Power is a liquid, not a solid

Abstract

An approach to political “human nature” which incorporates data from the natural sciences ranging from neurophysiology to primatology better captures the free-flowing character of dominance interactions than the categorical analyses derived from conventional political science. Even the early theorist Max Weber appeared to suspect this. There is an intriguing link between deception by subdominant individuals and self-deception by dominant ones. Animals including humans appear to prefer to be dominant rather than subdominant.