Genocidal policy often originates with mid-level officials and is ratified from above.
Evidence
The bureaucracy that destroyed the European Jews was remarkably decentralized, and its most farreaching actions were not always initiated at the top. Officials serving in middle or even lower positions of responsibility were producers of major ideas. Every once in a while, a particular set of recommendations would be approved by a superior and become a policy, authorization, or directive. Such, often enough, was the genesis of an “order.” — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide, 652
Categorization
- XREF: Inverts the Milgram top-down obedience chain: initiative bubbles up and ‘orders’ are post-hoc ratifications. — connects to: Genocidal escalations begin well before the genocidal regime takes power. — Leonard S. Newman and Ralph Erber (eds.), Understanding Genocide: The Social…, 131; Regime norms embed themselves in officials’ belief systems, creating internal momentum to perpetuate them.
- SEED: Angle: ‘The Order That Was Never Given’ — how decentralized initiative, not command, produced the Holocaust.