Countervailing, conditioned, and contingent--the power theory of John Kenneth Galbraith

Power has been a neglected topic in economics at least since the neoclassical paradigm has dominated the profession. John Kenneth Galbraith is probably the most prominent and successful among his fellow American institutional economists in this particular field of inquiry. Steven Lukes's useful framework to distinguish different theoretical approaches to explain power in the social sciences will be used to evaluate and emphasize Galbraith's particular theoretical contributions. The paper scrutinizes the elements--countervailing, corporate, persuasion, conditioned, and contingent--of Galbraith's power theory and shows how they all can be coherently combined to form an elaborate theoretical framework in the conclusion.