# Power, Legitimacy and Legality Political Science I · Political Science I · https://tryals.app/learn/political-science-i/power-legitimacy-and-legality ## Power, and Where to Look For It **Power** is standardly defined after Dahl: A has power over B when A gets B to do something B would not otherwise do. It is relational, not a possession. Dahl used this to study New Haven. He concluded it was **pluralist**: different groups prevailed on different issues. No single elite ruled. Critics asked: **Where** should we look? | Face | What it consists of | How you detect it | |---|---|---| | **First** (Dahl) | Prevailing in open decisions | Observe who wins decisions | | **Second** (Bachrach and Baratz) | Keeping issues off the agenda | Find grievances that never reach a vote | | **Third** (Lukes) | Shaping what people want | Compare expressed and objective interests | The **second face** is non-decision-making. Power keeps threatening questions off the agenda entirely. Looking only at open decisions misses it. The **third face** shapes preferences. Lukes argues power leads people to want things against their own interests. Critics object that analysts cannot easily declare what another person's "real" interests are. ### Consent, Coercion, and Legitimacy Power rests on two foundations: - **coercion**: compliance driven by fear of sanctions. - **consent**: compliance because the command is accepted. No durable regime relies on coercion alone. It is too costly. Gramsci used **hegemony** to describe rule through civil society, making the order seem like common sense. ### Legitimacy versus Legality - **Legality** means conforming to written rules. - **Legitimacy** is the shared belief that authority is rightful. They often come apart: - **Legal but not legitimate**: Apartheid laws, or rigged elections following local statutes. - **Legitimate but not legal**: Principled civil disobedience, or widely supported resistance movements. Weber identified three **pure types of legitimate domination**: - **traditional**: authority based on long-standing custom. - **charismatic**: devotion to the exceptional qualities of an individual leader. - **legal-rational**: authority based on impersonal, legally enacted rules. > **Common pitfall:** Confusing legitimacy with moral approval. Legitimacy is purely descriptive. It measures whether subjects accept rule as rightful, even in regimes an observer finds monstrous. ## Practice questions 9 of this lesson's 14 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app. ### 1. Dahl concluded that New Haven was pluralist. Why did his critics say the conclusion followed from where he looked rather than from what was there? A. His chosen sample of municipal policy issues was too narrow to represent city governance B. He examined local city council politics rather than sovereign state decision-making C. Studying only decisions taken cannot detect issues successfully kept off the agenda D. He recorded observable influence over outcomes rather than institutionalised authority **Answer:** C. Studying only decisions taken cannot detect issues successfully kept off the agenda **Why:** Because a method built on observing decisions is blind to **non-decisions** by construction. If the most effective exercise of power keeps a question from ever arising, then a study of questions that arose will find power dispersed, and will be reporting a property of its own instrument. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/power-legitimacy-and-legality/dahl-concluded-that-new-haven-was-pluralist-why-did-his-critics-say ### 2. A law can be entirely legal and widely regarded as illegitimate at the same time. **Answer:** True **Why:** **True**, and keeping the two apart is essential. Legality is conformity with the rules in force and is checked by reading them; legitimacy is whether authority is accepted as rightful, and is a fact about people. A regime can have flawless legal form and no legitimacy at all. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/power-legitimacy-and-legality/a-law-can-be-entirely-legal-and-widely-regarded-as-illegitimate-at ### 3. Complete the vocabulary of power. **Answer:** Bachrach and Baratz added the second face of power, which they called **non-decision**-making. Lukes added a third, in which A shapes what B **wants**. Gramsci's term for rule that works through civil society so that the existing order appears as common sense is **hegemony**. Weber's three pure types of legitimate domination are traditional, charismatic and **legal-rational**. **Why:** The four terms trace one argument: power is exercised in decisions, in what never becomes a decision, in what people come to want, and finally in the grounds on which they accept being ruled at all. Each addition makes power harder to observe and harder to deny. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/power-legitimacy-and-legality/complete-the-vocabulary-of-power ### 4. Which are true of Lukes's third face of power? A. It requires the analyst to identify interests other than those expressed B. Its critics argue this move is uncomfortably close to claiming to know better than people do C. Lukes regarded the objection as fatal and withdrew the argument D. It claims A can shape B's preferences against B's own interests **Answer:** A. It requires the analyst to identify interests other than those expressed; B. Its critics argue this move is uncomfortably close to claiming to know better than people do; D. It claims A can shape B's preferences against B's own interests **Why:** The objection is serious and Lukes accepted it as a difficulty rather than a refutation: identifying real interests against expressed wishes is exactly the move authoritarian politics makes. The dispute is live, and reporting it as settled in either direction misrepresents the literature. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/power-legitimacy-and-legality/which-are-true-of-lukess-third-face-of-power ### 5. How many faces of power does the Dahl–Bachrach and Baratz–Lukes sequence identify in total? **Answer:** 3 **Why:** **Three**, added in that order over seventeen years. Each addition makes power harder to observe: the first leaves a public record, the second leaves an absence, and the third leaves nothing at all except a discrepancy between what people want and what an analyst judges to be in their interest. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/power-legitimacy-and-legality/how-many-faces-of-power-does-the-dahl-bachrach-and-baratz-lukes ### 6. Match each type of legitimate domination to its ground. **Answer:** - Traditional → It has always been so - Charismatic → The personal qualities of a leader - Legal-rational → Impersonal rules, competently applied - Ideal type → An analytic construct no real case matches exactly **Why:** The fourth pair is the one students skip and then misuse the other three. Weber's types are **ideal types**: deliberate exaggerations built to measure real cases against, so finding that a regime mixes all three is the expected result rather than a refutation. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/power-legitimacy-and-legality/match-each-type-of-legitimate-domination-to-its-ground ### 7. Legitimacy describes a shared belief in rightful authority rather than moral validity. What follows from this distinction when evaluating an authoritarian regime whose subjects actively endorse its rule? A. The analyst must evaluate the moral validity of enacted state statutes B. The regime remains illegitimate because true consent precludes tyranny C. The analyst must concede the regime possesses legitimate domination D. The regime is deemed legal-rational because its subjects obey willingly **Answer:** C. The analyst must concede the regime possesses legitimate domination **Why:** Conflating legitimacy with moral rightness or formal legality confuses social facts with normative evaluation. Weberian legitimacy requires only that subjects believe the command is rightful, regardless of whether external observers find the order monstrous or non-democratic. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/power-legitimacy-and-legality/legitimacy-describes-a-shared-belief-in-rightful-authority-rather ### 8. No durable regime rests on coercion alone. **Answer:** True **Why:** **True**, and the reason is practical before it is moral. Coercion is expensive, requires surveillance proportional to the population, and produces compliance only where the surveillance reaches. Every durable regime therefore also produces consent, which is what Gramsci's hegemony describes. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/power-legitimacy-and-legality/no-durable-regime-rests-on-coercion-alone ### 9. Of the three faces of power, how many can a study that observes only decisions taken detect? **Answer:** 1 (within ±0.4) **Why:** **One.** Non-decisions leave no record of a decision, and shaped preferences leave no record of a conflict. This is why the methodological choice is not neutral: an instrument that can only detect the first face will keep finding that power is dispersed. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/political-science-i/power-legitimacy-and-legality/of-the-three-faces-of-power-how-many-can-a-study-that-observes-only