Louis XIV’s experience exemplifies the most fundamental fact of political life. No one rules alone; no one has absolute authority. All that varies is how many backs have to be scratched and how big the supply of backs available for scratching.
Winning Coalition
Organizations minimize coalitions needed to maintain control.
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But how much power did even large shareholders have? Little. When the Company’s directors petitioned the government to be released from their obligation to publish ten-year accounts in 1612 - the date when investors were supposed to be able to withdraw their capital if they chose to - permission was granted and publication of the accounts and the repayment of investors’ capital were both postponed.
These holdings, individually and collectively, do not convey control, but these large investors can make themselves heard, and their actions can affect the welfare of the companies and their managers. ... If the managers fail to pursue actions that favor shareholder returns, institutional investors will be inclined to sell the stock (depressing its price), or to listen sympathetically to outsiders contemplating takeovers. These investors are a force helping press media companies toward strictly market (profitability) objectives.
In the context of a nascent company, ownership and power are uncomplicated and largely the same thing. But context is key because ownership does not exist in a vacuum. Whether your ownership matters hinges on the volume of what you own and the context in which you own it.
First, sustained economic growth requires innovation, and innovation cannot be decoupled from creative destruction, which replaces the old with the new in the economic realm and also destabilizes established power relations in politics. Because elites dominating extractive institutions fear creative destruction, they will resist it, and any growth that germinates under extractive institutions will be ultimately short lived.
Behind the very notion of separation is a theory of countervailing power. Separations are an effort to prevent any single element of society from gaining dominance over the whole, and by such dominance becoming tyrannical.
The point Kropotkin was trying to make about power relationships is developed further by the 'SNAFU Principle': "True communication is possible only between equals, because inferiors are more consistently rewarded for telling their superiors pleasant lies than for telling the truth." Creative teamwork utterly depends on true communication and is thus very seriously hindered by the presence of power relationships.