Five Sources Of Power Analysis

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Power is a multifaceted concept that comes to mind whenever the security policy of a country comes into discussion. This is even more notable for the Federal Republic. Seen both as the power of Germany and Germany as a power, this concept is central to the analysis of past, current and future foreign policy decisions, and implicitly security measures. Even thought it is used in order to distill the the current foreign policy role, assumed by Germany in the late 20th century, to one single concept such as: “global economic power”, “leading European power”, “central power in Europe”, even “civilian power” or “re-emerging military power”, these mental shortcuts paint, in broad strokes, an image of the position and abilities of the German polity. …show more content…

Before going in further I would like to mention that, they acknowledge those to be just the “especially common and important ones” and the relationship between two actors is characterized by a series of qualitatively different variables which constitute the bases of power particular to each empirical case. Moreover, they make an important leap, that is not further explained in the book, from power as the ability of an individual A to enact an action towards another individual B in order to change their behavior, to power as B’s perception of the ability of A to act upon him. This opens the possibility for a division of power, based on the two components of the relationship, as actual power, or the real extent of the ability of actor A to enact upon actor B and change their behavior, and perceived power, or the assessment of actor B of the ability of actor A to enact upon him. This can only complicate out mission to asses the sources of power of a specific actor, but I believe it will provide a good framework for the conclusions as to allow a dual perspective on the results of this …show more content…

It is fair to assume that with an increase in the magnitude of the reward that A can or is perceived to be able to bestow on B there will also be an increase in the strength of the reward power that A has over B. This strength depends also on the ability of A to remove or decrease negative valences felt by actor B. In the context of international relations we can observe examples of reward power in the offering of development aid as an administration of positive valences, but also as elimination of a non-tariff constraint for a specific export of B to A as a riddance of negative

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