Political Narratology. How Stories Shape Power and Compliance

Introduction

In the first part of this book, we discussed why politics inevitably becomes history. We talked about how facts transform into meanings, how a collective ‘we’ emerges from language, how the past and future are rewritten depending on the present. Now it is necessary to take the next step. Simply understanding the nature of the political narrative is not enough.

Any story, once it has arisen, must be held, defended, repeated, reinforced, and passed on. And it is precisely here that the mechanics of power begin to operate.

If in the book Theoretical Narratology the narrative was examined as a universal form of human thought, and in the book Applied Narratology as a tool influencing the private life, choices and identity of an individual or a community of people, then in politics the narrative becomes an entire infrastructure. Not an idea, not an opinion, but a full-fledged system.

Power as the Management of Explanations

Power is usually described through its institutions: parliament, courts, the army, police, ministries. But these forms are secondary.

Before power becomes law, it becomes an explanation. Before an order appears, its justification arises. Before submission occurs, a story emerges in which that submission appears reasonable. Power exists thanks to the ability to hold the right to interpret what is happening. What is considered a crisis, what is the norm, what is a threat, and what is an acceptable risk and a necessary sacrifice? The mechanics of power is the mechanics of meaning.

Why Stability is More Important Than Force

Political power is difficult to maintain through violence alone: violence is costly, unstable, and does not scale well. Power that does not require constant coercion is far more effective; it reproduces itself through language, is supported by rituals, and is habitually perceived as the surrounding landscape.

Such power does not look like power; it looks like reason, common sense, tradition, inevitability, responsibility. Anything but power. That is precisely why the key questions in our exposition become not ‘Who rules?’ and not ‘What decisions have been made?’ but ‘Why do people submit to this?’ ‘When do people stop believing?’ and ‘What happens when the story no longer works?’

From Private Narrative to Mass Narrative

In the book Applied Narratology, we saw how a narrative governs the life of an individual person, their choice of profession, their attitude towards the body, time, age, pleasure, and responsibility. In politics, the same thing happens, but on the scale of society.

And here one transition is especially important: what in private life looks like a habit or a personal choice, in politics becomes a norm, and then an obligation.

An individual narrative can be changed. And a political one can too, but it is much more difficult. Because behind such a narrative stand not only the words and their constructions but also entire institutions, sanctions, rituals, expectations, and collective emotions.

When Power is Strongest Where It is Invisible

The most stable forms of power operate inconspicuously. They do not require constant orders. People themselves know how to think, speak, and feel ‘correctly’. They repeat the necessary formulas, shame others for deviations, explain events only in permissible terms; they experience fear, not so much of punishment, but of exclusion.

The mechanics of power is not only the control of actions. It is the control of everything that accompanies actions: interpretations, pace, pauses, and silence.

What This Part is About

In the following chapters, we will not be talking about ‘evil regimes’ or ‘bad leaders’. We will be analysing why power is recognised as legitimate, how it loses the right to tell the story, why the image of the future is more important than the memory of the past, how promises turn into a contract, why a leader becomes a character, how rituals replace content, why the language of power becomes more complex, and why silence frightens power more than protest.

And all of this is not an exposé: it is the anatomy and physiology of power.

Why Understand the Mechanics of Power

Understanding mechanisms, anatomy, or physiology does not automatically make a person free, but it gives them a chance not to be completely blind. Those who do not see what power consists of and how it works almost inevitably begin to explain what is happening in the language of power itself.

This part of the book is an attempt to return to the reader the distance between an event and its explanation, between a decision and its justification, between reality and the story into which it is packaged. Because power begins where explanation ceases to be a subject for discussion.

And it is with the question of legitimacy that we continue.

Chapter 11. Legitimacy: Why People Submit

A tyrant has only two eyes, two hands, one body – and nothing more beyond that, save the power you give him.

Submission as an Enigma

The most interesting question that politics poses is not about forms of coercion and violence, but about forms of unforced consent.

History knows countless regimes in which millions of people obeyed orders, laws, restrictions, and sacrifices without being under constant physical compulsion. Moreover, they often defended that power, justified it, reproduced its language, and punished those who doubted it.

If power were only fear, why does it endure for years, decades, sometimes centuries, even when fear subsides?

Why do people submit not only under the whip but voluntarily?

The answer to this question is legitimacy.

Legitimacy Is Not Legality

In everyday speech, legitimacy is often confused with legality. But these are different substances: legality is formal conformity to rules; legitimacy is the recognition of those rules.

One can have an entirely lawful power that is not perceived as ’one’s own’. And one can have a power that violates formal procedures yet is accepted as necessary and justified.

Legitimacy is not so much a legal category as it is a psychological and narrative state of society, in which submission appears reasonable, inevitable, and right.

That is precisely why the question ‘Why do people submit?’ cannot be resolved by reference to constitutions, courts, or procedures. All this is decided in the space of narratives.

Weber and the Three Sources of Belief

Max Weber proposed the classic typology of legitimacy: charismatic, traditional, and rational-legal. It is often recited mechanically, as a textbook list, but behind it lies an important insight.

All three forms are not types of power – they are types of belief.

People submit because they believe in the person, in the order, in the procedure. Not simultaneously and not necessarily consciously, but they believe.

Charisma, tradition, and rationality are different narratives of justification for submission, different stories about why this particular power is permissible.

Charisma: The Power of Exceptionality

Charismatic legitimacy arises where power is linked to a person. Not to an institution, not to a rule, but to a specific figure who appears exceptional.

The charismatic leader is a character in the story in whom expectations, fears, hopes, and projections are concentrated. They are attributed with special vision, destiny, a mission, and a connection to the future or the past. They may break the rules, and paradoxically, this very fact is taken as proof of their strength.

But charisma is unstable; it lives only as long as it is sustained by a story of success. Failure destroys it instantly.

That is why charismatic power either rapidly institutionalises or collapses irretrievably.

Tradition: The Power of Habit

Traditional legitimacy is the quietest and the most resilient. It requires no adulation; habit is sufficient.

People submit because ’it has always been this way’, ’it is customary’, ’this is how the world is ordered’. Here, there is no need to explain every decision; it is enough to refer to the order of things.

Tradition is a narrative in which time works for power, and the past serves as an argument.

But this form of legitimacy has its own weakness: it weathers abrupt change poorly. When the world accelerates, the traditional narrative begins to appear archaic and rapidly loses persuasiveness.

Rationality: The Power of Procedure

Rational-legal legitimacy is built on belief in rules. Not in people and not in the past, but in procedures. Here, people submit not because they love the power, but because they consider the system as a whole to be fair, or at least predictable.

Laws, elections, courts, and regulations – all these are elements of a narrative in which power appears impersonal and therefore purportedly neutral.

But rationality, too, requires belief. As soon as procedures begin to be perceived as a fiction, this form of legitimacy collapses faster than any other.

Legitimacy as a Story about Justice

All forms of legitimacy share a common element: they tell a story about justice. Justice may be understood in different ways: as the will of the leader, as fidelity to tradition, or as adherence to rules. But without a sense of justice, submission becomes fragile.

A person can endure inconvenience, restrictions, and even suffering if these are embedded in a story where justice exists.

When this story of justice disappears, nothing remains but bare coercion. And that does not work for long.

Submission as Participation

One of the most dangerous myths is the conception of submission as a passive state. In reality, submission is a form of participation. A person always participates in the reproduction of power when they repeat its language, when they explain its decisions, when they justify its mistakes, and when they condemn those who doubt. They participate even when they censor themselves internally.

Legitimate power conserves resources because people do part of its work themselves. This is precisely why legitimacy is power’s chief capital. Armies, police, and laws are necessary for its functioning, but they are secondary.

When Submission Becomes the Norm

The most stable moment of legitimacy is when the question ‘Why do we submit?’ ceases to arise. At that moment, power becomes a convenient background. It is not discussed, not problematised, not recognised as a choice.

People begin to perceive the order as natural and the alternative as dangerous, naïve, or irresponsible.

This is the peak of narrative force.

Cracks in Legitimacy

Legitimacy does not vanish suddenly. It is eroded gradually. First, a discrepancy appears between the story and experience, then doubt arises, then cynicism. And only then – open conflict.

When power continues to tell the same story, and reality fits into it less and less, submission itself begins to demand ever greater effort.

It is precisely this moment that we will examine next, in the chapter on how power loses its right to the story.

Why This Understanding Matters

Understanding legitimacy is a way not to confuse submission with necessity nor order with truth. A person who sees how belief in power arises ceases to perceive it as a natural background, even if it is a convenient one.

They may still continue to submit, but now consciously. And conscious submission is, at the very least, less dangerous than blind submission.

Because legitimacy is not something that power possesses once and for all. It is something that society each day either confirms or refuses to confirm.

And in this lies the hidden point of freedom, from which political thinking begins.

Chapter 12. When Power Loses Its Right to the Story

Power weakens when its explanations grow longer than society’s patience.

The Loss of Power Does Not Begin with Revolt

It is customary to think that power collapses due to uprisings, coups, economic disasters, or external pressure. But that is already the final stage.

A real crisis of power begins earlier, at the moment its story ceases to work. When people still obey but no longer believe; when words continue to sound but no longer evoke either a response or support. When the language of power remains the same, but the internal consent of the masses disappears.

Power may retain control over institutions, the army, the economy, but if it loses its right to the story, it begins to exist in a state of deferred disintegration.

What The Right to the Story Means

The right to the story is not a formality; it is society’s agreement to accept the interpretations of power as plausible.

Power possesses this right so long as its explanations seem credible, align with everyday experience, give meaning to what is happening, promise a future, or at least explain its absence.

As soon as these conditions are violated, a rupture emerges between words and reality. And it is precisely this rupture that is the beginning of the end.

Discrepancy as the First Symptom

The loss of narrative power begins with micro-cracks. People notice that official explanations no longer match what they see and experience. That the language of power becomes either too optimistic, too abstract, or overtly defensive.

A sense of falseness appears. Not necessarily lies – specifically falseness.

It is important to understand the distinction here: people can tolerate a lie for a long time if it is embedded in a convincing story. But they cannot endure meaninglessness.

Repetition Without Conviction