The Legalization of Domination as a Strategy of Political Stabilization
Introduction
Political power rarely emerges in a codified form. In many historical and contemporary contexts, domination is first exercised informally: through personal networks, coercive practices, patronage, violence, intimidation, and tacit arrangements. Informal power thrives in moments of uncertainty, conquest, collapse, or transition. Yet such power is inherently unstable. It depends on continuous enforcement, personal loyalty, and unpredictable force. To endure, power must transform itself.
This transformation takes the form of codification. The passage from informal power to codified authority marks a decisive moment in the consolidation of domination. Practices that were once discretionary become regulated; relationships that were personal are translated into rules; coercion is reframed as legality. Far from limiting power, codification often secures it. What was arbitrary becomes normalized. What was contested becomes procedural.
This article argues that the codification of power is not primarily a civilizing or pacifying process. Rather, it is a strategic operation through which domination is stabilized, depersonalized, and rendered durable.
I. Theoretical Frameworks: Why Power Seeks Codification
Max Weber’s sociology of domination provides a foundational insight. Weber argues that domination based solely on force is inherently fragile. Durable power requires legitimacy, which, in modern societies, is most effectively produced through legal-rational authority. Codified rules replace personal command, allowing domination to appear impersonal, objective, and necessary (Economy and Society).
Norbert Elias, in his analysis of state formation, demonstrates that the monopolization of violence does not eliminate coercion but reorganizes it. Through law and administration, violence becomes regulated, predictable, and socially acceptable. Codification thus serves as a mechanism for concentrating power while masking its coercive origins (The Civilizing Process).
Pierre Bourdieu deepens this perspective by emphasizing the symbolic power of law. Legal codification transforms relations of force into relations of meaning. Once inscribed in legal language, domination appears neutral and legitimate. The law conceals the power struggles that produced it (The Force of Law).
Michel Foucault further challenges the assumption that law constrains power. He shows that legal dispositifs often function as instruments through which power circulates more effectively. Codification does not suppress domination; it organizes it (Security, Territory, Population).
II. Mechanisms of Transition: How Informal Power Becomes Codified
The passage from informal power to codified authority generally involves four interrelated mechanisms:
- the formalization of pre-existing practices,
- the translation of personal domination into general rules,
- the stabilization of arbitrariness through legal frameworks,
- the diffusion of responsibility across institutions and procedures.
Through codification, power becomes less visible but more entrenched. The ruler disappears behind the rule, without relinquishing control.
III. Four Empirical Illustrations
1. Absolute Monarchy in France: From Courtly Power to Administrative Rule
Under the French Ancien Régime, royal authority initially relied on informal networks of loyalty, patronage, and courtly influence. Power was exercised through proximity to the monarch rather than through standardized institutions.
From the seventeenth century onward, however, the monarchy undertook a systematic process of codification: royal ordinances, centralized taxation, standardized judicial procedures, and the expansion of royal administration. As Roland Mousnier has shown, the appointment of royal intendants transformed personal authority into codified governance.
This transition did not diminish royal power. On the contrary, it extended it into the provinces, reduced local autonomy, and rendered domination more effective by embedding it in administrative routine.
2. Authoritarian Regimes: From Extrajudicial Violence to Legal Repression
Many modern authoritarian regimes originate in informal violence: coups d’état, militias, purges, and extrajudicial repression. Yet once consolidated, such regimes tend to codify their power.
Juan Linz demonstrates that stable authoritarianism depends on institutionalization. Constitutions, emergency laws, security courts, and administrative decrees provide a legal framework that transforms coercion into legality. Violence no longer appears as abuse but as lawful enforcement.
Codification allows repression to persist while reducing its political cost. Domination becomes procedural rather than overtly brutal.
3. Colonial Rule: From Conquest to Administrative Normalization
Colonial domination offers a paradigmatic example of codification as a strategy of control.
Following military conquest, colonial powers rapidly developed legal codes, administrative classifications, and differentiated legal statuses. Systems such as the Code de l’indigénat institutionalized inequality and coercion through law. As Mahmood Mamdani has demonstrated, colonial governance depended on transforming raw domination into routine administration (Citizen and Subject).
The colonial subject was governed not only through force, but through codified norms that structured labor, mobility, and political participation. Violence became ordinary because it was legal.
4. Armed Movements Turned Governing Authorities
When armed movements seize power, they face a fundamental dilemma: rule through force alone or transform domination into governance. In many cases, they choose codification.
Informal mechanisms of control are translated into decrees, regulations, and institutional hierarchies. Codification serves several purposes: disciplining internal ranks, controlling populations, and projecting an image of order. While coercion remains central, it is now exercised through rules rather than improvisation.
This transition marks not a departure from violence, but its rationalization.
IV. Political and Social Effects of Codified Domination
The passage to codified authority produces several structural effects:
- domination becomes less visible and therefore less contestable,
- resistance is confined within legal boundaries defined by power,
- victims are reclassified as administrative subjects,
- obedience is reframed as compliance with rules rather than submission to force.
Law functions not as a constraint on power, but as its most stable instrument.
Conclusion
The transition from informal power to codified authority does not signify a move toward justice, restraint, or accountability. It represents a strategic consolidation of domination. By legalizing arbitrariness, power becomes durable. By codifying coercion, it becomes normalized.
Understanding this process allows political analysis to move beyond the illusion that legality necessarily protects against abuse. In many contexts, law is not the antidote to domination, but its most effective vehicle.
References
- Weber, Max. Economy and Society.
- Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process.
- Bourdieu, Pierre. The Force of Law; On the State.
- Foucault, Michel. Security, Territory, Population; Society Must Be Defended.
- Linz, Juan. Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes.
- Mamdani, Mahmood. Citizen and Subject.
- Mousnier, Roland. The Institutions of France under the Absolute Monarchy.
- Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer.