Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Biographical Context and Intellectual Formation
- Theoretical Framework: Multiple Logics of Social Power
- The IEMP Model and Historical Dynamism
- The Sources of Social Power Series
- Methodological Innovations: Comparative Historical Sociology
- Mann, Globalisation, and the Twenty‑First Century
- Critiques and Extensions
- Teaching Mann: Pedagogical Payoffs
- Contemporary Relevance: Climate Crisis and Networked Futures
- Conclusion
Introduction
Few contemporary sociologists have mapped the architecture of power with the persistence and panoramic reach of Michael Mann. Since the late 1970s Mann has argued that power is not a single substance but a dynamic field composed of intersecting networks. In four landmark volumes titled The Sources of Social Power he roams across five millennia, showing that empire building, market exchange, ideological persuasion, and statecraft are analytically distinct yet historically entangled processes. For undergraduate readers trying to make sense of world history, Mann’s work offers both a vocabulary and a set of conceptual lenses: it teaches them to ask not simply who holds power but how power circulates through infrastructures, beliefs, organisations, and territories.
Mann writes against the grain of monocausal explanation. Where classical Marxism places economic class at the centre of historical change and Weberian sociology elevates legitimate domination, Mann contends that transformative moments occur when multiple sources of power realign. His refusal to elevate one master variable may seem demanding, yet it liberates students from false dichotomies—structure versus agency, material versus symbolic, state versus market. It invites a multidimensional imagination able to track power as it condenses, disperses, and recombines across arenas that range from the household to the global financial system.
This article surveys Mann’s major contributions, clarifies the logic of his IEMP model, reviews the empirical sweep of The Sources of Social Power, and highlights ongoing debates and extensions. By the end, readers will be equipped to deploy Mann’s schema in their own coursework—whether they are analysing medieval crusades, the rise of Silicon Valley, or the politics of climate change.
Biographical Context and Intellectual Formation
Born in Manchester in 1942, Michael Mann came of age while British social science was reinventing itself. Undergraduate study in history at Oxford exposed him to Annales‑style longue‑durée thinking, while doctoral work immersed him in post‑war debates between Marxism and Weberian sociology. Early teaching at the London School of Economics sharpened his comparative instincts, bringing him into contact with scholars experimenting with world‑systems analysis and dependency theory.
Relocating to the University of California, Los Angeles in the late 1980s placed Mann inside a vibrant transatlantic network of comparative‑historical sociologists. American discussions of state autonomy, social movements, and racial formation pushed him to refine his conceptual vocabulary. The result was a perspective that marries European historical erudition to the methodological pluralism of U.S. sociology, producing a body of work that is at once global in scope and empirically dense.
Theoretical Framework: Multiple Logics of Social Power
At the heart of Mann’s oeuvre lies the proposition that societies are woven together by four partially autonomous yet intersecting power sources. These form the IEMP model:
- Ideological power – the capacity to define reality, craft meaning, and command moral authority through institutions such as religions, schools, and mass media.
- Economic power – the capacity to extract, allocate, and distribute resources, thereby shaping dependencies through markets, property relations, and fiscal systems.
- Military power – the capacity for organised coercion, ranging from nomadic cavalry to modern nuclear arsenals, used to conquer territory or enforce order.
- Political power – the capacity to rule by regulating, administrating, and coordinating collective life; in modern states this includes infrastructural power—the routine ability to penetrate civil society via law, taxation, and surveillance.
These sources are networked rather than ranked. At different historical moments one may thicken while another recedes; more importantly, the interactions among them generate path‑breaking transformations. By tracking how ideological movements leverage economic discontent, or how military revolutions reshape political constitutions, Mann demonstrates the analytical payoff of studying power relationally.
Ideological Power: Infrastructures of Meaning
Mann extends the notion of ideology beyond values to the institutional carriers that stabilise meaning over time. Medieval Catholicism fused ritual expertise with bureaucratic reach, disciplining elites and peasants long before nation‑states monopolised legitimacy. In the modern era, secular mass media and educational systems continue this work, mobilising publics around narratives of nationalism, progress, and security.
Economic Power: Circuits and Constraints
Rather than foregrounding production alone, Mann emphasises circuits of exchange. Trade routes, banking networks, and taxation regimes create dependencies that can discipline labour and reward capital irrespective of formal legal ownership. This perspective clarifies why city‑states such as Venice, though militarily modest, could dominate Mediterranean politics through control of credit and shipping.
Military Power: Organised Violence as Social Technology
For Mann, armed force is not a residue of “primitive” eras but a decisive social technology. Innovations in cavalry, gunpowder, logistics, and cyber warfare periodically upset ideological and economic equilibriums. The Mongol Empire’s mobile archery, for example, allowed it to extract tribute across Eurasia despite limited ideological coherence, illustrating the non‑hierarchical relation among power sources.
Political Power: States, Infrastructures, and Territoriality
Borrowing from Mann, social scientists distinguish despotic power (decision‑making autonomy) from infrastructural power (the everyday capacity to implement decisions). The modern territorial state is a historically specific amalgam: its censuses, railways, and welfare agencies weave a fine‑grained mesh through which authority is exercised, resisted, and reproduced.
The IEMP Model and Historical Dynamism
Historical change, Mann argues, erupts when the density and reach of one power source outpace the others, triggering a new configuration. The Protestant Reformation illustrates an ideological shock that fractured political authority and legitimated novel economic practices in Northern Europe. Merchant capital, invigorated by Atlantic trade, bankrolled administrations capable of fielding larger militaries, creating the sovereign state system recognisable today.
In the long nineteenth century, industrial capitalism re‑wired economic power. The factory system deepened class stratification, but its expansion also required political infrastructures—railways, legal codes, public schooling—that gave states unprecedented everyday presence in citizens’ lives. Ideological discourses of nationalism and progress provided cohesion, while mass conscript armies projected force abroad, culminating in imperial competition.
The twentieth century witnessed even more volatile alignments. Fascism thrived where militarised organisations fused with totalising ideologies, while liberal democracies hardened legitimacy through welfare provisions financed by mass production. After 1945 the United States exemplified geo‑economic militarism, coupling a global security architecture to dollar supremacy and a missionary liberal creed. Each episode underscores Mann’s warning: no single source remains hegemonic for long; power is always on the move.
The Sources of Social Power Series
Mann’s magnum opus chronicles these shifts across four densely researched volumes.
Volume I (1986): From the Dawn of History to 1760
Traversing Mesopotamia, classical Athens, imperial China, and beyond, Mann shows how irrigation systems, priestly cosmologies, and cavalry warfare interacted to build—and topple—early empires. He revises hydraulic‑despotism theories by demonstrating that local temple networks, not royal fiat, kept canals functioning in ancient Sumer.
Volume II (1993): Classes and Nation‑States, 1760–1914
Here Mann analyses the industrial age, contrasting Britain’s parliamentary‑capitalist coalition with Germany’s alliance between a truncated bourgeoisie and a militarised aristocracy. The result is a nuanced account of why some societies liberalised while others pursued authoritarian modernisation.
Volume III (2012): Global Empires and Revolution, 1914–1945
Plunging into the century’s nadir, Mann explores how ideological extremism, economic collapse, and technological warfare produced genocides and total war. He interprets Nazism as a pathological synergy of military and ideological power unchecked by robust political institutions.
Volume IV (2013): Globalisation and Crisis, 1945–2011
The final instalment interrogates the Cold War, neoliberal financialisation, and climate politics. Mann rejects narratives of state decline, arguing instead that states mutate: they outsource functions upward to global regimes and downward to markets, even as infrastructural power remains indispensable for collective coordination.
