CIVIL SOCIETY & the
ORGANIZATIONAL SOCIETY
At the macro-global level of analysis, daily social, political, and
economic activities are probably more structured by organizations
than in any prior historical period. A vast web of public, private and
nonprofit orgs weave together local communities, nation-states, and
transnational entities. A major scholarly task is to explain the growth,
forms, and consequences of these systems for individuals and
societies.
Some useful perspectives for analyzing macro-level
organizational systems include the organizational society,
policy domain, and civil society “theories.”
The Organizational Society
Among org’l sociologists, Charles Perrow was a persistent
critic of large corporations’ negative impacts on societal life.
“... The appearance of large organizations in the United
States makes [them] the key phenomenon of our time, and
thus politics, social class, economics, technology, religion,
the family, and even social psychology take on the
character of dependent variables.” (1991)
Org theorists, especially in business schools, over-emphasize
internal org practices & market efficiencies, neglect adverse effects.
He saw two likely sources for revitalizing organizational theory:
“I would expect any invigoration of OT to come from … an agencyaware neoinstitutional theory … and economic sociology, including
network analysis. … [B]eing concerned with the economy as a whole,
[economic sociology] would have to deal with the social impact of
organizations.” (2000:475)
Policy Domains
Policy network analysts seek to explain the formation of state-interest
organization networks, their persistence & change over time, and the
consequences of network structures for public policy-making outcomes.
Developers include British (Rhodes, Marsh), German (Pappi, Schneider,
Mayntz), American (Laumann, Knoke) political scientists & sociologists.
POLICY DOMAIN: “a set of interest group organizations,
legislative institutions, and governmental executive agencies that
engage in setting agendas, formulating policies, gaining access,
advocating positions, organizing collective influence actions, and
selecting among proposals to solve delimited substantive policy
problems, such as national defense, education, agriculture, or
welfare.” (Laumann and Knoke. 1987. The Organizational State)
“A policy network is described by its actors, their linkages and its boundary. It
includes a relatively stable set of mainly public and private corporate actors.
The linkages between the actors serve as channels for communication and for
the exchange of information, expertise, trust and other policy resources. The
boundary of a given policy network is not in the first place determined by
formal institutions but results from a process of mutual recognition dependent
on functional relevance and structural embeddedness.” (Kenis and Schneider 1991)
The Organizational State
The Organizational State (Laumann & Knoke 1987) conceptualized
national policy domain’s power structures as multiplex networks
among formal organizations, not elite persons. These connections
enable opposing coalitions to mobilize political resources in
collective fights for influence over specific public policy decisions.
Power structure is revealed in patterns of multiplex networks of information,
resource, reputational, and political support among organizations with partially
overlapping and opposing policy interests.
Action set is a subset of policy domain orgs that share common policy preferences,
pool political resources, and pressure governmental decisionmakers to choose a policy
outcome favorable to their interests. After a policy decision, the opposing action sets
typically break apart as new events give rise to other constellations of interest orgs.
Collective Action Systems
Collective action systems – such as legislatures,
courts, regulatory agencies – make policy decisions
about numerous proposed laws and regulations.
Organized interest groups hold varying pro/con
preferences across multiple policy decisions. Action
sets lobby officials to choose outcomes favorable to
coalitional interests. Decision makers may also hold
policy preferences, and may change their votes on
some events to gain support for preferred decisions.
An actor’s structural interest is “a revealed preference,
for a particular outcome, resulting from identifiable
social constraints or influence,” which may differ from
an unconstrained preference (Mizruchi & Potts 2000:231).
Models of socially embedded policymaking explore how
network ties shape collective decisions through
information exchanges, political resource, persuasion,
vote-trading (log-rolling), and other dynamic processes.
Political
Cleavages
Memberships in action sets
for 3 U.S. labor policy
domain events revealed
overlapping patterns of
organizational interests in
influencing these policy
decisions.
The labor and business
coalitions comprise a core
set of advocates (AFL vs.
Chamber of Commerce)
plus event-specific interest
organizations, particularly
nonlabor allies of unions.
SOURCE: p. 354 in Knoke. 2001. Changing Organizations.
Civil Society
Numerous conceptions of civil society – encompassing voluntary,
nonprofit, social movement organizations & networks – range
across local, national & transnational levels. Most CSO definitions
exclude for-profit business organizations and the state/government.
“[T]he realm of organized social life that is voluntary, selfgenerating, (largely) self-supporting, autonomous from the
state, and bound by a legal order or set of shared rules. It is
distinct from ‘society’ in general in that it involves citizens
acting collectively in a public sphere to express their
interests, passions and ideas, exchange information, achieve
mutual goals, make demands on the state, and hold state
officials accountable...it excludes...political efforts to take
control of the state…”
Larry Diamond. 1994. “Towards Democratic
Consolidation.” Journal of Democracy 3:5.
Does CS include interest group orgs created by states and
businesses? Communities? Extended families? Criminal cartels?
International, Transnational & NGOs
Globalization generates numerous international, transnational &
nongovernmental organizations (NGOs): United Nations, European
Union, International Labor Org, World Bank, IMF, WTO, NATO …
They contend with sovereign national states for autonomy, resources,
and political legitimacy.
UN resolutions on Iraqi sanctions & US unilateral decision to invade
Bush rescinded steel tariffs under threat of WTO & EU trade retaliation
Ottaway (2001): tripartite governance councils are creating a global
corporatism – participation not by individuals but “by a limited number
of corporate groups to which they supposedly belong.”
• NGOs can diffuse tensions, forge political compromises
• Danger of authoritarianism is very limited under nation-state system
• Unrepresentative NGOs can morph into self-interested bureaucracies
QUEX: Are international & transnational NGOs the seedbeds of a
world governance system?
Toward a Global Civil Society?
United Nations Development Programme’s Civil Society Division
works with a differentiated conceptual framework. “The new task of
UNDP … is to identify and work with all parts of the private sphere
that can contribute effectively to [social & human development].”
Dynamic fuzzy boundaries of CSOs
reached at the interfaces with:
•Regime in power
•Public institutions & gov bureaucracy
•Governance system (the way politics &
government interact)
•Market and its actors
•Affinities & obligations of (extended)
families
Fuzzy Boundaries
Nation-States in the World-Society
Meyer et al. (1997) analyzed the worldwide institutionalization of the
modern nation-state form (“equal, autonomous, expansive”). Arising in
the West, the nation-state was constructed & diffused by rationalistic
cultural and associational processes that transcend national borders.
Three drivers toward the isomorphic nation-state:
1.
World societal “statelessness”
2.
Multiple levels of legitimated associational actors
3.
Internal contradictions & inconsistencies
Scholte (2002) noted democratic deficits in current global governance. “Positive
interventions from … civil society groups can infuse global governance with
greater democracy.” CSOs should complement other political processes.
QUEX: What are the prospects for replacing nation-states with
“supra-state” forms of world-society sovereignty & governance?
Are states still too powerful to allow any serious erosions in their
legitimate authority and control over force within their territories?
References
Kenis, Patrick and Volker Schneider. 1991. “Policy Networks and Policy Analysis: Scrutinizing a New
Analytical Toolbox.” Pp. 25-62 in Policy Networks: Empirical Evidence and Theoretical Considerations,
edited by Bernd Marin and Renate Mayntz. Boulder/Frankfurt: Campus/Westview Press.
Knoke, David, Franz Urban Pappi, Jeffrey Broadbent and Yutaka Tsujinaka. 1996. Comparing Policy
Networks: Labor Politics in the U.S., Germany, and Japan. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Laumann, Edward O. and David Knoke. 1987. The Organizational State: Social Choice in National Policy
Domains. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press.
Mizruchi, Mark S. and Blyden B. Potts. 2000. “Social Networks and Interorganizational Relations: An
Illustration and Adaptation of a Micro-Level Model of Political Decision Making.” Research in the
Sociology of Organizations 17:225-265.
Perrow, Charles. 1991. “A Society of Organizations.” Theory and Society 20:725-762.
Perrow, Charles. 2000. “An Organizational Analysis of Organizational Theory.” Contemporary Sociology
29:469-476.
United Nations Development Programme. 2003. <http://www.undp.org/csopp/CSO/NewFiles
/programmesglobalfmwrk2.htm#framewrk2>