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Abstract
In Modern Political Analysis (MPA), Robert A. Dahl presents what he saw as the essentials of politics and political science. Spanning four decades of Dahl’s scholarly career, the six editions of MPA address (i) the nature of politics; (ii) ‘influence’, the constituent element of politics and MPA’s term for what political scientists often call ‘power’; and (iii) similarities and differences among political systems. Seven ‘forms of influence’ – power, coercion, force, persuasion, manipulation, inducement, and authority – are distinguished and analyzed. In exploring similarities and differences among the world’s political systems, MPA presents an overview of Dahl’s insights on democracy and polyarchy. The six MPA editions also provide an opportunity to observe how Dahl’s thinking about the essentials of his discipline evolved over forty years.
Disclosure statement
Bruce Stinebrickner is the co-author (with Robert A. Dahl) of MPA 6th (2003).
Notes
1. When an identical or almost identical point or passage appears in more than one edition of MPA, to reduce the repeated distraction of multiple citations I shall generally cite only one edition. When the context seems to make it useful or even necessary, citations of more than one MPA edition will appear.
2. As coauthor of the sixth edition of MPA, I was responsible for initial drafting of the revised manuscript, but Dahl and I discussed all significant changes in advance of my drafting. He carefully and promptly read every chapter I drafted and suggested changes that he thought were warranted. This article will treat MPA 6th as Dahl’s work and essentially ignore the existence of a coauthor for that edition. In turn, I shall in places be offering criticisms of my own work in MPA 6th, which, of course, is consistent with the approach that Dahl took to his own work over his entire career. I am also pleased to report that Bob Dahl was a wonderful coauthor – as conscientious, accommodating, and gracious as anyone could wish for.
3. This criticism of Lukes’s approach is one of MPA’s infrequent explicit and direct critiques of other scholars’ work. In this context, Dahl’s comments about responding to criticisms of his work that were recorded in interviews conducted in 1980 and 1981 seem worth noting: ‘I decided early on that I didn’t want to spend my time dealing with all the criticisms of any work [of mine]. One view is that you have a scholarly obligation to continue the discussion because that’s a part of progress in the field. I, for a whole variety of reasons, have not wanted to do that…. It may be that I’ve done less of that than I’m properly obliged to do’ (‘Robert A. Dahl’, Citation1991, p. 176).
4. Mapping or trying to map MPA’s four ‘levels of influence’ onto Clegg’s distinctions among episodic, dispositional, and systemic power (Citation1989 cited Haugaard Citation2010), or vice versa, might well be an interesting and productive exercise, but it is beyond the scope of this article.
5. Characterizing the ‘spheres of decision-making or levels of influence’ discussion in MPA 6th as Dahl’s ‘last word in response in to … critiques’ should be read in the context of Dahl’s professed disinclination to engage in that sort of enterprise. See Note 3.
6. In MPA, a ‘state’ consists of a ‘government’ and the residents of the territory ruled by that government (MPA 6th, p. 31). Stephanie Lawson’s article (Citation1993) conceptualizing state, regime, and government suggests that political scientists studying comparative and international politics typically have understandings that diverge somewhat from MPA’s use of these terms. But these terminological differences do not undermine MPA’s attributing central importance to government and the state in politics. I am grateful to my departmental colleague Brett O’Bannon for calling this matter to my attention and for directing me to Lawson’s article.
7. Dahl uses the phrase ‘Words About Words’ as his heading for short explanations about the use and meaning of particular words that appear, set off from the main text, throughout his On Democracy (Citation1998). For that reason, its use in a subheading in this article seems particularly apt.
8. According to Haugaard (p. 432, Citation2010), MPA’s neutral stance is consistent with the ‘sociological analytic political science’ approach to influence/power and is by no means idiosyncratic.