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Chapter Seven

PART THREE: THE LIMITS OF POWER

Summary: Chapter Seven: Rosemary Lawlor

In 1969, two economists, Nathan Leites and Charles Wolf Jr., wrote a report on how to deal with insurgencies—armed revolts against civil authority. The report’s conclusion was that the way to put down an insurgency is to make the cost of rebellion exceed the benefit. What this analysis leaves out, Gladwell proposes, is the need for authority to be seen as legitimate. Rules must be predictable, enforcement must be fair, and those expected to obey must have a chance to be heard. In a school classroom, for example, a teacher who wants students to obey should be consistent, should treat students impartially, and should listen when students have something to say.

On a larger scale, this “legitimacy principle” applies to “the Troubles” that began in Northern Ireland around the time Leites and Wolf’s report came out. After violence broke out between the Catholic and Protestants of Belfast, the British Army sent soldiers to restore order. Although the soldiers were officially there as neutral peacekeepers, they were perceived by Catholics as being on the side of the Protestants, and the army did nothing to correct this impression. On the contrary, in one Catholic neighborhood, called Lower Falls, the army conducted a destructive house-to-house search, looking for weapons, and while the army did this, it imposed a curfew that prevented families from leaving their homes, even to buy bread. Rosemary Lawlor, a young Catholic woman who lived in nearby Ballymurphy, was stunned. She and other women challenged the curfew by pushing baby carriages loaded with food into Lower Falls. When the British soldiers began to beat the women, their commanding officer stopped them. The food got through to the families that needed it. The Troubles, however, would last another thirty years.

Another example of the legitimacy principle at work comes from Brownsville, a New York City neighborhood long troubled by high crime rates and high incarceration rates for its young men. In 2003, police officer Joanne Jaffe, charged with keeping order in the local housing projects, started the Juvenile Robbery Intervention Program (J-RIP). This program identified 106 juveniles probably responsible for many of the area’s crimes. Jaffe’s officers established contact with these individuals in standard ways, such as surveillance, but the officers also sought to establish legitimacy in the eyes of the community, by bringing families Thanksgiving dinners, playing basketball with local youth, and providing rides to doctor appointments. Robberies in Brownsville dropped dramatically, from over 120 in 2006 to less than 30 in 2011. Arrest rates for J-RIP individuals plummeted, too.

Analysis: Chapter Seven

Gladwell poses the question of whether or not severe uses of force are effective when battling mismatched opponents. He applies his argument about underdogs, advantages, and disadvantages to an historically complex issue when he examines the struggle between the Protestants, Catholics, and British military between the 1960s and 1990s. Gladwell begins his analysis with clearly mismatched power dynamics, and argues it is easy to assume the military will be victorious. However, Gladwell’s David and Goliath thesis claims using power in predictable ways can lead to defeat. Gladwell uses the teacher to further illustrate this point. Gladwell also makes the argument that power dynamics rarely remain consistent and further clarifies his interest in analyzing how underdogs outsmart giants. The Catholic community does not rely on the military for safety or view them as a respectable form of authority. Gladwell argues this is where the problem begins and introduces the teacher to further illustrate the point about thinking outside the box in a different way. She fails to do so and is not successful. This example is representative of the power struggles in Northern Ireland. Much like the students in the teacher’s class, tensions are already high in the community, and when the commanding officer uses force to attempt to dispel conflict, he escalates the situation and causes unnecessary violence. 

The story of Lower Falls is another example that illustrates Gladwell’s David and Goliath metaphor. Like David, the Catholic community thinks outside the box and uses alternative tactics to beat the giant. The women’s tactic is like that of Wyatt and Dr. King, as they all catch authority figures off guard. The women enter the village with baby strollers full of food, and the soldiers in the narrative make a critical decision. If they attack women, their authority weakens even more. The soldiers do not want their actions to be used against them, and so the women ultimately succeed.

Gladwell further illustrates his claim about the “legitimacy” of authority through the story of Joanne Jaffe. Gladwell believes respect is the foundation of establishing reliable authority. In a situation where a group like the police are seen as a tool of authoritarianism and racism, there is no reason for people to trust that the police have any interest in them as human beings. The effect of dehumanizing the people a police force is tasked to serve is that the people have no incentive to respect the authority. Respect must be a kind of conversation, flowing from both ends of the relationship. Jaffe, Gladwell argues, demonstrates this knowledge when she tries to establish personal connections with the young people she works with. By showing a genuine personal interest, she creates a mutual respect and is viewed as a reliable, trustworthy form of authority. It is rarely the case that people have zero interest in any kind of authority, but rather they are simply unwilling to engage with an authority that treats them without respect and regard for their shared humanity.

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