Bertrand de Jouvenel is considered only an liberal philosopher, known for works such as “Du Pouvoir” (1945) and “De la Souveraineté” (1955).
I want to demonstrate that this thinker is influenced by the political scientist Harold Lasswell.
In “Politics: Who Gets What, When, How” (1936) and “Power and Society” (1950, with A. Kaplan) he writes that political power is a condition in which an actor obtains a desired behavior from another subject by the use of constraints or remuneration.
In “The Pure Theory of Politics” (1963), Jouvenel developed the “Law of Conservative Exclusion”:
power is the result of a dialectic between individuals and groups. When different subjects “instigate” other members of a group to undertake a political action between several solicitations, one will be accepted, and the other excluded. The incitement accepted will be transformed into a command and then threaten with punishment those who do not obey.
