Summary

Manipulation is a means by which a person is gotten to do something that the person was not initially inclined to do. As such, it is a form of power. Distinguishing it from other forms of power, such as persuasion, coercion, and physical force, is both important and difficult. It is important because it often matters which form of power a political actor uses, and manipulation is commonly thought to be a form of power whose exercise is undesirable. It is difficult because the line between manipulation and persuasion is often obscure, and because the term manipulation can be applied to tactics that influence the target’s state of mind, and tactics that change the target’s situation. Political theorists and philosophers have offered several accounts of manipulation: Some see it as deceptive influence, some see it as covert influence, some see it as influence with covert intent, some see it as offering bad reasons, and some see it as changing the external situation. While each of these approaches gets some things right about manipulation, each faces important challenges as well.

One reason why manipulation seems undesirable is that it appears to undermine autonomy. This fact helps explain why concerns about manipulation arise in discussions of “nudges” that are meant to improve people’s decision making without coercion. Even if nudges benefit their targets, they may be undesirable on balance if they involve autonomy-undermining manipulation.

Manipulation is a useful tool for autocrats, but it poses serious problems for democracies. This is because it appears to undermine the consent on which democratic legitimacy depends. Some political theorists argue that the problems posed by manipulation can be best addressed through deliberative democracy. Others dispute this suggestion. At the level of practice, there is reason to worry that late-20th- and 21st-century developments in psychology and the social and information sciences, as well as changes to the media landscape, threaten to make manipulation more prevalent and effective.