Sociology Now, Census Update

Politics: Power and Authority

Politicsis the art and science of government. Politics is about about power, the abil-

ity to make people do what you want them to do—whether they want to do it or not.

And it is about government—the organization and administration of the actions of

the inhabitants of communities, societies, and states. And politics is about author-

ity—powerthat is perceived as legitimate by both power holders and those who are

subjected to it. If politics is working well, it is through government that power is trans-

formed into authority.

If you have a lot of power, you can coerce (force) others, through violence, mon-

etary means (like fines for speeders on the highway), or loss of liberty (detention for

students who talk in class). If you have very little power, you must beg, plead, or whee-

dle (the way children get permission to stay up past their bedtime). If you have no

power at all, you might need to resort to trickery, the way sit-com heroes like Bart

Simpson do.

Sociologists have always wondered about power: how we get it, how we use it,

why some of us have so much of it and some of us have so little (Faulks, 2000; Lukes,

1986; Orum, 2000). Back in the nineteenth century, Marx saw power as purely a char-

acteristic of social class. The owners of the means of production had a tremendous

amount of power. They had complete control over the workers’ tasks, schedules, and

salaries; they could pay their workers enough to live comfortably, or just enough to

keep them alive, or even less and let them starve to death. Meanwhile the workers

had no power at all. They had no control over their wages or working conditions and

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many people just give up on labels and vote for a mixed bag of Republicans, Democrats,

independents, and Greens.

Finally, in some ways, the world is more democratic than ever before. People everywhere

celebrate democracy as an ideal, and virtually every nation claims, in its constitution or in

its official name, to be a democracy—including the People’s Republic of China, the Islamic

Republic of Iran, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Yet many of these countries are

authoritarian regimes, ruled by political or theocratic elites rather than the “consent of the

governed.” And many democracies are also corrupt or run like individual fiefdoms, so the

world sometimes seems less democratic than ever before.

Which is it? More or less power? More or less aware? More or less politically aligned?

More or less democratic?

To the sociologist, the answer to these questions isn’t one or the other. It’s both. The

processes and dynamics of how we can be both more andless aware, powerful, or democratic

is sociology’s unique contribution to the study of politics.