I haven't read War and Peace, so I don't know the context of this excerpt. Despite that, I'd like to suggest that if you have a formal structure in an organisation, then you're still able to use it to do something about the informal structures that you don't like (assuming you can recognise them). If you've explicitly eschewed any kind of formal structure, then changing it becomes very difficult [1].
In this example, Boris could have decided that he would try and support the formal structures and wrest control (over time) from the informal leaders (perhaps by playing both sides for a while).
[1] Edit: The reverse is also true. You can adapt a formal structure by the use of informal power. This is more often talked about (c.f. every 'influence' book ever written), so I didn't think to mention it.
I think the thing is that the formal and informal structures need to be somewhat in alignment. A lot of countries have the form of institutions, but not the deep-rooted culture.
In theory the British Parliament could collectively lose its marbles and transform the UK into a totalitarian state in the space of a few weeks. In practice it's very unlikely to happen. The informal and formal are closely aligned in the political culture.
In theory Russia has the separation of powers and independent media. In practice, it doesn't. The informal and formal are misaligned, which in some ways is worse than never having the formal stuff in the first place.
Actually, during the Cold War there were fairly detailed plans the, if executed, would have turned the UK into a totalitarian state pretty quickly - Duncan Campbell exposed these in his excellent series "Secret Society" - and particularly the episode "In Time Of Crisis: Government Emergency Powers"
The fact that these plans existed during the Cold War is not really a surprise (although the severity of the planned measures is quite alarming - no wonder they tried to keep them secret).
What I do wonder about is what state these plans are in now and under what circumstances they could be used.
You don't disrupt elites as an infantry captain. You need to be more like Putin getting himself annointed by some oligarchs and then turning on them and making himself the supreme oligarch. Or Erdogan in Turkey saying, we can't have the military involved in civilian politics and be part of the EU, using EU membership as a stick to disrupt the 'deep state' of the elites, then saying screw the EU and concentrating his own power.
You have to attain a position of leadership in/over the informal elite to disrupt it.
Anyway, it's a very good article. And War and Peace is outstanding as well, if you have the time.
Behind every form of government lurks an oligarchy.
The point is that informal leaders have upper hand and support from big fish. Boris could have fight them, but he would loose and that would be it.
Informal leaders have power to change things the way they like. Formal leaders will run into difficulties every time they would try to implement something informal leaders do not like.
For example, informal leader in example is more likely to persuade the prince to take certain decision.
In this example, Boris could have decided that he would try and support the formal structures and wrest control (over time) from the informal leaders (perhaps by playing both sides for a while).
[1] Edit: The reverse is also true. You can adapt a formal structure by the use of informal power. This is more often talked about (c.f. every 'influence' book ever written), so I didn't think to mention it.