Coordination & Coercion

John Wallis’s presentation was to understand how countries or such societies can enforce impersonal rules for everyone. John Wallis spoke about how impersonal rules apply to “most” all individuals, but not universal and anonymous rules are those that apply differently to different individuals.  Governments do not get their power from coercion but instead from coordination with the elites.  His definition of elites, were people who had coercion power and could impose some form of violence to other individuals.   Since government gets its coordination power through the coercion power of the elites, why would elites give up some of their own coercion power?  This was explained as that there has to be some form of benefits, better known as rents, to the elites for them to give more coordination, and possibly but not necessarily coercion, to the government.  This coordination between elites in the form of “government” can give validation to the organization, given by the elites.  It was discussed that in the face of being overthrown by the “elites” own people, the elites will turn to creating some formal entity to entice the people to see fairness achieved throughout the lands by this entity.  This so called “entity” is what can be called a government.  For government gives some validation of political and economic hope for fairness in which the elites will relinquish some coordination and possibly coercion power to the government.  The key question observed was, At what point can the government punish the elites?   Ultimately, in conclusion, the government must treat everyone the same which is what we began the discussion about, impersonal rules.  With this point made, now organizations, elites, and likewise interested parties must pay more attention to what the government is doing because of this stated “rules for everyone” type atmosphere.  John stated that this turns the government into a largely more political environment more similar to what we see today.