Enforcement that removes leadership fragments an organisation into more numerous and less predictable successors.
Documented in counterterrorism and drug enforcement. Removing a cartel's leadership fragments it into smaller successors that are harder to negotiate with and often more violent than the organisation they replaced.
In practice
- A police operation removes the leadership of an organised group and produces four smaller ones with no negotiating partner.
- A ban on one supplier of a prohibited good produces six, each harder to identify and each with less to lose.
- Standing
- Related to the iron law of prohibition.
- Further reading
- Wikipedia
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- What can be proved and measured about power