ABSTRACT
Common is the idea of a relationship such that one person, group or corporate entity is able to affect some other persons, groups or entities in their reasons for acting and indeed in how they act. To have interpersonal power is to be able to get somebody to act in ways s/he would not otherwise choose to do. This is done by manipulating in some way the reasons in response to which other people govern their actions. If I care for my bodily safety, and you credibly threaten me with physical violence unless I act in a certain way, you give me reason to act in that way, though it is perhaps an action I would not otherwise consider performing. That is a case of coercive physical power. If you have control of economic resources to which I need to have access, and you grant me access to them only on condition of my acting in a certain way, you exercise economic power. Your decisions materially affect my reasons for acting and thus my possible decisions and courses of action. In as many ways as one person can, by virtue of general features of their position, affect the reasons others have for acting, and can thus affect the way they act, so many are the kinds or forms of power. Yet all those we have considered so far concern one’s ability in fact to change reasons for acting because of physical or economic or other relations actually existing between people.
