Two Ontologies of AuthorityEvery political theory begins with an unspoken premise: what is power? Before we argue about who should rule, or how institutions should be designed, we have already decided—often unconsciously—what kind of thing power is. That decision shapes everything that follows. There are, at root, two incompatible answers.I. Power as PropertyThe first treats power as something that can be possessed. It is imagined as an object: a resource that can be accumulated, inherited, t...
