Political Theory has undergone a remarkable development in recent years. From a state in which it was once declared dead, it has come to occupy a central place in the study of Politics. Both political ideas and the wide-ranging arguments to which they give rise are now treated in a rigorous, analytical fashion, and political theorists have contributed to disciplines as diverse as economics, sociology and law. These developments have made the subject more challenging and exciting, but they have also added to the difficulties of students and others coming to the subject for the first time. Much of the burgeoning literature in specialist books and journals is readily intelligible only to those who are already well-versed in the subject.

This article examines the concept of interests in politics which has been the subject of major debate in recent years. It makes two proposals: one concerns the elucidation of the concept of interests; the other concerns the relative status of an agent's perception of his or her own interests and an observer's specification of them. For brevity, statements of the form ‘x is in A's interest’ are referred to as interest-statements.

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This article discusses the notion of ‘persuasion’ applied to a political method. It proceeds by comparing and contrasting ‘persuasion’ with concepts within the ‘power’ family. There are two sorts of justification for such an exploration of ‘persuasion’, the first positive and the second negative.

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