Subordinates under a powerful superior may come to distrust one another

Evidence

There is a further problem in power relations. The subordinates may come actively to distrust one another. For example, courtiers are commonly in contest with other courtiers over who has the greatest favor of the powerful king. The French court in Versailles elevated vacuity to its high status in self-defense against the harms that could befall anyone who ventured to say anything with real content that might be reported to the king. — Russell Hardin, Trust and Trustworthiness, 478

Categorization

• XREF: Parallels the Saramago integration: once observable monitoring collapses (here, because speech can be reported to the king), even peers cease to trust each other — an informational rather than material degradation of order. — connects to: Subordinate self-determination is read as a threat to dominant rule — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1504