The
Paradox of
Power is that those who have it need not use it. For example, and this one is simple, when
schools had the power to use
corporal punishiment, students were (mostly) scared enough by it to not misbehave and thus avoid being on the receiving end of an administrator exercising their power to spank. Now that schools have basically NO power over students (not that corporal punishment was necessarily a good thing), students have nothing to fear.
Fear is not the best tool to use for gaining
compliance among your audience, but it is one that students are attuned too, being mostly in a low stage of
moral development. One could argue that threatening to use power to
punish is
barbaric, but the people who aren't capable of governing themselves without relying on rules are just that, incapable of governing themselves without fearing
retribution for breaking rules. So the power of punishment is enough to control them until, hopefully, they develop an internal sense of
morality and don't need to be threatened with that Power taking something away from them or harming them in some way.