This is an important and neglected subject, and I am glad it is being discussed here.
Here is a video by CGP Grey, which is largely a summary of The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics (which I have not read) which is itself a popular presentation of the Selectorate Theory of political power (about which I have read very little). It is naturally an oversimplification, but does a good job of building the intuition that power is largely a matter existing forces. As a bonus, it even has a small decision tree!
In the context of your post, it asserts that borrowedpower radically outweighs owned power. This makes intuitive sense to me: owned power may be more reliable, but there is a lot more total power floating around in society that any one person could reasonably own and so gambling on a fraction of the much larger pool gives better results.
This is an important and neglected subject, and I am glad it is being discussed here.
Here is a video by CGP Grey, which is largely a summary of The Dictator’s Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics (which I have not read) which is itself a popular presentation of the Selectorate Theory of political power (about which I have read very little). It is naturally an oversimplification, but does a good job of building the intuition that power is largely a matter existing forces. As a bonus, it even has a small decision tree!
In the context of your post, it asserts that borrowed power radically outweighs owned power. This makes intuitive sense to me: owned power may be more reliable, but there is a lot more total power floating around in society that any one person could reasonably own and so gambling on a fraction of the much larger pool gives better results.