Institutions encode the prevailing power distribution while lowering its costs.

Evidence

Prudent managers of power resources therefore are likely to attempt to decrease these costs of power through reliance on indirect ways of affecting distributive processes. Central in this context is the emergence of formal and informal societal institutions. This strategy thus involves a move - often a conflictual one - from distributive action to distributive institutions, which routinize distributive processes. These institutions can be expected to differentiate distributive outcomes in ways which reflect the prevailing distribution of power while decreasing both liquidity and application costs of power. — Walter Korpi, The Iceberg of Power below the Surface, 9

Categorization

• XREF: Institutions as frozen power maps connect directly to Gilens & Page’s finding that organized elite interests carry influence. — connects to: Power holders routinize outcomes into institutions to cut mobilization and application costs — Walter Korpi, The Iceberg of Power below the Surface:…, 9
• SEED: Angle: how routine procedures reproduce imbalance after the conflict that created them has passed.