Another ideologist of this term is Niccolo Machiavelli – the Italian political philosopher – who wrote an essay “The Prince”. In his work he examined “mechanic of power” and rejected ideas about political authority. He argued that the conventional advice to rules to be merciful, liberal and loved was ideal in a word in which people were virtuous, but the problem was that the world wasn’t like that. He argued that a ruler could only survive by being mean, cruel and by keeping his word only when it was to his advantage to do so. In chapter XVII of “The Prince” author asks whether it’s better to be loved than feared. He doesn’t dismiss the idea of the people feeling ‘love’ for whoever was in power, believed that in order of rule effectively, it would be far more advantageous for the people to live in some kind of ‘fear’.
Next ideologist taking a part in this area is Steven Luke. He was talking about a radical view of power. Lukes identifies “three faces of power” : decision making, non-decision making and manipulating desires.
The first ‘face’ focuses only on behaviour in decision making, specifically on key issues and essentially only in observable situations. These often take the form of subjective interests: policy preferences demonstrated through political action. The second Radical View of Power qualifies the first one's critique of behaviour and focuses on decision-making and non-decision-making. It also looks at current and potential issues and expands the focus on observable conflict to those types that might be observed overtly or covertly. The last, Radical View, is a "thoroughgoing critique" of the behavioural focus. It concentrates on the decision-making in a political agenda and the control over that agenda. As in the 2nd view, both current issues and potential issues are considered. But Lukes expands the critique to include both overt and covert observable conflicts, and those that might be latent. Also, Lukes illustrates that a full critique of power should include both subjective interests and those "real" interests that might be held by those excluded by the political process.
They are all mentioned and discussed by him in his book “Power: A Radical View”. The idea is that the effectiveness and level of power for a given group or individual can be measured by considering certain criteria. The focuses of these views are discussed at length in Lukes' work, and he offers the Third Dimension as his own view of the shortcomings of the other views previously postulated by others, as well as being a more appropriate way to assess power. What’s more - in his opinion Weber was talking only about the first “face” – decision making.
