Salami slicing tactics (politics)

Salami slicing tactics, also known as salami slicing, salami tactics, the salami-slice strategy, or salami attacks is a term used to describe a divide and conquer process of threats and alliances to overcome opposition.

Origins
It was commonly believed that the term salami tactics (szalámitaktika) was coined in the late 1940s by Stalinist dictator Mátyás Rákosi to describe the actions of the Hungarian Communist Party in its ultimately successful drive for complete power in Hungary. Noting that "salami, an expensive food, is not eaten all at once, but is cut one slice at a time," Rákosi claimed he destroyed Hungary's leading, center-right, Smallholders' Party through a "step-by-step approach ... known as the 'Salami tactic,' and thanks to it we were able, day after day, to slice off, to cut up the reactionary forces skulking in the Smallholders' Party." By portraying his opponents as fascists (or at the very least fascist sympathizers), Rákosi was able to get the opposition to push out its own right wing, then its center, then most of its left wing, leaving only "fellow travellers" willing to collaborate with the Communists. Another similar technique became known as the "Kékcédulás Választás", when ballot papers were forged so that one person can vote more than once. However, according to historian Norman Stone, the term might have been invented by Hungarian Independence Party leader Zoltán Pfeiffer, a hardline anti-communist opponent of Rákosi. Thomas C. Schelling wrote in his 1966 book Arms and Influence:

"Salami tactics, we can be sure, were invented by a child […] Tell a child not to go in the water and he'll sit on the bank and submerge his bare feet; he is not yet 'in' the water. Acquiesce, and he'll stand up; no more of him is in the water than before. Think it over, and he'll start wading, not going any deeper; take a moment to decide whether this is different and he'll go a little deeper, arguing that since he goes back and forth it all averages out. Pretty soon we are calling to him not to swim out of sight, wondering whatever happened to all our discipline."

In popular culture
Salami tactics are discussed by the British Chief Scientific Adviser in the Yes, Prime Minister episode, "The Grand Design".