ABSTRACT
Power comes from the capacity to inflict evolutionarily significant consequences quickly and certainly. The concentration of power in specific people or institutions implies a corresponding reduction of evolutionarily significant consequences for the powerful and a corresponding increase of evolutionary significant consequences for others. In 1922, one of the founders of contemporary social science, Max Weber, wrote that power consists of the ability to influence or control the behavior and beliefs of others even without their consent. In this sense, the variations in climate, population, and human behavior that alter consequences exercise power. Power grows with the importance of the resources involved and the number of clients. Specific patterns of interpersonal interactions thus reflect the social distribution of power and specific assumptions and cultural norms consistent with that distribution. Newly independent African governments merely took over the single-channel resource structure that had been created by the colonial powers.
