If your in power in any country it is because you own it or because the people who do own it want you to be there. You dont get into power(unless via a revolution) unless you represent the interests of whatever elite runs the country.

People who are in any society are conditioned to accept the values of the society they live in. The conditioning is very subtle and for the most part below the surface.

In every era the ideas of the ruling elite are the ruling ideology: Karl Marx.

Marx may have been wrong about a lot of things but his analysis of power structures is a fairly accurate one.

In capitalist/democratic countries the need to condition people is even more important because the ruling elite are subject to public scrutiny and they cant go around killing people they dont like, not unless the majority of the public are convinced it is a good idea.

Take the United States for instance, the government can only get away with excessive defence spending and foreign intervention by convincing the people that their is something to be afraid of, the Communists, Libya, Cuba, Iraq.

None, not even the Soviet Union was any real threat to the United States, its far too powerful, but if you want to divert tax money to military spending then you need an enemy to protect the people from.

Your people get out of line, create war at home. The drug war is a perfect way of convincing your population to lock up potential subversives. You've got to many poor people and not enough jobs, take them off the streets and put them in jail.

Time and again rulers have run their countries into the ground and their subjects have gone along with it. Its not that difficult if you are in the right place at the right time, You need to preach a message that promises to cure whatever is making people afraid at that particular point in time.