One of the very first concepts that we teach in political science is the concept of power.
One might think that the term is obvious but when you spend some time seeing how power is wielded and how power is manifest in relationships, you will see that it is complicated.
You might try an experiment that we use sometimes to help our students think critically about power.
We often ask them to draw a picture of power and among the many, many creative works we often get are drawings that including a weapon, a sign with words like "stop" or "do not enter" or a picture of fist held up in triumph.
We get pictures of an adult with a child or a picture of a police officer dealing with a criminal. We might see a picture of money or a university degree or an appeal to donate to an important cause.
I am sure that if you try this exercise you will come up with all sorts of ideas about how we may draw the concept of power.
The next step is to look at how power is articulated through each of those drawings.
In terms of the weapon, we might identify that the power of the weapon is coercive. In terms of the parent or the police office, we would say that their power comes from authority.
And, for money or a university degree we would identify that influence is the mechanism by which these objects give us power.
Coercion, authority and influence are the three main forms of power.
Each of these three forms of power emanates from different sources.
Dickerson, Flanagan and O'Neill in their book, An Introduction to Government and Politics, say: "Influence is the ability to persuade others to do your will, to convince them to want to do what you want them to do. The important point is that the targets of persuasion act voluntarily... Coercion is the deliberate subjection of one will to another through fear of harm or threats of harm. (Finally,) authority is a form of power in which people obey commands not because they have been rationally or emotionally persuaded or because they fear the consequences of disobedience, but simply because they respect the source of the command."
Authority can come from two sources: natural or public authority. Natural authority is like the parental relationship.
Public authority stems from the norms we create in society that have us tacitly obey those who have been given power to act on our behalf. For example, it is a generally accepted norm that a police officer is acting on our behalf. And, while we don't often say this, it is true that public servants, like politicians and bureaucrats, are elected or hired to act on our behalf.
Each of the relationships that exist under each of these forms of power is different.
I raise all this to point out an important distinction between influence and authority that I believe was conflated this week in the testimony of James Comey, the former FBI director.
There was a great deal of information in both his written and oral testimony, but I just want to reflect on one sentence.
Comey said that the President of the United States said to him, in the case of Michael Flynn: "I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go."
In questions from Congress, Comey was asked to interpret the words "I hope you can let this go."
Comey's response was that the statement was said to him by the president and therefore he took it as a directive but one of the senators who posed a question to Comey suggested that if someone says "they hope something can happen," it should be assumed that it is a wish and not a request.
The important distinction here is that Comey assumed that he was being directed to do something by the most important public authority in the United States: the president.
The senator, taking the conversation out of that context, suggested that Comey was only under the power of influence to do something that would make someone happy i.e. the president.
Whether President Trump's comment was intended to assert power through authority or influence does indeed depend very much on the context and that will likely be at the root of the discussion in the coming days.
