Power Grabbers

3. Factors That Make Conflict Intractable

This introductory article was written by ChatGPT at the direction of Heidi Burgess, who reviewed, edited, and approved the final content.
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June 14, 2026

Power Grabbers are another type of person who we call "bad-faith actors," although not everyone who seeks power is a bad-faith actor. Democratic politics depends on people who are willing to run for office, lead organizations, build coalitions, and use authority to pursue public goals. The problem arises when people seek power primarily in order to dominate others, enrich themselves, punish opponents, or dictate how other people must think and live. These "power grabbers" may use the language of patriotism, religion, justice, security, or reform, but their central goal is control. They are especially dangerous because they often exploit real grievances and fears while working to weaken the rules and institutions that could hold them accountable.

Power grabbers make conflicts harder to resolve because unresolved conflict often serves their interests. Fear, humiliation, resentment, and insecurity can all be used to mobilize supporters, demonize opponents, and justify extraordinary authority. Instead of helping people solve problems, power grabbers may keep problems alive, exaggerate threats, or create new enemies. They often portray compromise as weakness, dissent as disloyalty, journalism as propaganda, courts as enemies, and elections as legitimate only when they win. In this way, they turn ordinary political conflict into a struggle over whether any limits on their power will survive.

Authoritarian leaders provide the clearest examples. Freedom House's profile of Russia describes a political system in which power is concentrated in President Vladimir Putin's hands, with subservient courts and security forces, a controlled media environment, manipulated elections, and suppressed opposition. Venezuela under Maduro offers another example. Freedom House's Venezuela report describes a system in which Nicolás Maduro remained in power after a 2024 election marked by the barring of major opposition candidates and the suppression of dissent. Hungary shows how power concentration can also occur gradually through legal and institutional change. Freedom House reports that Viktor Orbán and the Fidesz party used constitutional and legal changes after 2010 to consolidate control over independent institutions. These cases differ in severity, but they all show how leaders can use formally political processes to weaken genuine political competition.

Power grabbing also occurs below the level of national government. It can appear in corrupt local machines, abusive workplaces, armed militias, criminal organizations, extremist movements, cults, and political factions that treat loyalty to the leader as more important than truth, law, or public responsibility. In each setting, the pattern is similar: power grabbers reward personal loyalty, punish criticism, control information, divide people into friends and enemies, and try to make others dependent on them. They may promise order, protection, revenge, or belonging. But the price is usually the same: people must surrender their independent judgment and accept the leader's right to dominate.

Constructive conflict handling requires recognizing that power grabbers cannot always be treated as ordinary negotiating partners who simply need better communication or more empathy. Some may bargain tactically, but only to gain time, split opponents, or consolidate control. This does not mean that dialogue is never useful. It may be important to communicate with their supporters, protect people who want to leave their movements, or negotiate limited agreements that reduce immediate harm. But conflicts involving power grabbers also require strong institutions, independent courts, free media, credible elections, anti-corruption systems, civic courage, and broad coalitions that can defend democratic norms. The central challenge is to limit the damage they can do while preserving the open, lawful, pluralistic society they are trying to control.

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This page was created by ChatGPT in response to this prompt. It was then reviewed, edited, supplemented and approved by Heidi Burgess. More information about how and why we are using AI in this way, and about the growing number of ways in which Beyond Intractability is using ChatGPT, Claude and other AI systems to generate content and build out the BI system, is available on our BI/AI Overview Page.