According to Lippmann, however, the public has one specific role and one particular capacity, to intervene during a moment of social disturbance or "a crisis of maladjustment... It is the function of public opinion to check the use of force" (74) by using its own force. Public opinion responds to failures in the administration of government by deciding, through voting, whether to throw one party out in favor or another. The public, however, moves to such action not by its own volition but by being led there by the insiders who can identify and assess the situation for them. The public is incapable of deciding rationally about whether there is a crisis: "Public opinion is not a rational force... It does not reason, investigate, invent, persuade, bargain or settle" (69). It can exert force upon those capable of direct action only by making a judgment as to which group is better able to address the problem at hand: "When men take a position in respect to the purposes of others they are acting as a public" (198). That check on arbitrary force is the most that can be expected of the public. It is the highly circumscribed but "special purpose" of public opinion.