Concept information
Preferred term
causal theories of power
Definition
- There are key similarities between what is ordinarily considered an ascription of social power and that which is considered under the more general rubric of a “cause.” At one end of the historical scale, Thomas Hobbes asserted, “Power and Cause are the same thing.” At the other end, Herbert Simon asserted that we can substitute the locution “i has power over j” with “i's behavior causes j's behavior,” and William Riker argued that power and causality are really two sides of the same coin, so that we can delete the concept of power from the vocabulary of social science and political philosophy. These claims are not surprising because in social contexts we generally use the terms power and cause to refer to circumstances related to the potential or actual “inducement of change” or of “making things happen” by some agent or group of agents against a set of known background conditions and regularities. [Source: Encyclopedia of Power; Causal Theories of Power]
Broader concept
Belongs to group
URI
https://concepts.sagepub.com/social-science/concept/causal_theories_of_power
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