Managed Populations: 3 Elections as Legitimating Rituals

In the lateralised state, democracy functions less as a mechanism of accountability than as a ritual of legitimation. Elections are celebrated as the ultimate expression of popular sovereignty, yet they often serve to stabilise elite alignment rather than disrupt it. They provide the illusion of vertical influence while allowing the lateral networks of power — ministries, bureaucracies, allied governments, and transnational institutions — to remain insulated.

This is the architecture of ritual: it produces coherence without relational penetration. Parties debate, candidates campaign, and media narratives unfold. Citizens cast ballots. But whether the electorate chooses “left” or “right,” the underlying structure of governance — who decides, how resources are allocated, how policy aligns with global systems — remains remarkably stable. The elections themselves are absorbed into the lateralised logic of the elite class.

The managed population participates, not as co-individuating agents, but as contributors to ritual continuity. Dissent is tolerated only insofar as it does not threaten systemic coherence. Policy critiques are reframed as procedural concerns, ethical objections as noise, civil unrest as security risk. In this way, the democratic theatre preserves appearance without affecting structure.

Consider foreign policy decisions: an action widely condemned internationally, or morally questioned domestically, is pursued not despite public opinion, but largely indifferent to it. Citizens may protest peacefully, articulate moral objection, or demand intervention. Yet the state frames these acts as risks to be managed, not signals requiring structural change. Elections may follow, but the cycle repeats: ritual legitimates continuity, abstraction masks consequence, and vertical accountability remains suspended.

This movement highlights a key dynamic of modern representative democracy: ritualised engagement displaces relational accountability. The electorate’s moral judgment exists as a symbolic input; the structural field in which elites operate remains insulated. Even when citizens act collectively, the mechanisms of co-individuation with power are thin, mediated, and often neutralised.

The structural question is stark:

If elections stabilise rather than disrupt elite networks, what remains of democratic accountability beyond ritual?

The next post will address the next layer: how scale and representation interact, and whether vertical identification can survive in systems so vast, abstracted, and insulated.