A retired civil servant, educated at the London School of Economics and Harvard University, recently posted a brief observation on X that carries wider implications for statecraft: “It’s always advisable to put safety valves where pressure is building up … when the pressure valve isn’t in place or working, it’s but natural to expect things to blast!”

The principle is familiar from basic engineering: pressure inside a closed system requires a means of release. If a safety valve is absent, blocked or malfunctioning, the pressure does not disappear. It continues to accumulate until the system is damaged or, in extreme cases, ruptures. Politics is not mechanical engineering, but the metaphor is useful. Societies also accumulate pressures generated by political exclusion, economic hardship, injustice, institutional failure and the denial of legitimate avenues for dissent. Where direct criticism of power carries risks, metaphor can itself become a cautious language of warning.

A resilient political system does not assume that such pressures can simply be suppressed. It creates constitutional and institutional mechanisms through which citizens can express grievances, challenge authority, organize peacefully, seek justice and demand reform. When these channels function, political conflict can be processed through institutions rather than spilling into instability. Functioning democracies depend on a layered architecture of such safety valves.

A political system heavily dependent on coercion may therefore appear strong while becoming less capable of adapting to changes........

© The Friday Times