The ambivalence of power. Concentration or diffusion? A re-reading of Max Weber

Abstract

In this text of the lecture given by the author this same year, a detailed analysis is made of what power is and its implications in the current society. The starting point is the power as control and as a limit of the action of others, approaching it from its three dimensions: power as action or force, as authority and as influence. To this enumeration, the author adds what is known as “structural” power, exercised by the system. And it is in relation to the latter, and to the fact that the maximum institutional configuration at present is the State with its bureaucracies and its formal Law, that the author then focuses on political power and the statalisation of the world. He points to a generalisation of statehood which in turn implies a concentration of power and the role of the European institutional architecture in world politics as well as the emergence of transnational organisations and new global powers. At the same time, the role of the political parties that control the State and therefore also its resources is mentioned. Finally, the author makes a historical analysis of how the concentration of power in fewer and fewer states in the so-called international order has been reached.