My primary purpose in this review is to provide a detailed critique of the internal logic of Albert O. Hirschman's Exit, Voice, and Loyalty} Before doing this, however, I should like to consider briefly the phenomenon of which it is an exemplar: the 'in' book. For this raises some general questions of interest. One important manifestation of the self-conscious professionalism of American academics is the way in which a corpus of ideas -often in severely strippeddown form -is at any given time common property. Indeed, the possession of the current stock of ideas, at least in rudimentary form, sufficient to enable references to be identified, might be said to be the badge that distinguishes the professionals and would-be professionals (advanced graduate students) from the dilettantes, the drop-outs and the inside-dopesters. 2 The way in which the corpus is built up would repay investigation by a sociologist of knowledge, but I shall hazard a few guesses. First, the idea itself must have the dual characteristic that its essence can be expressed very simply while at the same time its ramifications are great. Second, the process of dissemination is almost certainly by word of mouth rather than by formal channels such as book reviews or footnote citations. So long as the channels of communication across and within departments exist in any case, all that is then required is a fairly widespread desire (whether normatively or prudentially motivated) to 'keep up with the field'.
This paper is divided into two parts. Part I contains a critique of two existing ‘power indexes’—the Shapiey‐Shubik index and the Banzhaf index. Part II begins with a rigorous analysis of the relationship between luck, decisiveness and success. It is shown then that the supposed ‘paradoxes of power’ generated by the other indexes can be easily dissolved. An extended application of the method of analysis to the US Constitutional Convention of 1787 follows. Finally, the relation between decisiveness (a probability) and power (a capability) is presented, and the question posed in the title is answered. At two points, the relevance of the conceptual points made to the pluralist‐elitist debate is made explicit, and support is offered for the view that each side's conclusions follow from its assumptions about the nature of power.
Abstract. Part I of this article comprising sections I‐III, which appeared in the issue for June 1980 (Vol. XXVIII, No. 2), offered a critique of some standard power indices. Part 2 is devoted to working out an alternative way of thinking about power. Section IV defines success as luck plus decisiveness. Section v illustrates the use of these concepts by applying them to the example of the US Constitutional Convention. Section VI offers a definition of power in terms of the conditions under which an actor can be decisive. It is then suggested that power should increase in importance to an actor the more uncertain that actor is of the likely alignment of forces in the relevant period of time.
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