Power as Relative Position: A Foundational Theory of Systemic Asymmetry

Power is a pervasive feature of life: from dominance hierarchies in primates to coordination in human organizations and competition in international geopolitics, systems consistently exhibit asymmetries of influence and control. At the same time, perfect equality is vanishingly rare, yet despite this ubiquity, existing accounts of power remain fragmented, often conflating it with cultural norms, institutional rules, or personal traits. To address this gap, we provide a systemic account of biological and psychological evidence, highlighting how positional asymmetries—rather than individual differences or conventions—consistently shape access to resources, coordination, and influence. Building on this foundation, we advance a unified system-theoretic account of power, defining it as relative position in a system. From this definition we derive five lemmas that explain how power reinforces itself, converges, produces exponential distributions, resists local disruptions, and stabilizes against challenge. This framework clarifies when power is truly at play and establishes a foundation for rigorous system-level analysis of asymmetry.