This book undertook to critically examine the concept of power in some important theories of the contemporary period. The objective of studying different concepts of power was not to try and iron out differences between them and work towards evolving an all-encompassing and universally acceptable definition of power. The thrust of the argument in the book is that this would be an impossible task. The reason is not that the phenomenon of power in society is so complex, and far-reaching, that no single definition of power would be able to do justice to it but that the very nature of political theory, and the existential problems which it addresses, would make it impossible to conceive of a politically neutral concept of power. The argument is, political theories and concepts themselves constitute a form of political articulation. They embody, explicitly or implicitly, a political perspective and may also constitute an intervention in the political discourse in a society. Hence we can only make sense of the diverse concepts of power which are embodied in different theories by analyzing them in the context of the theories and perspectives which generate them. This is not to argue that theories represent only a refined form of political polemics, or that they are only a cover for special interests. But it does mean that we cannot assume that theories represent objective and scientific statements about social reality which can be ‘proved’ to be universally true by supporting empirical evidence. This was the positivist view about scientific theory which has been challenged in this study.