"Leviathan or Geryon? Power Abuse in Democratic Societies" [2007] ELECD 224; in Marciano, Alain; Josselin, Jean-Michel (eds), "Democracy, Freedom and Coercion" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007)

Book Title: Democracy, Freedom and Coercion

Editor(s): Marciano, Alain; Josselin, Jean-Michel

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781847201263

Section: Chapter 8

Section Title: Leviathan or Geryon? Power Abuse in Democratic Societies

Number of pages: 21

Extract:

8. Leviathan or Geryon? Power abuse in
democratic societies
Louis M. Imbeau


Leviathan: a sea monster, identified in different passages [of the Bible] with the
whale and the crocodile and with the Devil; [ . . . ] an autocratic monarch or
state.
Oxford Dictionary of English
Geryon: in Greek myth, a three-headed or three-bodied giant living in the far
West on an island, Erytheia [ . . . ]; there he pastured a herd of magnificent cattle
[ . . . ]. It was one of the labours of Heracles to steal the cattle and drive them
back to Greece.
The Concise Oxford Companion to Classical Literature



INTRODUCTION

In the wake of Hobbes' famous book, political philosophy has traditionally
considered a single manifestation of power concentration in society: the
autocratic monarch, or State, represented by the biblical monster Leviathan.
Classical students of power in political science have followed this tradition.
Dahl, for example, limited the extension of the term `power' to the coercive
influence exercised by the State (1963: 50­1). For Lasswell and Kaplan
(1950: 74) `it is the threat of sanctions [by the State] which differentiates
power from influence in general'. But more recently political sociology has
considered a social organization in which multiple forms of power concen-
tration coexist. Geryon, the mythological three-headed giant, is a more valid
representation of power structures in society than Leviathan, the dragon-
like monster of the Bible.
The point I want to make in this chapter is that if, relaxing the classical
assumption of a single form, we assume that power concentration ...