Examine the nature and meaning of power.
How the answer moves
The flow snapshot — the routes in, the body, the counter-view and the routes out.
Route 1 Power = central concept of politics (“money of economics”) → meaning settled, nature contested
Route 2 Lasswell: shaping & sharing of power → politics = acquisition / exercise / resistance → meaning vs nature
Meaning = capacity to produce intended effects → Dahl + Weber (“power over”) → two presumptions: individual + domination → nature challenges both → Coser’s two traditions (Weber domination / Parsons facility) → Arendt: acting in concert, enabling → structural loci: Marx (class) / feminists (patriarchy) / Foucault (discourse) → Lukes’ three dimensions: decision-making → agenda-setting → thought-control (Gramsci hegemony) → least observable
Against the Dahl-Weber individual-and-domination reading: power as collective and enabling (Arendt), as structural (Marx, feminist, Foucault), and as hidden/ideological (Lukes, Gramsci)
Route 1 Power is many-sided: “over” and “to”, visible and hidden — more than command
Route 2 Meaning stable (capacity for effects); nature plural and contested across agent, locus and visibility
Model answer
Handwritten, in the form it would be written in the examination hall.
