Content area
Full Text
For decades, scholars from various disciplines have used the synonymous terms "power vacuums" and "political-vacuums" in order to describe the gaps in control that exist when shifts in authority occur involving conflicting/competing socio-brute entities (i.e. human individuals, clans, tribes, nations) operating on a macro-political and/or micro-political level. However, there is no systematic explanation, organization and categorization of the forces designed to fill power vacuums in the politico-scientific literature. In order to fill this lacuna, the following research essay shall establish a taxonomical outline of kenosymblirosis, a process where a power vacuum(s) is partially or entirely satiated by political "gap-fillers" called gemismatic forces or symblirotic forces. The purpose of this work is to equip Political Science professors and scholars with the lexico-conceptual tools necessary for teaching and explaining to students of the "master art" how power vacuums are actually filled.
Keywords: kenosymblirosis, Political-vacuum, Power-vacuum, Taxonomy.
(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)
Power and Power-Vacuums
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term "power-vacuum" first appeared in 1941 in The Journal of Politics regarding the minor states of Eastern Europe.1 Its synonymity with the term "political-vacuum" is attributed to the self-evident fact that politics embodies the forces and institutions, both governmental and non-governmental, that "use and abuse power".2 Technically, the essence of a power-vacuum is the absence of any source of authority and/or command structure(s) in a macro-political and/or micro-political space where conflicting and/or competing socio-brute entities operate (i.e. human individuals, clans, tribes, nations). Moreover, the delimitations of any power-vacuum can only be determined through the authoritative forces that operate towards filling a power-vacuum.
Although power-vacuums cannot be defined without understanding the nature of power, definitions of power, including types and sources of authority and influence, are too numerous to list and analyze in one conference paper.3 So for the sake of brevity, power shall be defined in accordance with the Greek concepts of δ?ναμη/ισχ?sfgr; ("strength", "force", "ability", "might") and [varepsilon]ν[varepsilon]ργοποι?ση ("activation of energy"). In other words, power shall refer to: 1) potential, both universal and metaphysically derived, that exists in the form of innate volition in humans such as rationality (i.e. the ability to think), emotions/instincts (i.e. the ability to feel and live) and ethicality/morality/spirituality (i.e. the ability to judge right from wrong, good from...