ABSTRACT
Robert Dahl made truly major contributions to our understanding of democracy, as political theorist, political scientist, and critic. No less significant was his writing, extending across his career, about power, both analyzing the concept and deploying it in empirical research. I agree with Professor Stinebrickner that Dahl himself contributed to what he saw as ‘the “vast improvement” in political and other social scientists’ understanding of influence-terms’ (Stinebrickner 2015, p. 194). That contribution was considerable and important, but it has, according to Professor Baldwin, been misunderstood and mischaracterized. It originated with the first of two articles on the concept of power in 1957 (Dahl 1957), to be followed by a second in 1968 (Dahl 1968), and continued with his sharply focused and salutary challenge to the ‘ruling elite model’ of C. Wright Mills (Dahl 1958) and with his major study of the distribution of power in New Haven, Who Governs? (Dahl 1961) and it culminated, after successive editions of his introductory text, Modern Political Analysis in the sixth edition of that work, published in 2003 (Dahl and Stinebrickner 2003), where we can read, in Stinebricnker’s words, ‘Dahl’s last word in response to the many searching critics of his Who Governs?’ (Stinebrickner 2015, p. 199) The publication together of Baldwin’s and Stinebrickner’s articles in this symposium offers a most welcome opportunity both to reconsider Dahl’s developing views of power in light of the charge that they have been misinterpreted and to assess the strengths and weaknesses of his last word on this centrally important topic.
