“I believe that political power also exercises itself through the mediation of a certain number of institutions that seem to have nothing in common with political power, that have the appearance of being independent, but are not.”

Je crois que le pouvoir politique s’exerce encore, s’exerce en outre, de plus, par l’intermédiaire d’un certain nombre d’institutions qui ont l’air comme ça de n’avoir rien de commun avec le pouvoir politique, qui ont l’air d’en être indépendantes et qui ne le sont pas.
Debate with Noam Chomsky, École Supérieure de Technologie à Eindhoven, November 1971

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French philosopher 1926–1984

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Michel Foucault (1926–1984) French philosopher

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“Political power is a psychological relation between those who exercise it and those over whom it is exercised.”

Source: Politics Among Nations (1948), p. 27 (1954 edition).
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Political power is a psychological relation between those who exercise it and those over whom it is exercised. It gives the former control over certain actions of the latter through the influence which the former exert over the latter's minds. That influence may be exerted through orders, threats, persuasion, or a combination of any of these.

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