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Concept
Power (international relations)
Summary
In international relations, power is defined in several different ways. Material definitions of state power emphasize economic and military power. Other definitions of power emphasize the ability to structure and constitute the nature of social relations between actors. Power is an attribute of particular actors in their interactions, as well as a social process that constitutes the social identities and capacities of actors.
International relations scholars use the term polarity to describe the distribution of power in the international system. Unipolarity refers to an international system characterized by one hegemon (e.g. United States in the post-Cold War period), bipolarity to an order with two great powers or blocs of states (e.g. the Cold War), and multipolarity refers to the presence of three or more great powers. Those states that have significant amounts of power within the international system are referred to as small powers, middle powers, regional powers, great powers, superpowers, or hegemons, although there is no commonly accepted standard for what defines a powerful state.
Entities other than states can have power in international relations. Such entities can include multilateral international organizations, military alliance organizations like NATO, multinational corporations like Walmart, non-governmental organizations such as the Roman Catholic Church, or other institutions such as the Hanseatic League and technology companies like Facebook and Google.
Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall define power as "the production, in and through social relations, of effects that shape the capacities of actors to determine their circumstances and fate." They reject definitions of power that conflate power as any and all effects because doing so makes power synonymous with causality. They also reject persuasion as part of the definition of power, as it revolves around actors freely and voluntarily changing their minds once presented with new information.
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