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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 November 2009
Political Decision-Making in a Democracy
All the factors which influence political decision-making may (reasonably) be integrated into a model which combines operational concepts of power, influence, and authority. The problem-solving approach is applied to one class of decisions, defined here as those made for social situations involving both technical and political factors. Political power seems necessarily to be engaged in a twofold form of activity. On the one hand it formulates the content of decisions to be made and is thereby affected by both the technical and political definition of the problem to be resolved. On the other hand, power is both an agent and an object of influence at every stage of the decisional process. Political power appears, then, to be a more comprehensive concept than either authority or influence. Its basic constituents are found in a fusion of the function of influence with the function of defining issues authoritatively. Authority is but one kind of influence while influence itself is simply one of the two chief functions of power.
Power, before it is influential, is creative, inventive of ideas, and of solutions. Incorporation of these different categories into a model provides us with a systematic representation of the decision-making process of formulation, adoption, and execution. Particular attention is devoted to differentiating those components of behaviour on which authority is based from those which make the assessment of authority possible. On the whole, authoritative decision-making seems to be circumscribed by the original definition of the problem and by the decision-maker's personal under-standing. Up to a certain point this permits us to distinguish the part played by the force of given circumstances from that attributable to the free choice of the actors in a democratic political system.
1 Lasswell, H. et Kaplan, , Power and Society (New Haven, 1950), 71, 75 et 133.Google Scholar
2 Models of Man (New York, 1957), 75. L'autorité est ici liée à tous les types de motivations qui peuvent déterminer l'assujetti à se conformer à la volonté de son détenteur, et non à la seule légitimité.
3 Ibid., 63, n. 3.
4 Ibid., 75.
5 Il est très important et a été observé par Friedrich, Karl J., Constitutional Government and Democracy (Boston, 1941), 589–91.Google Scholar Il à été étudié par Simon dans son ouvrage Models of Man, 67 et ss.
6 Les actes des gouvernants ont une autorité distincte de celle des gouvernants proprement dits chaque fois que le consensus et l'opposition portent sur ces actes sans viser l'auteur de l'acte à travers l'acte lui-même. Le général de Gaulle n'engage pas son autorité personnelle chaque fois que les pouvoirs publics interviennent, en France, pour sanctionner des actes de désobéissance mineurs qui sont sans portée politique.