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Power, it is something that everyone has but few really understand the concept. What is power? How do you describe or define it. It is something that we know it when we see it. But power is not a difficult concept. Power overall is the ability to influence others. Therefore, politics is the dialectical struggles for power. Everyone has power but the real question is to what degree.

Overall, there are many different kinds of power. There are soft power and hard power. While the concepts of soft and hard power comes from international relations, it can be applied both in the domestic and individual level. We can define soft power as the following: "a persuasive approach to international relations, typically involving the use of economic (rewards) or cultural influence." We can define hard power as "the use of military and economic means to influence the behavior or interests of other political bodies. This form of political power is often aggressive, and is most effective when imposed by one political body upon another of lesser military and/or economic power." With the breakdown of hard and soft power, I believe we can fully analyze most political and power struggles in the game.

Soft Power



There are a few forms of soft power. The three source of power I will discuss in this section are legitimate power, referent power, and expert power.

Legitimate power aka "positional power," it is the power of an individual because of the relative position and duties of the holder of the position within an organization. This form of power denotes from an governmental position in which position holders can influence the discourse, behavior, and actions of others. The key point of legitimate power is the concepts of both position holders as well as the laws, tradition, and ideals of the institution/ organization. Only people who holds certain post have the real influence on the discourse of the organization/ society. However, law is important as position holders can be replaced. Organizations and institutions do operate on traditions, laws, and rules. Therefore, the history, tradition, and morality values of the laws checks the powers of the position holders. Therefore, legitimate power is a basic condition for governing. Without it, the system would not work.

Referent power is a simple concept of loyalty. of an individual over the Team or Followers, based on a high level of identification with, admiration of, or respect for the powerholder/ leader. One of the reasons why I returned to eBE was due to people like MaryamQ, Critically, Curlybear, and others. This power can be identified as charismatic power as it focus on the ability to wins the hearts and loyalty of others.

Expert Power is an individual's power deriving from the skills or expertise of the person and the organization's needs for those skills and expertise. Unlike the others, this type of power is usually highly specific and limited to the particular area in which the expert is trained and qualified. I think this form of power is important as we should heed the position and perspective of those who are experienced and knowledgeable. The influence level of a player who was/ is the Secretary General of a major alliance is much greater than a loud noob who thinks s/he knows everything. While the noob could be correct in the assessment, their influence is much weaker due to their lack of experience knowledge.

Soft Power/ Positive Power

Rewards can be a great source of power/ influence. If anyone took a class on education/ child psychology, they talked about the role of positive reinforcement. The term positive is not about good or bad. The person of power is giving a benefit to the person who he/she wants to influence. The influence target will gain (positive) a benefit. This can be anything from financial gains to titles, position, and legitimate power itself. People with power can promote/ give titles to people who are doing well. In the eNetherlands, citizens who do great deeds in their society can receive forum medals which improves and enhances citizens' prestige and conduct. This is a great way for the legitimate power holders to encourage citizens to act in a way which benefits the society.

Cohesive Power/ Negative Power



Cohesive power is the application of negative influences. It includes the ability to demote or to withhold other rewards. It is the opposite of positive power. While legitimate powers can use cohesive powers to enforce the law and orders like in the case of Shadow and his illegal use of multi accounts in the eBelgium forums, cohesive power is commonly used by people and elements who does not have legitimate power. The illegitimate people use tactics like political take over and undoing the democratically elected dictatorship to undermine/ overthrow the existing legitimate powers. They want the society to conform to their ways and if they do not, they aim to take away the institutions and the rights of sovereignty from the society.

So What?



With that said, people who are "in the right" to govern employs soft power more than hard power. People who come into power via the right channel has legitimacy. With legitimacy comes loyalty and admiration of the people. Lastly, we do hope these people are knowledgeable in their task when they lead the society. People who came to power via the legit way will employ positive and negative power but they really do not have to rely on them. They might use positive power more to encourage people to continue to work hard for the society but tends to not rely on negative power as much. If we look at our eBelgian history, I do not recall much negative power enforced. Only Shadow comes into mind. The eBelgian community never censored or banned anyone. eBE as a community is more tolerant and forgiving than the eRepublik game rules itself. Referent power is relevant as the citizens and people are devoted to the laws and tradition of the land. This is true in eBE as many people gave so much to their country to protect and combat against forces who aims to do ill to the community. These citizens includes the likes of MaryamQ, Elynea, NLSP, Fhaemita, Mittekemuis, Critically, Tecuvo, McKitkat, Curlybear, and many others. While some of them are in different countries, their hearts and minds are still with eBE. They still keep in touch with the community and aims to promote the country to the best of their ability.

Therefore, people who seeks power outside of the legitimate ways employ positive and negative power more. These people do not have legitimacy as they do not seek power via the ways of tradition. In eBE, that is done via a republican system of election and representative democracy. Therefore, they seek cohesion to use hard power to force their way into power against the will and interest of the society. These people use rewards only on their followers who are willing to heed their ill deeds. These regards and be monetary rewards but most commonly, the rewards used by illegitimate forces the citizenship of the victim countries as well as a role in their new order. The illegitimate forces rarely use expert power but they do use referent power. They are loyal to each other often bounded by meaningless/ hollow political rhetoric in their quest to overthrow the establishment.

Is this a Statist Perspective

In a way, yes. I do believe the role of the state in eRepublik should be a great one. The state should be the primary actor in the decision making process of issues like foreign policies and domestic well being of its citizens. With that said, I do not believe the state is mighty and infallible. The state needs to follow a republican model of representation and it needs to allow and tolerate political dissent. I do believe in the Hegelian sense of dialectical approach to progress and innovation but not that of revolution.

The antiestablishment revolutionaries of eBelgian do not follow the enlighten sense of Hegelian dialectical discourses. Their over use of negative power is evidence of this. Revolution is not dissent. They protest against our traditions and system as illiberal, their end product is dissonance justice and "democratic" ideals.

Means to dissent



From my perspective, revolution and political take over's are not dissent but an act of treason. Dissent should be done via the means of civil disobedience [the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is a symbolic or ritualistic violation of the law, rather than a rejection of the system as a whole.] The laws they violate should not jeopardize the wellbeing and integrity of the state. With that said, civil disobedience can be in the following formats:

-Refusing to fight at a key battle (This does not mean fighting for the enemy)
-Writing articles challenging the regime in key policy positions (not hollow rhetoric)
-Refusing to accept citizenship mandated by the state (not accepting hostile agents who supports the dissenting forces' perspectives)
- etc.

These examples shows inaction which defiles the government in protest. However, this is an passive defiance which protest against the state while not actively combat the state with an aim of its destruction. As civil disobedience does not reject the system of law and order as a whole. Dissent should focus on political reform and not the annihilation of the system. The actions of civil disobedience will allow the dissenters to gain legitimate power with time as it is a great means to promote their agenda in the media. Revolution on the other hand and the over reliance of hard negative power will just make people resistant to their cause.

Nature of Power

So power does matter. How one uses their power influence both public perceptions as well as the effectiveness of their influence. Those who are effective will use legitimate powers well. This will help them obtain referent and expert powers. They do not rely solely on rewards and negative powers but they can use it if needed. Effective people will dissent via civil disobedience and will never adopt or tolerate revolutions. With that said, the study and analysis of how one use power tells a lot about that person. We can identify how that individual regards towards morality as well as their thinking process. For might is not right and talk is cheap. An effective ruler will guide and influence others by their deeds within the framework of tradition and ethical approaches to governance.