Political Theorists Who Make Power Easier to Understand

Power is the word politics runs on and the one people define least. This list collects the theorists whose ideas you can actually use: to see who sets the agenda in a council meeting, why a bureaucracy behaves as it does, how organisations drift towards oligarchy, why people obey and when they stop. It runs from ancient statecraft through classical sociology to modern political science, and each entry gives a concept to try out and a readable place to start. Several of these thinkers flatly contradict each other, which is the point; inclusion explains an idea, it does not endorse it.