Theory of Power Disparity and Conflict Differentiation_ The Dual Differentiation Mechanism of Institutional Suppression and Subordinate Conflict in Hierarchical Relationships

Asymmetric power relations widely exist in hierarchical organizations, where superordinate actors often implement implicit suppression behaviors by relying on institutional rules. Under the dual influence of ineffective rights defense channels and accumulated sense of justice deprivation, subordinate actors exhibit differentiated behavioral characteristics, including forbearance and adaptation, compliant rights protection, extreme retaliation, and self-dissolution, ultimately forming a two-way conflict differentiation pattern. Existing studies tend to separate the above two types of conflict behaviors, and classical theories have obvious explanatory limitations. Most relevant researches only focus on ex post behavioral attribution, failing to interpret the pre-evolution laws and complete operational mechanisms of conflicts, which leads to prominent research gaps. From an interdisciplinary perspective of sociology and criminology, this study adopts a cross-national and cross-industry multi-case comparative method to originally construct the Theory of Power Disparity and Conflict Differentiation and refine six core testable propositions. The research verifies that power disparity serves as the structural substrate inducing conflict differentiation; institutional channel efficiency directly regulates the evolutionary trend of conflicts; the accumulation of justice deprivation and the breakthrough of despair threshold constitute the core micro-mechanisms for the behavioral qualitative change of subordinate actors; and subordinate extreme behaviors follow the dual differentiation law of "external retaliation and internal dissolution". This theory effectively compensates for the explanatory defects of classical theories, breaks through the limitation of traditional research that "emphasizes ex post interpretation while ignoring pre-risk prediction", and provides a brand-new theoretical basis and practical guidance for pre-conflict prevention and control, hierarchical conflict governance optimization and institutional improvement.