Order As Psychological Spell

The article argues that Britain’s public order rests on a fragile belief among senior elites about police/state coercive credibility. When authorities display asymmetric tolerance, groups infer impunity, risking rapid cascades from protest to mob action. Stability is maintained as much by elite expectations as by actual forces on the ground. — It shifts policing and governance debates from raw capacity to credibility management, explaining why uneven enforcement can trigger sudden legitimacy collapse.

Sources

If you’re not in the meetings, you can’t accurately estimate the relative levels of dishonesty and self-delusion involved

Isegoria 2025.08.27 100% relevant

Cummings’ account of No.10 meetings with the Metropolitan Police where leaders feared the 'psychological spells' supporting order could break.

People, ideas, machines XII: Theories of regime change and civil war

Dominic Cummings 2025.05.28 78% relevant

The piece’s focus on preference falsification, asymmetric enforcement, and the risk of rapid cascades echoes the claim that stability depends on elites maintaining credible coercive belief; once that 'spell' breaks, mob action can escalate quickly—directly paralleling Cummings’s warning about Britain’s slide to chaos.