A power chain requires controlling another’s exercise of power, not just their actions.

Evidence

We want to talk of chains only when, and in so far as, A can arrange not only any of B’s actions but specifically his exercise of power, i.e. when A has at his disposal B’s power over C. Therefore, a chain does not exist if the king can command the general, if the latter can give his wife orders and she her servants, who, likewise because of their position, are able to tyrannize their neighbours. But a chain only exists if and in so far as the power-holder can intervene in the chain. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 655

Categorization

• DEFINE: Sharpens the action-chain definition with a negative example: mere nested personal authority does not constitute a chain. Only where A can command B’s power over C.
• XREF: Discriminates between the Darlington household chain (where Lord Darlington ultimately directs Stevens’s direction of others — a genuine chain) and mere diffuse household hierarchy. — connects to: Power counts as non-arbitrary when those subject to it control how it is exercised. — Frank Lovett, Republicanism, 33; Controlling water supplies enables control over the people who depend on them — Rebecca A. Martusewicz, Jeff Edmundson, and John Lupinacci, EcoJustice Education: Toward Diverse,…, 1527