The idea has stemmed from work by sociologists such as Tom R. Burns and Peter Hall, the economist Thomas Baumgartner, as well as by political scientists such as James Rosenau and Stephen D. Krasner.
Power and social control are typically conceptualized and investigated in terms of interpersonal or intergroup relationships in which one actor tries to get another to do something, usually against the latter's will.
Among other things, it may be used to encourage cooperative social organization on the one hand, or to produce competition or conflict between actors on the other, and generally, to increase power in relation to others.
These entail powers and dis-powers; classes, capitalist owners (whether individuals or collectives), top managers, expert advisors; supervisors, foremen, workers, excluded and marginalized groups – as in the case of any institutional arrangement.
There is systematic organized bias distinguishing classes of people in terms of possession of or access to powers in capitalist systems.
The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it [the bourgeoisie] forces the barbarians' intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate.
Institutional selection may operate, for instance, to change the frequency of certain activity patterns or to alter the distribution of resources (concentration, and centralization, e.g. through ratchet effects), to determine the parameters of power, the forms and types of games actors play.
Agential meta-power is where some agents shape particular structural conditions and institutional arrangements for other actors: to establish a constitution; to carry out substantial reforms, to restructure an industry, to transform social relationships and interaction opportunities and potentialities.
The state launches projects, protects workers vis-à-vis their employers, supports (or blocks) the development of nuclear power, and outlaws certain chemicals, and, in general, regulates societal interactions with the environment.