Scholar.

⁹ Wildavsky, Aaron, Leadership in a Small Town (Totowa: Bedminster Press, 1964), p. 8Google Scholar.

¹⁰ Polsby, , Community Power …, pp. 95–96Google Scholar; McFarland, Andrew S., Power and Leadership in Pluralist Systems (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1969), Chapters 5 and 6, pp. 70–124, esp. Chapter 5Google Scholar. Also see Clark, Terry N., “The Concept of Power,” in Clark, Terry N., ed., Community Structure and Decision-Making: Comparative Analyses (San Francisco: Chandler, 1968), pp. 69–71Google Scholar.

¹¹ Polsby, , Community Power …, p. 96Google Scholar.

¹² McFarland, , Power and Leadership …, p. 82Google Scholar.

¹³ McFarland, Chapter 6, pp. 93–124.

¹⁴ McFarland, pp. 112–123.

¹⁵ They state, in “Two Faces of Power,” p. 950, that “… any challenge to the predominant values or to the established ‘rules of the game’ would constitute an ‘important’ issue; all else, unimportant.” In Power and Poverty, pp. 47–48, they state that, “A key issue … is one that involves a genuine challenge to the resources of power or authority of those who currently dominate the process by which policy outputs in the system are determined.”

¹⁶ McFarland, p. 87.

¹⁷ Dahl, Robert A., Who Governs? (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1961)Google Scholar. The areas were political nominations, public education, and urban redevelopment.

¹⁸ An introduction to these concepts is furnished in sections of the articles referred to in note 4.

¹⁹ Lasswell and Kaplan, pp. 57–58. “Agglutination” refers to a situation in which the structural “… positions of a person or group in different value patterns [power, wealth, prestige, etc.] tend to approximate one another.” “… The patterns of different values tend to coincide.”

²⁰ I have attempted to deal with equivalence in “Cross-Cultural Survey Research in Political Science,” in Holt, Robert T. and Turner, John E., eds., The Methodology of Comparative Research (New York: The Free Press, 1970), pp. 173–294, esp. pp. 187–190, 232–233, 240–257, and 284–288Google Scholar.

²¹ Bachrach and Baratz, “Two Faces of Power”; Anton, Thomas J., “Power, Pluralism, and Local Politics,” Administrative Science Quarterly, 7 (March, 1963), 425–457CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²² McFarland, p. 122.

²³ Dahl, p. 333.

²⁴ Dahl, Robert A., “A Critique of the Ruling Elite Model,” American Political Science Review, 52 (June, 1958), p. 466CrossRefGoogle Scholar. I find it somewhat ironic that Bachrach and Baratz are among the most emphatic in building conflict into the very conception of power itself: “… In order for a power relation to exist there must be a conflict of interests or values between two or more persons or groups.” (“Decisions and Nondecisions …” p. 633). They, however, define “power” to be what I should call a subtype of power, along with authority, manipulation, force, etc., and they have no generic term for what is common to all these relations. At least two of their power concepts, nonetheless, permit power without conflict—viz., authority and manipulation.

²⁵ Weber, Max, The Theory of Social and Economic Organization, edited by Parsons, Talcott (London: The Free Press of Glencoe, 1964), p. 152Google Scholar: “‘Power’ (Macht) is the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his own will despite resistance, regardless of the bases on which this probability rests.” Or, cf., “In general, we understand by ‘power’ the chance of a man or of a number of men to realize their own will in a communal action even against the resistance of others who are participating in the action.” Gerth, H. H. and Mills, C. Wright, eds., From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co., 1947), p. 180Google Scholar. Mills, for example, adopted the Weberian conception in The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), p. 9Google Scholar, as Wolfinger notes. According to my interpretation, however, the Weberian conception and Dahl's, though perhaps alike in referring to a potentiality rather than an actuality, differ critically in that Weber builds the intention of the influencer into the definition whereas Dahl does not. In the first formulation, Weber may even be taken to build resistance, as commonly rather than power analytically defined, into the conception of power. Dahl's more general formulation seems much preferable. The distinctions regarding intention and resistance can then be included via sub-ordinate conceptualization.

²⁶ Dahl, “A Critique …,” p. 464.

²⁷ Dahl, Robert A., “The Concept of Power,” Behavioral Science, 2 (July, 1957), 201–215CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁸ Frey, “Political Science, Education, and Development,” pp. 365–369. Extremely useful explications of the concept of power are March, James G., “The Power of Power,” in Easton, David, ed., Varieties of Political Theory (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), pp. 39–70Google Scholar, and Riker, William, “Some Ambiguities in the Notion of Power,” American Political Science Review, 58 (June, 1964), 341–349CrossRefGoogle Scholar, though in each case, in contrast to Wolfinger, I should argue that the pessimistic conclusion is not justified by the discussion.

²⁹ Huxley, Aldous, Brave New World (London: The Vanguard Library, 1952)Google Scholar; Skinner, B. F., Walden Two (New York: Macmillan Paperbacks, 1962)Google Scholar.

³⁰ Dahl, , “A Critique …,” p. 468Google Scholar.

³¹ Vidich, Arthur J. and Bensman, Joseph, Small Town in Mass Society (Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1960)Google Scholar.

³² Schattschneider, E. E., The Semi-Sovereign People (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1960)Google Scholar.

³³ Who Governs? p. 17.

³⁴ Though he is well aware of the limitations of the procedure, this is done, e.g., in Seasholes, Bradbury, “Patterns of Influence in Metropolitan Boston: A Proposal for Field Research,” in Swanson, Bert E., ed., Current Trends in Community Studies (Kansas City: Community Studies, Inc., 1962), p. 61Google Scholar.

³⁵ Janowitz, Morris, “Community Power and ‘Policy Science’ Research,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 26 (Fall, 1962), p. 405CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³⁶ P. 452.

³⁷ P. 641. In Power and Poverty, they provide two apparently similar definitions which, however, are in one sense significantly different. The first (p. 44) defines a nondecision as “… a decision that results in suppression or thwarting of a latent or manifest challenge to the values or interests of the decision-maker,” and the second (p. 57) says that a nondecision is “an attempt to prevent an issue from reaching the decision-making state.” The last definition seemingly focuses on attempts rather than successful prevention and in that way is anomalous compared to their other formulations. But the major change in these conceptions—a significant improvement, I believe—is no longer to define the nondecision from the perspective of the status quo and an assumed dominant group. Since most of their work has not been in this vein, however, I have concentrated on their earlier formulations, which are essentially reiterated as the first two and one half chapters of Power and Poverty.

³⁸ Friedrich, Carl J., Man and His Government (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963), chap. 11, pp. 199–215Google Scholar.

³⁹ Merelman, Richard M., “On the Neo-Elitist Critique of Community Power,” American Political Science Review, 62 (June, 1968), 451–460CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁰ P. 952.

⁴¹ “Decisions and Nondecisions …” Power and Poverty.

⁴² Lasswell, Harold D., Psychopathology and Politics (New York: Viking Press, 1960), esp. Chapter IV, pp. 38–64Google Scholar, and Power and Personality (New York: Viking Press, 1962), passimGoogle Scholar. Cf. Janowitz' comment that “It is no longer fashionable to speak of the psychopathology of politics, but the issues that Lasswell raised a quarter of a century ago about the unconscious motives of politicians remain unclarified and unprobed, especially in community political systems,” “Community Power and ‘Policy Science’ Research,” p. 402.

⁴³ For example, David C. McClelland and his students, James Uleman and David Winter, working on “n power.” See, McClelland, , The Achieving Society (Princeton: Van Nostrand, 1961), pp. 167–170CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Uleman, James S., “A New TAT Measure of the Need for Power,” unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1965Google Scholar; David G. Winter, “Revised N-Power Scoring System,” unpublished manuscript; Veroff, Joseph, “Development and Validation of a Projective Measure of Power Motivation,” Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 54 (January, 1957), 1–8CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed. Also note Christie, Richard and Geis, Florence L., Studies in Machiavellianism (New York: Academic Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Adorno, T. W.et al.. The Authoritarian Personality (New York: Harper, 1950)Google Scholar; as well as the standard “dominance-submission,” “power,” and “autonomy” components of the basic personality inventories. One rare attempt by political scientists to investigate individual power motivations in this fashion is Browning, Rufus P. and Jacob, Herbert, “Power Motivation and the Political Personality,” Public Opinion Quarterly, 28 (Spring, 1964), 75–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

A quite provocative viewpoint also comes from some of the post-Freudian psychoanalysts such as Karen Homey, Harry Stack Sullivan, and Erich Fromm. All in all, however, there seems to be a tremendous imbalance in the study of the psychology of power which concentrates on the person influenced and what leads him to be influenced much more than on the influencer and what leads him to attempt influence. Interestingly enough, the analogous imbalance seems present in the field of communications research.

⁴⁴ “Further Reflections …,” pp. 304–305.

⁴⁵ Barber, James D., Power in Committees (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1966)Google Scholar; Banfield, Edward C. and Wilson, James Q., City Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press and the M.I.T. Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Neustadt, Richard E., Presidential Power (New York: Wiley, 1960)Google Scholar.

⁴⁶ Cf. Crenson, Matthew, The Un-Politics of Air Pollution: A Study of Nondecisionmaking in the Cities (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1971)Google Scholar.

⁴⁷ “Two Faces of Power,” p. 952.

⁴⁸ Polsby, , Community Power and Political Theory, p. 132Google Scholar.

⁴⁹ Dahl, “A Critique …,” p. 469; Merelman, “On the Neo-Elitist Critique …,” p. 453; Bachrach and Baratz, “Two Faces of Power,” p. 952. In fact, in “Decisions and Nondecisions …,” Bachrach and Baratz seem to hint at the type of argument I am making regarding the two phases of research on nonissues: establishing expectations regarding influence attempts and then finding the power mechanisms for preventing influence attempts. They say, “although it is true that a nondecision is not visible to the naked eye, a latent issue is discernible and so is the mobilization of bias. Thus it can be said that the nondecision-making process(the impact of the mobilization of bias upon a latent issue), in distinction to a nondecision, is indeed subject to observation and analysis.” McFarland also seems to adopt a position similar to mine regarding establishing expectations of influence attempts through theory and comparison: “A partial solution to this problem may be achieved if the observer (1) explicitly states assumptions concerning all human behavior, or (2) utilizes a comparative method,” Power and Leadership …, p. 76Google Scholar.

⁵⁰ “Two Faces of Power,” p. 952.

⁵¹ Who Governs? p. 84.

⁵² Who Governs? p. 80.

⁵³ On these concepts, see the articles referred to in note 4.

⁵⁴ For example, suppose we single out two individual actors in the structure (actors A and B) and note the set of actors influenced by each (i.e., their domains). Suppose also that in the domain of each there are actors who are not in the domain of the other. Now suppose that we consider these two actors as a coalition (AB). It does not necessarily follow that we can simply add their individual domains to get the domain of the coalition. At least some of the actors in one of the individual domains might react very differently if they perceived they were being influenced by the coalition AB rather than by actor A or actor B alone. Much will depend on whether this coalition is recognized by other actors and, if so, what their attitudes toward it will be. One can be sure of this only if data have been gathered regarding the new actor in the system, the coalition AB.

⁵⁵ It is sometimes also suggested that the connotations of the term “power structure” lead one to assume that “… power and the class or status structure of the community are linked in a certain way (i.e., the way the stratification writers describe) …” Polsby, Community Power … p. 97. On this I can only say that I see no such connotations personally or among political scientists. The linkages or correlations among power structures themselves (across issues or scopes) and between power structures and other social structures (such as communication, prestige, friendship, liking, wealth) are clearly a matter for empirical determination. They constitute a most important topic for investigation—a topic that eludes us without the notion of power structures.

Wolfinger also mentions that the notion of a power structure is “inherently comprehensive.” It implies the inclusion of all actors and all relationships, given the social unit, the scope, and the time period. This is true, and it is probably also usually true that for scopes including many nonissues it may be uncertain whether all relationships have in fact been covered. But this is simply to say that the accuracy of the depicted structure may in some cases be plainly tentative. So may many other aspects of community research. It does not seem sufficient reason to discard an otherwise fruitful concept.