When people compete or conflict with each other, the most energetic, resourceful, and dedicated people are likely to emerge successful at the expense of others. Similar to a sports contest, power struggles breed skillful strugglers who thereby gain more power to coerce while others lose. As that happens, the stakes get higher, since the threat of coercion increases in people s lives. And when the stakes get higher, people have reason to sacrifice a little more of their reluctance to struggle for power. Thus, the power struggle escalates.
Some people resort to more extreme methods of struggling for power.
People who would prefer to be law-abiding citizens, might feel compelled to bend the law or violate laws in ways that seem minor. Deceit, demonstrations, riots, blackmail, and conspiracy become more attractive options for some of the more dedicated power-strugglers. No matter what the reason might be for a person to struggle for power, the motives logically deduced in the above paragraphs apply. While some people might struggle for power strictly for their own personal gain, others might struggle for the sake of ideals that they honestly believe in such as helping poor or disadvantaged people, protecting our environment, or taking power away from their estimate of evil power-strugglers. The whole point is that power struggles are enabled and motivated by the agreed-on existence of controllable positions of power, and manipulatable procedures for the deliberate use of coercion.