On contemporary misdefinition of power and the importance of definitional fidelity

Abstract

This paper’s conceptual treatment documents a recent tendency in the literature to abandon the traditional definition of an important social construct: power. Naturally, such flexibility or looseness of conceptualization contains detrimental implications for operationalization and theory. When very different measures or manipulations are derived from incongruent conceptual definitions for a given nominal construct, it can produce uncertainty about the variable really being measured, from which a theoretical void follows. So, in this case, it is possible that many published studies and empirical findings ostensibly applying to social power, in fact, may not be. Thus, an entire literature stream appears to be misleading, even vitiated. Along with empirical grounding, remedial information is provided here to address the concern.

Keywords

• classification
• definition
• experimental design
• philosophy of science
• social power