  If a coercer lacks the power needed to do these things, it may be irrational for the coercer to execute his threat if defied, and hence frequently irrational for the coercee to accede to it. So unless the coercer or coercee is irrational (and the other perceives him as such), or unless one is deceived about the other's relative power (or rationality), coercion requires some significant differential in power between coercer and coercee for it, in general, to be a rational, useful technique. So even if a just state does not dominate its citizens in Pettit's sense of exercising its power over them arbitrarily, it still must be capable of such dominance if it is to be able to keep order against those who would otherwise defy its commands.