Highly despotic regimes cannot dominate too deeply and rely on indirect rule

Evidence

Researchers associated with the subaltern studies school have shown that even where political mobilization is highly restricted, a substantial reservoir of cultural resistance necessarily confronts racist regimes, peripheral or metropolitan, colonial or postcolonial. In their studies of colonial and postcolonial systems of rule ina variety of spatiotemporal contexts- India, Latin America, Southeast Asia, as well as the American South- they have demonstrated that where rule is highly despotic and racially exclusive, it cannot “go too deep.” It generally must rely on “{ndirect” strategies of domination: collaborators, colonial administrators, agents, informers, rights legislation, many black activists considered that their underlying ideals had not only gone unfulfilled, but had been betrayed. — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 163

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Expanding state authority paradoxically erodes its de facto control and efficiency — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 1726; Military format constrains which class can dominate a regime — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 81; Democracies prescribe few performances but tolerate many while high-capacity autocracies do the reverse — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 446