Examples Of Implicit Power

Question 1
Power can be exercised in one of two ways. The first is far easier to comprehend. It is called “manifest power”. Manifest power involves one person or group of people exercising control over a second person or group of people by giving some sort of sign or signal. This includes everything from coercion to simply asking for something to be done or even giving non-verbal cues, like a police officer flashing their lights. If a police officer were to flash their lights, every driver in the United States would know that means the police officer wants them to pull over. By making the driver pull over, the police officer is exerting manifest power on the driver. As long as there is some form of observable communication between the two parties
In the case of implicit power, the group being controlled is not doing something simply because they were asked or threatened to do so but because they implicitly understand that the party in power wants that thing done and, for one reason or another, the party being controlled wants to do it. The thing that makes this form of exerting power so difficult to identify is that there is often no observable communication between the two parties, but rather an implicit understanding. It is very hard to find examples of implicit power in official governments, but in the small, unofficial rules of personal relationships, families, and other forms of social interaction, there are plenty of examples. For example, a child may clean their room without being told explicitly because they know their room is messy and their parents prefer it to be clean.
However, as was previously stated, it is hard to find examples of implicit power in politics, so most official political business falls under the ‘manifest power’ category. Plenty of examples of manifest power can be found in the workings of the U.S. Congress. For example, their process for making foreign aid policy requires the use manifest power at just about every
Many constituents may feel that spending money abroad is counterintuitive, but if the money is being spent in a domestic economy, they may be more willing to support funding for foreign aid. For example, there is a sort of standing earmark on all food aid that any agricultural products sent for food aid must be grown inside the United States. In many cases, it would simply be cheaper to buy up local surpluses in the country and then distribute them there (to avoid the massive shipping costs). However, that would be very unpopular domestically as it would not benefit American farmers, so we continue to use the system of sending our own food as