Resumo

HALUANI, MAKRAM. Orígenes históricos y componentes del poder nacional contemporáneo: factibilidad y utilidad de la medición empírica de las capacidades estatales. CDC [online]. 2006, vol.23, n.61, pp.127-148. ISSN 1012-2508.

This article seeks to identify the salient quantitative and qualitative aspects of the national power. As a relatively new theme in political science, national power is defined as a combination of components that will permit a given country to plan, execute and reap the benefits of its national capacities (of both public and private origin), applied as public policies in the domestic and external sphere of action, in pursuit of predeterminated national interests. Based on the analysis of its historical origins and essential, structural-permanent and/or relational-circumstantial components, it also seeks to determine the feasibility of measuring it, be it in quantitative, qualitative or even in novel «quantilative» terms. The conclusions will focus mainly on the uses and abuses of national power as a theoretical concept and as a practical dimension in national and international politics.

Palavras-chave : National power; Components; Quantitative; qualitative meassuring.