Coercive force alone cannot sustain an extralegal order.

Evidence

Violence by itself, however, will not do. It is risky, costly, and generates instability and conflict: explaining the persistence of the mafia simply by its capacity for coercion would be nearly as-limited as explaining the persistence of capitalism on the same basis (see Przeworski 1985). — Diego Gambetta, Trust - Making and Breaking Cooperative…, 2220

Categorization

• XREF: Reinforces the reader’s core argument that observability-plus-constraint, not raw violence, undergirds the doctor’s wife’s authority in the novel — the brutal man’s coercion fails where her more social order partially succeeds.