Forms of Power

Political power is often viewed as the sole embodiment of 'socialpower', even while we recognize that social power manifests itselfin different forms and institutional spheres. This new book byGianfranco Poggi suggests that the three principal forms of socialpower - the economic, the normative/ideological and the political -are based on a group's privileged access to and control overdifferent resources.
Against this general background, Poggi shows how variousembodiments of normative/ideological and economic power have bothmade claims on political power (considered chiefly as it isembodied in the state) and responded in turn to the latter'sattempt to control or to instrumentalize them. The embodiment ofideological power in religion and in modern intellectual elites isexamined in the context of their relations to the state. Poggi alsoexplores both the demands laid upon the state by the business eliteand the impact of the state's fiscal policies on the economicsphere. The final chapter considers the relationship between astate's political class and its military elite, which tends to usethe resource of organized coercion for its own ends.
Forms of Power will be of interest to students andscholars of sociology and politics.