Breaking down the question
The statement sets up a debate between two conceptions of power. A zero-sum view treats power as a fixed quantity: what one party gains another must lose, so power is inherently a relation of domination over others. A variable-sum or positive-sum view treats power as something a society can generate collectively for shared ends, so that its total can grow. The command word discuss asks you to weigh the claim, using Weber and Parsons as the two anchoring positions.
The examiner has chosen the pairing deliberately. Weber is usually read as the classic exponent of the constant-sum, conflictual view — power as the chance to impose one's will despite resistance. Parsons is the leading theorist of the variable-sum view — power as a generalised social resource. A strong answer explains both, tests the statement against each, and reaches a balanced verdict.
Threads to develop:
- The meaning of zero-sum and variable-sum conceptions of power.
- Weber's definition and why it leans towards a constant-sum, conflict reading.
- Parsons's redefinition of power as a collective, variable-sum capacity, and the debate between them.
How to approach it
Open by distinguishing the two conceptions clearly, since the whole answer turns on them. Then set out Weber's account of power as the probability of realising one's will against resistance, and his theory of legitimate domination, showing why this is generally taken to imply a zero-sum, conflictual relationship — though noting the ambiguity that authority introduces.
Turn next to Parsons, who explicitly rejected the zero-sum assumption and treated power as a generalised medium circulating in the social system, backed by legitimacy and directed to collective goals. Draw on the note on power, elite and political institutions and the profile of Max Weber. Close by weighing the statement, granting Parsons's insight while retaining Weber's realism about conflict.
Model answer
The proposition that power is not a zero-sum game challenges a long-standing common-sense view. In the zero-sum or constant-sum conception, power is a fixed stock over which individuals and groups compete: it is exercised over others, so one actor's gain is necessarily another's loss, and power is fundamentally a relation of domination and conflict. The variable-sum or positive-sum conception, by contrast, holds that power can be generated collectively and expanded, so that a whole society may become more powerful without any group losing. Weber and Parsons represent, broadly, these two positions.
Max Weber offered the classic modern definition: power is the probability that an actor within a social relationship will be able to carry out his own will despite resistance, whatever the basis of that probability. The very phrasing — will against resistance — frames power as a contest between actors with opposing interests. On this reading power is closely tied to domination and coercion, and it is easy to see it as zero-sum: the more one party can impose its will, the less another can resist. Weber's sociology of class, status and party likewise depicts groups struggling over scarce chances in the market and the polity, reinforcing the conflictual, distributive picture.
Yet Weber's account is not so simple. His central concept is not brute power but authority — legitimate domination, in which obedience is given because the command is believed rightful. His three types of legitimate authority — traditional, charismatic and rational-legal — describe stable relationships resting on belief and consent rather than perpetual coercion. Authority so understood can be productive: rational-legal authority organised through bureaucracy enables the modern state to accomplish collective tasks. So while Weber's definition leans towards a constant-sum, conflict reading, his treatment of legitimacy opens the door to a more enabling view of power.
Talcott Parsons took that door and walked through it, mounting the most explicit rejection of the zero-sum assumption. Criticising the conflict tradition, he argued that power should be understood not as one group's capacity to dominate another but as a generalised capacity of a social system to achieve its collective goals. Parsons drew an analogy with money: just as money is a medium that circulates in the economy and can be expanded through credit, so power is a medium that circulates in the political system, generated by the collective and backed by the legitimacy of authority and by shared values. When members of a society agree on common goals — national development, security, welfare — and authorise leaders to pursue them, power is created, not merely transferred. A society that mobilises consent and cooperation becomes more powerful as a whole; the total quantity of power grows. Power, in this variable-sum sense, is a collective resource rather than a fixed prize.
Set against each other, the two positions illuminate different faces of power. Parsons's account captures a genuine truth that the zero-sum view misses: the capacity of an organised, legitimate community to accomplish things none of its members could achieve alone, so that cooperation genuinely enlarges collective power. It rightly foregrounds consensus, legitimacy and collective goals. Yet critics — notably from the conflict tradition — object that Parsons dissolves the hard reality of domination and exploitation. By defining power in terms of shared goals, he neglects the awkward questions of whose goals prevail, who is excluded, and how power is used over subordinate groups. Weber's realism reminds us that even legitimate authority rests on the possibility of coercion and serves particular interests, and that much political life is indeed a struggle over finite advantage.
The balanced verdict is that the statement is partly true. Power is not only a zero-sum game: as Parsons shows, and as Weber's account of legitimate authority concedes, it can be a variable-sum collective capacity generated through consent and directed to common ends. But it is not purely variable-sum either. In any actual society the two dimensions coexist — power as collective enablement and power as domination over rivals. A complete sociology of power must hold both together, treating the zero-sum and variable-sum conceptions as complementary aspects rather than exclusive alternatives.
Examiner's perspective
The question rewards candidates who begin from a clean statement of the zero-sum versus variable-sum distinction and then organise Weber and Parsons around it. Scripts that recite each thinker's general theory of power without connecting it to the specific proposition drift off the point.
Examiners look for two things in particular: an accurate reading of Weber that notes both the conflictual definition and the enabling role of legitimate authority, and a precise account of Parsons's variable-sum, money-analogy view of power as a collective capacity for goal-attainment. The best answers do not simply endorse the statement; they weigh Parsons's insight against the conflict-theory critique that he obscures domination, and conclude that power has both faces. Correct use of terms — legitimacy, collective goals, generalised medium, domination — and a reasoned rather than one-sided verdict secure the top band.