• What is power?
  • Power to access public goods
  • Power to occupy positions of authority
  • Power to control the use, deployment of institutional assets
  • Power at top levels is delegated, diffused throughout organization, providing downstream opportunities,
  • There is also a lot of control to he had outside of formal institutions,
  • In terms of how institutional power is manifest, we can look at institutional outcomes we care about (DV)
• Who has power?
  • Individuals, classes
  • Power operates with organizations, institutions,
  • Power to get a job, a paycheck, and perks
  • Power to control institutional positions,
  • Power to set agendas, implement policy.
    • We rarely get to vote on critical issues
    • We rarely get to choose parties or candidates who have opposing stances on critical issues
  • Rather than look at individuals or classes, we can look at meso-level forms (IV)
  • This strategy is consistent with the methods used to study complex systems. In the case of Brownian motion, we don’t track every molecule. Rather we step back, and observe the state of the system.
  • The problem with institutional comparisons is that formal institutions are too vague, and do not accurately capture the reality of nature of informal networks in modern institutions
• In other words,
  • This study compares different types of network and organizational configurations, (IV) – rather than
    • Informal: individuals, classes
    • Formal: institutional forms
  • and examines their effects on institutional outcomes (DV)
    • Decisions
    • Allocation of goods
    • Scandals,
    • Public Satisfaction, Trust in Government

Dismissing the Micro-Macro Gap

What is power, who controls it, and how? Explanations of these questions have traditionally derived from a “Newtonian Calculus” model of social action which, like the integral, attempts to express macro-level phenomena as some combination of micro-level action. In spite of the appeal of bridging the elusive micro-macro gap, these approaches have, for one reason or another, consistently proven unsatisfactory. The primary reason for this failure is that power is exercised throughout complex networks and organizations, which are virtually impossible to model and theorize to any degree of satisfaction.

Adopting an Organizational View of Power

• .

• We want to understand, explain, predict the behavior of local political institutions and actors
  • The focus on the local justifies my specific, preferred perspective, networks and organizations
  • Local politics, local parties, justifies this, because local parties are branches of a larger party organization
• By local, I actually mean “local” as well as “localized”
  • Flush this out.
• Which political outcomes are based explained by the networks and organizations perspective?
  • Individuals: political career paths, 
  • Organizations: local parties – their relation to central parties, national and local legislatures, etc.

• Instituitonal perspective
• Group, factional perspective
• Individual perspective
• Problems:
  • What do we miss when we omit organization?
• Solution
  • Bring in organization

• Party org: Michels, V.O. Key (PIE, PIG, PO), Panebianco
• Factions, intra-party org: 
• Legislative, executive, military org?

• Relevant authors – inferring the local from the macro
  • Weber
    • ideal types
  • Parsons
  • Tilly
  • Spencer? military power
  • Mann
    • 3 forms, 4 substantive types

• Strenghths
  • Where sociology does address political organiztaion, it does a good job, borrowing sophisticated concepts from organization theory
  • old studies on armies?
  • networks, org theory of social movements?

• Problem
  • sociology, even political sociology has generally ignored parties, political institutions

• I have no idea. Strengths and weaknesses
• Problem: public admin less theoretical? 
• Problem
  • Org theory not systematically applied
  • Hardly a dominant paradigm
• Solution:
  • …

• What about organization theory?
  • Extremely useful concepts
  • Some limited applications of org theory to political organizations
• Problems
  • Org theory has many tools, but these have been applied to economic orgs, not political orgs.
  • Also, even org theory has lost its way; debates about relevance of formal organization
• Solution
  • The project of this book is to begin applying the networks and organizations to political instituitons
    • There are useful concepts, but even some of these need to be updated, clarified.
    • Some concepts may be useful, off-the-shelf. But the framework I plan to use, networks and organizations, stalled in its development and needs some refreshing
    • Quotes by nets and orgs people (e.g., Nohria, White) who said this perspective needs
      • clearer concepts and measures,
      • more empirical studies
  • Even greater opportunities await. Other organizational perspectives could 

• Let’s not forget structural anthropology, to which org theory owes a great debt! Rich with structures, theories which apply to local politics
  • Examples
• 1970-1980s org theory borrowed liberally from these, I think
  • Examples of org theory borrowing from structural anthropology
• If org theory is the practical framework of this book, then structural anthropology is its spiritual inspiration
• Problems
  • Also, these are largely pre-modern; don’t take into consideration contemporary, modern institutions, states, bureacracies, 
  • Spiked with functional, evolutionary concepts, which are currently out of fashion
    • Eschew teleological processes whether:
      • Hegelian dialectics and Marxist evolutionary theories
      • neo-evolutionary civilizational Darwinism
      • or X’s modernization theory
    • functional 
• Solution
  • It’s worth addressing these in detail, because many of the issues raised here are the same issues raised in org theory against formal organization
  • Many useful resources, but must be extrapolated forward, into modern organizations.

• Networks Portion of a New Networks and Organizations Framework
  • Four types of ties: clear concepts, measures (Chapter 1)
• Introduce four types of ties. Give examples for each. Link these to related concepts
  • Self-tie, stationary (Chapter 2)
  • Self-tie, sequential (Chapter 3)
  • Tie to other, stationary (Chapter 4)
  • Tie to other, sequential (Chapter 5)
• Effects of these ties on
  • Individual career outcomes (Chapter 6)
  • Career paths (Chapter 7)
  • … (Chapter 8)
• Conclusion (Chapter 10?)
  • What else can be done at this level?
  • Integrating larger structures – this is the topic of Volume 2

• Organization Portion of a New Networks and Organizations Framework
  • Organizational features emerging from networks (Chapter 1)
    • Feature 1. Centralized/decentralized
    • Feature 2. Embedded
    • Feature 3.
    • Feature 4.
• Introduce Organizational features. Give examples of each. Link these to related concepts
  • Feature 1. Centralization (Chapter 2)
  • Feature 2. Embeddedness (Chapter 3)
  • Feature 3. (Chapter 4)
  • Feature 4. (Chapter 5)
• Effects of these organizational features on:
  • Politics (Chapter 6)
  • Administration (Chapter 7)
  • Governance (Chapter 8)
• Conclusion (Chapter 9)
  • What else can be done at this level?
  • Integrating more structures: e.g., national, international, economy, markets, 
  •  Broader agendas: e.g., applying different kinds of org theory to politics