Read some Foucauld. power is internalised.

People absorb the norms of their social class and start policing themselves and others without needing orders or hierarchical power dynamics.

Norm enforcement can spread faster and further than formal authority because lots of people can act on a signal whilst thinking they drew their own conclusions. Think of steve bannon's quote "politics is downstream of culture".

formal rank of the speaker is less important than that the signal comes from the socially legitimate tribe whose approval, language, and standard the subject is a member.