Chapter Eight: Limits to Power

Study

Chapter Summary

An actor's capabilities may not always be a good indicator of the actor's ability to obtain its most preferred outcome in a given situation. Actors may have different levels of motivation, so that they may choose not to commit the full extent of their capabilities to an issue. Actors might also face a situation with characteristics of a coordination or distribution problem. When faced with multiple different outcomes so that no one move is always a best response, actors can choose to implement a mixed strategy to make their opponents indifferent between the outcomes.

Study Questions

• When is (military) power not a useful tool to solve a problem? What other resources do states have to resolve these problems?
  
  
  
• When (under what circumstances) might an international organization be more likely to reflect the power distribution of its members? When might an international organization be more likely to have some type of power to counter its members?
  
  
  
• Does motivation matter only in situations in which states use military power? Can motivation matter for other types of power?
  
  
  
• Motivation, like power, is an “unobservable,” an intangible factor affecting behavior. How might a political scientist try to measure motivation, if he or she wanted to rank states by level of motivation?
  
  
  
• Is power more “useful” or “beneficial” when it is used or exerted or when it is a potential or a threat?