The power has become the central element of politics in modern and contemporary era. Any reflection on institutions, laws, justice, law, government or man of state, takes us to Him. But what is power? How is it constituted? How is it institutionalized in legal-political structures and in social codes that perpetuate the domain and reproduce obedience? How is it legitimized? Can we trace your story? Figures of power is proposed to answer these questions by means of a double question: 1) What figures have you defined successively in modern and contemporary era? 2) How to think about the relationship between power structures and forms of government, particularly in contemporary democracies? The object of the given answers is to determine to what extent we have moved today from the conceptual categories on which modern political thinking was built.