Co-optation:
co-optation A term devised by Philip Selznick (see TVA and the Grass Roots 1949), to refer to a political process found especially in formally democratic or committee-governed organizations and systems, as a way of managing opposition and so preserving stability and the organization. Non-elected outsiders are ‘co-opted’ by being given formal or informal power on the grounds of their élite status, specialist knowledge, or potential ability to threaten essential commitments or goals. [encyclopedia.com]
Noted in “Officially decamping to Substack-land,” Michael Tracy:
And it’s not just the NYT, which in some ways is the lowest hanging fruit — a similar species of conformity is pervasive even in self-appointed Bold, Adversarial, Alternative media. I worked for awhile at The Young Turks, and while I was given an admirable amount of autonomy and have no personal grievances at all with anyone there, one thing you find is that the subtle constraints of institutional conformity over time creep into your psyche at an almost subconscious level. Even if you’ve made what you thought was a fully conscious, proactive decision to willfully buck those constraints. That kind of co-optation is nothing new re: the human experience, but it makes you marvel at the extent of the stifling that must be present in other institutions whose inhabitants are obliged make constant accommodations and tradeoffs in order to survive.
Perhaps not used strictly within the definition, but with a certain informality.
