9 - The effects of coercion: compliance or conflict?

Summary

The three preceding chapters have sought to explain why coercive power is used so infrequently in social exchange relations. We have seen that coercion is not structurally induced by a punishment power advantage, and that the strategic use of coercion is constrained by fear of loss, structural dependence, and norms of fairness. As a result, even when actors who are disadvantaged on reward exchange have the power to coerce more rewards from their partners, they seldom use it.

In this chapter I examine whether the low use of coercive power accounts for its weak effects on social exchange. Chapter 6 showed that both bases of power have equal effects when either is the sole source of power. And Chapter 7 showed that coercive power is more effective when the risk of retaliation is removed and its use increases. But an important question remains: how effective is coercion in the networks that are the focus of this research – networks in which all actors have both reward and punishment power, and retaliation is possible? If actors in these networks used coercion more frequently and consistently, would their coercive power be more effective?

As we saw in Chapter 3, many theories – from macro analyses of political power to micro analyses of social interaction – contend that it would not. The exchange theorists who excluded punishment from their analyses, as well as many theorists who explicitly study the use and effects of coercive power, argue that it will be less effective the more it is used.