Social elites, popular discontent, and the limits of cooptation

Rulers face challenges in governing distant or hostile populations. In response, they may coopt elites from those groups into relationships of indirect rule, thereby boosting their perceived legitimacy and ensuring compliance with their policies. Because a ruler’s goals diverge from a hostile population’s preferences, an important tension results: the elite’s cooperation becomes more valuable to the ruler, but their ability to foster compliance is strained. How does that tension influence the ruler’s governance strategy and the resulting bargain between the ruler and the elite? I construct a model of cooptation showing that a legitimating elite’s bargaining power is non-monotonic with respect to preference divergence between a ruler and the citizenry. Bargaining power for the elite is increasing in preference divergence at low levels and falls discontinuously once divergence passes a threshold. Preference divergence therefore carries implications for rulers’ institutional choice, as cooptation is only viable at intermediate levels of popular discontent. I apply the model to the Ottoman Empire’s system of indirect rule and show that it explains several features of regime-elite relations.