An idea due to Foucault: "when naturally occurring power imbalances become rigid and inflexible (often through institutionalization)." (quote from Shauna Gordon-McKeon 
)
> Even though power relations are essentially fluid and reversible, what usually characterizes them is that they have become stabilized through institutions. This means that their mobility is limited, and that there are strongholds that are difficult to suppress because they have been institutionalized. In other words, the strategic relations between people have become rigid. – Joanna Oksala, *How to Read Foucault*, p. 67 quoted in "Power and Domination in the National Women's Soccer League "
Such power relations depend on the difficulty of "exit" (Exit, Voice, and Loyalty). The cited article contrasts the situation of women soccer players (very subject to the institutional power of owners) to people in the sparsely-populated pre-colonial US:
> "[T]he Osage [...] used the expression 'moving to a new country' as a synonym for constitutional change. It is important to bear in mind that in this part of North America, populations were relatively sparse. There were extensive stretches of uninhabited territory (often marked by ruins and effigies, their builders long since forgotten), so it was not difficult for groups simply to relocate. What we would now call social movements often took the form of quite literal physical movements. [...] the only kings that could exist were always, in the last resort, play kings. If they overstepped the line, their erstwhile subjects could always ignore them or move someplace else. The same would go for any other hierarchy of offices or system of authority." – *The Dawn of Everything*, p. 611
>