power

   The ability to get things done, if necessary involving making others do what they would not do by free choice. Other means of persuasion may be deployed but underlying their use is the ability to reward or punish. It is a key ingredient of politics, enabling collective decisions to be made and enforced, the tool that enables rulers to serve or manipulate the people over whom they rule. Indeed, writers such as Hay see politics as being ‘concerned with the distribution, exercise and consequences of power’.

   Power may be found in many different locations, depending on the type of power being considered. Britain has a diffuse political system in which no group or individual has overwhelming power. Three main concentrations of power might be distinguished: Political power is in reality exercised by the Cabinet (increasingly by the Prime Minister), although Parliament is the legal repository of political power, for it is a sovereign body. In recent decades, power has increasingly been exercised by other bodies, the trades unions in the 1960s and 70s and quangos today. Economic power is in the hands of government, which can regulate economic policy via fiscal and monetary policy, but is also exercised by industrial combines (especially multinational companies), financial institutions and, to a much lesser extent, unions. Military power is dependent on political decisions, as in the case of the decision to invade Iraq or send troops to Northern Ireland. Weaponry and personnel are the key ingredients of any country’s military capability.

   See also: parliamentary sovereignty

   Further reading: C. Hay, Political Analysis: A Critical Introduction, Palgrave, 2002