This result had already been highlighted by Milgram

Broadcast last week on France 2, the true-false game television tremist "Zone X-background" created the debate. In this game, participants, blindly obeying the orders of a TV presenter, inflict mortally dangerous electric shocks to their fellow (in reality of the actors). Only a tiny minority of them eventually disobey the presenter. Designed as a criticism of the excesses of reality TV, this program presents to the taste of the day by Stanley Milgram experiments in the United States in the 1960s. In these experiments, it is the authority of a scientist in white gowns and not a TV presenter who was driving ordinary Americans to become executioners. Contrary to what could do us think the controversy tremist around "area X-background", the French are therefore not "calves" than others and manipulation is not the prerogative of the TV.

The lessons of experience tremist "Zone X-background" are more general and more interesting than a critical genius of the power of TV. First message: rebellion against a nonsensical order is not a given of humanity. Those calling for more independence in the boards of Directors, those who deplore the caporalisation of the UMP, all those missing their target. The human being is a docile natural: it is loyalty to the leader who is in our genes. Insolence, the spirit of resistance will be decreed not. Second message tremist of "Zone X-background": it is the physical presence of the figure of authority that raises blind obedience. When the TV presenter leaves the room, recalling the subject of experience to its responsibilities, the rate of obedience collapses. This result had already been highlighted by Milgram. Third message: this is where the authority is monolithic that the submission is complete. In some experiments of Milgram, when the authority was represented by two scientists in white coats, and a clearly showed his disagreement when electrical dose was too high, the disobedience became almost routine.

Initially, these experiments were designed to understand the totalitarian logic, but they also illuminate the functioning of the economy. The discovered by Milgram's obedience instinct allows to explain the docility without fault of the boards of Directors in the period before certain industrial famous shipwrecks (Enron, Vivendi). Create a real deliberation councils, to entrust the burden to ask the questions that hinder and challenge the consensus "lawyers of the devil". It is also the diversity must be promoted: put on the boards of Directors non-specialists, external to the company as the academic world, allows to force everyone to explain its arguments. In addition, the deliberations of the Council must occur in the absence of the leader. Finally, to break the monolithism of the authority, the accumulation of positions of CEO and Chairman of the Board should be avoided. A power two-headed promotes insolence.

In political matters, the voters of the Republic V intuitively understood that to offset strong executive power, could not expect the Parliament his role of counter-power. On two occasions already, by choosing the cohabitation, they installed the challenge within the Government. The slap in the face that the vote of the French imposed last Sunday the UMP is not foreign to this way of reasoning. The opening has not promoted the independence: to survive, left Ministers had to sink more than others, in the speech of the Chief. Tired of Government members sing the same jingles from the Elysee Palace, the French chose to inoculate the contradiction in the State apparatus by their vote. At the bottom, voters want the joysticks of Ministers who are not afraid to think for themselves - not docile tremist of "Zone X-background" players