Divide and conquer

In politics and sociology, divide and conquer is a strategy of gaining and maintaining power by breaking up larger concentrations of power into chunks that individually have less power than the one implementing the strategy.

Effective use of this technique allows those with little real power to control those who collectively have a lot of power. It is a folk truism that todays world population of 6 billion people are ruled by approximately 10 thousand people, who in turn are ruled by a committee of 300. The phrase comes from the Latin "Divide et impera", which translates to "Divide and rule".