1. 3. Governing Society: We Know Who You Are

2. What is meant by “We know who you are”?
Reflection:
What is meant by “We know who you are”?

3. Controlling the Behavior of Others
One of the key differences between realists and idealists is the way they view human nature.
Idealists
Tend to believe that humans are basically good and care for others.
Consequently, governments and their leaders should be judged by these ideals.
Realists
Tend to believe that human beings care only about maximizing their own self-interests.
They expect no more from their leaders.

4. Controlling the Behavior of Others
The study of how governments need to control individuals is a realist approach.
When examining politics, this perspective asks:
Who benefits?
How do they benefit?
The answers to these two questions will usually provide a solid first step toward unraveling the political puzzle.
Often, the best line is: “Show me the power.”

5. Controlling the Behavior of Others
It can be argued that all leaders, regardless of the types of governments they head, try to maximize their self-interests.
What individual benefits might leaders pursue?
Power
Wealth
Prestige
The goals might be selfish or altruistic, but the concept of leadership benefits is a powerful explanatory tool.

6. Which is the most important to you? Explain why. POWER MONEY PRESTIGE
Reflection
Which is the most important to you? Explain why.
POWER
MONEY
PRESTIGE

7. Leadership Benefits
The greater the benefits to be gained from the leadership position,
the more willing people are to take risks to achieve the position
and the greater the lengths to which the leader will go to hold on to it.

8. The Panopticon
One of the fundamental mechanisms leaders use to control large populations is based on the concept of the panopticon.
The concept is based on an eighteenth-century prison design by Jeremy Bentham.
The prisoners could be watched at any time, but they never know when they are being watched.

9. Plan of the Panopticon
1843 (originally 1791)
The Works of Jeremy Bentham, vol. 4, 172–73.

10. The Panopticon
The only way for the prisoners to avoid punishment was to police their own actions and serve as their own guards.
Michel Foucault noted that the panoptic control of a few guards over hundreds of prisoners is similar to how governments control large populations.

11. The Panopticon Think of the way traffic laws are enforced.
The vast majority of times there are no police to be seen.
However, there always could be a police officer around any bend in the road.
Self-policing allows a few hundred police officers to control thousands of drivers.
Leaders use this same concept to prevent revolt and maintain control.

12. Collective Action, Revolution, and the Use of Force
Government is essentially an institutionalized mechanism for collective action.
Revolutions are collective actions with the aim of tearing down and replacing the current government.

13. Collective Action, Revolution, and the Use of Force
Those at the top of existing social hierarchies are driven by self-interest to oppose actively any collective effort to overthrow the system.
They employ a variety of techniques to prevent revolutionary groups from forming.

14. Atomization
When people are isolated they are kept from forming a group that could threaten a leader’s hold on power.
At the most extreme, a leader would want to prevent anyone from forming any kind of personal bond with another.
To accomplish this, leaders use two important mechanisms:
Peer policing
Preference falsification

15. Atomization: Peer Policing
Peer policing is having people police each other.
Leaders need to encourage citizens to engage in peer policing against potential revolutionaries.
Leaders might make it a crime to not report someone else’s efforts to form a revolutionary group.
This works particularly well if people believe that government agents will test individuals’ willingness to turn in others.

16. Atomization: Peer Policing
Governments and their leaders can handle individual isolated revolutionary actions, but mass action may overwhelm a government’s policing and enforcement mechanisms.
Peer policing happens in democracies as well as in totalitarian states.
Can you think of examples of peer policing?

17. Atomization: Preference Falsification
Preference falsification is hiding the way you truly feel while publicly expressing what those in power want to hear from you.
As long as people’s true feelings are hidden, how can potential revolutionaries even know if there are others who share their view?

18. Limits on Forceful Control
The level of force leaders must use to maintain control is related to the level of dissatisfaction.
When dissatisfaction is low, less force is necessary.
When dissatisfaction with unresolved problems becomes high enough, desperation may overcome fear, and force may no longer be enough.
When pushed too far, people will stand up to a bully.

19. Legitimacy and Government Control
Instead of relying on force, threats, and punishments, leaders can maintain control by pursuing legitimacy.
Legitimacy is the voluntary acceptance of government.
Pursuing a path of legitimacy can be an expensive long-term proposition.
It is generally far cheaper in the short term to use force.

20. Legitimacy and Government Control
Governments can achieve or lose legitimacy in many ways:
By staying in power a long time
By getting the blessing of a legitimate past leader
By convincing people that God sent the leaders to rule
By winning popular elections
Electoral democracies institutionalize revolt by giving citizens the power to keep or replace the government.

21. Legitimacy and Conflict within Groups
After World War I, researchers believed that conflict was something horrible and that conflict should be eradicated.
Georg Simmel and later Lewis Coser pointed out that the complete elimination of conflicts could be equally bad, because conflict serves constructive functions.

22. Legitimacy and Conflict within Groups
When a group is engaged in a conflict with another group, self-identification with the group increases and support for the leadership increases.
Intragroup conflict (conflict within the group) can serve as a safety valve, reducing tensions caused by frustration.

23. Crosscutting Cleavages
If there are a variety of conflicts, divisions over them do not always coincide.
People who disagree on one issue may agree on others.
This prevents society from dividing sharply over a single issue.
People will be less hostile toward those they disagree with on one issue if they agree on other issues.

24. Conflict as a Source of Legitimacy
Such conflict facilitates the resolution of the underlying cause of disagreement; resolving small issues can keep them from growing into large ones.
Such conflict also provides a foundation for developing compromises.

25. Conflict as a Source of Legitimacy
Resolving conflict within the group enhances the public’s willingness to accept the group and its structures voluntarily.
This enhances the legitimacy of the group and its leaders.