Social Power and Negative Freedom

When agent A exercises power over agent B, what is the effect on B’s freedom? Is B less free as a result? Does A remove any specific freedoms of B? Most of us feel intuitively that there are many kinds of social power, and that while some of these may affect B’s freedom to a great extent, others may affect it less, and others still may leave B’s freedom completely intact. It would seem to be important for philosophers and social scientists to provide an explicit and coherent explication of this intuitive relation between the social power of A and the unfreedom of B. Nevertheless, surprisingly little attention has so far been devoted to its analysis. One reason for the relative lack of interest in the freedom-power relation may lie in the different theoretical outlooks dominant within the disciplinary areas within which these two concepts tend to be examined and applied. The concept of freedom has been analyzed above all by political philosophers interested in its role within normative theories and thus in its relation to concepts like equality, justice, toleration, rights and the rule of law. Power, on the other hand, is a fundamental concept in the social sciences, where little attention has been devoted to the concept of freedom. Political scientists often express the view, shared by a number