Author:

Diego Silveira Coelho Ferreira

Abstract:

This text, essayistic, conducts, through a survey bibliographical study, a study of the use and definition of the concept of power in the literature political science, with an emphasis on research on the political action of the business community in Brazil. In the first part of the essay, aims to show of synthetic form as the concept was developed in the tradition of the theory of elites and two other schools of her political theory derived, the pluralistic and the neoelitista. The aim is to find the Foundation of political power for those traditions that dominate the study of entrepreneurship, i.e. find out who holds power and in which elements the power is based. In the second part enters more specifically, the discussion on the operationalization of the concept of power, especially its methodological advantages and disadvantages. It will be noted that there are two views large about of power in the literature of the area, namely, a vision of power as the attribute social structure and other see it as the result of strategic interactions. This last vision It’s frankly between the dominant research on entrepreneurship policy action investigated here, in particular pluralist bias. From this, we can see that the way the pluralistic study political power, primarily through the analysis of decision-making processes and with the assumption of individual rationality, developed a great debate with other theories, too elitist bias. Finally, it will be studied how some classic and contemporary research on the politics of the business community Brazil were developed. The aim is to frame these searches in the theoretical debate about the power held in the first two chapters and so understand the underlying concept power in those studies.