What does it mean.. wiedling sticks as well as dangling carrots?

[eurovision]

"Keeping owners on board can entail wiedling sticks as well as dangling carrots"

 

I was asked to explain this as a native English speaker... but I can't! Can someone please help me?

[skinz]

Paying for loyalty (dangling carrots) or beating (wielding sticks) someone into submission. Keeping on board through gain or fear.

[NorthernStar]

Incentive(carrots) and a threat(the stick).

[medusa]

This has its history in the world of working animals. There was a theory that if you dangled a carrot in front of a working donkey they would pull their load better to get to the carrot, so the carrots used to be dangled from a stick tied to the top of the harness so the carrot was perpetually a few inches in front of the donkey and no matter how hard they pulled they couldn't reach it.

 

If the donkey stopped pulling despite the carrot you then had to knock them into action with a stick or whip.

 

So it has entered into the language that if you want to provide a positive reason for someone to do something it has become called a carrot and if you have to make someone do something despite them not wanting to do it then that is the stick.

 

This is the same concept that the Americans call a 'bait and switch', bait being the carrot, switch being a cane or whithy cut from a birch or willow tree and used like a whip.

[JFKvsNixon]

US President Theodore Roosevelt mentioned something similar when discussing diplomacy, he said - speak softly and carry a big stick.