Power operates by keeping grievances off the agenda entirely

Evidence

Even though the power of nondecision-­making has been well known for a long time, these insights have, however, been widely overlooked by the opinion-­policy link literature. This is well illustrated by Bachrach and Baratz (1963, 641): “When the dominant values, the accepted rules of the game, the existing power relations among groups, and the instruments of force, singly or in combination, effectively prevent certain grievances from developing into full-­fledged issues which call for decisions, it can be said that a non-­decision-­making situation exists.” Hence, blocking power can be executed both by voting against and obstructing reforms, but also by forcing issues out of the agenda and making sure that they never even enter the decision-­ making process. — Mikael Persson and Anders Sundell, Blocking the Poor, 38

Categorization

• DEEPTHINKING: Reframes blocking as a two-channel mechanism — overt obstruction plus agenda suppression so grievances never become decidable issues; a structural claim about how power invisibly forecloses politics.
• SEED: Essay angle: ‘the policy that was never debated’ — how measuring opinion-policy congruence only on issues that reach the agenda biases every finding toward the status quo.
• XREF: Connects to Bachrach & Baratz’s ‘two faces of power’, Schattschneider on the scope of conflict, and agenda-setting literature (Cobb & Elder, Kingdon).