CPAID researchers have developed ‘logics’ to explain how public authority is claimed, accrued, and employed. These logics have been useful in drawing out comparisons between places, specific public authorities, and delineating patterns. They have been used to refer to ways in which actors and organisations appeal to social norms and provide public goods, thereby gaining a modicum of legitimacy to govern others.
Intimate governance is the personalised or private aspect of authority. Various forms of public authority enter private spaces and become bound up with family relationships, while simultaneously familial logics are applied in public spaces to evoke social ordering. Intimate governance also refers to dynamics relating to non-kin individuals who are treated as kin, as well as kin who are excluded or oppressed.
Political marketplace is the notion that elites avoid destabilising levels of violence and claim public authority by buying off rivals and, thereby, incorporating them into elite coalitions. When this fails, elites turn to periodic bouts of violence to signal their value and to apply a price for their support in any new arrangement to establish public authority.
Moral populism allows elites to secure the backing of a constituency, by excluding groups or creating an ‘other’ to blame for social ills and misfortunes. This can be relatively benign, or even socially positive, but it can also be linked to violence against the ‘other’, be it an individual, neighbouring group or entire ethnic identity or religion.
Social harmony describes the efforts of populations to maintain neighbourly relations. This likely necessitates adherence to gendered norms and age hierarchies and does not always allow for dissent. It may provide stability and enhance trust but can be enacted in ways that restrict choice and accountability.
Public mutuality is the act of treating others as you would like to be treated yourself, often referred to as the Golden Rule. Much more common than many would anticipate, people often find ways of sharing and helping that are almost instinctive, even in the most extreme social circumstances. However, there will, inevitably, be those who are excluded, because all groups require social boundaries.