Domination persists amid law as lower-intensity arbitrary household and workplace power

Evidence

Such an absolute power of arbitrary interference may have been available to slave-holders over their slaves in certain dispensations— certainly not in all—and it may have been accessible in some regimes to despotic potentates over their subjects. But it is not likely to be realized in many contexts. Such power is often approximated, however, at lower levels of intensity, even in rule-governed societies. The husband who can beat his wife for disobeying his instructions and be subject, at most, to the mild censure of his neighbours; the employer who can fire his employees as whim inclines him and hardly suffer embarrassment for doing so; the teacher who can chastise her pupils on the slightest excuse or pretence at excuse; the prison warder who can make life hell for inmates, and not worry much about covering her tracks: all such figures enjoy high degrees of arbitrary power over those subject to them. They may not be as common in some societies today as they once were. But they are not as unfamiliar as the slave-holder or potentate, and even where they do not survive, they have often left somewhat less powerful, but still recognizable, progeny in their place. — Philip Pettit, Republicanism, 301

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Mystified arbitrary power becomes immune to legal restraint — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 628; Institutional power persists even in egalitarian settings that believe they disavowed it; War drives the regular mechanisms of power beneath the law (+5 more)

Broader Connections

• Mystified arbitrary power becomes immune to legal restraint #expands (0.82) — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 628
• Political power grows as domination merges into everyday leisure and consumption #expands (0.82) — Herbert Marcuse, One-Dimensional Man, 418
• Normalized legal power shapes everyday life far more than brutality does #complicates (0.80) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 612
• Institutional power persists even in egalitarian settings that believe they disavowed it #complicates (0.75)
• Rule of law makes power context-free and universally mobilizable #qualifies (0.75) — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 673
• Modern state power diffuses control through continuous measured mechanisms rather than personal command #complicates (0.75)
• War drives the regular mechanisms of power beneath the law #complicates (0.72)