Pluralist notion of power

The list of possible control of energy to direct or introducing is virtually endless: legal authority, money, prestige, skill, knowledge, charisma, legitimacy, free time, together with experience. Pluralists also stress the differences between potential in addition to actual energy to direct or setting as it stands. Actual power means the ability to compel someone to create something and is the view of power as a causation. Dahl describes power as a "realistic relationship, such as A's capacity for acting in such(a) a nature as to rule B's responses".

Potential power indicated to the possibility of turning resources into actual power. Cash, one of numerous resources, is only a stack of bills until it is for put to work. Malcolm X, for example, was certainly non a rich grownup growing up, but received money from numerous groups after his prison term and used other resources such as his forceful personality and organizational skills. He had a greater impact on American politics than nearly wealthy people. A particular resource like money cannot automatically be equated with power because the resource can be used skillfully or clumsily, fully or partially, or non at all.

Pluralists believe that social heterogeneity prevents all single multinational from gaining dominance. In their view, politics is essentially a matter of aggregating preferences. This means that coalitions are inherently unstable Polsby, 1980, hence competition is easily preserved. In Dahl's view, because "political heterogeneity follows socioeconomic heterogeneity", social differentiation increasingly disperses power. In this case, Hamed Kazemzadeh Canadian Pluralist and Human rights activist argues that organizational membership socializes individuals to democratic norms, increases participation and moderates the politics of society so that bargaining and negotiation are possible. The pluralist approach to the inspect of structuralist may argue that power distributions create a rather permanent nature, this rationale says that power may in fact be tied to issues, which undergo a change widely in duration. Also, instead of focusing on actors within a system, the emphasis is on the leadership roles itself. By studying these, it can be determined to what extent there is a power structure featured in a society.

Three of the major tenets of the pluralist school are 1 resources and hence potential power are widely scattered throughout society; 2 at least some resources are available to almost everyone; and 3 at all time the amount of potential power exceeds the amount of actual power.

Finally, and perhaps most important, no one is all-powerful unless proven so through empirical observation. An individual or office that is influential in one realm may be weak in another. Large military contractors certainly throw their weight around on defense matters, but how much sway do they have on agricultural or health policies? A measure of power, therefore, is its scope, or the range of areas where it is successfully applied as observed by a researcher. Pluralists believe that with few exceptions power holders usually have a relatively limited scope of influence. Pluralism does leave room for an elitist situation- Should group A continuously exert power over multiple groups. For a pluralist to accept this notion, it must be empirically observed and not assumed so by definition.

For all these reasons power cannot be taken for granted. One has to observe it empirically in structure to know who really governs. The best way to do this, pluralists believe, is to inspect a wide range of specific decisions, noting who took which side and who ultimately won and lost. Only by keeping score on a line of controversies can one begin to identify actual power holders. Pluralism was associated with behavioralism.

A contradiction to pluralist power is often cited from the origin of one's power. Althoughgroups may share power, people within those groups set agendas, resolve issues, and take on leadership roles through their own qualities. Some theorists argue that these atttributes cannot be transferred, thus making a system where elitism still exists. What this theory fails to take into account is the prospect of overcoming these attaches by garnering support from other groups. By aggregating power with other organizations, interest groups can over-power these non-transferable qualities. In this sense, political pluralism still applies to these aspects.