The Search for Community Power

Two classic articles that have been particularly influential on researches on the topic of the search for who really holds power in a community - both of them providing for rather elitist view regarding this question. Briefly, while the first article, the famous "Middletown's X family" piece by Robert and Helen Lynd, describes of the situation in which one extended family seems to hold an almost unlimited power as a ruling family of a middle-sized industrial community, the latter article locates the center of power in groups of men identified as forming a clique consisting of about 40 or 50 of elites who together exercise decision making power in a community, while relegating actual carrying out tasks to those "lower" in ranks.

The Middletown piece describes of a situation in which members of the "X" family act as the reigning royal family with quite tight grips (and often direct ownership of) over institutions of banking, industry, retailing, education, YMCA and YWCA, churches, government, and press. The authors characterize the personal qualities of the members of the X family as essentially that of benevolent rulers with strong commitment to philanthropy and identification with Christian values and "Protestant ethic" values stressing hard work. In many senses their presence has made the community more economically productive and the living environment more attractive than other communities of similar size. Yet undeniably, it is also true that they are the para-autocratic royals who could potentially put economic squeeze on any citizens who come to be seen as the dissenters, in a community in which the family's wills tend to become the official guiding patterns.
 

The latter piece by Floyd Hunter, according to the editors, is as much known for its resultant assertion that there is a clique of relatively small men who together consist of the nucleus of the power structure in a community as the methods employed to identify and describe patterns of power structure. This method is known as the "reputational method", and it involved asking presumably knowledgeable persons to identify those individuals seen to be most "influential" as a preliminary step before the quantification - in short, this method relies on purely subjective index of prestige, and probably that is one of the reason it has been the "focus of considerable controversy" (p. 52).

On the more substantive side, first Hunter notes of a concern with the issue of "pyramiding" somewhat similar to that of Dahl. That is, according to different issue areas different individuals seem to exercise power and no one identifiable individual or group of individuals have the reigning power, unlike in the Middletown study. Nevertheless, the assertion here is also that there is also a relatively small number of men who together form a nucleus of power structure. Hunter notes that the high consensus regarding the top leaders on the list of forty, plus the lack of any concerted opinion on additional opinions as ascertaining to this elite group's existence. These men together form a group of "men of independent decision", with decision making power to decide on what gets formulated, what gets done. In short, these men are always at the top of the pyramid, guiding the overall flow of community decision making. It is the "executioners of practice", those who are assigned the role of carrying out tasks but not decide to carry out certain things in the first place, who may or may not become the constituents of the "pyramid" according to different issue areas. The group of elite men is drawn overwhelming from the economic elites, while those of other institutions as that of religion and education are ordinarily relegated to the "executioners of practice" level. Some other notes on who are really the members of this elite group. While social prestige and deference are important as a defining characteristic of being an elite member, they do not have much of independent effects. The important consideration is the actual concrete act of doing something for the community in terms of businesses or other means, so prestige per se is not an important consideration. Political eminence is another important criteria, though again it is not a sole criterion and as such often must be accompanied by other factors. Further, most social institutions and associations are subordinate to this elite group. The institutions of the family, church, state, education, and the like are ordinarily subordinated to this group of elite men who largely represent the economic interests and have the critical decision making power.

Then Hunter also gives a brief consideration to the process of decision making on certain issues. This first involves the forming of what is called the committee - often formed initially through informal meetings and consist largely of elite men. This "committee" then comes to formulate, eventually, the lower parts of the "pyramid" who would actually execute the plan once the plan had originally been formulated. Governments, in general, are not seen as the holders of strong power over that of the group of elite men, by Hunter. He notes: "It is true that there is no formal tie between the economic interests and government, but the structure of policy-determining committees and their tie-in with the other powerful institutions and organizations of the community make government subservient to the interests of these combined groups. The governmental departments and their personnel are acutely aware of the power of key individuals and combinations of citizens' groups in the policy-making realm, and they are loathe to act before consulting and clearing with these interests..." (p. 62). Finally, in the last two pages, first, Hunter gives a table listing the "four-story structure of personnel within the pyramid". Then, he notes of the power of the elite men to "punish" dissenters through economic pressures, i.e., expulsion from jobs, like the same case had been mentioned by the Lynds regarding the power of the elite to coerce people through economic means.