Force and consent operate dialectically, not in mechanical sequence.

Evidence

Some have reduced the theory of the “dual perspective” to something trivial and banal, to nothing but two forms of “immediacy” which succeed each other mechanically in time, with greater or less “proximity”. In actual fact, it often happens that the more the first ” perspective” is “immediate” and elementary, the more the second has to be “distant” (not in time, but as a dialectical relation), complex and ambitious. In other words, it may happen as in human life, that the more an individual is compelled to defend his own immediate physical existence, the more will he uphold and identify with the highest values of civilisation and of humanity, in all their complexity. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 721

Categorization

• XREF: The force/consent, violence/civilisation, authority/hegemony pairings feed directly into how Islamophobia analysis will read coercive state power against cultural hegemony as two faces of one dialectic rather than alternatives. — connects to: Political allegiance rests on continuous acknowledgement, not rational consent. — Chantal Mouffe, The Democratic Paradox, 432
• DEFINE: Clarifies the ‘dual perspective’ in Machiavellian politics as a dialectical coupling rather than a mechanical alternation of force and consent.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 721