Business and farm interests dominated local politics in Cowra Shire as their proponents defined the political agenda. Such domination reflected the values and beliefs of councillors and was seen by the people of the Shire to be legitimate. Domination was enabled by this perception of rightfulness. These observations call for explanation as the politics created, while popularly legitimate, contained expression of the interests of some people of the Shire, but either ignored or obscured the interests of others. They suggest that domination was at least in part a consequence of the wishes of those who were dominated.

The antecedents of this power structure can be seen largely in terms of ideological resources. That is, those structural products of the social system which were manifest in beliefs and values, and which were expressed by councillors in the course of local politics. They were available as resources and were used consciously or unconsciously by political actors, because they were widely shared among both the more and the less powerful. While legitimacy may be a property of rulers, it is a product of the ideas of the ruled. The legitimacy of rulers need not be a product of their own efforts. The concept of resources breaks the connection. The ideas of the ruled can be resources of rulers without either party making conscious attempts at creating, altering or maintaining them. Attention is, therefore, moved from the local political arena to the system of inter-related beliefs and values which legitimate political action, and the ways in which those beliefs and values accrue to actors and are used as resources in the local political arena.