ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the political and daily arenas of power, beginning with a discussion of the images of political power structure in the United States then moving to a review of evidence that bears on those images. It shows that office incumbents are most likely to come from high social classes, discusses the importance and difficulty of conceptualizing power, and analyzes pluralist, power-elite, and ruling-class views of the national power structure, and the data that bear on the validity of each. At the bottom of the pyramidal power structure are the large majority of people who are quickly developing into a mass society. The ruling-class view similarly proposes that a small group has inordinate political power in the society and that there are important interconnections between economic and political institutions. Each of the positions just discussed makes a different argument about political inequality on the national level in the United States. Voting is a frequently used measure of political participation.
