Power chains amplify available power beyond any single holder’s capacity

Evidence

The formation of chains has the function of making more power available than one power-holder can exercise – to make all power available, in the borderline case of political elections, to those who cannot exercise it at all. Chain formation thus makes possible increases in power which go beyond the selection capacity of the individual power-holder. The artificiality of such an increase in power is reflected in the demands it imposes on the power-code; for example, it cannot be realized without binary schematization (see Chapter 6), without distinguishing between power-code and power-themes and between the position and the person. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 657

Categorization

• XREF: The position/person distinction maps onto Stevens’s devotion to his role post as head butler separate from himself as person.