17 © Te Author(s) 2018 M. Mosca (ed.), Power in Economic Tought, Palgrave Studies in the History of Economic Tought, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94039-7_2 2 The Dream to Tame the Leviathan: Authoritarian Power and the Market Bruna Ingrao 2.1 Ideas and Defnitions of Power Ideas of power form a large semantic feld in political philosophy and in economic thought. What is power is controversial, and the word ‘power’ admits alternative interpretations in social science. As the political phi- losopher R. Dahl suggests, its open semantics with the broad range of meanings it involves might be an insidious trap more than a sound scien- tifc conception (Dahl 1957: 201). In popular imagination, power is often identifed with the extraordinary capacity some elite circles are endowed with, whose members complot in secrecy with formidable underground resources to change the course of events. Tese may be banks, multinational corporations, fnancial speculators or the media, which are deemed to globally regulate the state of markets or world events. In social science, the range of meanings involves disparate notions such as the institutional state authority on subjects or citizens, the unsta- ble equilibrium of States on the international scenery, the hierarchical B. Ingrao (*) University of Rome La Sapienza, Rome, Italy