Few concepts have played more central roles in the study of political science than ‘power' and ‘causation'. But students of the subject have fallen into serious ambiguities in recent decades. Some scholars claim that the concepts of power and causation the better.

In view of the present state of affairs in the research area, this article seeks to accomplish three tasks in order to provide a firmer foundation for future research. First, to review Robert Dahl's papers on power and causality in order to explicitly identify and elaborate the causation implication of power definition. Second, to examine systematically the connection between causal conditionals and causality. Third, to discuss the relationship between path coefficients in path analysis and 'amount of power' in Dahl's power definition.