California Gov. Jerry Brown (D) raised some eyebrows while attending the United Nations Climate Summit in Paris, proclaiming the "coercive power of the central state" is needed to promote good public ...

One of the oldest insights of sociologists of religion is that religions and national governments are drawn to each other. Nevertheless, the kind of power necessary for governments of nations is the ...

President Theodore Roosevelt addresses officers and crewmen of the USS Connecticut upon her return from the Atlantic Fleet’s cruise around the world, February 1909 (U.S. Navy photo by Lt. Cmdr.

In 1959, social psychologists John French and Bertram Raven studied power, classifying five kinds: legitimate, reward, coercive, expert and referent. These power bases still figure prominently in ...

In Paris, Gov. Jerry Brown gave every indication that government will continue to force businesses to respond in certain ways. He called it using the “coercive power” of the state to do good—his ...

In my last blog post, I explained the difference between power and influence as they’re classically defined in business and organizational psychology, and I made the case that even though the words ...