¹ The widespread belief that ‘rational persuasion’ has a special moral standing is referred to by Dahl, R., in his Modern Political Analysis, 3rd edn (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1976) at pp. 95–6Google Scholar, and Connolly, William E., Terms of Political Discourse (Lexington, Mass.: Heath, 1974), p. 95.Google Scholar Felix Oppenheim rejects definitions which rely on normative assumptions. See Political Concepts (Oxford: Blackwell, 1981), pp. 156–7.Google Scholar

² Zedong, Mao, Selected Works, Vol. 5 (Peking: Foreign Language Press, 1977), pp. 432–3.Google Scholar

³ R. Bell's compendium of twenty-seven articles on power and influence. Political Power: a Reader in Theory and Research (New York: Free Press, 1969)Google Scholar has no separate account of persuasion. More generally, the situation is little different, more than a decade on. One bright exception is Benn, S., ‘Freedom and Persuasion’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, XLV (1967), 257–75.Google Scholar As an example of undifferentiated usage, we have Neustadt's famous (but astonishing) remark that presidential power is barely more than the power to persuade. Neustadt, Richard E., Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership (New York: Wiley, 1960).Google Scholar As John Hart points out in ‘Presidential Power Revisited’, Political Studies, XXV (1977), 48–61 at p. 54Google Scholar, ‘The linguistic differences between persuasion, influence and bargaining are not relevant here, for the terms are used interchangeably.’

⁴ Broadly speaking, studies begin with power (or manipulation) and then state a position on whether persuasion is part of power. Yes, according to Oppenheim, , Political Concepts, pp. 38, 156, 180.Google Scholar No, according to Connolly, , The Terms of Political Discourse, pp. 94–5.Google Scholar Yes and No according to Lukes, Steven, Power - A Radical Review (London: Macmillan, 1974), pp. 32–3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁵ Dahl, , Modern Political Analysis, p. 83.Google Scholar

⁶ Crick, B., In Defence of Politics (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. 1962).Google Scholar This does of course go against the account of politics given by members of the ‘other’ Chicago school (such as G. Catlin, for whom politics is the science of power and all politics is by its nature power politics, see Systematic Politics (Toronto: Allen and Unwin, 1962)).Google Scholar

⁷ The strengthening or weakening of B's attachment to an existing position is included in this definition. Belief and behaviour do not have to coincide. More on this on p. 397.

⁸ Russell, B., Power (London: Unwin, 1975, first published in 1938), p. 25.Google Scholar

⁹ A person's beliefs or behaviour may be the object of another's persuasive endeavour. It is assumed that a way of life or a character or personality represent some combination of belief and behaviour.

¹⁰ Indeed, A. Greenwald found empirically that persuasion quite often produces a change in belief without a corresponding change in behaviour, in ‘Effects of Prior Commitment on Behaviour Change After Persuasive Communication’, Public Opinion Quarterly, XXIX (1965–1966), 595–601.Google Scholar

¹¹ We can see no point to Talcott Parsons's restriction of persuasion to instances where A expressed reasons why it would be a good thing for B to adopt his advice, and exclusion from persuasion of all instances where A suggests reasons why it would be a bad thing for B to not adopt A's advice. See Parsons, T., ‘On the Concept of Political Power’, American Philosophical Society Proceedings, CVII (1963), 232–62Google Scholar and ‘On the Concept of Influence’, Public Opinion Quarterly, XXVII (1963), 37–62.Google Scholar

¹² This contrast between authority and both coercion and persuasion was made by Arendt, H. in On Violence (London: Penguin, 1970, first published in 1969), p. 45.Google Scholar

¹³ The limited use-value of lexical definitions can be illustrated here. For the Oxford English Dictionary persuasion includes ‘the presenting of inducements or winning arguments’. An ‘inducement’ is ‘any ground or reason which leads or inclines one to a belief or course of action’; ‘a moving cause’; ‘an incentive’; ‘something that leads to a result’.

¹⁴ This is to take issue with Mill's, John Stuart account, in On Liberty (1859)Google Scholar, of how one person might properly behave towards another with respect to that other's so-called self-regarding sphere of behaviour. Mill argues that the withdrawal of company would be a ‘natural’ consequence of the other's alleged self-regarding faults. For Mill it would thus be an acceptable case of an attempt to persuade. See On Liberty (London: Dent, 1962) especially pp. 132–40.Google Scholar Mill's account is considered further in Burnell, P., ‘On Opinion in “On Liberty”’, Mill News Letter, XVIII (1983), 2–11Google Scholar, especially p. 9. Miller, G., who allows persuasion to be ‘indirectly coercive’Google Scholar, by allusions to threats as well as promises goes even further than Mill. Roloff, M. and Miller, G., eds, Persuasion: New Directions in Theory and Research (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1980), Chap. 1.Google Scholar

¹⁵ For philosophical essays on indoctrination see Snook, I., ed., Concepts of Indoctrination (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972).Google Scholar

¹⁶ Ware, A., ‘The Concept of Manipulation: Its Relation to Democracy and Power’, British Journal of Political Science, XI (1981), 163–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁷ Benn also invokes ‘good faith’ to separate manipulation from persuasion. Such a notion makes analysts uncomfortable, because it is difficult to know how to identify good faith, and therefore to accurately describe the observed interaction. But if we wish to mark the difference that actors themselves have in mind, this seems to be the best one. B's reaction to finding out about A's mistake or intention is crucial. See Benn, , ‘Freedom and Persuasion’, p. 266n.Google ScholarGoodin, Robert E., Manipulatory Politics (New Haven, Conn, and London: Yale University Press, 1980)Google Scholar treats manipulation as ‘deceptive influence’, which implies that persuasion involves good faith.

¹⁸ Reeve, A., ‘Power Without Responsibility’, Political Studies, XXX (1982), pp. 77–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

¹⁹ Ware, , ‘The Concept of Manipulation’, p. 173.Google Scholar