Mid-century scholars became fascinated with power after witnessing its world-historical uses

Evidence

Turn-of-the-century political scientists (e.g., Acton, 1907) had found power distasteful, but by midcentury students of politics had become comfortable, even fascinated, with power and its study (Leighton, 1945; Lasswell, 1948; Hunter, 1953; Dahl, 1961; Winter, 1973; McClelland, 1975), perhaps because of seeing governmental power exercised both to perpetrate genocide and to defeat the perpetrators in a war that incidentally caged the big bad wolf of economic depression. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 362