I'm not sure if there are specific thinkers to tie it to actually. It may have just been something my first poli sci prof said that has stuck with me.

For Weber, violence and power are sort of different. His three types of power look at how coercion is legitimized in institutions. So for him it's more "How is violence legitimized?"

He does separate those legitimizing forces into three separate categories and they're basically the same as the ones I used, but instead of coercion as a form of power he's focused on how law, charisma, and authority legitimize the use of violence.

For Arendt power is actually outside of violence. For her power is collective action, and violence can actually destroy that (and thus destroy some instantiations of power). For her, the more coercion you need, the less power you actually have (but based on our lense we could say she's just overemphasizing charismatic power).

Both are super relevant, but I think all are sort of critiquing power and violence whereas here, we're trying to formalize how power is exercised in a meaningful way that may expand beyond coercion. Both thinkers are great and both have influenced that massively (and rightfully so).

But I think here we're trying to broaden the lenses. Like yes coercion is always at the core of political power, but how come it seems like cult leaders can exploit people without putting a gun to their head? How come authoritative positions, are so ripe for exploitation, even if not explicitly backed by coercion?

It's hard to discuss without getting into very triggering examples though.

We may find that coercion is operative in all these cases, but I'm not so sure.

I'm not saying anyone is wrong. I actually think all of these positions matter. Mao saying politics is sourced out of the barrel of a gun, Arendt pointing to power really only being about collective action, Weber focused largely on legitimacy, all of it, super productive for uncovering how we relate to power.

That's why I really like the lense my prof provided. It allows us to track all of this at once. None of them really have to be wrong, you can just see how they're emphasizing the relations between coercion, charisma, and authority differently.