Big-Picture Power  A few years ago, when I was involved in a
project to build broad coalitions of progressive organizations
at the state level, there was a fad among these groups to do a
''power analysis'' of the political conditions in their states
and create a plan to ''build power'' for their causes and
constituencies.  At the time I wondered, wasn't ''building
power'' what they were doing? But the answer was that a lot of
progressive organizations, especially those structured as
nonprofits, had been kind of uncomfortable with the idea of
power. They didn't think in those terms. Their theory was that
putting persuasive information in front of policy-makers or
getting courts to issue injunctions to stop bad things would be
sufficient. Their counterparts in electoral politics thought
winning elections was the end of the fight.  To the extent they
had a theory of power, it was limited to the idea that when
there was a public decision to be made -- an election, a ballot
initiative, a piece of legislation -- so