Power, Force, Coercion and Influence: The Family of Words That Get Confused
Chapter Three
Syllabus topic 1.1.1, "Meaning and definitions of Power"
Pages 11 to 14 of 506
In one line
Power, force, coercion, influence, authority, manipulation and control are seven different things, and the examiner's favourite question is whether you can tell them apart.
In the wording a student can write in an exam: power is the general capacity to affect the behaviour of others; force is the physical application of harm or restraint; coercion is the threat of it; influence is the ability to affect behaviour without any sanction at all; authority is power accepted as rightful; manipulation is influence exercised without the subject's knowledge; and control is power so complete that the subject's compliance is habitual.
Why the words have to be kept apart
Ordinary speech treats them as synonyms. A newspaper will say a minister is "powerful", "influential" and "an authority on the subject" in one paragraph and mean roughly the same thing three times. Political science cannot afford that, for a reason that becomes obvious in Module II.
The whole question of political obligation is: why should anybody obey? If power and authority were the same word, the question would answer itself, because obedience would be nothing but the effect of superior strength, and there would be no such thing as an unjust law to disobey. Every argument in this book about resistance, dissent and satyagraha depends on the distinction between the officer who is entitled to give you an order and the man who is merely able to enforce one.
The seven, one at a time
Power
The genus. Everything else on this list is a species of it, an ingredient of it, or its limiting case. Power is the capacity to affect another's behaviour in a way that other would not have chosen, whatever the capacity rests on.
Force
The physical application of harm or restraint to a person or a thing. Its distinguishing feature is that the subject does not choose. When four constables carry a protester off a road, the protester is not obeying, complying or submitting; the protester is being moved. That is why force is the crudest form of power and, oddly, the weakest evidence of it.
Force is also self-limiting. It has to be applied to each person separately, it costs money and manpower, and it produces resentment that raises the cost of the next application. A government that must use force routinely is not demonstrating strength; it is demonstrating that everything cheaper has failed.
Coercion
The threat of force or of some other serious harm. The subject still chooses, but the alternatives have been arranged so that only one is bearable. "Vacate the premises or be evicted" is coercion. "Pay the penalty or be prosecuted" is coercion.
The distinction from force matters in law as well as in political theory. A confession obtained by beating is obtained by force; a confession obtained by telling a suspect his brother will be arrested is obtained by coercion. Indian criminal law treats both as vitiating consent, but they are not the same fact and are not proved by the same evidence.
Power, Force, Coercion and Influence: The Family of Words That Get Confused
Inducement
The offer of a benefit. It is the mirror image of coercion, and the two are often confused because both change behaviour by rearranging the alternatives. The test is the baseline: coercion threatens to make you worse off than you would have been; inducement offers to make you better off. A subsidy for installing effluent treatment is inducement. A penalty for not installing it is coercion. The two may produce identical behaviour and are morally very different, which is why governments prefer the first when they can afford it.
Influence
The ability to affect another's behaviour without any sanction at all, positive or negative. A retired judge whose opinion changes a minister's mind has influence. An editorial that changes a policy has influence. A teacher whose student takes up a subject has influence.
Two features distinguish it. First, there is nothing to fall back on: if the influence fails, nothing follows, because there was never a threat or an offer. Second, influence usually operates through the subject's own reasoning: the person is persuaded, and then does the thing because they now want to.
Influence and power overlap and are not the same. Every exercise of influence is an exercise of power in the wide Weberian sense, because the subject's behaviour was affected. Not every exercise of power is influence, because most power carries a sanction.
Manipulation
Influence exercised without the subject knowing that it is being exercised, or on a false picture of the facts. A minister who leaks a selective statistic to a newspaper so that a policy looks inevitable is manipulating. The subject acts freely, and would have acted differently had they known.
Manipulation is the hardest of these to detect and the easiest to deny, which is why it is central to the second and third faces of power.
Authority
Power that those subject to it accept as rightful. The authority relationship has a feature none of the others has: the subject obeys because of who gave the order, and not because of what the order says or what will happen if it is disobeyed. A litigant who obeys a decree they think mistaken is obeying an authority.
Control
Power so complete and so settled that compliance no longer requires anything at all: no force, no threat, no argument. Weber's Disziplin, the chance of prompt and automatic obedience by force of habit, is the sociologist's name for it. A well-run army in peacetime is the standard example.
Power, Force, Coercion and Influence: The Family of Words That Get Confused
The distinctions table
| Rests on | Does the subject choose? | Does the subject know? | If it fails | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Force | Physical superiority | No | Yes | Nothing is left; force is the last resort |
| Coercion | A credible threat | Yes, under duress | Yes | The threat must be carried out or abandoned |
| Inducement | A resource to offer | Yes | Yes | The offer is raised or withdrawn |
| Influence | Reputation, argument, affection | Yes, freely | Yes | Nothing follows; there was no sanction |
| Manipulation | Control of information | Yes, but on false premises | No | It is exposed, and the influence is destroyed |
| Authority | Belief that the holder is entitled | Yes, willingly | Yes | The system faces a legitimacy crisis |
| Control | Settled habit | Compliance is not deliberated | Barely | It reverts to authority or coercion |
A worked example
An Assistant Commissioner of Police must clear a road blocked by a protest of two hundred people.
She begins with authority: she reads out the order under which the assembly has been prohibited and asks the crowd to disperse. Fifty leave. They obey because a police officer, acting under an order, told them to, and they think she is entitled to.
She uses influence on the organisers: she points out that the person whose grievance they are pressing has an appointment with the Collector that afternoon, and that the road blockade will make that meeting harder. Another eighty leave. Nothing was threatened; they were persuaded.
She uses coercion on the remainder: she announces that anybody still on the road in ten minutes will be arrested and charged. Sixty leave. They still chose; they chose under a threat.
The last ten sit down and lock arms. She uses force: they are lifted into a van. Nobody is obeying anything now; they are being carried.
Read the sequence backwards and you have the whole of Module I. The cheapest, fastest and most complete compliance came from authority, and it worked on the largest group. Force worked on the smallest group and cost the most. And if you asked which of the four was the greatest exercise of power, the answer is the first, which looked like nothing at all.
What these are NOT
Force is not the paradigm of power. Students reach for the gun because it is vivid. It is the least common and least effective form.
Influence is not weak power. It is a different relation, not a smaller quantity of the same one. A newspaper columnist may change more behaviour than an inspector.
Authority is not merely legal authority. A parent, a guru and a senior counsel all exercise authority, and none of them holds an office under a statute. Legal authority is one species.
Power, Force, Coercion and Influence: The Family of Words That Get Confused
Manipulation is not the same as persuasion. Persuasion gives the subject reasons they can examine; manipulation withholds or falsifies them. The moral difference between the two is the whole basis of the law on misrepresentation.
Quick revision
- Power is the genus; the rest are species, ingredients or limiting cases.
- Force: the subject does not choose. Crudest, costliest, self-limiting.
- Coercion: a threat. The subject chooses under duress.
- Inducement: an offer. The test against coercion is the baseline, worse off or better off.
- Influence: no sanction at all. If it fails, nothing follows.
- Manipulation: influence the subject does not know about, or acts on falsely.
- Authority: power accepted as rightful; the subject obeys because of who ordered.
- Control: obedience become habit; Weber's Disziplin.
Test yourself
1. Distinguish force from coercion. Force is the physical application of harm or restraint, and it removes choice: a protester carried into a van is not obeying but being moved. Coercion is the threat of such harm, and it leaves the subject choosing, though under duress, because the alternatives have been arranged so that only one is bearable. Force ends the matter; coercion depends on the threat remaining credible.
2. Distinguish coercion from inducement. Both change behaviour by rearranging the subject's alternatives, and both may produce identical conduct. The test is the baseline. Coercion threatens to make the subject worse off than they would otherwise have been; inducement offers to make them better off. A penalty for untreated effluent is coercion; a subsidy for a treatment plant is inducement.
3. Is influence a kind of power? Give reasons. In the wide Weberian sense it is, because the subject's behaviour is affected within a social relationship. But it differs from most power in two ways: it carries no sanction, so nothing follows if it fails, and it works through the subject's own reasoning, so the subject ends up wanting the outcome. It is a different relation rather than a smaller quantity of the same one.
4. Why is the distinction between power and authority the foundation of Module II? Because political obligation asks why anybody should obey. If power and authority were the same, obedience would be nothing but the effect of superior strength and the question would not arise, nor would there be any such thing as an unjust law. The distinction between the officer entitled to give an order and the man merely able to enforce one is what makes obligation, resistance and civil disobedience intelligible.
5. Distinguish manipulation from persuasion. Both change behaviour without any sanction, and in both the subject acts freely. Persuasion supplies reasons the subject can examine and accept or reject. Manipulation withholds material facts, supplies false ones, or conceals that any influence is being exercised, so that the subject's free choice is made on a picture of the world that the manipulator has arranged. The difference is the basis on which the law distinguishes fair dealing from misrepresentation.
The rest of this subject
These notes are cut from the University's printed syllabus. Open the syllabus itself, or the past papers, for the same subject.