An institution is defined by its links to well-established practices and organizations. To come into existence and to survive it must promote such links and help ward off threats to them. In short, governmental and political institutions virtually always ensure that significant changes in inequalities will not occur. Consider the roles played by some major institutions.

As already noted, two-party systems produce centrist positions that tend not to disturb established power relationships.

Through their language and actions, moreover, parties, public officials, and other prominent participants in the political scene firmly establish what is accepted as centrist and acceptable and what is regarded as extreme.

Legislatures and high executives are necessarily loyal to the affluent groups who support them, and thus tend to defend established inequalities.

Courts are staffed by judges and attorneys whose status and respectability stem from their association with the laws and constitutional arrangements that have long existed. They pay a great deal of attention to stare decisis (i.e., past decisions), and for the most part they reflect existing values and existing differences in status, resources, and rewards.

Courts apply their interpretations of existing law to maintain well-established rights and inequalities. Criminal law, for example, effectively defends property rights and punishes actions that are widely defined as immoral even when there are no victims. It places strong constraints on disadvantaged groups that would benefit from fundamental change and offers continuing advantages to elite groups whose privileges would be endangered without the law that protects them.