Power and Personality (Norton Library; N829) - Softcover

Lasswell, Harold Dwight

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393008290 ISBN 13: 9780393008296

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 1976

Synopsis

“A trailblazing study that has mapped out new ways of understanding politicians and power, democracy and leadership, political systems and political personality―by the foremost intellect in American political science.” ―James MacGregor Burns

Power is an interpersonal situation: those who hold power depend on a continuing stream of empowering responses. Are there ”born leaders” and “born followers”? Is there a basic political type, or a certain kind of personality that seeks power? What implications do the motives for getting and using power have for democratic forms of government? In the light of recurrent challenges to democracy, and growing interest in psychological factors in those who govern, Harold D. Lasswell’s classic study offers a wide-ranging introduction to these vital concerns.

About this title

About the Author

Harold D. Lasswell (1902-1978) served as Ford Foundation Professor of the Social Sciences at Yale University, Distinguished Professor of Policy Sciences at John Jay College of the City University of New York, and as professor of political science at the University of Chicago. He was a past president of the American Political Science Association and author of many books covering the full range of political and policy research.

Review

“This brilliant book draws, soberly and eloquently, upon more than twenty years of the intellectual production of one of the most insightful political analysts of our time.”

—Nathan Leites, the Public Opinion Quarterly

“The reader will find many insights.”

—William W. Hollister, the Journal of Philosophy

“A disturbing aspect of Lasswell’s approach—and it may disturb others—is that if he is correct, our profession is afflicted with a high degree of technological obsolescence.”

—V.O. Key, Jr., the American Political Science Review

“This book, in both thought and style, is well calculated to infuriate some of its possible readers, just those readers who would get the most out of it. . . . Lasswell is magnificently objective toward facts; pragmatic and resolute regarding purposes. This seems to me to be the difficult but necessary method of any writer on politics who assumes the coadjuvant rôle of political leader. We need much more writing of this kind but it would be too much to expect of it to be as good as this.”

—Lyman Bryson, Political Science Quarterly

 

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 1976
• ISBN 10: 0393008290
• ISBN 13: 9780393008296
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 268