Power functions through unexercised possible sanctions rather than actual coercion

Evidence

This gives power to the one who can decide whether such a conditional linking of combinations of possibilities is to be made or not. Thus power rests on the fact that there are possibilities, whose realization is avoided. The avoidance of sanctions (which are and remain possible) is indispensable to the function of power. Each actual recourse to avoidable alternatives, each exercise of violence, for example, changes the communication structure in an almost irreversible way. It is in the interests of power to avoid such an occurrence. Thus, already in terms of its structural quality (and not only by reference to laws), power rests upon controlling the exceptional case. It breaks down whenever the avoidable alternatives are realized. As a result, among other things, highly complex societies, which need far more power than simpler societies, have to modify the ratio of the exercise of power to the application of sanctions, and must manage with an ever decreasing incidence of factual realization of avoidable alternatives. — Niklas Luhmann, Trust and Power, 621

Categorization

• DEFINE: Core Luhmann definition: power is the capacity to avoid realizing avoidable alternatives, sustained by remaining sanctions. Directly relevant to Stevens’s case — the butler’s authority over staff functions without ever actually being enforced.
• XREF: Connects to Giddens’s distinction between authoritative and allocative resources, and to the broader ‘faceless commitments’ thesis — authority maintained through institutional structures rather than face-to-face enforcement. — connects to: Securing negative rights globally required proactive enforcement, not passivity — Quinn Slobodian, Globalists: The End of Empire and the…, 415; Mere non-interference can coexist with domination when security is absent — Philip Pettit, Republicanism: A Theory of Freedom and…, 349; Regimes with capital substitute purchase for direct coercion of subjects — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 129
• ADDENDUM: Relates to the sacrifice article’s theme of power structures stabilized by ritual non-exercise: power’s force inheres in what is held back, not what is done.