Power in influencing individuals comes in all sorts of forms, broadly from direct physical power to motivating individuals by giving incentives and punishment until naked power.
The writer of this article distinguishes and describes each power based on politics. The writer broadly starts with explaining the most basic form of power that most people are familiar with, direct physical power, using animals as an example. However, throughout the article, we can see that actually all these powers are related to each other. For instance, to borrow the examples from the article, a pig tied to a rope and pulled into the ship can be a subject that has experienced physical power over its body and a donkey that was lured into the ship with a carrot can be a subject that has experienced power of motivation. These two animal's action can be seen, as a whole, the consequences of education, even though it was by force or motivation. Now the focus moves on to who and what uses this power for what purposes. The power of Law explains this to us. Power of the Law is the coercive power of the State. It is a privilege of a state to enforce law to prevent its citizen's action by setting rules with some limitations. However, the power of this Law can be only exercised with the power of the support by public sentiment. Law, therefore is and effective force but the degree of feeling in favor of the law is one of the most important characteristics of a community, sometimes even more important than the powers of the police. This leads us to the distinction between traditional power and newly acquired power. Traditional power has many positive aspects such as it guarantees its stability and does not have to prove its reasons why it has continued. However it does have some opposite aspects such as, since it is so secure, it is not on the look-out for traitors. Power not based on tradition, the writer calls it naked power. The writer refers naked power to military which may take the form either of internal tyranny or of foreign conquest. However, military power is not all that is needed in order to gain power. For example, a revolutionary authority trying to gain power once again need a support of the majority and the sufficient popular support can be gained by their power of words. Hitler for example is known to be a very good speaker which made the citizens support him. Intellectual can also be one factor of power. However, all these power of words and knowledge is just a means of getting the support of the majority which leaves us to the conclusion that eventually, the assent and satisfaction of the majority has the most power in politics and of course daily life.
Assessment
I think above all powers, powers of the support of the majority is the most powerful power of all. Of course, at first, if a dictator and apply force to his citizens it may work, but not for long. Eventually the citizens will feel unsatisfied and rise up. Moreover, the reason why the North Korea, for example, is brain-washing their citizens is to get the support of their citizens. It shows that even North Korea knows that physical force is not everything in gaining power. Taking Barack Obama, the president of United States, as an example, we can see he was very successful in his speeches which played a big role in gaining the support of the citizens. By looking at all these examples, I think that the if there is no support of your citizens, you will fall down someday.