Abstract

In recent decades, Anglo-American social theory has seen little agreement about what social power is and about what the task of a theory of power ought to be. In this thesis, I endorse the notion of understanding social power as it is understood in ordinary discourse: as a dispositional property of an agent that can be actualized in an exercise of power. I update this approach by improving on works on power that use such a "dispositional" model, and by criticizing a work that does not use one. I then illustrate the analyses and arguments of the thesis with a case study of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev's last year in office. The thesis is ultimately a recommendation for linguistic usage and a proposal for social inquiry