Bret Devereaux

I think a focus on webs of power is important, but I'd leaven that with some Hannah Arendt: force and violence are not power (and so 'military power' as used here, is almost but not quite a contradiction in terms). 18/21

Just because a work is old doesn't mean it isn't current. Arendt's dichotomy of violence and power is still a valid and quite prominent theoretical framework in the poli-sci/security studies space.

It is also, more to the point, useful. Power - the ability to create/organize collective action - is not the same as the ability to compel an action through violent or the threat of violence.

The example I use to illustrate the distinction is a stop-light. If you run the light and are arrested by a police officer, that's violence. If you only stop at the light because there is a police officer there at the time, that is (@MilHist_Lee 's expansion of the idea) force.

But most of us stop at the stop-light even when there is no police officer. We stop at the light even when there are no cars. We've all, I suspect, sat behind 2 or 3 stopped cars behind a red light at a country intersection where there is no another soul in sight.

We might stop there because it is 'the doing thing' (norms), or because we don't like breaking laws (the 'majesty of the law' being a form of legitimacy), or because we assume smart leaders put the rule in place for a reason (another form of legitimacy).

It would be odd to stop because one thought the red light was ordained by God, but I hesitate to stand in judgement of someone's faith (religious legitimacy). All of these are power - and they function quite differently than the police officer sitting at the light.