This commitment leads Dahl to a view of power. Power is not a possession (like a jewel) but a relationship between specific actors over specific actions. To claim “A has power over B” is incomplete unless one specifies: over what issue? At what cost? With what probability of success? By operationalizing power in this way, Dahl opens the door to systematic empirical research. His famous definition — A has power over B to the extent that A can get B to do something B would not otherwise do — requires the analyst to identify a counterfactual: what would B have done in the absence of A’s influence?
This definition was revolutionary because it was expansive. It meant that a family, a university, a trade union, or a nation-state could all be analyzed as political systems. By stripping the definition down to its core dynamic—power relationships—Dahl provided a universal toolkit for analyzing vastly different societies. modern political analysis by robert dahl full
Because Dahl viewed "perfect democracy" as an unattainable ideal, he coined the term to describe real-world, large-scale representative governments. This commitment leads Dahl to a view of power