Anyone approaching the phenomenon of power sets out by searching for definitions or rather formulae so as to somehow make the phenomenon tangible and graspable. In more recent publications, and by the way not only those of the German speaking community, it is Max Weber who is most frequently quoted as defining power as the chance for imposing one's own will even against opposition. At the same time, he described the term ‘power’ as sociologically amorphous, i.e. without form or structure. This characterisation left many unsatisfied, and so people have been looking for statements that could provide the term with a certain ‘form’ after all.