Transcript Document

Reflections On the Organizational
Emergence of Democratic Nation-States
Elisabeth Clemens
Department of Sociology
University of Chicago
Points of (Re)Engagement
• “Properly speaking, individuals don’t have goals; roles
have goals. Consistency of motivations across roles
should in no way be presumed for complicated
persons.” (p. 5).
• Annealing: “The more explosive the mix of elements
being combined into hybrids, the more important it is
to blend them in an oscillatory manner. Increase
fluidity, decrease fluidity, increase fluidity, decrease
fluidity.” (p. 27)
• “innovation in language usually lags, not leads . . .
Mostly we all play interpretive catch-up with events,
trying to respond to the jaggedness of the unpredicted
twists of a vibrant and vast social world far beyond our
comprehension.” (pp. 40-41)
Networks of Democratic Revolution:
Creating a Constitutive Absence
• Mobilization of insurgency driven by grievances
generated by the existing architecture of
governance and along diverse networks of ties
and communication (Breen 2010)
• Insurgency intersects with networks of discourse,
theorizing new forms of governance.
• Successful insurgency produces a spillover of
these linked networks to control of positions
charged with responsibility for governance.
A new production standard without
an accompanying production rule
• In the first two modern democratic revolutions, there is
great ambiguity about what democratic governance would
actually entail.
• Fuels ferment of borrowing and recombination (from
contract theory, commonwealth tradition, republican
philosophy, ancient history, etc.)
• Normative claims (the production standard) provide a
language for contesting and delegitimating any provisional
organizational arrangement of democratic governance (the
production rules).
• Indeterminacy evident in the different aftermaths of the
American & French Revolutions (esp. with respect to rules
regulating the relationship of the political domain to other
domains of social organization)
Modes of Thinning,
Trajectories of Change
• [The importance of] redundancy [to reproductive
stability] suggests that sensitivity to system tipping –
dramatic network cascades that we associate with
organizational inventions – increases as redundancy is
thinned out. Too much thinning and the system will
collapse, but some threshold level of network thinning
may move a highly redundant system toward being
poised to tip.” (P&P, p. 26).
• “In our view, the pattern of change, and not the
amount of change itself, must be considered as the
basic variable.” Crozier, The Bureaucratic
Phenomenon, p. 226.
• To what extent do the conditions that enable novel
recombination shape durable trajectories?
Thinning, Invention, and Innovation
in the Early Republic
• Europeans, observes historian Joyce Appleby (2000,
25), “were astounded by the presence of social order in
America in the absence of social solidarity. Their
amazement emphasizes how unusual was the task of
transforming colonial societies into the American
nation.” In the wake of the Revolution:
• Coordinating level of imperial governance is removed,
leaving courts, councils, legislatures to be modified by
new political demands.
• The remaining pillar of imperial governance, the
established churches in each colony/state, was
dismantled (Hatch, Democratization of American
Christianity).
A New Primeval Soup
• Persistence of two remnants of earlier arrangements of
organized sovereignty that are now de-coupled from
government:
– Disestablished churches, supported through novel principles of
“voluntarism”
– Chartered corporations, set loose from durable legislative
control by Dartmouth College (1819).
• Construction of a “peripheral” state, resources
concentrated in ports, customs, Navy, and the Army on the
frontier.
• Innovation of new relational structures for political life:
– The popular political party
– The post office
“How a Free People Conduct A Long
War,” Charles Stillé (1863)
• For the first half of the 19th C, the architectures of
governance combined and recombined these
elements.
• Modern civil war, however, provided a serious
challenged to reconciling the practical organization of
government activity with norms of political liberty and
the dignity of democratic citizens.
– The Confederate States of America was constructed on a
centralized, “European” model (Bensel, Yankee Leviathan).
– In the North, the puzzle of “How a Free People Conduct a
Long War” provoked a pair of organizational inventions:
• The United States Sanitary Commission
• The United States Christian Commission
U.S.S.C
Buildings of the
Great Central Fair,
Philadelphia
Recognized as Political Inventions:
Keep the Army Close to the People
•
The whole of the American people – men, women, and children alike, in thus
rendering their armies efficient, prove conclusively that the war is not carried on –
as many in Europe suppose, -- by the Government of a minority, but is waged by
the great mass of the citizens themselves. In no other way can you explain the
colossal achievements of this Volunteer Commission.
–
•
Edmund Crisp Fisher, Military Discipline and Volunteer Philanthropy (1864)
Such popular exhibitions of patriotic and religious feeling are inconceivable where
the army is simply an instrument of oligarchic power, and war is for royal ends
alone, -- removed from the knowledge and interests of the people. Hon. Geo.
Bancroft, in a private letter, remarks: -- “Nothing like the self-organized
commissions for the relief of our armies ever was before. The Christian
Commission is the fruit of our institutions, -- could not grow up, would not be
allowed to grow up in any nation in Europe, unless it be in England, and could not
there in the huge, free, popular way that we have witnessed here. Republicanism
proves herself the friend of charity and of religion, and may the union endure
forever. Go on, and write your noble work; -- every word of it will be the eulogy of
free institutions.
– Lemuel Moss, Annals of the United States Christian Commission (1868, p. 60).
Novelty Stems from Hybridity
• “It will be difficult to find two principles more seemingly
antagonistic than Military Discipline and Volunteer Philanthropy.
The Discipline necessary for the cohesion and effectiveness of
armies proceeds from set rules framed upon the experience of long
years: it is cold, impassive, unimpulsive, non-eclectic, autocratic,
tyrannical; it robs man of his individuality, deprives him of free-will
-- and looking only at the end to be attained, treats the soldier as a
simple part of a great machine, to be strained, forced, and
overwrought, if needs be, and cast aside when worn out or
otherwise incapacitated. Reverse the position in all its several
particulars, and we have the most distant and opposite end of a farstretching diagonal, -- Volunteer Philanthropy.”
– Edmund Crisp Fisher, Military Discipline and Volunteer Philanthropy. A
Paper read before the Social Science Congress held in the City of New
York During the month of September, 1864, (London: William Ridgway,
169 Picadilly,1864).
Foreign Confirmation of Novelty
History has afforded no other example –
though it is to be hoped that it will hereafter
afford many – of so great a work of
unselfishness extemporized by the spontaneous
self-devotion and organizing genius of a
people, altogether independently of the
Government.
John Stuart Mill, Our Daily Fare, June 20, 1864
Mazzini Recognizes a New Production
Rule for Democratic State-Building
Giuseppe Mazzini requests a “good, accurate primary history” of
“the doings of the Sanitary Commission and all that tends to prove
the immense vitality of your republican principle? What you have
done is so heroic that I feel the profound necessity of having it
publicly known in all our countries, and especially in my own.”
“Your triumph is our triumph: the triumph of all, I hope, who
are struggling for the advent of a republican era. Our adversaries
were pointing to the worst period of the old French revolution as to the
irrefutable proof of republics leading to terror, anarchy and military
despotism. You have refuted all that. You have done more for us in
four years than fifty years of teaching, preaching and writing, from
all your European brothers, have been able to do.”
“Letter from Mazzini,” Liberator (July 7, 1865)
Inconsistent Motivations Across Roles,
Incompatible Relational Geometries
•
Civic Dignity of Citizen-Soldiers v. Charitable Dependency: “As for the extras, they can
and ought to pay for them. It is better to spend their money and preserve their selfrespect. Disguise it as we may, if we continue the present practice beyond the period of
dire necessity, we introduce a system of alms-giving and alms-taking; and no purity of
motive can avert the degrading influence of such a system.”
–
•
Christian Charity v. Military Discipline: “At times I may have displayed an impatience
when the agents manifested an excess of zeal, in pushing forward their persons and
stores when we had no means to make use of their charities. But they could hardly be
expected to measure the importance of other interests, and I have always given them
credit for good and pure motives. Now that the great end is attained, and in our quiet
rooms and offices we can look back on the past with composure, I am not only willing,
but pleased with the opportunity, to express my belief that your charity was noble in its
conception, and applied with as much zeal, kindness and discretion as the times
permitted.”
–
•
Samuel Gridley Howe, Letter to Mrs. _______, and other Loyal Women, Touching the Matter of Contributions
for the Army, and Other Matters Connected with the War (1862)
Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman on the USCC (quoted in Moss, pp. 238-39)
Civic Benevolence v. Government Responsibility: “What is the govt. doing? Why can’t
it do all? Why is the Sanitary the Best channel for the gifts of the people?”
–
Louisa Lee Schuyler summarizing concerns of women volunteers (quoted in Attie, Patriotic Toil, p. 138)
Decades of Oscillation follow:
• The Great Commissions are disbanded:
– But individuals carry models to cities:
• Elite men of the USSC found Union League Clubs
• Women of the USSC found Charity Organization Societies
• Agents of the USCC return to urban mission movement, including
Dwight Moody, “God’s Man for the Gilded Age”
– Relational Geometries are Reconfigured:
• Asymmetrical dependence between donor and beneficiary is
replaced by:
– Horizontal “kula ring” among elite donors
– Relation to beneficiaries mediated by increasingly professionalized
charity workers and social work organizations
• Intersecting networks are stabilized by the invention of the
“federated campaign” or Community Chest model; civic networks
subordinated to business organizations (Chambers of Commerce)
Pulse of Nationalization
• Organizational mutation: rechartering of American Red
Cross links civic networks to federal executive.
• Event-driven transposition: A dozen Community
Chests go into the war, hundreds of “War Chests” by
Armistice.
• Donating becomes a mark of civic membership: “Make
It Unanimous”
• Red Cross achieves membership of 22% of US
population by armistice.
• Organized benevolence linked to new resource stream
by adoption of charitable deduction to the individual
income tax via the War Revenue Act.
Success, then conflict over
transposition to domestic crises
• Red Cross chapters in 2500+ of over 3000 counties (nationallocal); 329 cities have Community Chest organizations by 1929
(local, loose alliance nationally).
– NB: different political geographies and alliance ties of the
two major meta-organizations in the charitable field had
very different political geographies and alliances.
• Hoover, the “Master of Emergencies,” and the Great
Mississippi Flood of 1927 – a success ($10m voluntary
contributions, $7m in-kind aid from government)
• In the early years of the Depression, first unprecedented
mobilization of resources, followed by recognition of
inadequacy (new production rules for relief of fellow citizens).
Community Chests and Amounts Raised, 1914-1931
(Walker 1933: 1205. From data compiled by the Association of Community Chests and Councils).
Year
Number of Chests
Amount Raised
1914
1
22,427
1919
12
14,224,740
1924
180
48,850,000
1929
329
372,743,916
1930
363
75,108,792
1931
377
83,213,428
Recombination and Co-Evolution
• FDR himself rehabilitates use of organized benevolence
to solve non-governmental problems ( March of
Dimes)
• Social Security and many labor regulations exempt
religious and eleemosynary organizations.
• 1935 Wealth Act establishes business charitable
deduction.
• New exemplary biographies linking government,
business, and organized civic benevolence.
– e.g. Walter S. Gifford (War Industries Board, President of
AT&T, President of NY Charity Organization Society,
President’s Committee on Unemployment Relief,
Ambassador to the Court of St. James).
Asymmetrical Co-Evolution
Figure 2: Charitable Contributions by Individuals
(Adjusted 1918 Dollars)
12,000
8,000
6,000
4,000
Figure 5: Number of Charitable and Nonprofit Organizations
2,000
800,000
19
23
19
28
19
33
19
38
19
43
19
48
19
53
19
58
19
63
19
68
19
73
19
78
19
83
19
88
19
93
19
18
0
Source: Hall (2006), T able B606-619
700,000
600,000
500,000
400,000
Figure 4: Growth in Corporate Philanthropy
(Adjusted: 1930$)
300,000
200,000
100,000
1000
900
800
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
0
0
1945 1950 1955 1960 1965
1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995
Source: Hall (2006), Table 55-64
19
29
19
33
19
37
19
41
19
45
19
49
19
53
19
57
19
61
19
65
19
69
19
73
19
77
19
81
19
85
19
89
19
93
19
97
Millions$
$Millions
10,000
Source: Source: Hall (2006), T able B676-690
Back to Crozier:
Patterns, not Levels, of Change
• Struggles over the form of democratic governance continue
to work on the intersection of “voluntary” or “nonprofit”
organizations, flows of government funds, and delegations
of government authority.
– Democratizing moment of Great Society: “maximum feasible
participation” and the Community Action Agencies.
– Neoliberalism has come with privatization and contracting-out.
• At the present moment, we see the points of
institutionalized intersection of networks – the charitable
deductions, the exemptions of religious organizations from
labor law – functioning as a seam of structural opportunity
for those who seek to diminish the scope of government
activity accountable to electoral/legislative authority.
Back to Padgett and Powell:
Inconsistency and Indeterminacy as
Engines of Sustained Oscillation
• On the inconsistency of motivations across roles (yes, but):
the inconsistencies across roles – and the incompatibility of
distinct relational geometries in a Simmelian sense –
generate friction and energy that destabilize settlements
and drive experimentation.
• On annealing: the lack of a set of production rules that
conform to legitimated production standards (a constitutive
indeterminacy or contradiction) creates a focus for
sustained oscillatory recombination of a durable set of
organizational resources.
• In the case of the first modern democratic revolutions,
normative ideals for governance preceded stable
procedures for organizing governance “by the consent of
the governed.”
France*
United States
“The principle of all sovereignty resides
essentially in the nation. No body nor
individual may exercise any authority
which does not proceed directly from the
nation.” Declaration of the Rights of Man
and Citizen, 1789
“That to secure these rights,
Governments are instituted among Men,
deriving their just powers from the
consent of the governed.” Declaration of
Independence, 1776
Rigorous legal exclusion of organizations
and associations that might intrude upon
or mediate the expression of this popular
sovereign will (e.g. Le Chapelier laws);
extreme thinning of networks organizing
the polity.
Recognition of right to assembly and
permissive interpretation of corporate
charters creates context for proliferation
of organizational forms in civil society.
Development of centralized
administrative state; extensive
collaborations with “private” and
“nonprofit” entities develop late.
Development as a “government out of
sight” (Balogh 2009), governance through
arrangements of “infrastructural power”
(Mann 1986) and “delegated governance”
(Morgan and Campbell 2011), citizenship
enacted through organized benevolence.
*Pierre Ronsavallon, The Demands of Liberty: Civil Society in France Since the Revolution
(Harvard, 2007)
I believe in the Red Cross for ordinary times and events. In the cities
we have the community chest, to which I contribute regularly for the
dependants [sic] of our city, but the drought is very unusual and covers
the country people. I think they should be helped and that adequately;
but it all should be done by law and the money raised through the
income tax. No other way is democratic and fair and by it the burden
falls on those who can pay it and in just proportion.
Now if you attempt to raise it by soliciting methods; you will
penalize the good people and put an unjust burden on them and the
stingy will not contribute. This city is typical; I know some rich citizens
who will not give; no orator can touch their hearts; and the generous
ones who are already doing much will be compelled to do more.
I beg of you to try and have money raised by law and taxes; no
other way is fair to all.
W.B. Faris (a banker) to Herbert Hoover, January 31, 1931