Large power asymmetries suppress visible conflict by lowering the weaker party’s aspirations

Evidence

The ‘frustration-relative deprivation’ view holds that conflicts burst out when the gap between expectations and actual achievements becomes intolerable, that is, when relative deprivation increases actors’ frustrations beyond certain critical levels. Assuming actors to be rational, the power resources approach indicates that, where differences in power resources between actors are large, the weaker party may find it to be in its best interests, at least in the short term, not to attempt to resist the claims of the stronger actor and is likely, in the long run, to modify its levels of aspiration (Korpi, 1974). In distributive processes involving differently empowered actors, power thus may have important consequences without being associated with manifest conflict. The behavioural approach largely overlooks those situations where differences in power between actors are large because it focuses explicitly on manifest conflict generated through decision making. It concentrates, instead, on cases where these differences are relatively small. — Walter Korpi, The Iceberg of Power below the Surface, 6

Categorization

• XREF: This is the reader’s central testable hypothesis — grievance thresholds should fall (not rise) where real power deficits are largest, because behavior adapts rather than manifests. — connects to: Rationally adjusting aspirations downward can suppress grievance despite large power gaps — Walter Korpi, The Iceberg of Power below the Surface:…, 6
• QUESTION: If relative deprivation is inversely related to structural power deficits, can any felt-grievance measure be validated against Korpi-style power resource data?