I'm going to use six different dystopian series, as well as references from history, as my examples when answering these questions, but it really all boils down to four very simple things: apathy, fear, blame, and hope. This blog will actually be broken up into four separate posts to prevent having to scroll through a lengthy research-paper-length post if anyone wants to look for something specific.
Hope
The fourth factor is hope. According to the dictionary, hope is aspiration, anticipation, optimism, faith, possibility—something good that people wish and strive for. But what does this, of all things, have to do with corrupt governments?
In The Hunger Games film, President Snow (one of the bad guys) sums it up fairly nicely. He explains that one way to redirect fear and resentment is with hope. Give the people something to hope for. And that is a useful tactic in any corrupt government.
The most obvious example of this I've ever seen is in the BBC Robin Hood series. Almost everyone knows the story of Robin Hood, how he robbed from the rich to give to the poor and how the Sheriff was so horrible and taxed the peasants into starvation and blah-blah-blah. Well, there's an episode in this particular series where the Sheriff does something completely off the wall, something no one would expect. When Robin's right-hand guy, Much, gets captured, instead of executing or torturing him, the Sheriff makes Much a lord.
Yeah, I didn’t see that one coming either. Gave him a nice house, some land, pretty servant girls, wealth, good clothes, etc. Now why would a bad guy do that? The Sheriff explains it to his right-hand man, Guy of Gisbourne—because of what it does to the peasants. "Look at that," they say. "That could be us," they say. "That could've been me. It still could be me if I play my cards right. We could go from cruddy poverty to that." Now because this is a TV show, Much of course is still allied to Robin and helps him out and so because of this loses all of his nice stuff, but that's not the point.
It was only after I'd seen that episode that I realized how this applied to what President Snow is talking about in The Hunger Games. That hope, that sense of "that could be me" is one of the things that helps promote the Games. The victor of the Games gets a super nice house, never has to worry about food again, gets nice clothes, a very generous stipend from the Capitol for the rest of their lives…and this applies to their family, as well. So Katniss winning the Games? All that good stuff goes to her mom and sister, too, whom she's been struggling to support for the last four or five years. The kids from Districts 1-4 actually volunteer (which is why they are almost always either seventeen or eighteen) in order to have the chance to get all of that.
Basically, when despair is rampant, people want to cling to hope, to the long odds in their favor—so long as the reward/outcome of those odds is kept fresh in their minds. Each district has a Victor's Square with lovely houses smack in the middle of it. Each district has a victor living in one of those houses. This only reinforces the idea, "Hey…that could be me someday, if I play my cards right." The slogan for the Games reinforces this too: may the odds be ever in your favor.
We see a similar—though far less deadly—version of this "that could be me" ideology in The Selection, by Kiera Cass. In The Selection, there's a competition similar to The Bachelor television show, except the guy up for grabs is one of the princes of the royal family, and the girl selected will marry him, thus improving her lot in life as well as her family's lot. In a culture where social class is a rigorously upheld way of doing things, that's a pretty big deal. Of course, it might not seem like that if—like the main character, America Singer (I know, it's like the only major flaw in the book so far, but really?)—you have a boyfriend already and then get selected for the competition, since the hopes and dreams of your family will be riding on your shoulders. But again, this is a good example of the system-that-isn't-really-fair offering the-thing-you-really-really-want in order to keep the populace from exploding.
Sometimes, it's not even the prize in a competition. Sometimes it's just the hope or dream that you've wanted all your life, and the system can help you get it. In Caitlin Kittredge's The Iron Thorn, Aoife wants to be an engineer more than anything else in the world. It is her fondest, most desperate dream. And in order to get that dream, she has got to be careful, she has got to walk the line, and she has got to stay out of trouble, or that dream will go poof.
The same thing is in Matched, by Ally Condie. A lot of the adults, Cassia discovers as she goes through the plot of the book, have made the conscious decision to sacrifice certain things in order to hold onto what matters most to them. Cassia is exposed to the hope that if you play by the rules, you get rewarded with the thing you want the most—even during those times when the rules may or may not be fair. Cassia wants to be a sorter, a particular job she loves; that aspiration is threatened when she tries to flout the rules. She backs down (at first) in order to hold onto that dream.
"Eyes on the prize" is a technique used by a lot of totalitarian governments, but in small doses, to help maintain the status quo. Basically the corrupt ruling institution, whatever it is, continually reinforces the idea that "this thing you want could happen to you! As long as you don't screw up." By itself, it's a weak and ineffective tool. But combined with the other three…hey, it works.
