While analysts often assume that amorphous and immobile masses can be structured and moved only by the elite, it is often the case that various competing elites try to outbid each other using ideas and rhetoric in their pursuit of power. Those who manage to supply better than other competitors gain the profit. To be sure, sellers may sometimes agree to fix prices, and elites may agree on certain rules that limit the boundaries of competition, such as those in a democracy. But trust is difficult to establish and maintain in an emerging marketplace where there are incentives to break the rules for short-term gain. For example, the Bolsheviks in 1917 outbid other parties in part because they were willing to promise land at no cost and to unilaterally withdraw from World War I, something that all other parties felt inhibited about, but the peasant masses desperately wanted.
Sellers can sometimes shape demand, rather than just passively responding.
But once a demand exists, it usually takes on a life and effect of its own. Taken to its logical conclusion, what began as a rhetorical exercise merely for political positioning in a competitive environment produces increasingly assertive rhetoric that may ultimately result in corresponding actions. Russia was also defined as a nation in transition to democracy, a prodigal son coming back to the family of Western nations. However, democratic reforms have not delivered good lives to people, and Russians increasingly perceive the West, and the US in particular, as not exactly an all-forgiving loving father. The change in Russian public opinion has occurred in spite of Western humanitarian aid, financial loans, and a Russian media that is on the whole pro-democratic.