The threat of an action usually frightens its target more than the action itself would.
Rule nine of Rules for Radicals, paraphrased. Alinsky's best-known illustration was a planned occupation of every toilet at Chicago's O'Hare airport, meant to press the city to keep its promises to the Woodlawn Organization; he recounts that the plan was leaked and that the city conceded before it was carried out.
In practice
- A union announces a strike date, and the employer, picturing every missed shipment, settles days before it.
- A child told that there will be consequences behaves better than one who has already been punished.
- Possible explanations
- One explanation is uncertainty: an unknown cost is imagined at its worst. Another, from psychology, is that people overestimate how bad future events will feel. A third is that a threat can be withdrawn in exchange for a concession, which an action cannot.
- In its favour
- Consistent with bargaining and deterrence research and with Alinsky's documented campaigns; a threat costs little to make.
- Against it
- Threats that are never carried out lose credibility, and escalating threats can provoke a pre-emptive response. Critics see coercion by threat as at odds with deliberative politics.
- Standing
- Compare Alinsky's rule of perceived power.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Rules that restrain power, and advice on using it