Power Transition

forms of power are certainly more effective than others. The key to realizing power most

Mearsheimer’s short article “The cause of great power war” explains the occurrence of major power wars. According to Mearsheimer, power gives rise to three kinds of systems which are known as Bipolarity, Unbalanced Multipolarity, and

In “Congress and the Quest for Power” by Lawrence Dodd (1977), politicians enter Congress with the sole incentive to obtain power for their own arbitrary reasons. However, this power requires reelection; by being reelected, they are proving that are conforming to society's traditions, creating an air of personal equitableness, and helping themselves gain the the necessary skills that justify the exercise of power. The member of Congress soon develops an incumbent advantage and is no longer afraid of losing his position, whichever one it may be. As the hunt for power and authority continues, he moves through different phases that bring him closer and closer to the end of his goal. For example, the politician will gather up support from the electoral base by doing casework and joining housekeeping committees and legislative and committees that have to do with their district’s needs. If he finds himself successful, he will move on to serving primary committees such as those dealing with commerce, education, and labor. He becomes a legislator and focuses on national concerns rather than the more local ones, gaining power as he does so. If the Congressman is able to get this far in

There are many different factors that can cause power to shift between superpowers over time such as: resources, population, and economics, military and cultural. Superpowers are define as: the capacity to project dominating power and influence anyway in the world, sometimes in more than one region of the globe at a time.

In the novel Brave New World, the author Alduous Huxley introduces his readers a totalitarian state where the government promotes the idea that programming citizens can more easily manipulate the society than incorporating violence to make law enforcement. In order to maintain the social stability in the World State, the World State government inhumanely manufactures people through bokanovskyfication, predestining and sleep-teaching them at early ages, offers its citizens a drug called “soma”, characterized as a hallucinogen appraised as the “perfect drug” to calm people down, places prohibitions on practicing religions, and has inexorably

How Might their Source of Power Change over Time and How Does it Impact the Followers?

In regards to international relations, power is influence and control one state has over another. Often times, state power is an indication of economic and military strength. According to Joseph Nye, the concept of using economic and military forces to coerce other political bodies is known as hard power. In contrast,

Conflict handling is best addressed when both parties engage in an integrative approach where they work in cooperation and generate solutions that address the needs of both parties (de Reuver, 2006). This isn’t always the approach, however. Power can prevent a positive problem solving approach. The one holding the power simply does not need to operate in this way. “The powerful are less dependent on others than others are on them for acquiring and maintaining important resources” (de Reuver, 2006). In short, conflict, difficult already to manage, becomes much more difficult to handle if the power is unequal.

The balance of power theory is viewed as critical policy in the handling of international relations. To fully comprehend how the balance

Power is a fundamental concept in any conflict. The nature of that power can depend

Power means to be on top, that there is no competition against you. I personally believe power gets you respect. People follow a powerful person. A powerful person is someone who does anything that they please in any particular way without any restraints. Another the way of having power to be financially successful. Having financial power in my world is another way of being powerful because money has a huge value in today's society and can affect people’s decisions. Having power is important to me not only for the respect factor but because by being powerful I would have less financial worries.

The final level of analysis Morgenthau considers to be important is whether or not the power is legitimate and moral or if it is illegitimate and immoral. Legitimate and moral power carries considerable weight in the international community. However, if the power of a state is derived from illegitimate sources such as a dictatorship the international community will be less responsive to that state, weakening its power. Weak or small states may enter into alliances with stronger states to increase their power and influence within the international community (Kleinberg 2010, 33-34). Morgenthau also believed that the charisma and personality of a leader was very important when reviewing the balance of power and understanding a state’s self interest (Kleinberg 2010, 32).

Realism assumes that under a balance of power, the overriding aim of all states is to maximize power and become the only hegemony in the system. States only help themselves in the anarchic international system. Therefore, China’s rise is regarded as a disconcerting threat to the U.S.’s primacy of power in the present international stage. The power shift in East Asia is creating security dilemmas; the U.S. thus demands more security to its Asian allies including Philippines, Japan and South Korea. The rapidly-rising Chinese power would inevitably challenge the current international balance of power and appear aggressively in the eyes of weaker power such as the Philippines. Therefore it seeks help to its ally, the U.S., to counterbalance the power of China. China intends to gain more resources and to transform current international order to its favor according to its national interests. The 2010 Chinese White Paper on National Defence states that: “Contradictions continue to surface between developed and developing countries and between traditional

Snyder claims that realism failed to predict the Cold War. Given this, Mearsheimer states “China cannot rise peacefully.” Since realists describe the world as a self-help system, according to Posen, every country “must look to its own interests relative to those of others” and because “security is the preeminent issue in an anarchic world, the distribution of capabilities to attack and defend should matter.” Thus, because China’s strive for regional hegemony inevitably threatens the power dynamic of the global system, the U.S. will, according to Mearsheimer, take an offensive realist approach that will eventually lead to war. In addition, as seen in post-Cold War, economic stability greatly determines the distribution of power. Friedberg notes, that the projected “speed and magnitude of China’s growth in recent decades appears to be unprecedented” and as early as 2015, “China’s economy could overtake that of the United States.” Although the U.S. faces an unprecedented challenge to economic power, according to Ikenberry, China has signaled cooperation by “redoubling its participation in existing institutions, such as the ASEAN Regional Forum and the East Asia Summit or working with the other great powers in the region to build new ones.” Nevertheless, following the actions of the U.S. post WWII, China strategically makes “itself more predictable and approachable” to reduce “the incentives for other

Morganthau (Cited in Haas,1953, pp.445) argues that the Balance of power can be viewed as either a description of any state of international politics in relation to power distribution or a policy or action intending to distribute power. From this framework we can use the balance of power to both understand static moments in history to observe where power lies at that moment in time and to look at how states themselves actively implement foreign policy for their own power related interests whether that be looking to balance the set of scales or to tip them