Neighborhood Organization and Interest-Group Processes 9781400868742

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Neighborhood Organization and Interest-Group Processes

DAVID J. O'BRIEN

Neighborhood Organization and Interest-Group Processes

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Copyright © 1975 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press Princeton and London ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on the last printed page of this book Publication of this book has been aided by the Whitney Darrow Publication Reserve Fund of Princeton University Press Composed in Linotype Caledonia and printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey First PRINCETON PAPERBACK printing, 1979

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED TO MY WIFE

Mary Lou

Contents

Preface Introduction

3

CHAPTER ONE

Incentives and Individual Support for Collective Action

7

CHAPTER T W O

Resource Needs and Environmental Problems

43

CHAPTER THREE

Community Development

64

CHAPTER FOUR

Social Action-Protest Strategies

93

CHAPTER FIVE

Community Action Programs

130

CHAPTER SIX

Variations in Development in Local Community Action Programs

153

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Future of Neighborhood Organization

175

References

223

Index

249

Preface

In the mid-1960s when I first began to think about neighbor­ hood organization, many of us were enveloped in a mood of confidence about the ability of the American people to make their institutions more responsive to the sentiments of the grassroots. Today that optimism has been replaced with con­ fusion and doubt, a tendency to withdraw into ourselves, and at worst, a subtle kind of nihilism which questions the value of trying at all to change the world. The most popular interpretations of this change of mood focus either upon events, such as Vietnam, Watergate, and the collapse of the War on Poverty, or upon our inability to find the answers to the pressing problems of our day. Both of these interpreta­ tions, in my view, are misleading. The source of our current malaise is not the events but our failure to understand the causes of them within some kind of meaningful framework, and we suffer not from a lack of answers but from an inabil­ ity to formulate meaningful questions. My hope is that this study will contribute to the belief that by proper analysis of past failures we can find the seeds of solutions for the future. It is a major task of scholarship in a free society to use critical analysis to refine and reformulate our capabilities of action by identifying those causal links which may not be readily apparent to the layman. To pro­ ceed in this fashion, however, we must accept the discipline of critical thinking and must be willing to lay bare our often precious assumptions about man and his world. As an academic critic of the many years of hard work and sacrifice of the dedicated people who tried to build com­ munities in the slums, I can only say that my analysis Qf their efforts in no way is meant to detract from their contributions;

PREFACE

if they had not been so bold as to act I would not have much to write about and the future would be that much further off. Since the reader is apt to ask where my personal biases he, it is only fair that I set some of them down at the outset. I am personally committted to the philosophical belief in the pri­ macy of the free individual as the core unit in human society. For me, this belief stems from the Judaeo-Christian tradi­ tion's emphasis upon the dignity of man and from the classic libertarian statements of Alexis de Tocqueville. But, I am also committed, as was Tocqueville, to the principle of equality of opportunity and thus find myself drawn to sig­ nificant aspects of socialist thought. Reconciling these two strains of thought and belief is often problematic, but I be­ lieve that the working out of their relationship is essential to the solution of many of the problems we face today. Most important, as I hope this study will demonstrate, analytical techniques which focus on the individual as the basic unit of inquiry are indispensible to our understanding of "collective phenomena." Some material from the first chapter was originally pub­ lished under the title, "The Public Goods Dilemma and the 'Apathy' of the Poor," in Social Service Review 48 (June 1974): 229-243, © 1974 by The University of Chicago. I am deeply grateful to a number of people who helped me in writing this book. To my friend Norm Carroll I am grateful for early teachings on the value of economic con­ cepts for the sociologist. To Professor Bill D'Antonio I am thankful for a gentle push into the civil rights movement and for his wisdom on the relationship between scholarship and justice. Without the encouragement and scholarly direction of Professor Marv Olsen, my advisor at Indiana University, I never would have begun my doctoral dissertation ("Neigh­ borhood Organization and Interest Group Politics") from which this present work is derived. He displayed a confi­ dence* in me and a desire to bring out the best in me for χ

PREFACE

which I am deeply grateful. I also want to thank Professor Jim Wood for scholarly advice and counsel during that pe­ riod. To Professor Sam Mueller, first a member of my disser­ tation committee and now a colleague, I am grateful for a number of helpful suggestions which have strengthened the present work and for his friendship. I feel very fortunate also to have had the happy accident of meeting Professors Vincent and Elinor Ostrom, both political scientists, who broadened my horizons considerably. To Professor Sheldon Stryker and the sociology department of Indiana University, I wish to express my thanks for their patience with me. During the evolution of the present work, I have learned a great deal. To Sandy Thatcher, the Social Science editor at Princeton University Press, I wish to express my thanks for his support. Princeton also gave me the gift of two readers whose demands for excellence have often been frustrating but in the end are greatly appreciated. I am especially grate­ ful to one of the readers, Michael Aiken, who devoted a great deal of time in seeking ways that I might improve both the scope and organization of the book. To my chairman, Pro­ fessor Bob Terry, I am grateful for a working environment in which I have had the freedom and time to complete this work. Thanks are also due my colleagues at The University of Akron who have helped me in numerous ways. Mrs. Irene Fort went beyond the call of duty in typing the many drafts of the present manuscript and especially in juggling busy work schedules so that I might meet my numerous dead­ lines. I also wish to thank Chris Rongone, Becky Rarick, Cathy Sucher, and Millie McDowell, who typed portions of the manuscript. My deepest thanks go to my wife Mary Lou who played a big part in bringing this work to completion. I am grateful for her love and understanding during the many nights and weekends I was preoccupied with this work. She was my first reader and her suggestions, although they sometimes bruised my ego, have been an immense help in organizing the manu­ script.

PREFACE

I want to thank my children Robin, Becky, and Jeffrey for their love and for teaching me so much about life. Finally, while working on this project for the past few years I have become keenly aware of the gifts my parents have given me. I wish to thank them for those gifts.

Neighborhood Organization and Interest-Group Processes

Introduction

Not too many years ago, the subject of neighborhood organi­ zation would have seemed to many of us, especially if we were of liberal political persuasion, to be extremely irrel­ evant in understanding important political processes in American society. Until the mid-1960s, it seemed that all of the political action was at the national level. The New Deal experience and the civil rights struggle seemed to indicate that major social issues would be resolved either by Con­ gress, the federal courts, or the president. The only people who appeared to be deeply concerned with neighborhoods, or with local politics in general, were the conservative Re­ publicans, racial segregationists (who used the concept of the neighborhood to block integration in housing and schools), and a few "romantics" such as Jane Jacobs (1961). The minor significance granted to the concept of the neighborhood, or anything "local," is clearly reflected in the orientations of political scientists and political sociologists during the 1950s and 1960s. Influential scholars during this period, such as Burns (1967), BeII (1962), Lane (1966), and Lipset (1960), almost totally neglected local issues in con­ sidering the status and future of politics in America. C. Wright Mills (1956) was severely criticized for overlooking the power of "veto groups" (Kornhauser, 1959) to countervail the power of the military-industrial complex, but no one seriously challenged Mills' assertion that local politics was no longer important in American life. In fact, during the 1950s and 1960s there was only one major work—City Politics by Banfield and Wilson (1963)—which attempted to develop a comparative theoretical and empirical analysis of urban politics.

INTRODUCTION

However, in recent years it has become increasingly more difficult not to take local politics and neighborhood issues seriously. The civil rights era has ended, and with it the se­ cure feeling that social issues and political conflicts can be resolved at the national level. Today, we find that some of our most salient and explosive domestic political issues are struggles for power between residents of poor neighbor­ hoods on the one hand, and local interest groups and local public authorities on the other. The efforts of black parents in Oceanhill-Brownsville to gain control of their local schools was a struggle for power against the teachers' union in New York City (Green, 1970; Hoffman, 1968; Judge, 1966; Fantini, Gittell, and Magat, 1970: chap. 6). The struggle of minority groups to gain some neighborhood control over the police is essentially a struggle for power against the central city's po­ lice department (Waskow, 1969). These struggles for power have been generated in part by the emergence, in recent years, of ideologies (such as black power) and welfare-rights organizations which advocate the indigenous organization of the poor. But, the larger signifi­ cance of these struggles is that they remind us that we live in a nation whose Constitution dictates that the quality of our lives will be determined to an important degree by our influence in local decision-making processes. Contrary to the fears of conservatives and the hopes of liberals, the fact that the federal government now pours large amounts of money into our cities, although certainly not enough so far as their residents and mayors are concerned, does not mean that the federal government has gained a commensurate amount of power over how that money is spent. Given the constraints imposed by our Constitution, federal money must still flow through local decision-making structures. The urban renewal experience is one of the best illustra­ tions of the limitations of federal initiatives in local affairs, even when the federal government "pays the bills." Although the legislation which launched urban renewal was supposed to provide benefits for mayors, businessmen, and the poor, it

INTRODUCTION

is clear that businessmen and mayors have gained substan­ tially more than the poor. Urban renewal has subsidized the clearing of land in order to build new structures which have produced profits for businessmen and increased tax revenue for mayors, but the program has not provided the poor with adequate housing for relocation (Fried, 1966; Friedmann, 1971; Gans, 1966; Glazer, 1965). The direction that urban re­ newal has taken is not accidental; mayors and businessmen simply have more power than the poor in local decision­ making. Most important, if the distribution and uses of local power are such important determinants of the outcomes of a pro­ gram which is directly funded by the federal government, then certainly they have even more impact on the distribu­ tion and utilization of public services, such as schools, gar­ bage collection, police protection, and recreational facilities, over which the federal government has even less control. Therefore, the question of how powerless persons gain power in local affairs is of great importance to our under­ standing of American politics. This study is a theoretical and empirical analysis of the problem of trying to organize the residents of a poor neigh­ borhood to pursue their common interests vis-a-vis other in­ terest groups and public authorities in local decision-making processes. My theoretical approach to this problem rests on the assumption that persons in a poor neighborhood have in­ terests in common, but that they are all self-interested indi­ viduals who try to be rational in coping with the problems of their lives. Given this assumption, the fundamental task of the neighborhood organizer is to find incentives (Barnard, 1938; Clark and Wilson, 1961) that will induce these selfinterested individuals to support collective efforts. In chapters 1 and 2, I shall develop a theoretical frame­ work that explains why incentives are crucial in understand­ ing the difficulties which neighborhood organizers face in their efforts to organize the poor and why organizational dilemmas emerge during the process of trying to cope with

INTRODUCTION

the incentive problem. This theoretical framework will form the basis for my analysis of specific neighborhood organizing strategies and programs. Chapter 3 focuses on efforts to em­ ploy the rural organizing technique of community develop­ ment in urban grassroots-organization programs. Chapter 4 examines social action-protest strategies for organizing the poor through confrontations with their adversaries, while chapters 5 and 6 will be devoted to a detailed study of the federal government's attempt to promote neighborhood or­ ganization through its Community Action Programs. In chapter 7, I shall use the preceding analysis as the starting point for what I believe to be a more effective approach to the problem of organizing poor neighborhoods.

CHAPTEB ONE

Incentives and Individual Support for Collective Action

Here the problem of inducing the poor to support neighbor­ hood organizations is analytically defined. Because the res­ idents of a poor neighborhood have a latent or potential basis of common interest, the problem of persuading them to sup­ port collective efforts is analytically similar to the problem which faces other aggregates with latent common interests, such as workers or members of a profession. All of these ag­ gregates must cope with the problem of devising a way to induce individuals to pay for the "costs" of collective action.1 Even in unions, which are controlled by an oligarchy, work­ ers must pay their dues and must support a strike when it is called or the union will not persist as a collective bargaining agent. Similarly, professional associations must persuade their members to pay dues in order to support collective lob­ bying efforts. My contention is that the neighborhood orga­ nization faces a similar problem in that it must convince the poor to pay for the costs, such as time, money, and effort, of the collective benefits which the organization can bring them. Why are neighborhood organizations, by and large, un­ able to induce the support of the poor when other aggregates such as workers and professionals have succeeded in orga­ nizing for collective efforts? I argue that the fundamental reason for the failure of neighborhood-organization efforts lies not in any peculiar social-psychological or cultural char­ acteristics of the poor but rather in the inability of these or1 By

costs I am referring to nonmonetary as well as monetary costs, including time, effort, and the risk of political sanctions.

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

ganizations to solve a problem which all interest groups must solve. This problem, as defined in Mancur Olson's (1965) public goods theory of interest groups, is that individuals in a large aggregate will not voluntarily pay for the costs of col­ lective goods even if they are all rational men and are aware that they will receive individual benefits from these goods. In order to persuade individuals to pay for collective goods, an interest group must either provide a device with which members can coerce themselves into paying for the costs of the goods or provide, in addition to the collective goods, some kind of selective individual benefit. The public goods approach to neighborhood organization differs from the more conventional sociological approach, which views social organization as a necessary precondition for interest-group organization. It is my view, however, that political and social organization can develop simultaneously in previously disorganized areas, such as urban slums, if in­ dividuals receive incentives to support such organization.

THE NEIGHBORHOOD AS A LATENT INTEREST GROUP Can the neighborhood be considered a latent or potential basis of common interests for its residents in the same sense that a class can be considered to be a latent basis of common interest for its members? In speaking of a latent basis of common interest I am using the same analytical approach which Weber employed in his classic discussion of class. Ac­ cording to Weber, we can speak of individuals having an ob­ jective basis of common interest if we can find an objective principle which places these individuals, as an aggregate, in a conflict of interests vis-a-vis another aggregate of individ­ uals and if this objective basis of common interest exists whether or not individuals are conscious of their common interests and whether or not they do anything about these interests (Gerth and Mills, 1946: 180-195). Thus, classes are defined in terms of their positions in the marketplace; workers and owners occupy opposing class-

I N C E N T I V E S AND SUPPORT

positions in the labor market; buyers and sellers occupy op­ posing class-positions in the commodity market; and creditors and debtors occupy opposing class-positions in the credit market (Gerth and Mills, 1946: 180-195; Wiley, 1967a). The principle which defines the latent common interests of neighborhood residents is found in the nature of public ser­ vice-delivery systems in the United States.2 A host of public services, including schools, parks, garbage collection, and police protection, are delivered to neighborhoods. Since the quality and quantity of these services varies considerably from one neighborhood to another, the nature of the public services that an individual receives is dependent in large measure on which neighborhood he lives in. Since all indi­ viduals within a particular neighborhood are similarly af­ fected by the quantity and quality of services the neighbor­ hood receives, they have a latent or potential basis of common interest. This does not mean that residents of a neighborhood are necessarily aware of their common interests and/or that they will see collective action as a reasonable course of ac­ tion, but it is safe to say that if the quality and quantity of services in a neighborhood are improved all of the residents will benefit. Most important, the relationship between the neighbor­ hood and service-delivery systems provides a latent basis of conflict between (1) the neighborhood and the public bu­ reaucracies which deliver services to them, and between (2) the neighborhood and other neighborhoods within the city. The potential basis of conflict between the neighborhood and the public bureaucracies which deliver services to it 2 A point we often forget is that because of our federal constitutional arrangement, even when social services are financed by the federal government they are often distributed at the local level. In chapter 5 we will see how the failure of the federal planners of the Community Action Programs to recognize this point was a major factor in generat­ ing conflict and controversy over these programs. The issue of modes of service delivery, as opposed to the issue of financing of social ser­ vices, is critical to this study and in my concluding chapter I shall dis­ cuss an alternative model for service delivery. At this juncture, how­ ever, I am concerned with the present arrangement for service delivery in American cities.

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

arises from the fact that on the one hand neighborhood res­ idents have a latent basis of common interest in improving the quality of services they receive, but on the other hand, because of their organizational maintenance needs, public bureaucracies have an interest in keeping those services to a minimum. Given the fiscal crises in which most cities pres­ ently find themselves, there is simply not enough money to provide adequate services in all neighborhoods. Therefore, it is not unreasonable to expect that these public bureau­ cracies will try, if possible, to "skimp" on a particular neigh­ borhood's services.3 The inherent conflict between public bureaucracies and neighborhoods explains why poor neighborhoods seem to be so slighted by the bureaucracies.4 Until recently, at least, poor neighborhoods were the most politically impotent in the city and therefore were most likely to be slighted when the public agency had to choose where to distribute its ser­ vices. Undoubtedly, some officials in public agencies discrim­ inate against poor neighborhoods because they feel the poor deserve it, or because the poor are black or Latin, but the more basic reason for the conflict between the neighborhood and public bureaucracies seems to lie in the organizational maintenance needs of the bureaucracies. For example, civil rights groups are probably justified in their claim that police departments engage in far more brutality or just plain harass­ ment in poor black neighborhoods than they do in more afflu­ ent neighborhoods, but the fact is that police departments are continually pressured by property owners and the middleclass public to use more efficient methods to enforce "law and order." Because the poor live in high crime-rate areas, they are more likely than those who live in more affluent neighborhoods to be adversely effected by efficient, but often 3 The fiscal crisis which cities now face has reached such proportions that many of them are on the verge of bankruptcy. This is especially true with respect to funding for public schools. 4 Cloward and Piven (1966) and Cloward (1967) develop a similar argument with respect to the conflict between the poor and public welfare agencies.

INCENTIVES AND SUPPORT

illegal, methods such as "stop and frisk" or the dragnet (Skolnick, 1966; Wilson, 1968). The relationship between neighborhoods and public ser­ vice-delivery systems also means that different neighbor­ hoods within the city must compete with one another to get more public services. As I have mentioned, there is usually an inadequate amount of money or personnel in any service area and, thus, some neighborhoods can be expected to get more than others. This point is extremely important to keep in mind when considering the political activity of the poor. There has been much confusion about the organization of the poor because we have often failed to realize that servicedelivery systems often provide a potential basis for conflict between poor neighborhoods. To clarify the issue we can make a distinction between three kinds of public services which affect the lives of the poor: (1) welfare services such as ADC which have a similar effect on poor people regardless of where they live in the city; (2) welfare services such as child-care centers and "demonstration projects" which can vary considerably from one poor neighborhood to another; and (3) public services such as schools, parks, garbage collection, and police pro­ tection which everyone in the city receives but which can vary considerably from one neighborhood to another. There is conflict between the poor and public bureau­ cracies with respect to all three kinds of issues, but the nature of the conflict varies from one kind of issue to another. If we are considering the first kind of public-service issue, the poor, as an aggregate within the city, have a latent basis of common interest. The quality and quantity of ADC services, for example, affects the poor irrespective of where they live. However, the second and third kind of public services are delivered to neighborhoods and, therefore, the aggregate of poor persons within a particular poor neighborhood have a latent basis of common interest and these issues can provide a basis for conflict between different poor neighborhoods. If the issue is where to put a demonstration child-care center or where to improve garbage collection, for example, there is

NEIGHBORHOOD OKGANIZATION

a strong objective basis of conflict between different neigh­ borhoods because limited resources demand that some neighborhoods get more than others. Thus, while the first kind of issue has the potential to unite the poor politically around their common condition of poverty, the second and third kinds of issues have the potential to hamper efforts to create city-wide organizations of poor people. In addition, divisiveness is exacerbated when a city's poor population is separated by different ethnic and/or racial neighborhoods, each vying for better public services for "its own."5 Essentially, then, the residents within an individual poor neighborhood do have a latent basis of common interest and thus an objective reason for developing an interest-group organization. Unlike many other aggregates in similar cir­ cumstances, however, poor neighborhoods remain disorga­ nized and without political power. They frequently organize around a specific issue, such as urban renewal or police bru­ tality, but these efforts normally dissipate once the issue is resolved (Turner, 1968). Therefore, the next question we must deal with is, why is it so hard to mobilize poor neigh­ borhoods for sustained collective efforts?

WHY DON'T POOR NEIGHBORHOODS ORGANIZE? Before considering the specific problem of organizing poor neighborhoods it will be helpful to examine whether or not the structural conditions of our society today are conducive to the development of interest groups in general. Most scholars agree that historically a large number of aggregates with common interests have managed to form interest groups to help them pursue those interests. The transformation of 5 Kramer (1969) points out that the need to distribute money into different neighborhoods (that is, target areas) in a city's Community Action Program at times resulted in conflicts between different ethnic neighborhoods and/or their representatives. He also points out, how­ ever, that in some cities different ethnic groups among the poor were able to form coalitions and present united fronts to mayors and public service bureaucracies.

I N C E N T I V E S AND SUPPORT

the disorganized immigrant masses into political interest groups (Banfield and Wilson, 1963: 38-44, 50-51; Fuchs, 1968; Glazer and Moynihan, 1963; Handlin, 1951: 201-226) and the government's role in developing countervailing power for disadvantaged groups (Galbraith, 1956: 135-153) are among the most impressive examples of the ways that in­ terest groups have emerged in our society to meet the needs of various aggregates. Yet, during the past few decades a number of writers have questioned whether we are seeing the end of interest-group politics because we are developing into a mass society (Fromm, 1941; Nisbet, 1962; Mills, 1956) and/or are being ruled by a power elite (Mills, 1956). Empirical data show that, despite urbanization and bu­ reaucratization of national life, we have not approached a mass society. Axelrod (1956) and Greer (1956) found that in­ dividuals are not as isolated in an urban milieu as the masssociety writers suggest and that a substantial portion of urban dwellers have regular intimate interaction with others, especially kin. Glazer and Moynihan (1963) show that ethnic subcultures and associations still provide a meaningful basis of identification for New Yorkers, and Herberg (1960) argues that when ethnicity is no longer a relevant basis of identifica­ tion it is often replaced by religion. In addition, empirical studies show that ethnic identification is manifested in vot­ ing behavior and party identification (Dahl, 1961: 34-35, 4450; Banfield and Wilson, 1963: 229-230; Wolfinger, 1965), and even has an effect on types of city government (Gordon, 1968). Similarly, empirical studies show that religious identi­ fication (Lenski, 1963), racial identification (Olsen, 1970), and regional and class identification (Lipset, 1960) are all re­ flected in organized political activity. I am not suggesting, of course, that there has not been any centralization of power in the United States during the past few decades, nor am I dismissing Mills' (1956) claims about the post-World War II ascendency of the military, the de­ fense industry, and the executive branch of government. Nevertheless, I find the evidence does support the conten­ tion that structural conditions in our society still permit the

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

growth of a host of interest groups which manage to exert in­ fluence in national and local affairs. Consequently, we will have to seek other explanations for the inability of poor neighborhoods to organize. One such explanation is derived from pluralist interest-group theory. Pluralist Interest-Group Theory The basic thesis of pluralist interest-group theory (Commons, 1959; Bentley, 1949; Truman, 1958) is that interest groups will emerge in a pluralist society when individuals have a need for them. Central to the pluralisms argument is the no­ tion that men are rational and self-interested. The pluralist contends that when an aggregate of rational self-interested men realize that they have interests in common and that they will all benefit from collective action, an organized in­ terest group will develop. The pluralist assumes that the resources for interest-group development are available to everyone in our society, al­ though most of the time most people do not use these re­ sources. Dahl notes that: Most of the time, as we have already seen, most citizens use their resources for purposes other than gaining influ­ ence over government decisions. There is a great gap be­ tween their actual influence and their potential influence. Their political resources are, so to speak, slack in the sys­ tem. In some circumstances these resources might be con­ verted from non-political to political purposes; if so, the gap between the actual influence of the average citizen and his potential influence would narrow. The existence of a great deal of political slack seems to be a characteristic of pluralistic political systems and the liberal societies in which these systems operate. In liberal societies, politics is a sideshow in the great circus of life. Even when citizens use their resources to gain influence, ordinarily they do not seek to influence officials or politi­ cians but family members, friends, associates, employees,

I N C E N T I V E S A N D SUPPORT

customers, business firms, and other persons engaged in non-governmental activities. A complete study of the ways in which people use their resources to influence others would require a total examination of social life. Govern­ ment, in the sense used here, is only a fragment of social life [1961: 305], However, the pluralist states that when a man s personal in­ terests are threatened he will use his resources for political purposes. When a large aggregate of men are similarly af­ fected by personal suffering or dislocation, the pluralist ex­ pects that an interest group will arise to fill their needs. According to the pluralisms thesis, therefore, we would ex­ pect to find the highest rate of associational development during periods of great personal suffering and dislocation. Mancur Olson points out, however, that the history of laborunion development in the United States and Great Britain does not follow this principle. It was not during the years of greatest dislocation and economic hardship that unions formed, but rather during periods when the conditions fac­ ing workers began to improve somewhat (1965: 123). I am not suggesting, of course, that "suffering" is unrelated to in­ terest-group formation, but simply noting that it is not a sufficient condition to account for the development of viable collective organizations. How does the pluralist explain those cases where interest groups do not emerge to meet the needs of an aggregate with common interests? He typically treats them as "deviant cases" and explains their deviance by the properties of the in­ dividuals who make up these aggregates. For example, Dahl argues that many individuals do not employ their resources for political purposes because they do not have political con­ fidence. Political confidence, in turn, is correlated with middle- class attributes such as relatively high education, in­ come, and occupation (1961: 282-293). The pluralisms argument appears to be especially perti­ nent in the case of the poor neighborhood. Empirical studies

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

show that the poor- are much less likely than persons in other social strata to become involved in voluntary associations (Hausknect, 1962), participate in social movements (Pinard, 1967) or engage in other kinds of political activity such as voting or campaigning (Dahl, 1961: 282-300; Erbe, 1964). One of the most popular explanations for the empirical fact that the poor do not become politically involved is the "culture of poverty" thesis (Harrington, 1962; Lewis, 1966). The thesis is that the poor feel powerless to effect change in their lives, through political or other means, because they have internalized a subculture—the culture of poverty— which defines the world as remote and unamenable to change and the poor person himself as relatively power­ less to effect changes in his life situation. This culture, it is argued, accounts for the apparent "vicious cycle" which keeps poor people in a dependent state from generation to generation. Roach and Gursslin (1967) point out, however, that the concept of the culture of poverty does not really explain very much, since the independent and dependent variables are not specified. There is a failure to distinguish between cul­ ture as a description of behavior and culture as a cause of behavior. It is one thing to describe the poor as anomic, alienated, or apathetic, but it is an entirely different matter to ascribe this to a culture. To say that a group of people share a culture means that they share a symbolic system which passes on values and beliefs from generation to gener­ ation and which in turn affects the ways they select among alternative ways of acting. But often what is referred to as cultural is merely a situational adaptation which can be changed if the situational constraints are altered (Kriesberg, 1963; H. Lewis, 1967; Hannerz, 1969: 181-183; Valentine, 1968). This, it will'be recalled, was the basis of the criticism of the studies of national character (Bendix, 1952; Bendix and Berger, 1959). Also, as Dennis Wrong points out, one consequence of the tendency of sociologists to overuse cul-

I N C E N T I V E S AND SUPPORT

ture as an explanatory variable is that "the degree to which conformity is frequently the result of coercion rather than conviction is minimized" (1961: 188). Nevertheless, even if we cannot ascribe the behavior and attitudes of the poor to a unique culture, perhaps we can ascribe it to psychological states, such as anomie, alienation, or apathy, which are a result of the structural conditions of poverty. This explanation, then, focuses on the situation of living in poverty and its causal relationship to the attitudes of persons living in that state. Thus, a number of writers ar­ gue that the poor feel powerless, alienated, or anomic be­ cause the general social disorganization of slum life and its lack of supportive subsystems (for example, the lack of a stable family) affect the personal perceptions of individuals Hving under those conditions (Wright and Hyman, 1958; Bell and Force, 1956; Erbe, 1964; Mizruchi, 1960; Neal and Seeman, 1964). In short, the argument is that the poor fail to use their resources for political purposes because they are relatively passive and apathetic members of our society. Other research on the poor, however, indicates that they are not nearly as passive and apathetic as we are accustomed to believe (Haggstrom, 1964; Miller and Riessman, 1961; Miller, Riessman and Seagull, 1968; Wiley, 1967b). Lee Rain­ water (1968) suggests that what often appears to the middleclass observer as the apathy of the poor is really a strategy for survival which they use to adapt to their environment. For example, the expressive lifestyle of the poor is often mis­ taken as a sign of resignation, when it is really a conscious rational attempt to exploit a meager environment. Rain­ water says: But underneath the apparent spontaneity, the expressive style of lower-class people is deadly serious business. It is by virtue of his ability to manipulate others by making himself interesting and dramatic that the individual has an opportunity to obtain some of the few rewards that are available to him—whether a gift of money, gambling debt

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

won, the affections of a girl, or the right to participate in a community of peers, to drink with them, "bum around" with them, gain status in their eyes. The individual learns by his expressive ability to "work game" on his peers, to "sound on them," to "put them in a trick," thereby raising his status by lowering the other fellow's [1968: 28], Also, recent studies of linguistic patterns in the ghetto, especially "rapping," indicate clearly that the poor person takes an activistic, purposive approach to life (Abrahams, 1964; Kiel, 1966; Kochman, 1969). Speaking of rapping, Kochman notes that: In conclusion, by blending style and verbal power, through rapping, sounding and running it down, the black in the ghetto establishes his personality; through shucking, grip­ ping and copping a plea, he shows his respect for power; through jiving and signifying he stirs up excitement. With all of the above, he hopes to manipulate and control people and situations to give himself a winning edge [1969: 34]. In a similar vein, black writers such as Malcolm X (1965), Ralph EUison (1952), and Claude Brown (1965) demonstrate how the apparent submissive behavior of the poor black man often can be a conscious strategy for survival. Historically, what is now referred to as "tomming" was at times the only effective exploitive technique which poor blacks could use against their oppressors. John Dollard describes how this technique was employed in a typical Southern town in the 1930s: Here is the sort of submissive response that white men like: A white man speaks to a Negro, "How are you, Sam?" Sam: "Oh, pretty good for an old nigger." In this case, the Negro takes toward himself the derogatory attitude of the white man, calls himself by the name "nigger" which has so much negative effect for Negroes. A Negro responding in this manner establishes himself as definitely knowing

INCENTIVES AND SUPPORT

his place and puts himself in a good way to get whatever he wants from the white man. Lower-class Negroes are quite expert at managing white people through their van­ ity. It is apparently a case of making the· best of their status and exploiting the whites as best they can, in such ways as borrowing without repaying, minor thieving, and so on. This is a sort of secondary compensation for the pri­ mary loss of self-esteem. A middle-class informant said that Negroes manage whites by self-abnegation. The "Sambo" or "Rastus" type of Negro takes off his hat, grins, strikes the boss for a half dollar, and often gets it in ex­ change for his submissiveness. This, informant said, is what white men mean by saying that the Negro is a "good psychologist" and that he knows his white folks; he adjusts himself to the inevitable and knows how to take some ad­ vantage of the situation [1949: 179], Finally, there is some direct empirical evidence to support the contention that often when sociologists think they are measuring alienation among the poor they are actually mea­ suring acquiescence to the interviewer. Lenski and Leggett (1960) developed an obverse form of one of the Srole items (1956), a conventional measure of alienation, and presented it to their respondents along with the regular Srole items. They found that a tendency to agree with both forms of the items was related to racial and class variables, with blacks and persons from low socioeconomic backgrounds more likely than whites and persons from higher socioeconomic backgrounds to agree with both forms even though they had opposite meanings. More recently, Carr (1971) presented the full Srole scale in its original and obverse form to two inde­ pendent samples of poor Southern blacks, one sample receiv­ ing the original form and the other sample receiving the ob­ verse form. Again, there was a strong tendency for the poor to agree with both forms of the scale items. The point of the preceding discussion was to emphasize the fact that the poor must be viewed as purposive actors

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

who consciously try to make adaptations to their environ­ ment. However, the nature of the environment they have to cope with forces them to spend most of their resources on nonpolitical activities. On the one hand, the conditions of living in poverty force the poor person to see life in terms of immediate needs. The poor, unlike most of us, face a daily struggle to provide the bare minimum for sheer physical sur­ vival. Because of this fact of life they are unable to afford the luxury of engaging in political activities which only promise to yield results in the future, even if those results might be more rewarding than results gained from short-run activities. Thus, if the poor person does not support a move­ ment to change the basic structural conditions of his life (for example, to eliminate poverty through political action) it is not necessarily because he is alienated; rather, given his con­ dition he simply cannot afford the luxury of getting involved in such activities which only promise some relief to his plight in the future. On the other hand, if the poor feel powerless (and express it on alienation scales) it is because they really are powerless vis-a-vis the forces which control their lives. These forces, especially public welfare agencies and the po­ lice, keep the poor dependent and constantly in fear of sanc­ tions. In short, the poor are more vulnerable to sanctions for participating in political activities than are other groups in our society. Situational constraints on the behavior of the poor explain in large measure why the poor black man in the North ap­ peared to be so apathetic about the civil rights movement. He was primarily concerned with immediate tangible things such as jobs, decent housing, and the quality of public facil­ ities. The civil rights leaders, however, were concerned with less tangible goals such as ending "de facto" segregation of public facilities and neighborhoods. One can make a cogent argument that if the goals of the civil rights groups were realized there would be, in the future, a marked change in the condition of all blacks vis-a-vis all whites. Nevertheless, there was no incentive for the poor black man to invest his

INCENTIVES AND SUPPORT

resources in action which only promised to bring about change in the future; given the immediacy of his needs, he was not particularly interested in long-range social change. In fact, the civil rights leaders often asked him to sacrifice his immediate needs for the pursuit of long-range goals. Wilson, for example, notes that civil rights leaders often op­ posed construction of hospitals or schools on the grounds that they would reinforce "de facto" segregation. Yet, many poor blacks were primarily concerned with receiving better hospitals and schools whether they were segregated or not. Thus, when the poor blacks refused to support the civil rights leaders they were acting in their own rational self-interest (Wilson, 1960: 211). The fact that the civil rights movement was unable to offer any incentives to the poor undoubtedly is an important rea­ son for the emergence of black-power ideology (Carmichael and Hamilton, 1967) and community-organization activities in the past few years. Both the ideology of black power and the activities of community organizers emphasizes the need to organize the poor around immediate problems such as schools, the quality of housing, and public services. In short, attention has shifted to "grassroots" organization, especially at the neighborhood level. Nevertheless, despite the growth of ideologies supporting neighborhood organization (black power, for example), and the emergence of skillful political strategists (Saul Alinsky, for example), we have certainly not seen a grassroots revo­ lution in the slums. If, as I have argued, the poor do not have a unique psychology or culture which permanently immobi­ lizes them politically, then why dont they support collective organizations (that is, neighborhood organizations) which are directed toward their immediate concerns? To answer this question we must examine whether or not there are any payoffs for the individual poor person support­ ing a neighborhood-organization effort. Pluralist interestgroup theory assumes that rational individuals will support a collective effort if they will individually benefit from that

NEIGHBOKHOOD ORGANIZATION

effort; however, if the benefits are available to everyone, whether or not they make a contribution, what incentive is there for a rational self-interested indiviudal to voluntarily contribute to the costs of those efforts? For example, if schools or parks are improved as a result of a neighborhood organizations efforts, everyone in the neighborhood will benefit, but if there is no way to exclude benefits from those who do not pay their share of the costs, the rational selfinterested man will not join the organization. Therefore, the fundamental problem in inducing the sup­ port of the poor for neighborhood organization efforts is not that they are irrational or nonrational, but rather that they act as rational self-interested men. To ask the poor to volun­ tarily contribute to neighborhood organizations is to ask them to act in an altruistic manner but, given the precarious nature of their environment, they seem unlikely to do so. In order to gain a clearer analytical understanding of this prob­ lem, as well as an understanding of the ways in which other interest groups have been able to overcome it, I shall now turn to Olson's (1965) public goods theory of interest groups. The Public Goods Dilemma The problem of persuading individuals in a polity to pay for the costs of goods that will benefit everyone, such as roads, schools, or national defense, is analytically defined in the economist's concept of a public good (Samuelson, 1954,1955, 1958). A public good is defined as a good which is nondivisible; that is, it is available to everyone whether or not they pay for its costs. Since the voluntary contribution of a single individual toward the cost of this good obviously would not make much difference and since by definition a public good is available to everyone, there is no rational economic reason for an individual to make a voluntary contribution. Never­ theless, we do manage, altough sometimes not very well, to pay for public goods such as schools or roads. Usually, we agree to coerce ouselves into paying for the goods through taxes. While it is not rational for a man to voluntarily pay for

INCENTIVES AND SUPPORT

part of the costs of a road or a school, it is rational for him to coerce himself and others into paying for these goods.6 Mancur Olson (1965) argues that all large aggregates whose members have interests in common face a similar public goods dilemma. Collective organizations, such as the union or the professional lobby, will bring increased individual benefits to members of those aggregates—for example, higher wages, better working conditions, or favorable legislation— but, as in the case of roads or schools, the voluntary contri­ bution of a single individual will not make much difference; and since the benefits of collective ogranization will accrue to everyone, regardless of whether or not they contribute their share, there is no rational incentive for an individual to make a contribution to the collective effort. Olson explains the dilemma: . . . The analog to atomistic competition in the non-market situation is the very large group, which will here be called the "latent group." It is distinguished by the fact that, if one member does or does not help provide the collective good, no other member will be significantly affected and therefore none has any reason to react. Thus an individual in a "latent" group, by definition, cannot make a noticeable contribution to any group effort, and since no one in the group will react if he makes no contribution, he has no incentive to contribute [1965: 50]. The public goods dilemma, Olson notes, explains why workers in the mass-production industries in the United 6Economists disagree among themselves about the utility of the concept of public goods. For varying opinions, see Samuelson (1954, 1958) and Colm (1936). One very practical consideration is whether any good can be enjoyed or used equally by all members of the public. Trucking companies obviously benefit more than the average working man from public roads. National defense, which is often used as an example of a public good, is also a source of persistent debate. How­ ever, I am not concerned with the economic implications of the public goods concept, but simply with its analytical utility for understanding the problems of organizing an aggregate of persons with latent com­ mon interests.

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

States were not able to organize until the passage of the Wagner Act in 1935. Prior to the Wagner Act, the worker who supported a union ran the risk of losing his job, but he had no assurance that other workers would support him. Therefore, the workers who supported the union during the pre-Wagner Act period were certainly not acting as rational self-interested men. However, the Wagner Act, by compelling employers to recognize a union when a majority of persons in a shop voted for collective representation and by specifically sanctioning the "closed shop," permitted the individual worker to coerce himself and others into joining a union. While a large portion of workers were unwilling to make voluntary contributions to union activity, they were willing to vote to coerce them­ selves into making contributions to the union. Thus, in spite of the fact that from 1937 to 1945 unemployment dropped and the United States moved into a wartime situation of high demand for labor, membership in unions increased dramat­ ically (Olson, 1965: 76-91). "In 1937 alone labor union mem­ bership jumped by 55 percent" (Olson, 1965: 79). Olson argues that any large aggregate with common inter­ ests, which he calls a "latent group," must come up with some special device or strategy to solve its public goods di­ lemma. One solution is to develop a legal mechanism which will allow members of the aggregate to coerce themselves into paying for the costs of collective goods. Another device is to provide, in addition to the collective good, a divisible individual good. Professional organizations and other lobby groups use this strategy. Individuals join a professional or­ ganization because they want to receive some selective indi­ vidual benefits that they cannot receive elsewhere. For ex­ ample, physicians join the AMA because they desire the individual services of defense against malpractice suits and access to the association's medical journal. In order to re­ ceive these individual benefits, however, they must pay dues to the organization. Their dues, in turn, go to pay for the costs of lobbying efforts which are oriented toward collective

I N C E N T I V E S AND SUPPORT

goals. The individuals support for collective lobbying efforts, then, is a by-product of his initial interest in receiving an individual benefit for himself (Olson, 1965: 132-167). The public goods dilemma is not as problematic in the case of small groups, however, and this explains the empirical fact that small groups (for example, manufacturers) have a less difficult time organizing (for example, price fixing) than larger aggregates (for example, consumers), Olson says: . . . in some small groups each of the members, or at least one of them, will find that his personal gain from having the collective good exceeds the total cost of providing some amount of that collective good; there are members who would be better off if the collective good were pro­ vided, even if they had to pay the entire cost of providing it themselves, than they would be if it were not provided. . . . Thus, in a very small group, where each member gets a substantial portion of the total gain simply because there are few others in the group, a collective good can often be provided by the voluntary self-interested action of the members of the group [1965: 33-34]. In addition, a large amount of theoretical and empirical evidence demonstrates the enormous power of social sanc­ tions to force individuals to support collective efforts in small groups.7 However, as Olson notes, this principle of organiza­ tion which applies to the small group is not applicable to the large aggregate or group. In the latter case, individuals do not meet on a face-to-face basis and therefore are unable to 7 One

of the best efforts to organize empirical research on small groups within a comprehensive theoretical framework is George Homans' Social Behavior: Its Elementary Forms, (1961). Homans pro­ vides numerous illustrations of the ways in which small groups can apply social sanctions to get their members to adhere to group norms. Unfortunately, many sociologists move from analysis of small groups to analysis of large groups without taking group size into account. A classic sociological treatise which does treat group size as an important sociological variable is Emile Durkheim's The Division of Labor in Society, (1933).

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

use social sanctions to coerce themselves into supporting group goals (1965: 53-65).8 The fact that social sanctions have much more utility in organizing small groups than large ones explains why small groups have an advantage over large groups in political confrontations and why clever po­ litical strategists keep their basic unit of organization small.9 Finally, it must be emphasized that the public goods con­ cept is only applicable to sustained interest-group organiza­ tion, that is, to situations where an aggregate of people try to gain permanent recognition or legitimacy in the eyes of other interest groups. Various kinds of short-run interest groups, which probably should more accurately be called "movements," are able to sustain the participation of indi­ viduals for a while by the use of appeals to ideological sym­ bols, the dramaturgy of conflict, or "purposive incentives."10 This seems to be the case with student protests and civil rights movements. As we have seen in both of these cases, however, organizers have not been able to sustain participa­ tion after the excitement of confrontations over salient issues 81

am not suggesting that social sanctions do not operate at all in large groups. The concept of societal norms, for example, illustrates the way in which the behavior of persons in a total society is influenced by socialization into the standards of a very large group. However, sociol­ ogists are well aware that as we move toward macrosocial analysis, the role of physical, legal, and political coercion becomes more important in influencing the behavior of individuals.The role of such forms of coercion, as opposed to the role of societal norms, values, and beliefs, in maintaining order in a society is of course a subject of a good deal of debate. For different perspectives on this debate see Demerath and Peterson (1967). Nevertheless, the purpose of this study is to investigate interest-group behavior and for that purpose the important point is that small groups have an advantage over large ones. 9 Olson notes that this accounts for the historical evolution of the "mass-based" movement outlined by Marx into the small tight-knit cadres developed by the actual revolutionaries, such as Trotsky and Lenin (1965: 106). DeBray (1967) describes how Maoist and other third-world "national liberation" movements employ the small group as their basic unit of organization. 10 It is more useful to view these movements as a type of "collective behavior." One attempt to apply Smelser's (1962) theory of collective behavior to neighborhood organization is Cohen (1968).

INCENTIVES AND SUPPORT

has ended. The reasons for this (analyzed in some detail in chapters 2 and 4) are complicated, but the central point here is that these types of protest organizations can persist as per­ manent interest groups only if their organizers find some de­ vice to solve the public goods dilemma. This is not to say, however, that a movement cannot be transformed into a permanent interest group. Most unions in this country began as protest movements for recognition of the rights of workers to collective bargaining. The most re­ cent example of such a movement is the Delano grape strike (Ecklein and Lauffer, 1972: 34-49). This strike was nurtured for a long time by the charisma of Caesar Chavez, but sus­ tained bargaining power was achieved only when the grow­ ers accepted the union as the legitimate bargaining agent for the grape pickers. In order for the grape workers' union to persist and sustain the support of its members, it needs a coercive device (the union shop) to guarantee that all those who receive the benefits of the union will contribute their share of the costs. Neighborhoods and the Public Goods Dilemma

At this point the reader may accept Olson's public goods argument with respect to traditional interest groups, such as unions and professional associations, but wonder if the theory applies to neighborhood organizations. Certain things make the aggregate of persons in a neighborhood different from the aggregate of persons who make up a profession or a work force in a factory. Rainwater notes that: . . . Neighborhoods contain a variety of people with quite different life circumstances, and it is only in an abstract sense that it is possible to speak of the common interests deriving from their neighborhood situation. Thus, the neighborhood is in sharp contrast with, say, the workers in a factory. The workers have a concrete community of in­ terest in terms of their wages and job security. While one

NEIGHBOBHOOD OBGANIZATION

can always move out of a "bad neighborhood" if one has enough money, workers who know that wages are pretty much the same for their kind of work everywhere can have recourse only to collective bargaining [1968: 34], The main thrust of Rainwater's remarks is simply that in­ dividuals in a poor neighborhood have reasons to believe that an "individualistic" solution to their problems is more feasible than a collective solution. Since the kind of neigh­ borhood a person lives in is determined to a large extent by his economic status, it may seem more reasonable to him to find a better job than to use his resources in a neighborhoodorganization effort. Harwood's research (1966) on Appala­ chian whites in a poor neighborhood in Chicago shows that they had internalized the American dream of individual mo­ bility and were extremely apathetic toward neighborhood organizers. In fact, there was some empirical basis for their beliefs. Their economic condition was better in Chicago than it was in Appalachia, and they saw that some friends and neighbors did move to "better" neighborhoods. Moreover, individualistic solutions to neighborhood prob­ lems are certainly not restricted to poor neighborhoods. Working- and middle-class whites characteristically respond to racially changing neighborhoods by "fleeing." Sociologists, economists, and human relations experts are correct when they say that if everyone in the neighborhood does not panic and leave, property values will remain stable; however, as we have seen, so long as collective efforts are purely volun­ tary, rational men in a large aggregate will not make contri­ butions to those efforts even when they recognize that they will benefit from such efforts. This accounts for the tremen­ dous advantage which "block busters" have over the unorga­ nized homeowners in changing neighborhoods.11 11 The people who live in a "changing neighborhood" may all be favorably disposed toward living in an integrated neighborhood and may all be aware that if everyone stays, property values will remain stable. However, given the fact that they do not have any way to coerce themselves into staying and given the fact that "block buster"

INCENTIVES AND SUPPOBT

The fact that individualistic solutions are available to in­ dividuals who live in a "bad" neighborhood (however "bad" is defined) poses a major obstacle to the development of ideas about ways of solving the public goods dilemma and creating viable neighborhood organizations. It is significant in this re­ gard that by far the greatest success in interesting people in neighborhood organization has occurred in minority-group neighborhoods where discrimination makes the option of leaving less feasible. Nevertheless, neighborhoods have an advantage over con­ ventional interest groups in that they have existing organiza­ tional structures such as churches, social clubs, and ethnic associations which can be used as the basis for developing neighborhood organizations. The fact that social institutions and organizations already exist, even in a poor neighbor­ hood, means that some individuals have more of a stake in the future of the neighborhood than others and therefore may be willing to pay more than their share of the costs of a neighborhood organization.12 A more important consideration with respect to the ex­ istence of organizational structures in neighborhoods per­ tains to the kinds of incentives that can induce persons to contribute to a neighborhood organization. Even in poor neighborhoods, individuals are induced to participate in a real estate agents can manupulate property values, it would seem that the rational self-interested individual in such a situation would not risk losing a large amount of his investment in his home and thus be one of the first to accept the block buster's offer to sell. In any event, the public goods argument would seem to provide a very strong case for legislation to enable residents of a changing neighborhood to obtain some kind of coercive device which would countervail the power of the real estate agents. Until now, however, most efforts to integrate neighborhoods have relied on "altruism" and, as we have seen, have not been terribly successful. 12 For example, persons who have invested time and money in or­ ganizations such as churches and businesses that cannot be easily moved from the neighborhood. See my discussion in chapter 4 of Alinsky's use of existing organizational structures in the development of a neighborhood organization.

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

variety of organizations, especially churches and social clubs, because of nonmaterial incentives such as "salvation" or social contact. Can these individuals perhaps support collec­ tive efforts as a by-product of their interest in receiving the individual benefit of salvation or social contact? A theoretical rationale for building neighborhood organi­ zation from a coalition of existing neighborhood groups is found in Olson's concept of a federal group. A federal group is a coalition of small groups which join together to seek some collective good for their members. While large latent groups cannot use social incentives to induce the support of their members for collective goals, small groups can use these de­ vices, which can be effective in maintaining the support of individuals in the respective small groups for the collective goals of the larger federal group (1965: 62-63). Therefore, it is not unreasonable to expect that if neigh­ borhood organizations can draw on the support of small groups in the neighborhood they will be able to overcome some of the problems of gaining long-term support for their efforts. However, the use of existing groups in building neighborhood organizations can be expected to have impor­ tant consequences for (1) the makeup of the neighborhood organization and (2) the kinds of strategies which the orga­ nization may employ in its organizing efforts. First, I mentioned earlier that participation in voluntary associations is positively correlated with socioeconomic status (Hausknect, 1962). Therefore, if a neighborhood orga­ nization draws its support from existing organizations in the community it is likely to contain a disproportionate number of persons with higher socioeconomic status who are prob­ ably not very representative of the kinds of people who live in the neighborhood. Second, we can expect that if existing organizations are induced to support a neighborhood-organization effort, the neighborhood organization will be constrained in the kinds of strategies it can employ to organize the poor. Groups do not usually participate in coalitions unless they feel that

INCENTIVES AND SUPPORT

they profit from their participation, and therefore we can ex­ pect that the small groups which participate in a neighbor­ hood organization will exert pressure to see that their inter­ ests are met in the organization's programs. Since it is the middle-class, "repsectable" members of the neighborhood who are most likely to belong to voluntary as­ sociations, this may mean that they will place constraints on the neighborhood organization's use of conflict tactics and force it to adopt a conservative posture. On the other hand, in certain black and Latin neighborhoods, for example,'the ex­ istence of militant ethnic associations may pressure a neigh­ borhood organization to adopt a more militant posture.13 In any event, a fundamental difficulty of the federal-group structure would seem to be that certain issues may generate pressure for a coalition of small groups to pursue a collective goal which is in the self-interest of all concerned, but as the issue wanes so may support for the federal group. Since, apart from small-group incentives, there is no incentive for individuals to support the federal group, they may simply go back to the situation which existed before the issue arose. Or­ ganizations which participate in a federal group can with­ draw their support from the group and still provide their members with individual selective benefits. For example, if a church decides to withdraw its support from a neighborhood organization it presumably can still provide its members with salvation or good fellowship as it did before it joined the federal group. In addition, we should note that social incentives may be less stable than ecenomic incentives in inducing individuals to support organizations. Social incentives such as good fel­ lowship would seem to be available in a variety of organiza­ tional contexts and thus may not hold members to an organi­ zation when they are at odds with its goals—in this case the support of a federal group. This seems to have been the case, for example, with a number of Protestant congregations dur13 See my discussion of the influence of minority-group organizations on the direction of the Community Action Programs in chapters 5 and 6.

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

ing the civil rights era when members who were dissatisfied with their church's policies on civil rights simply joined an­ other church.14 On the other hand, the Catholic church has been most successful in pursuing a vast number of collective efforts ranging from hospitals to schools, primarily, I would argue, because its members (or at least a good portion of them) are convinced that they cannot receive their individual benefit (that is, salvation) in another church. Nevertheless, I do not want to give the impression that social incentives are not sometimes powerful ways to hold persons to organizations. For example, the immigrant politi­ cal machine stayed in business partly because precinct cap­ tains provided the "newcomers" with friendship. Since the federal-group solution to the problem of neigh­ borhood organization is likely to involve a disproportionate number of residents with higher socioeconomic status and to create serious organizational maintenance problems, it is im­ portant to consider whether it is possible to develop organiz­ ing strategies which will involve a more representative group of residents and create a more stable organization. It is un­ likely, as I shall demonstrate in chapter 5, that poor neigh­ borhoods can count on the federal government to provide them with a coercive device as it did for labor; however, there is no reason why neighborhood organizations cannot employ the by-product strategy. Olson points out that the farm-bureau cooperative has developed into a powerful lobby for farmers because it provided them with selective individual benefits which can only be received if they join the organization and make some contribution to its lobbying efforts (1965: 149-159). Certainly, there are in slum neighborhoods an enormous number of unmet tangible economic needs that neighbor­ hood organizations could provide. If a neighborhood organi­ zation could provide one or more of these services to its members, then it might be able to gain support for the costs 14For a discussion of variations in reactions of different Protestant congregations to the civil rights struggle see Wood (1970).

INCENTIVES AND SUPPORT

of broader neighborhood goals. A few neighborhood organi­ zations have tried to use individual benefits to organize the poor (one of the most notable here is the Black Panther breakfast program), but they have not excluded these bene­ fits from non-members and therefore do not provide individ­ uals with any rational incentive to join their organizations. By and large, however, neighborhood organizations have avoided the issue of providing individual benefits to the poor and instead have tried to appeal to them on altruistic grounds to support nondivisible collective efforts. Up to this point, I have focused entirely on the problem of inducing the individual poor person to support neighborhood organizations, without considering the relationship between the social organization of the slum and neighborhood organi­ zation. The sociological literature on interest groups has em­ phasized the notion that social organization is prior to polit­ ical organization. Therefore, one might argue that poor neighborhoods do not organize basically because they lack a high enough degree of social organization. Despite recent studies (Suttles, 1968), which show that slums are more orga­ nized than conventional wisdom tells us, we still must con­ clude that their high rates of crime, illegitimacy, drug addic­ tion, and alcoholism indicate a marked degree of social disorganization. The argument that this disorganization pre­ vents residents of the slum neighborhood from developing a sense of community and does not give them any incentive to contribute to the welfare of the neighborhood must be ex­ amined in detail.

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND INTERESTGROUP DEVELOPMENT From the time of Marx, sociologists have stressed the notion that social organization must be a precondition for political organization. In other words, a group must form before group interests can be pursued. Even Marx, who is often criticized for his utilitarian biases (Parsons, 1949), argues that the

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

social organization of classes must precede their political organization. He states that the ecological and technological forces of capitalist industry will force workers into a com­ munity where in time they will develop consciousness of their common interests and finally act upon these interests through political action (Bottomore, 1956: 88-101). On the other hand, Marx argues that the French peasants did not engage in class action because the social organization of French farming did not lend itself to the growth of class consciousness, despite the fact that the peasants had an ob­ jective basis of common interest. He says, The small holding peasants form a vast mass, the mem­ bers of which live in similar conditions but without enter­ ing into manifold relations with one another. Their mode of production isolates them from one another instead of bringing them into mutual intercourse. . . . In this way, the great mass of the French nation is formed by simple addition of homologous magnitudes, such as potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes. In so far as millions of fam­ ilies live under economic conditions of existence that sep­ arate their mode of life, their interests, and their culture from those of the other classes and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. In so far as there is merely a local interconnection among these small hold­ ing peasants, and the identity of their interests begets no community, no national bond and no political organization among them, they do not form a class [Feurer, 1959: 338339]. Marx's analysis of the peasants and the workers focuses on the technological and ecological conditions which are, or are not, conducive to the growth of a form of social organization which in turn is conducive to the growth of class organiza­ tion. However, ecological factors in themselves are not a sufficient explanation for the ability or inability of an aggre­ gate to organize. These factors may be a necessary condition, although I am not convinced of that, but historical and con­ temporary evidence shows that different aggregates of people

INCENTIVES AND SUPPORT

who have to cope with similar ecological and technological conditions can develop quite different patterns of social structure and quite different political organizations.15 For example, although both immigrants and our contemporary poor have faced similar ecological conditions, the former managed to develop much more stable social structures and more viable political organizations than the latter. This suggests that perhaps social organization should be considered as an independent variable itself, apart from eco­ logical and technological conditions, in terms of its relation­ ship to interest-group organization. Weber's classic article "Class, Status, and Party" (Gerth and Mills, 1946: 180-195), for example, attempts to show that despite the development of rationalizing trends in the West, such as the market, nonrational bonds of social organization, especially those based on status, are still important determinants of a man's interest. The message of Weber's work seems to be that an aggregate with rational common interests, such as a class, will only pursue those interests through organized action if they are held together by nonrational social bonds such as status. Conversely, American voting studies indicate that when status identification cuts across class interests the result will be to dampen the effect of the latter (Lipset, 1960). One certainly cannot dispute the claim that social organi­ zation often precedes political organization or that the orga­ nized aggregate has a better chance than the unorganized aggregate to develop an interest group to represent it. How­ ever, the American experience is rich with historical cases where political and social organization have developed si­ multaneously.16 This is seen clearly in the case of immigrants. 15 One excellent example of this is found in Vogt and O'Dea's (1953) study of cultural differences in two ecologically similar communities and the impact of these differences upon collective projects in the two communities. 16 My emphasis here is on the process of social and political organi­ zation. A general theoretical work which attempts to overcome the static perspective so often prevalent in sociological discussions of social organization is Marvin Olsen's The Process of Social Organization (1968).

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

The historian Oscar Handlin vividly points out that, con­ trary to popular opinion, the early immigrants did not show much identification with what later were to become their ethnic communities. He says: Yet it was no easy matter then to define the nature of such groupings. Much later, in deceptive retrospect, a man might tell his children, Why, we were Poles and stayed that way—or Italians, or Irish or German or Czechoslovaks. The memories were in error. These people had arrived in the New World with no such identification. The terms re­ ferred to national states not yet in existence or just come into being. The immigrants defined themselves rather by the place of their birth, the village, or else by the provin­ cial region that shared dialect and custom; they were Masurians or Corkonians or Apulians or Bohemians or Bavarians. The parents back across the Atlantic, troubled by a son s too quick abandonment of the old ways, begged that he keep in himself the feeling of a Poznaniak (They did not say Pole.) [1951: 186]. Louis Wirth (1956) pointed out that even though the Jew­ ish ghetto of Chicago had the advantage of a long cultural tradition in Judaism, initially it was beset with serious con­ flicts between Jews of various nationalities and between those who held different views of Judaism. The intensity of the conflict is well illustrated by the feeling of a Russian Jew toward German Jews: "When I first put my feet on the soil of Chicago, I was so disgusted that I wished I had stayed at home in Russia. I left the Old Country because you couldn't be a Jew over there and still live, but I would rather be dead than be the kind of German Jew that brings the Jewish name into dis­ grace by being a Goy. That's what hurts: They parade around as Jews, and down deep in their hearts they are worse than Goyim, they are meshumeds (apostates)" [Wirth, 1956: 205].

INCENTIVES AND SUPPORT

Moreover, in the early" days the immigrant enclaves were plagued with a fairly high degree of social disorganization. Glazer and Moynihan (1963: 217-287) note, for example, that alcoholism and mental disorders were especially high in the Irish slums. Thomas and Znaniecki (1958) noted that the cultural discontinuities the Polish immigrant faced in coming from a peasant to an urban society resulted in personal and social disintegration. Finally, Glazer and Moynihan (1963) point out that immigrants themselves were responsible for a good deal of the direct exploitation within immigrant enclaves. History shows, of course, that eventually these various immigrant enclaves developed a strong sense of ethnic and religious identification. They manifested their sense of ethnic and/or religious identification and sense of community in collective political action to such an extent that it changed the course of American politics. But the important theoret­ ical question is what was the process by which all this came about? The fact that when the immigrant came to the United States he was forced by financial necessity and social pres­ sures to live with other immigrants and the fact that it seemed reasonable to him to move into an area where people spoke his language are historically documented. Physical contiguity and the fact that persons who live close to one another share things in common, however, is not a sufficient explanation for the growth of social and political organiza­ tion. Certainly blacks have been forced (in fact, more so than were the immigrants) to live in close contact with one an­ other, yet until very recently blacks have not shown much concern with community identification. The hostile reaction of native Americans toward immi­ grants is often cited as a reason for their desire to cling to­ gether in mutual protection societies, yet again the black experience suggests that even the most severe hostility to­ ward an aggregate of persons will not force them to band together and identify with each other. In fact, the growth of

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

black consciousness comes at a time when overt hostility toward blacks (for example, lynchings and other vigilante activities) is substantially less than at any time in our history. Physical contiguity and the hostile reaction of native Americans, then, were not sufficient conditions for the devel­ opment of ethnic social and political organization; somehow these conditions had to be translated into action. A key factor in this transformation was the political entrepreneur, an individual in the ethnic enclaves who had a personal stake in the organization of an ethnic group and who consciously engaged in efforts toward that end.17 Involved in this type of activity were newspaper publishers, church leaders, and above all politicians (Banfield and Wilson, 1963: 116-127; Cornwell, 1968; Dahl, 1961: 32-51; Glazer and Moynihan, 1963: 221-229; Handlin, 1951: 201-226). One of the important functions of the political entrepre­ neur was to provide individuals with information with which to interpret their world and to suggest ways to improve their lot in the world. Thus the fact that immigrant political entre­ preneurs tried to impress on the immigrant that he was living in a hostile world and that he must "stick with his own" if he wanted to survive was an important factor in promoting the growth of immigrant political and social organization. Alternatively, in recent years younger black political activists have recognized that a major obstacle to the success of polit­ ical organization in the black community has been the pre­ dominance of "entrepreneurs" who suggested either individ­ ualistic or "other worldly" solutions to the plight of blacks18 (Carmichael and Hamilton, 1967; Malcolm X, 1965). 17 An extensive analytical treatment of the role of the political entre­ preneur in relation to the public goods dilemma is found in Frohlich, Oppenheimer, and Young (1971). These authors also present some arguments about the limitations of Olson's conception of the public goods problem. 18 This problem is intimately linked to the problem of black selfconcept in a white racist society. For social psychological discussions of black self-concept see Frazier (1957), Clark (1965), and Kvaraceus et al (1965).

INCENTIVES AND SUPPORT

Information in itself, however, will not produce social and political organization. The politcal entrepreneurs in the im­ migrant enclaves were successful in developing social and political organization because they were able to provide se­ lective individual benefits to individuals supporting collec­ tive organization. These benefits included help in finding jobs, social services such as charity and medical care, and recreational activities. In many ethnic communities individ­ uals supported ethnic businesses because they benefited as individuals in terms of jobs or businesses for themselves. Many of the immigrant churches, especially the Catholic churches, provided their members with individual benefits ranging from salvation to social activities. As a by-product of receiving these individual incentives, individuals sup­ ported the costs of collective ventures such as construction of hospitals or schools. Once these services were established they provided further incentives for individuals to support their respective ethnic or religious communities (Glazer and Moynihan, 1963; Herberg, 1960). The importance of individual incentives in building polit­ ical organization is most evident in the growth of the im­ migrants' most powerful political weapon, the political machine. Banfield and Wilson note that: Even though the precinct captain asks for something that is almost worthless to the voter [i.e., his vote], he must offer something in return. What he offers is usually a per­ sonal nonmaterial incentive, "friendship." A Chicago cap­ tain explained, "I never take leaflets or mention issues or conduct rallies in my precinct. After all, this is a question of personal friendship between me and my neighbors." Much has been made of the "favors"—turkeys at Thanks­ giving, hods of coal at Christmas, and so on—with which the machine in effect buys votes. Such material induce­ ments are indeed given in some instances. The voter, how­ ever, is the one contributor to the machine's system of activity who is usually given nonmaterial inducements,

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

especially "friendship." The reason for this is, of course, that people will exchange their votes for "friendship" more readily than for cash or other material benefits; and the machine cannot afford to pay cash for many of the votes it needs. Many voters, indeed, seem to have valued the turkeys and hods of coal mainly as tokens of friendship, and, ac­ cordingly, of the humanity and goodness of the "organiza­ tion" and its "boss"! Jane Addams, the settlement house worker, explained this long ago: "On the whole, the gifts and favors are taken quite simply as an evidence of genuine loving kindness. The alderman is really elected because he is a good friend and neighbor. He is corrupt, but he is not elected because he is corrupt, but rather in spite of it. His standard suits his constituents. He exemplifies and exag­ gerates the popular type of good man. He has attained what his constituents secretly long for" [1963: 117-118]. The machine politician, then, did not rely exclusively on material incentives to induce the support of the immigrant voters, but he did provide them with some kind of selective individual benefit which was defined by them as important, and this in turn induced them to give their support to the machine. The immigrant experience is an extremely valuable illus­ tration of the fact that the success of interest-group organi­ zation efforts depends on much more than mere ideological appeals or the awareness of common interests. At the root of this historical experience in transforming unorganized masses into powerful political interest groups was the skillful development of a by-product strategy to solve the public goods dilemma. Naturally, the solution to the public goods dilemma among the immigrants was not dependent upon the ability of their political entrepreneurs to understand the pub­ lic goods dilemma in a formal way; yet these men did recog­ nize that in order to gain cooperation from individuals some way had to be found to appeal to their self-interest on an

INCENTIVES AND SUPPORT

individual basis. This is not to deprecate the ideals of ethnic and/or religious organizations or to suggest that the political entrepreneurs in these enclaves were purely Machiavellian in their outlook on life, but simply to record the historical fact that they saw to it that appeals to altruism were heavily intermingled with concrete inducements to the individual self-interests of the immigrants. The immigrant experience is relevant here, not as an anal­ ogy to contemporary affairs but rather as an illustration of the analytical principles put forward earlier. Obviously, the historical situations of the immigrants and the contemporary poor are vastly different on a number of key points. The simpler free-market economy of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries has been replaced by oligopolistic trends in industry and major technological developments in the production process itself. This means that the contemporary poor not only have a more difficult time than the immigrants in entering the work force, but they also have a more difficult time in developing their own business enterprises, which re­ sults in the loss of an important source of incentives for col­ lective organization. In addition, of course, the black poor have suffered, as a result of slavery, severe political, eco­ nomic, and psychological consequences that have no direct parallel in the immigrants' experiences. Furthermore, the enormous development of social service programs, including welfare aid, during the past few decades has eliminated an important source of incentives employed by the immigrants in their organizational efforts. As we have seen, a number of selective incentives offered by the immigrant political entre­ preneurs were in the category of material assistance, such as charity, health care, and so on. Today, on the other hand, political entrepreneurs in poor communities must compete with large-scale public service bureaucracies if they wish to use similar kinds of services as incentives for organizational participation. This is an important matter, which I shall discuss at length in my concluding chapter. Nevertheless, despite the inappropriateness of making a simple analogy

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

between the immigrant experience and the organizational difficulties of our contemporary poor, the earlier experience does illustrate both the utility of viewing interest-group processes from the perspective of the public goods dilemma and the analytical similarity of the fundamental problem faced by all aggregates seeking to create viable interest groups. To adequately understand why so many neighbor­ hood organizations have been unable to deal with that prob­ lem, however, we must extend our theoretical focus to the relationship between organizational processes and the public goods dilemma.

CHAPTER TWO

Resource Needs and Environmental Problems

We must now consider the organizational problems that a neighborhood organization can be expected to face when it tries to obtain the resources necessary to induce the support of the poor for collective efforts. The need of a neighborhood organization to gain financial resources and legitimacy ex­ erts pressure on the leaders of the organization to make adaptations to the sociopolitical environment in which the organization operates. In turn, the need for a neighborhood organization to adapt to its environmental surroundings, which are subject to constant change, can be expected to pose a number of organizational dilemmas for its leaders. Thus the role of organizational structure and information is affected and to some extent shaped by the problems resulting from the relationship between resource needs and environ­ mental contingencies.

FINANCIAL RESOURCES Given the precarious life situation of the poor, we would ex­ pect that they, more so than persons in more affluent strata, would have to receive incentives pertaining to the material problems of their existence if they are to support collective efforts. Such incentives do not always cost a lot of money, as for example, the individual mobility strategies offered to in­ dividuals by groups like the Black Muslims (see chapter 7), but, generally speaking, the problem of providing material payoffs for the poor invariably raises the question of who will pay for such benefits. Since a poor neighborhood is limited in its material resources, an organization emerging

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

from such a milieu will often have to look for other persons or groups to "pay the bills." Therefore, the first major re­ source need for many neighborhood organizations is money. While the problem of financial resources is given quite a bit of attention in the neighborhood-organization literature, much less attention is given to the problem of obtaining legitimacy.

LEGITIMACY1 A major problem for any organization which claims to repre­ sent a constituency is to convince persons and groups with which it hopes to negotiate to recognize it as a legitimate spokesman for that constituency. The union movement in this country struggled for some time to gain acceptance of the notion that unions had the right to represent workers in collective bargaining. More recently, we have seen resistance to the notion that public employees have a right to be represented by a union in their negotiations with public authorities.2 An examination of the sources of resistance to granting legitimacy to the above mentioned groups will help us to understand the problems which a neighborhood organization will face in this regard. There seem to be two major obstacles which groups have faced in trying to achieve legitimacy: (1) ideology and (2) vested interests. A large barrier to the recognition of unions in America has been the ideology surrounding the individual contract be­ tween employer and employee. In the early part of this cen­ tury, the United States Supreme Court thwarted a number of efforts to organize unions by making decisions which de1 The term legitimacy must be understood in the context of a rela­ tionship between individuals and groups. With reference to polities, legitimacy means that individuals and groups view a regime and/or constitution as having the right to govern them. In a sociological con­ text legitimacy is granted by those living within a polity (Lipset, 1960: 64-86), a view that differs from some philosophical conceptions. 2 A major issue in this regard has been the right, disputed by public school boards, of teachers to strike.

RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT

clared that compulsory unionization violated the "sacred­ ness" of the individual contract between employer and employee and, according to the Court, infringed on the "rights" of individual workers and their employers.3 The sacredness of the individual contract historically had been a key element in the ideology which supported a capitalist economic system. Thus, when unions were demanding col­ lective representation of workers in the wage bargain, they were striking at the heart of an ideology which was central to the maintenance of the American value system during that period. In retrospect, liberal economists, such as Galbraith (1956) and Olson (1965) can point out that workers, so long as they were unorganized, were at an unfair disadvantage in 3 A classic illustration of how the concept of the individual contract was used to thwart the organization of labor is found in the case of Coppage v. Kansas (1915). The Kansas State supreme court had upheld the conviction of a railroad agent (Coppage) who had fired a switch­ man because the latter refused to resign from the union. The Supreme Court of the United States, however, overturned the conviction on the grounds that the employer had the right to establish the conditions of employment, in this case that employees were forbidden to join a union, as part of the Constitutional guarantee of the freedom of in­ dividuals to make contracts. Here the Court upheld the "sacredness" of the individual contract although it expressly noted that employees were at an unfair disadvantage vis-a-vis their employers. The majority opinion stated that, ". . . Indeed a little reflection will show that wherever the right of private property and the right of free contract co-exist, each party when contracting is inevitably more or less influ­ enced by the question whether he has much property, or little, or none; for the contract is made to the very end that each may gain something that he needs or desires more urgently than that which he proposes to give in exchange. And, since it is self-evident that, unless all things are held in common, some persons must have more property than others, it is from the nature of things impossible to uphold freedom of contract and the right of private property without at the same time recognizing as legitimate those inequalities of fortune that are the necessary result of the exercise of those rights. But the Fourteenth Amendment, in de­ claring that a State shall not 'deprive any person of life, liberty or property without due process of law,' gives to each of these an equal sanction; it recognizes 'liberty' and 'property' as co-existent human rights, and debars the States from any unwarranted interference with either" (Gregory and Katz, 1948: 124-125).

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

bargaining with their employers, and thus justify collective bargaining on the grounds that it increases competition in the marketplace; but prior to the Wagner Act the notion of col­ lective representation of workers was certainly viewed by many, both inside and outside of management, as a subver­ sive idea.4 This is not to say, however, that the sacredness of the indi­ vidual contract has always been the major obstacle to union organization. Public employees have been obstructed in their efforts to unionize by the notion that they work first for the public and second for themselves. Such demands are not made of their often much higher paid counterparts in private industry. Nevertheless, the essential point is that ideological factors, whatever their source, can be an im­ portant hurdle which organizations must overcome if they are to achieve recognition as legitimate spokesmen for their constituencies. Similarly, we find major ideological obstacles to the notion that neighborhood residents have a right to collective repre­ sentation vis-a-vis public authorities in a city. In this instance, ideological obstacles come from two diverse sources: (a) the Reformers ideal of the nonpolitical single community and (b) the liberal's ideal of the integrated community. Banfield and Wilson (1963) and Hofstadter (1955a) point out that one of the major objectives of the Reform movement in city politics was to replace the highly politicized approach to city government with the concept that a city should be run like a business, in which efficiency rather than political con­ siderations would direct policy-making. Thus, the Reformers sought to eliminate the position of mayor and replace it with the city manager, defined as an administrator who was sup­ posed to be above politics. Also, the Reformers sought to eliminate ward elections of city councilmen, contending that 4 Two mutually reinforcing rationales were used to classify the union as subversive. First, the union challenged the basic competitive model of classical economics (Galbraith, 1956; Olson, 1965). Second, the union challenged the general American value placed on individual achievement (Lipset, 1963).

RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT

they fostered particularized interests (especially ethnic vot­ ing blocs), and to replace them with at-large elections in which councilmen would represent the whole city. Above all, the Reformers sought to eliminate conflict from city govern­ ment and to replace it with the notion that government should serve the "common good" of all the residents of a city. It is clear that the Reform movement has ended many of the traditional forms of corruption in city government, but it has also done much to replace the view that the city contains a plurality of different interest groups with the notion that the city is a single community. Thus the ideological legacy of the Reform movement is certainly not conducive to the notion that a neighborhood has a right to pursue its interests vis-a­ vis public authorities. (In chapter 6, I shall discuss some other implications of Reform measures for neighborhoodorganization efforts.) Ideological resistance to the concept of a neighborhood organization as a legitimate interest group also comes from post-World War II American liberalism. During the past few decades, one of the major objectives of liberal-reformers5 has been to create a truly integrated society. Among the most persistent adversaries of this objective have been persons and groups who have tried to use the concept of the neigborhood to prevent blacks and otehr minorities from gaining access to certain services enjoyed by the majority. For example, the concept of the neighborhood school has been used to prevent busing and other measures aimed at the integration of the schools. In addition, the whole thrust of liberal programs since the beginning of the New Deal has been toward greater central­ ization of authority in the federal government. In actuality local authorities have not lost nearly as much power as the 5

Here I am referring to New Deal-type liberals who have focused their attention of federal governmental solutions to social problems. In contrast, the Reform movement, mentioned above, focused its attention on city politics. More importantly, the New Deal reformers identified with labor, the immigrants, and the poor, while the Reform movement was essentially an expression of business interests.

NEIGHBOEHOOD ORGANIZATION

liberals had hoped for; but the important point at this junc­ ture is that liberal programs have been aimed at taking pre­ rogatives away from local authorities and finding solutions in the national government. Whether we are considering welfare-state measures such as federal aid to education or public assistance or civil rights legislation, liberals have traditionally viewed "local interests" as obstructionist while, at the same time, looking for solutions in a strong presidency (Burns, 1967). Therefore, from the point of view of tradi­ tional post-war liberal ideology, the notion of giving polit­ ical prerogatives to neighborhoods must seem extremely reactionary. Nevertheless, in the past few years, we have witnessed events which have challenged the liberal's faith in federal solutions to social problems. The Vietnam war has vividly brought home to liberals the unanticipated costs of a strong presidency. Also, the growing tide of black nationalism has placed a good deal of emphasis on grassroots control and neighborhood organization, which, in turn, has put pressure on liberals to support these efforts. The major consequence of these events, however, has been to create a good deal of confusion and doubt within the liberal camp. Many liberals are aware that the solutions for the problems of the New Deal and the civil rights era are not applicable to our con­ temporary problems, but they are unable to develop a pro­ gram to cope with these new problems. Thus, political impotence, which stems from doubt and confusion, leaves liberals unable to cope with the issue of neighborhood orga­ nization even if they are able to overcome their traditional ideological aversion to local politics.® In any event, resistance to local organizing efforts is not due solely to ideology; it also stems from the fact that if a disorganized aggregate of persons are organized they usually threaten somebody's vested interests. Certainly, management 6In

chapters 5 and 6 I shall examine some of the reasons for the dilemmas facing contemporary liberalism in America and in chapter 7 I shall suggest a way out of these dilemmas.

RESOURCES AND E N V I R O N M E N T

had vested interests in preventing the organization of unions because it is in a much better bargaining position when it has to deal only with workers on an individual basis. Like­ wise, we can expect that if a poor neighborhood organizes, it may adversely affect the vested interests of other individ­ uals and groups in the city, Mayors and public service directors can expect increased public service demands on them if poor neighborhoods organize. In addition, since organized groups have the poten­ tial to use their collective resources in electoral politics or lobbying activities, neighborhood organizations pose a direct threat to the political future of elected officials. City planners can also be adversely affected by neighbor­ hood organization. The problems of trying to develop and implement programs for the physical renewal of cities are complicated enough by technical and financial factors, but neighborhood organization presents the possibility of orga­ nized resistance to centralized planning goals. For example, a major obstacle to urban renewal comes from persons who don't want their neighborhood cleared for a particular project, whether it is a high-rise apartment complex or a superhighway. The organization of neighborhoods in many ways presents a more serious obstacle to mayors, public service officials, and city planners than the obstacles which the organization of labor presented to management. While management strongly resisted the efforts of labor to organize, once it was forced to recognize the legitimacy of unions, it quickly learned that the costs of meeting union demands (for ex­ ample, working conditions and higher wages) could be dealt with, in part, by raising prices. Management has not entirely resolved the problem of paying for the demands of laborit now faces competition with foreign goods produced by "cheap labor"—but federal subsidies and tariffs have taken at least a portion of this burden off of management and have passed the costs of labor organization on to the consumer. But the conflict between a neighborhood organization and

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

city officials more closely approximates a zero-sum game. If a neighborhood is able to increase demands on service delivery systems there is no easy way to pass on the costs of these demands to someone else. When costs of city govern­ ment rise they are passed on to city taxpayers, but taxpayers can always move to the suburbs, leaving the city government with increased costs and less tax revenue with which to pay those costs. I am not suggesting that the conflict between poor neigh­ borhoods and public authorities must assume the character of a zero-sum game. Restructuring the nature of this conflict game to another form, however, would require some basic rethinking on the part of public authorities. They would have to recognize, for example, the diseconomies connected with large-scale bureaucratic operations as opposed to the ad­ vantages of smaller-scale operations and calculate the costs of zero-sum games in terms of the disruptions to public order and of the high expenditures which are now paid for social control mechanisms to "keep the lid on" the urban crisis. In chapter 7 I shall illustrate how an awareness of these costs can lead to rethinking about alternative ways of establishing service-delivery systems which will institutionalize the con­ flict between public authorities and poor neighborhoods and, in turn, reduce the costs to both parties in the conflict situa­ tion. However, my emphasis at this point is on the way in which public authorities are most likely to perceive the im­ mediate costs of neighborhood organization vis-a-vis their public service-delivery systems and their political fortunes. Finally, the reader should note the intimate connection between financial needs and the need for legitimacy. The strong ideological and vested-interest resistance to the no­ tion that neighborhood organizations are legitimate interest groups can be expected to create resistance to efforts to grant financial resources to neighborhood organizations. In particu­ lar, persons who can be adversely affected by a neighbor­ hood organization can be expected to try to block efforts to financially support such an organization, and one of the most

RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT

effective weapons for doing this is to question the legitimacy of the concept of neighborhood organzation. In meeting major resource needs, the neighborhood orga­ nization will have to cope with fundamental organizational problems. To gain an understanding of these, we shall look first at the way in which other organizations, ranging from business corporations to political movements, have tried to cope with similar problems.

ORGANIZATIONAL STRATEGIES AND CHANGING ENVIRONMENTS One of the most important facts we have learned from re­ search on formal organizations is the degree to which pres­ sure to meet organizational resources needs can force organi­ zations to adapt to their environmental surroundings. Michels' (1962) formulation of the axiom that the first goal of all orga­ nizations is survival has now been articulated into the "open systems" approach to organizational study. This approach eschews the static self-contained bureaucratic model of the Weberian tradition and concentrates on the searching pro­ cess which organizations undergo in their effort to find strat­ egies to deal with their environmental contingencies (Katz and Kahn, 1966; Maurer, 1971; Selznik, 1948; Thompson, 1967; Thompson and McEwen, 1958). In a classic study of organizational change in response to environmental exigencies, Selznik (1966) describes how the need of the TVA to establish itself as a legitimate organiza­ tion in the Tennessee Valley forced its director to take account of the grassroots leadership in the valley's local communities. The TVA eventually opted for a strategy of cooptation in which local leaders were brought into the structure of the organization. This strategy effectively re­ duced resistance to the project in the valley, but at the same time the incorporation of local people into the organization forced its director to adopt a more conservative program than he had originally intended to pursue. The impact of the

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

environment on organizational goals and strategies is clearly evident in the case of education. Burton Clark (1956), for example, shows how the need for support from the local community can force a community college to get involved in a vast array of nonacademc pursuits. Most recently, of course, we have witnessed how student protests and public issues such as the Vietnam War have forced university ad­ ministrators to seriously reevaluate their goals and operating procedures, especially with respect to the participation of students and faculty in the governance of the school, the re­ search versus teaching demands on faculty members, and the relationship between the university and other institu­ tional spheres of society, including the military-defense industry apparatus and the local human communities sur­ rounding these colleges (Baldridge, 1971; The Cox Commis­ sion Report, 1968). Finally, the civil rights movement, black power, and demands for citizen participation on the one hand, and the unionization of teachers on the other, have created serious organizational dilemmas for public school administrators in terms of defining the spheres of influence of various groups in the administrative process itself (Fantini, Gitell, and Magat, 1970). Organizational movements face a similar problem in that pressure from their environments may force them to alter their original objectives and/or strategies. For example, the American union movement was unable to generate much public support until it spurned generalized political goals and adopted a more conservative posture which focused on the wage bargain. This orientation upsets some radical intel­ lectuals who would Hke to see the American union move­ ment develop along the more politicized lines of its European counterparts, but the fact is that the American Union move­ ment was forced by the realities of American institutions and values to adopt a more conservative orientation (Lipset, 1963: 193-233). Similarly, C. Wright Mills (1962) illustrates how the development of parliamentary democracy and in­ cremental social reforms forced the Marxist political parties

RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT

in Western Europe to turn from advocacy of violent revolu­ tion toward reform within the parliamentary system. Today, Marxists in the "third world" recognize that national libera­ tion movements have to be built around the unique social and political institutions of the nations in which they are working, and this means that political strategies will vary from one nation to another (De Bray, 1967). The empirical fact that organizations such as churches (Troelstch, 1931: 331-343) and political parties (Michels, 1962), which are ostensibly created to pursue nonutilitarian goals, often eschew idealistic goals in order to adapt to their surroundings is a source of great consternation to ideological purists. But, ideological purity and an unwillingness to adapt to environmental conditions can result in an organization's not achieving any of its objectives. The problem of adjusting an organization to environmen­ tal pressures is complicated by the fact that the environment is constantly changing, and therefore a strategy that may be effective in coping with problems at one point may not nec­ essarily be effective at another. Organizations that survive are those which manage to comprehend changes in their environments and, most importantly, are able to develop strategies to cope with new contingencies (Terreberry, 1971; Dill, 1971). Chandler (1962) shows how a population shift in the United States created a major organizational crisis for Sears Roebuck, and eventually forced the company to make major changes in its organizational policies. Sears was orig­ inally a mail-order house, but when the population of the United States started shifting from rural to urban areas, the functional importance of ordering goods by mail declined. Sears responded to this crisis by changing its organizational structure from a highly centralized corporation to a more de­ centralized corporation with semi-autonomous retail outlets in the urban areas. In a similar fashion the National Founda­ tion for Infantile Paralysis, which faced the prospect of going out of business when the Salk vaccine was discovered, redi­ rected its efforts toward birth defects (Sills, 1957). Alterna-

NEIGHBOBHOOD OBGANIZATION

tively, many organizations, for one reason or another, are unable either to comprehend environmental changes and/or to develop effective strategies to deal with those changes. The Townsend movement (Messinger, 1955), for example, was never able to adjust to the passage of the Social Se­ curity Act and now is just a historical event. Emery and Trist (1971) provide us with an illustration of how even competent administrators can make colossal blunders be­ cause of sudden shifts in their organization's environment. They describe how a major British canning firm invested sub­ stantial amounts of money in a new production process aimed at improving their traditional single-product line, only to dis­ cover after making the investment that post-War develop­ ments, including the frozen food boom, the development of grocery chains, and changing consumer preferences, had radically altered their market. Consequently, they had to make a costly readjustment in their production process planning. The problem of adapting organizational strategies to changing environmental conditions is even more problematic in the case of political organizations. The very character of our democratic system of government which promotes the growth of incremental reforms also creates problems for the survival of organizations which work for change. A per­ sistent dilemma with which all reform movements must con­ tend in a democratic society is that the same institutions and values which make the system responsive to pressure for change also provide adversaries with the means to reduce the long-term effectiveness of reform movements. On the one hand, a number of observers, including Schumpeter (1950) and Sorel (1950), note how responsive Western democracies are to pressure. Sorel says: The history of England affords more than one example of a Government giving way when numerous demonstra­ tions against its proposals took place, even though it was strong enough to repel by force any attack on existing in-

RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT

stitutions. It seems to be an admitted principle of Parlia­ mentary Government that the majority cannot persist in pursuing schemes which give rise to popular demonstra­ tions of too serious a kind. It is one of the applications of the system of compromise on which this regime is founded; no law is valid when it is looked upon by a minority as be­ ing so oppressive that it rouses them to violent opposition. Great riotous demonstrations are an indication that the moment is not far off when an armed revolt might break out; Governments which are respectful of the old tradi­ tions give way before such demonstrations [1950: 153]. On the other hand, the flexibility of democratic institutions and the value placed on compromise (or what Schumpeter calls the "non-heroic ethic") allow the adversaries of an or­ ganizing movement to make incremental or token conces­ sions to take the issues away from the movement. For ex­ ample, the ability of Western democracies to make conces­ sions to improve the standard of living of workers has re­ sulted in a substantal erosion of working-class support for radical movements.7 Because of the flexibility of democratic systems, move­ ments for incremental change are more easily organized and accepted as legitimate than those for radical change. This is certainly the case in the history of American politics. For ex­ ample, many of the reforms which were promoted by the Populist party, such as the direct election of senators, were later adopted by our government; yet the Populist party it­ self no longer exists. Similarly, social security and workmen's compensation, initially promoted by radical political parties, have now been adopted by the major political parties; but as a consequence of this, the radical parties have lost their sup­ port. In fact, a major dilemma for third parties in our country 7 More precisely, as Lipset points out, the class struggle in demo­ cratic- nations has been transformed from violent confrontation into electoral politics (19Θ0: 230-300). However, this means that classoriented political movements have accepted the electoral system and have, by and large, eschewed revolutionary goals.

NEIGHBOBHOOD ORGANIZATION

is that once their programs begin to gain general acceptance they usually go out of business.8 In addition, the flexibility of our constitutional system per­ mits changes in the "rules of the game" which can at times destroy the effectiveness of a given political strategy. For ex­ ample, middle- and upper-class WASPS, unable to compete effectively with immigrants in electoral politics within the existing rules of city government, were able through the Re­ form movement to make some changes in those rules and thus to compete more effectively. In many cities, the Reform movement was able to remove many of the traditional sources of graft and political patronage essential to the main­ tenance of the political machine. More importantly, the Re­ form measure of at-large elections limited the effectiveness of ethnic block voting (Banfield and Wilson, 1963: 138-150). The preceding discussion points out two major constraints with which the neighborhood organizer must cope in his ef­ forts to find ways to organize the poor. First, the environ­ ment places constraints on his selection of strategies because, on the one hand, a neighborhood organization needs re­ sources in order to provide incentives to induce the support of the poor; but, on the other hand, the need to obtain re­ sources may force the organization to displace some, or all, of its original goals. Second, because of the flexibility of the democratic political system in which neighborhood organiza­ tions operate, their adversaries will have the opportunity to learn ways of coping with their organizing strategies. This means that the neighborhood organization must constantly reevaluate the relationship between its strategies and envi­ ronmental conditions, if it wishes to survive. While all neighborhood organizations can be expected to face the aformentioned general organizational problems, we 8 An important factor in producing this outcome is our two-party system which promotes the absorption of minor parties into one of the two major parties and inhibits the growth of parties either too far left or too far right (Lipset, 1960: 303-331; 19Θ3: 327-365).

KESOURCES A N D E N V I R O N M E N T

can also expect to find variations in the nature of specific problems they face, according to the kinds of organizational structures they possess.

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND STRATEGY We saw in the illustrations of successful organizational sur­ vival that organizational structure played a strategic role in dealing with environmental uncertainties. Moreover, there is ample evidence to show that changes in organizational structure in response to environmental exigencies vary con­ siderably depending on the nature of the environment and the characteristics of the organization. Thus, some organiza­ tions have succeeded in coping with problems through in­ creased centralization of their organizational structures, while other organizations have solved their crises through decentralization (Chandler, 1962; Katz and Eisenstadt, 1960). While researchers have been able to establish some degree of correlation between organizational structures and specific environmental problems (Pugh et al., 1969; Thompson, 1967: 51-82), we have seen that in the life-history of any given or­ ganization, such as the TVA or Sears Roebuck, the match between organizational structure and environment is often the result of a lengthy searching process. A major organizational dilemma, however, is that an or­ ganizational structure developed to meet environmental problems at one point later may produce new unintended problems. We are most familiar with the unintended con­ sequences of bureaucratic solutions (Merton, 1940) in such diverse areas as religion (Troeltsch, 1931: 331-343) and politics (Michels, 1962), but the development of other kinds of organizational structures can create just as many prob­ lems for any organization. For example, the Protestant sects and the New Left movement developed in response to the unintended consequences of bureaucratization—in religion (that is, the Catholic church) and politics (that is, the Old

NEIGHBOEHOOD ORGANIZATION

Left), respectively—but both groups have since found that democratic structures put severe constraints on the mobiliza­ tion of resources for collective efforts.9 The constraints which organizational structure places on an organization s actions can be viewed as the costs of adapt­ ing the organization to environmental contingencies. Aiken and Hage (1968), for example, illustrate that while interorganizational cooperation can yield enormous benefits for all of the organizations concerned, such a structural arrange­ ment has a very deep impact on the internal organizational processes of the respective participants. Also, as organiza­ tional structures become more diversified to meet environ­ mental contingencies they must pay a price in terms of in­ creased communications problems (Hage, Aiken, and Marrett, 1971). The costs of a new structural arrangement will be highest when persons with different values and interests are incorporated into the organizational process, which in turn, changes the inducements-contributions problem for the organization. The new members of the organization can be assumed to be as self-interested as existing contributors and can be expected to consider organizational policies in light of their own interests. Thus, while new contributors may pro­ vide valuable input, their preferences may have to be con­ sidered by decision-making charting a course of action (Bar­ nard, 1938; Clark and Wilson, 1961). In short, the characteristics of an organization's structure are ordinarily the result of a trade-off between survival needs and other goals. Because this trade-off usually involves the issue of participation of diverse persons and groups as well as the issue of the boundaries of the organization's sphere of influence, it is not surprising that organizational structure is a major area of intraorganizational and interorganizational conflict (Aldrich, 1971; Baldridge, 1971; Pondy, 1969). 9 See my discussion of New Left efforts at neighborhood organization in chapter 4. An empirical case of organizational dilemmas faced by many Protestant congregations is found in Wood's (1970) analysis of the responses of Protestant congregations to the civil rights struggle.

RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT

We can expect, then, that organizational structure will pose a major problem for a neighborhood organization. In order to gain financial resources and/or legitimacy, a neigh­ borhood organization may look for sponsorship from another organization, such as a social service agency. Once the neigh­ borhood organization is linked to the organizational structure of the larger organization, however, the survival needs of the larger organization will have to be considered in any action which the neighborhood organization takes. Therefore, if the activities of a neighborhood organization threaten the sur­ vival needs of a sponsoring organization, we can expect that the sponsoring organization will put some constraints on those activities. Alternatively, if a neighborhood organization opts for ccimplete autonomy, it may have more freedom in selecting organizational strategies, but we can expect that it will face serious problems in obtaining the resources neces­ sary to carry out those strategies. In addition, as I mentioned earlier, throughout our history many groups that have initiated change have not persisted as viable interest groups. One of the reasons for this occur­ rence is that the kinds of organizational structures which are most conducive to strategies for change are often the least conducive to solving the problem of legitimacy. Radical gorups are able to initiate change because they lack "respect­ ability" and thus are not as subject to sanctions for their activities as are more "respectable" organizations. However, once they begin to initiate change and their objectives be­ come more "respectable," those objectives often are coopted by more "respectable" groups and the radical organizations find themselves outside of the decision-making process. Con­ versely, it is clear that "respectable" groups find it difficult to initiate radical change because to engage in controversial activities may threaten their "respectability." Therefore, the costs and benefits of a given organizational structure must be weighed in terms of the short-range and long-range consequences of the ability of an organization to cope with environmental problems. Normally, political or-

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

ganizations which are highly autonomous have a great deal more flexibility in selecting strateges to achieve short-range objectives, but the very organizational structure which per­ mits this flexibility may be a serious hindrance to the longterm stability of the organization. However, it is possible for an organization to use one kind of organizational structure to achieve short-term goals and then change that structure at a later date in order to achieve long-range goals. For example, since the thirties, American labor unions have gradually assumed stronger ties with other groups and institutions in the "respectable" community. However, labor was able to make this transformation from a group outside of the "respectable community" to a group very much part of the "establishment" only because it first gained legitimacy through the Wagner Act. Alternatively, other groups, such as the various third-party movements, have not been able to gain recognition as legitimate interest groups and thus, after the issues which they raised have been resolved, other persons and groups are not forced to bargain with them.10 Given the aformentioned dilemmas regarding organiza­ tional environments and structures, how will, the leaders of a neighborhood organization make decisions about alternative courses of action? A crucial factor in answering this question is the quality and quantity of information which leaders have at their disposal.

THE INFORMATION PROBLEM Even the most rational of men can only make rational deci­ sions to the extent that he has reliable information about pos10In chapter 4, I shall point out that there is a critical difference between forcing an adversary to bargain with a group over an issue and forcing an adversary to recognize the group as legitimate irrespec­ tive of issues. As we will see, issue-oriented neighborhood organizations find that once their adversaries are no longer forced to bargain with them over controversial issues they lose their position as interest groups for their neighborhoods.

RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT

sible courses of action. March and Simon point out that "from a phenomenological viewpoint we can only speak of rationality relative to a frame of reference; and this frame of reference will be determined by the limitations on the ratio­ nal man's knowledge" (1958: 138). The first limitation on one's knowledge is time. Decision­ makers in any organization are under pressure to make de­ cisions, and they cannot afford to wait indefinitely until all the information is in. They are thus forced to seek satisficing rather than maximizing solutions to their problems (March and Simon, 1958: 140-141). The second limitation on knowl­ edge is inconsistency between new information and previous decisions. Social psychological research in decision-making shows that when this occurs individuals often will simply block out new information (Festinger, 1957). Even in a utilitarian organization such as a business cor­ poration, the problem of obtaining and using information about organizational problems is a long and arduous process. Chandler (1962) notes that Sears executives spent several years trying to decide what kind of strategy would be best for coping with the shifting population in the United States. In political situations, ideological considerations often com­ pound the problem of obtaining accurate information. Michels (1962) points out that as Western European socialist parties became established, they changed their idealistic rad­ ical stance to a more conservative organizational maintenance posture. However, we should not overlook the fact that in many instances ideological considerations have inhibited the development of adaptive structural changes. Barrington Moore's (1965) study of Soviet politics, for example, points out that, as Michels predicted, the radical posture of social­ ism tends to wane as it becomes ascendent in a society. Moore also points out, however, that at critical junctions in Soviet history, ideological considerations prevented leaders from selecting strategies which could have solved major problems of their society. A well-known example is that of Soviet agriculture, the development of which has been se-

NEIGHBOEHOOD OKGANIZATION

verely hampered by ideological considerations. Such con­ siderations are, of course, not limited to socialist or commu­ nist countries. Since the end of World War II the extreme ideological commitment of the United States to "anticommunism" has resulted in a "containment" and counter-revolu­ tionary policy which has had disastrous consequences both internationally and domestically, especially with regard to domestic discord and displacement of public service goals in favor of military expenditures (David Horowitz, 1967). All political organizations, including neighborhood orga­ nizations, need ideologies in order to define the world and present a program of action, but these same ideologies place constraints on alternative courses of action. Initially, ideol­ ogies are responses to events or the failure of other ideol­ ogies to contend with events. Nevertheless, the state of the world when an ideology is developed will change through time (at times as a direct result of that ideology), and thus we often find situations where ideologies created to cope with one set of events hinder solutions to new events. In the history of Marxism, as I mentioned earlier, the growth of in­ cremental reforms in Western European democracies made the programs of early orthodox Marxism quite unrealistic as political strategies for change in those nations. Similarly, American liberals now face an ideological crisis because the unanticipated consequences of strong presidential power have become evident since the escalation of the Vietnam war. Finally, the rapidity with which the civil rights, non­ violent protest era began and ended undoubtedly has con­ tributed to the ideological confusion among blacks and white liberals over programs for solving the nonlegal eco­ nomic problems of poverty and inequality (Killian, 1968). In addition, although affective elements are probably pres­ ent in all forms of thought, they are particularly important to the maintenance of an ideology. Since ideologies often ask people to change fundamental "gestalts" with which they view the world and their individual places in that world, it is necessary for ideologies to develop symbols and other

RESOURCES AND ENVIRONMENT

emotion-evoking devices to convince persons to change their outlook. While necessary for the growth of an ideology, such symbolism becomes a serious obstacle to change when the ideology no longer fits events in the world. The emotional commitment which was necessary to promote the growth of the old ideology obscures the ability of individuals to per­ ceive that new events demand new programs and thus a new ideology. These information problems call attention again to the critical role of political entrepreneurs (Frohlich, Oppenheimer, and Young, 1971), such as those who worked among the immigrants (see chapter 1). The situations with which poor neighborhoods must contend today, however, are dif­ ferent in many ways than the situations which faced the im­ migrants, and we may therefore expect that political entre­ preneurs interested in organizing poor neighborhoods will have to develop their own unique strategies for solving orga­ nizational problems. With this in mind, we shall turn to an examination of some of the approaches that have been used in attempts to solve these problems.

CHAPTEB THREE

Community Development

Community development,1 an approach toward neighbor­ hood organization sometimes referred to as "locality develop­ ment" (Rothman, 1970), concentrates on the process of com­ munity involvement in self-help tasks. These are supposed to create more positive self-identities among residents and strengthen their bonds of community. Ecklein and Lauffer describe this process in the following manner: . . . In community development, the organizer's main tar­ get is always the consumer of his services: the resident, the member, the recipient. His goal is to overcome the individdual's or the group's ignorance of the possibilities open to them. People are organized to facilitate education and communication, to nurture hope. An immediate goal, if selected, is always considered by the organizer as a means toward another goal: the establishment of "community" and the ability of people through cooperative and collab­ orative ventures to face their common problems. The process itself and the learning that results from it are more 1 Some writers, such as Ross (1967), prefer to use the term "com­ munity development" only to refer to self-help projects in "underde­ veloped countries" or in rural areas of the United States; they use the term "community organization" to refer to similar kinds of projects in urban areas. This distinction is unsatisfactory for our purposes because, first, it obscures the fundamental similarities in ideologies and practices in a large number of rural and urban organization projects and, second, the term "community organization" has been used to label a variety of organizing strategies ranging from coordination of social welfare agencies to Saul Alinsky protest efforts. Consequently, I agree with Clinard that the term "community development" is most useful in helping us to identify a particular set of assumptions and techniques for organizing poor communities (1966: 132-135).

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

important than the achievement of any particular objec­ tive. The process is not time-limited [1972: 12]. Historically, community-development projects have taken place mainly in rural areas. Overseas, community develop­ ment has been an important aspect of the work of the United Nations and the American Peace Corps. These organizations have attempted to integrate traditional village life into na­ tional modernization programs (Perlman and Gurin, 1972: 102-108; Khinduka, 1971: 1345-1351). In the United States, community development dates back to the farmers' coopera­ tives organized at the turn of the century and the later agri­ cultural extension services2 (Wileden, 1970: 84-100). More recently, community-development self-help projects have been started in the "hollows" of Appalachia (Kahn, 1970). Despite its rural history, however, community develop­ ment has had an important impact on the thinking of per­ sons, especially professional social workers, engaged in work with the urban poor. Ross' (1967) influential book on com­ munity organization, for example, tries to incorporate community-development ideas into a practical guide for organiz­ ing people in an urban milieu. Also important in this regard is Clinard's (1966) book describing the use of communitydevelopment methods among the poor in Dehli, India. Most significant is the fact that community development played a major role in the formulation of the concept of "community action" in the War on Poverty, discussed in detail in chapters 5 and 6.3 2 The agricultural extension service was influential in assisting the growth of the Farm Bureau Co-operatives, a by-product lobbying or­ ganization (Olson, 1965: 149-159). Curiously, contemporary writers on community development have not seen this experiment as a model for present-day organizing work. Instead, as we will see below, the community-development literature has tended to avoid conceptual­ izing in interest-group terms the problem of organizing people and thus has evaded the public goods issue entirely. 3 Also important here, and paralleling to some extent communitydevelopment projects in rural areas, are the experiences of the Social Areas Delinquency Project in Chicago (Shaw and McKay, 1972) and the Cincinnati Social Unit Experiment (Weissman, 1970: xiv-xvi).

NEIGHBOKHQOD ORGANIZATION

For our purposes, the most salient feature of the com­ munity-development approach is its tendency to eschew an interest-group perspective on neighborhood organization and instead to treat the process of "building communities" as an apolitical venture. This results in the inability of com­ munity development to deal with the public goods dilemmas and causes individual community-development projects to face unanticipated organizational maintenance dilemmas which inhibit the growth of autonomous neighborhood organizations. The source of the aforementioned difficulties, however, is not merely a technical matter involving the application of cor­ rect organizational techniques but stems from much deeper problems in the philosophical and ideological origins of com­ munity development. The most critical of these problems per­ tains to die conceptualization of what is a community.

FOUNDATIONS OF THE CONCEPT OF COMMUNITY IN COMMUNITY-DEVELOPMENT THEORY The concept of community has occupied a central place in the philosophical and ideological debates among Western scholars since the end of the Middle Ages. In light of the present inquiry, I am concerned with two diverse views of the purposes and functions of the community: (1) the con­ cept of the autonomous community and (2) the concept of the community as an integrative mechanism vis-a-vis the larger society.4 Although the origins of these two perspec­ tives are complex and one may find aspects of both in a single writer, I wish to emphasize how each leads to quite different, and often contradictory, assumptions about what should be the goals of building communities. 4 Also significant, insofar as major Western ideological debates are concerned, is the Rousseauian-Marxian concept of the "political com­ munity" (see Bottomore and Rubel, 1956, and Nisbet, 1962: 153-188). This concept is important in the evolution of community development in terms of the concept of the integrative community being a reaction against it.

C O M M U N I T Y DEVELOPMENT

The Autonomous Community The notion that the autonomous community is preferable to other types of social and political organization goes back to ancient times (e.g., the Greek concept of the city-state) and is found systematically throughout Western history. It is ex­ pressed in such diverse forms as the early Christian commu­ nities, the writings of the anarchists (Shatz, 1971), the Uto­ pian communal movements of the nineteenth century (Nordhoff, 1965), the Catholic Worker movement (Miller, 1974), and the counter-culture movement of the 1960s (Roszak, 1969). Although there are substantial differences in the philo­ sophical foundations and purposes of these various move­ ments, they are all similar with respect to two fundamental principles: first, that a full and meaningful human life de­ pends upon the involvement of the individual in a coopera­ tive community; and second, that the community in some basic sense is a renunciation of one or more of the important parameters of the larger society including political, eco­ nomic, ideological, philosophical, or religious ideas and institutions. The former principle is found in all concepts of commu­ nity, including the integrative one which I will discuss later, but the unique feature of the autonomous perspective is found in the latter notion that somehow the community is in opposition and an alternative to the way life proceeds in the larger society. Hence, advocates of an autonomous commu­ nity often see their "lifestyle" as ethically superior to that of persons in the larger society and see their withdrawal from the larger unit as necessary to preserve their ideals and to prevent contamination from the corrupting influences of the status quo. Such movements often have been met with ridi­ cule for what persons in the main culture see as "naivete" or with outright persecution for the challenge presented to es­ tablished modes of thinking and acting. In modern times, the concept of the autonomous commu­ nity has usually surfaced as a reaction against what Weber

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

referred to as the "rationalizing" forces in the Western world (Gerth and Mills, 1946: 50-51). Specifically, communalists have objected to the depersonalization and competitiveness which they see as resulting from the growth of the market economy and bureaucratic forms of social organization. The Utopian socialist movement of the nineteenth century is es­ pecially illustrative of this viewpoint. It can be seen as an attempt to find an alternative to what its advocates per­ ceived as the dehumanizing effects of early capitalism. The complaint of the Utopian socialists was not against technol­ ogy per se but rather against its application in a capitalist mode of production in which the individual became subser­ vient to the technological process. The Utopian socialists proposed that the solution to the problem of personal aliena­ tion in the capitalist system was to create self-contained com­ munities in which individuals could determine their own destinies through democratic procedures and build strong bonds of solidarity through participation in cooperative projects. One of the major figures in the nineteenth-century com­ munal movement was the British industrialist and reformer, Robert Owen. Owen first attempted to create a sense of com­ munity in his own factories in England and later tried to es­ tablish a model Utopian community in New Harmony, In­ diana. Owen's socialist ideas were similar to those of Marx on the issue of alienation. Both men agreed that the negative qualities found among men in the nineteenth century—for example, poverty in slums and its attendent forms of social and personal disorganization—were rooted in an "unnatural" relationship between man and machine in the capitalist in­ dustrial state. But, while Marx saw the solution to this alien­ ation in the politicalization of the proletariat and, in turn, class conflict, Owen's eventual program, after some signifi­ cant social reform work and labor-union activity in England, was to establish autonomous socialist communities, such as New Harmony, apart from the traditional capitalist order (Cole, 1966; Duss, 1943; Lockwood, 1905; Owen, 1927).

C O M M U N I T Y DEVELOPMENT

In the end, of course, the New Harmony experiment failed and the Utopian socialist movements of the nineteenth cen­ tury receded in influence as radical and Marxian liberal move­ ments, which accepted the inevitability of an urban-industrial order, gained more power. Nevertheless, the basic orienta­ tion of the communalists has continued to influence thought up to the present day. In fact, during the 1960s, we witnessed a revival of this orientation in what has been variously termed the "counter-culture" (Roszak, 1969), "new culture" (Slater, 1970), or "consciousness III" (Reich, 1970). There is an interesting parallel here in the differences between the Utopian socialists and Marxian socialists of yesteryear and the contemporary split between the communally oriented, "alternative lifestyle" advocates and the political activists of the New Left movement.5 Moreover, the notion of the autonomous community has persisted as an intellectual antidote to what many persons see as the thwarting of individuality and creativity an our con­ temporary world. This is seen, for example, in the Good­ mans' (1960) concern with the self-actualization of the in­ dividual within a cooperative community. Their critique of contemporary modes of production and consumption echo the earlier writings of Owen and other communalists. They argue that Men like to make things, to handle the materials and see them take shape and come out as desired, and they are proud of the products. And men like to work and be use­ ful, for work has a rhythm and springs from spontaneous feelings just like play, and to be useful makes people feel right. Productive work is a kind of creation, it is an exten­ sion of human personality into nature. But it is also true that the private or state capitalist relations of production, and machine industry as it now exists under whatever system, have so far destroyed the instinctive pleasures of work that economic work is what all ordinary men dislike. 5 See

my discussion of the New Left movement in chapter 4 .

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

.. . Mass production, analyzing the acts of labor into small steps and distributing the products far from home, de­ stroys the sense of creating anything. Rhythm, neatness, style belong to the machine rather than to the man [Good­ man and Goodman, 1960: 153]. Among the most important factors in resurrecting the con­ cept of the autonomous community in recent decades has been the concern generated by federally sponsored urbanrenewal programs. These programs, initiated during the late 1940s, were orginally supported by a coalition of reformers, businessmen, and politicians, under the assumption that the physical renewal of the city could be achieved at the same time as improvement of the living conditions of the poor. The early history of urban renewal, however, demonstrated that the program, in effect, was subsidizing businessmen while paying little attention to the interests of those persons who were displaced by clearance for urban-renewal projects. Urban renewal often destroyed cohesive ethnic communities in order to build luxury high-rise apartments or superhigh­ ways (Clinard, 1966: 96-100; Gans, 1962,1966; Glazer, 1965; Friedmann, 1971). The urban-renewal controversy is significant, not only be­ cause of the power politics involved, but also because it re­ flects the same sort of issue which gave rise to the communal movements of the nineteenth century. Here, as in the earlier period, the communalists have contended that man has be­ come a slave to technology; only now the object of hostility is the technology of the planning experts instead of the cap­ italistic factory owner. Nevertheless, the effect is the same in both cases, insofar as the autonomous community is held up as a more decent and humane alternative to the status quo. The contemporary communal spirit is perhaps best re­ flected in Jane Jacobs' (1961) call for the preservation of urban residential neighborhoods. Part of her book is devoted to a critique of orthodox (around the 1950s) planning prin­ ciples which she sees as banal, uninteresting, and showing a lack of concern for human beings. The other part of her work

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

is an effort to show how neighborhoods can renew them­ selves through cooperative self-help efforts, thereby creating a sense of community in the urban environment. She de­ scribes such an effort in Boston's North End Italian ghetto, which she first saw as a run-down, semi-slum before World War II. Upon seeing the same area twenty years later, she noted: When I saw the North End again in 1959,1 was amazed at the change. Dozens and dozens of buildings had been rehabilitated. Instead of mattresses against the windows there were Venetian blinds and glimpses of fresh paint. Many of the small, converted houses now had only one or two families in them instead of the old crowded three or four. Some of the families in the tenements (as I learned later, visiting inside) had uncrowded themselves by throw­ ing two older apartments together, and had equipped these with bathrooms, new kitchens and the like. I looked down a narrow alley, thinking to find at least here the old, squalid North End, but no: more neatly repointed brick­ work, new blinds, and a burst of music as a door opened. Indeed, this was the only city district I had ever seen—or have seen to this day—in which the sides of buildings around parking lots had not been left raw and amputated, but repaired and painted as neatly as if they were in­ tended to be seen. Mingled all among the buildings for liv­ ing were an incredible number of splendid food stores, as well as such enterprises as upholstery making, metal work­ ing, carpentry, food processing. The streets were alive with children playing, people shopping, people strolling, people talking. Had it not been a cold January day, there would surely have been people sitting. The general street atmosphere of buoyancy, friendliness and good health was so infectious that I began asking di­ rections of people just for the fun of getting in on some talk. I had seen a lot of Boston in the past couple of days, most of it sorely distressing, and this struck me, with relief, as the healthiest place in the city [1961: 9-10],

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

One of the key elements in Jacobs' defense of the North End is its alleged aesthetic superiority over other types of residential areas. This aesthetic quality, according to Jacobs, is found in the North End's winding streets, its mixes of shops and homes, and the general vibrancy of life which fills its streets (1961: 9-11). In addition, she takes note of the fact that during the time she was writing her book, persons could walk down the North End's streets at night without fear of being molested (1961: 33). While Jacobs' concern is with the preservation of existing neighborhood communities, Marshall Clinard (1966) em­ ploys the concept of the autonomous community as a ratio­ nale for building communities in presently disorganized urban slums. He says: The basic purpose of urban community development is the preparation of ordinary people for assuming demo­ cratic responsibilities. Potential indigenous leadership must be identified and developed. It s a mistake to rely upon formal, traditional leaders and the better educated, for leadership from higher-status groups may inhibit the growth of leadership from below. The election of indig­ enous leaders is more effective than the use of well-mean­ ing volunteers, for in this way the energies and enthusi­ asms of the average slum dwellers, many of whom have never before held positions of leadership, can be released [1966: 324]. In short, both historically and contemporaneously, the concept of the autonomous community provides a rationale for local persons to gain a greater degree of control over their own destiny and to develop their respective individual cre­ ative talents. Thus, it is easy to see why the ideal of the au­ tonomous community has been influential in communitydevelopment work directed at the organization of the "grassroots." However, no urban community can operate in­ dependently of its milieu.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

The Community as an Integrative Mechanism While the notion of the autonomous community has as its primary referent the personal growth and development of the individual, the integrative concept of community focuses on the functions that the community serves in bringing about order and stability in the larger society. Writers who subscribe to the latter position contend that the personal in­ terests of the individual are linked to the integration of the community into the larger society. For our purposes, how­ ever, there is an important difference between this view and the one we have just discussed: in contrast to the community being antithetical to aspects of the larger society, proponents of the integrative viewpoint tend to see the goals of the com­ munity as consistent with those of the larger society and in­ deed essential to the maintenance of the latter. While the modern origins of the idea of the autonomous community are found in the ideals of the Utopian socialist movement, the romantic-conservative movement of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries is responsible, in large measure, for the spread of the concept of the integrative community in Western intellectual circles. Conservatives such as Burke, Bonald, and Maistre saw the political and social turmoil of their age as a direct result of the rationalism and individualism of the Enlightenment thinkers, who had subjected all social phenomena to negative critical analysis. The violence of the French Revolution and the class conflicts and social disorganization of society, in their view, were fostered by the humanists' idea that human happiness could be attained if men were liberated from the constraining in­ fluences of traditional nonrational social bonds. The conser­ vatives contended that this type of thinking would create social anarchy. They suggested that the solution to the prob­ lems of their age was to return to sentiment and tradition, and to reestablish nonrational social bonds of community among men (Nisbet, 1962; 1966: 3-44; Zeitlin, 1968; 33-55). While the Enlightenment thinkers idealized the individual and saw social institutions as corrupting him and limiting his

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

freedom, the conservatives viewed the relationship between the individual and society in the same light as the medieval scholars saws the "organic unity" of society. This frame of reference emphasized that individuals only existed in rela­ tion of social institutions, especially the community. Nisbet says: The family, religious association, and local community —these, the conservatives insisted, cannot be regarded as the external products of man's thought and behavior; they are essentially prior to the individual and are the indis­ pensable supports of belief and conduct. Release man from the contexts of community and you get not freedom and rights but intolerable aloneness and subjection to demonic fears and passions. Society, Burke wrote in a celebrated line, is a partnership of the dead, the living, and the un­ born. Multilate the roots of society and tradition, and the result must inevitably be the isolation of a generation from its heritage, the isolation of individuals from thier fellow men, and the creation of the sprawling, faceless masses [1962: 25], The conservatives saw the integrative functions of the community as a means for suppressing conflicts between men, whether they were the marketplace conflicts within the capitalist economic systems of Western Europe or the more disruptive Marxian types of class conflicts. The functions of the community, then, were intimately tied to the fundamen­ tal belief of conservatives that conflict was an abnormal state of affairs in human societies. The most influential articulation of this notion is found in the writings of the French sociolog­ ist, Emile Durkheim. Although Durkheim attempted to treat the relationship between the individual, the community, and the society from a scientific perspective, his analysis is set within a frame of reference which bears marked similarities to that of the earlier conservative writers. In the Division of Labor in Society (1933), he analyzes the growing class con­ flicts in European societies as an abnormal social form, which

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

he labels anomie (1933: 353-373). The abnormality, Durkheim contends, would be removed if industrial society could institutionalize functional equivalents of the medieval institu­ tions which had formerly curbed individualism and conflicts over self-interest. Thus, in the preface to the second edition of the Division of Labor in Society, Durkheim proposes the es­ tablishment of "occupational corporations" in which workers and owners would subsume their respective self-interests un­ der the common moral bond of the life of the group, sui ge­ neris (1933: 1-31). Thus, for Durkheim the community is a mechanism to suppress individuality and integrate individ­ uals into the larger society. Since the end of World War II, the Durkheimian view of the community has been favorably received by many intel­ lectuals who have been alarmed by what they see as growing "mass society" tendencies.6 These writers trace the rise of totalitarianism in Nazi Germany and the rise of Stalinism in the Soviet Union to the decline of intermediary social bonds among men, especially the loss of community. Nisbet (1962), for example, believes that the decline of the community is a primary cause of alienation in the contemporary world. He says: Historically, our problem [alienation] must be seen in terms of the decline in functional and psychological signif­ icance of such groups as the family, the small local com­ munity, and the various other traditional relationships that have immemorially mediated between the individual and his society. These are groups that have been morally de­ cisive in the concert lives of individuals. Other and more powerful forms of association have existed, but the major 6 Kornhauser (1959) makes a distinction between "aristocratic" and "democratic" critiques of the mass society. The basis of the aristocratic critique is the fear of the "tyranny of the masses," while the demo­ cratic critique is based on the ideal of grassroots, democratic participa­ tion. Kornhauser attempts to synthesize these two positions into a single theory of mass-society politics. In any event, the democratic critique of mass society is much closer to the autonomous community orientation than to the integrative community perspective.

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

moral and psychological influences on the individual's life have emanated from the family and local community and the church. Within such groups have been engendered the primary types of identification: affection, friendship, pres­ tige, recognition. And within them also have been engen­ dered or intensified the principal incentives of work, love, prayer, and devotion to freedom and order [1962: 50]. The call for the preservation of community, in the sense outlined by Nisbet, is consistent with the conservatives' aim of maintaining traditional society despite the pressures from radical and liberal critics. Nevertheless, it is important to note that the integrative viewpoint does not necessarily lead to a defense of the status quo. Tawney's work (1920; 1952; 1947), for example, is an illustration of how the "organic" conception of society can be employed as a rationale for a radical alternative to existing institutional arrangements, although it departs quite markedly from the Marxian approach. Tawney (1947) felt that avarice in capitalist societies was caused basically by the historical movement away from con­ cern with the purposes or functions of specific institutions for the larger society. He attributes this movement largely to the Reformation, the Calvinist variant in particular, which de­ stroyed the concept of the organic unity of society and eroded the influence of the institution whose responsibility it had been to enforce social ethics. With respect to the latter, Tawney saw the primary significance of the Reformation to be the total subjegation of the church by economic institu­ tions and the state. The "individualism" fostered by the Ref­ ormation, he argues, opened the door to rampant acquistiveness and the spread of capitalism. Although the concept of function was used in conservative thought and Ehirkheimian sociology with the primary intent of achieving order and integration without much regard for the issue of equality, Tawney uses it as the basis for a dem­ ocratic socialism, which calls for transferring power from the

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

factory owners to the workers and redistributing wealth. He says: So the organization of society on the basis of function, instead of on that of rights, implies three things. It means, first, that proprietary rights shall be maintained when they are accompanied by the performance of service and abol­ ished when they are not. It means, second, that the pro­ ducers shall stand in a direct relation to the community for whom production is carried on, so that their responsibility to it may be obvious and unmistakable, not lost, as at pres­ ent, through their immediate subordination to sharehold­ ers whose interest is not service but gain. It means, in the third place, that the obligation for the maintenance of the service shall rest upon the professional organization of those who perform it, and that, subject to the supervision and criticism of the consumer, those organizations shall exercise so much voice in the government of industry as may be needed to secure that the obligation is discharged. It is obvious, indeed, that no change of system or ma­ chinery can avert those causes of social malaise which con­ sist in the egotism, greed, or quarrelsomeness of human nature. What it can do is to create an environment in which those are not the qualities which are encouraged

[1920: 180]. Nevertheless, in light of our present inquiry, Tawney's work is striking because, although his ideology is different from that of the conservatives, his analytical approach is quite similar. In both instances, individuality and egoism are conceptualized in a negative light; they are obstacles in the path of creating the good society and their proper place is subsumption to the "common good." Obviously, definitions of the common good differ widely in the respective writings, but they share the assumption that somehow this ideal can be achieved and that the cooperative community will play a major role toward that end. We are primarily concerned at this point with the implica-

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

tions of the integrative viewpoint for community-develop­ ment work. The major impetus for incorporating this view­ point into theoretical perspectives in the field has been the desire to find a way to link local self-help projects with broader national goals. In community-development projects overseas, local efforts frequently have been seen as part of national modernization programs. From this perspective, the building of communities is supposed to aid in the integration of individuals into the larger national community by preserv­ ing aspects of the old culture while introducing modern tech­ niques. Community development is conceptualized as aiding in the transition from Gemeinschaft to Gesellschaft, or adapt­ ing to what Warren calls "the great change." He says: . . . the specific programs that are instigated are directed at increasing literacy, developing an industrial base that involves greater specialization of production and conse­ quent greater interdependence with other communities, developing a sense of participation in local institutions and also in the national political arena, utilization of economic and social resources from outside the community, intro­ duction of new health practices, and, withal, the stimula­ tion of organized ways of problem-solving among the local people. Such activities are seen primarily as a necessary prerequisite to the great change. . . . community develop­ ment can be seen as a means of achieving and guiding the great change, and perhaps of guiding it along lines indi­ cated by local values [1971: 83]. In the American urban programs, the integrative view­ point has played an important part in conceptualizing com­ munity-building as a means for integrating the poor into the mainstream of our society. Warren describes how communitydevelopment proponents perceive their work in this kind of milieu where "the great change" has already taken place: . . . here community development efforts are directed largely at taking effective adaptive action to mitigate the

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

painful consequences of the great change, rather than at bringing about that change. The great change has dis­ rupted older patterns of social relations, and the disruption in turn has brought about adaptive behavior that is ex­ perienced as the structural and personal problems of urban industrial life. Action to mitigate these problems can be taken in urban communities by only a small proportion of the people, acting through various relatively fragmented organizations. This affords at least a modicum of deliber­ ate, coordinated problem-solving activity, but it does not resolve the problem of how a substantial proportion of the population can meaningfully be brought into the process. At the neighborhood level, however, community develop­ ment efforts can engage a larger proportion of individuals over a larger sweep of neighborhood-level issues . . . [1971: 87]. What I have said so far is not meant to suggest that community-development writers necessarily subscribe to any of the philosophical underpinnings of the integrative concept of the community. In fact, as we will see shortly, it appears that many of these writers have not given very serious attention to the philosophical and ideological assumptions and/or con­ sequences of this view of community as well as the one we discussed earlier. Nevertheless, even though the philosoph­ ical assumptions may be forgotten and may play an implicit, as opposed to explicit, role in the formulation of community development objectives and procedures, they eventually have to be reckoned with when efforts are made to actually im­ plement programs.

ORGANIZATIONAL DILEMMAS OF COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT Curiously, proponents of community development have had a tendency not to see any problems in reconciling the two views of community described above. In its most cynical

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

form, community development rhetoric has been used to preserve status quo power arrangements in nations faced with revolutionary movements from indigenous guerrilla or­ ganizations. The United States Agency for International De­ velopment (AID), in particular, has employed communitydevelopment techniques as a complement to United States military "counter-insurgency" efforts. A classic example of this work is found in the "pacification programs" in South Vietnam, which were aimed at counteracting the land-redis­ tribution and tax-reform efforts of the National Liberation Front (Horowitz, 1972: 312-318).7 In this instance, it is clear that the goal of creating autonomous communities took second place to the goal of integrating local villages into the plans of the regime in power, despite official claims about creating democratic communities. By and large, however, proponents of community develop­ ment simply have not dealt with the political consequences of community-building. Their failure to make the distinction between different ideological approaches to the relationship between community and mass-society problems results in a good deal of confusion about the objectives of their work. It is one thing to build communities for the purpose of trans­ ferring power from centralized elites to the grassroots, but it is quite a different matter to build communities for the pri­ mary purpose of integrating persons into the plans of a par­ ticular regime either in underdeveloped or developed nations. Most frequently, I suspect, community-development writ­ ers have sincerely believed that the goals of community au­ tonomy and community integration are naturally compatible. The notion of community autonomy provides a rationale for demonstrating that community development is consistent with age-old democratic ideals, while the notion of the in­ tegrative community provides a rationale for obtaining out­ side assistance for community development. Without propos7

An example of the use of social science expertise in counter-insur­ gency efforts is found in Irving Horowitz's (1967) analysis of "Opera­ tion Camelot."

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

ing the idea that community-development projects can have integrative benefits for the larger society, it is unlikely that such projects could have obtained the financial assistance necessary to carry out their programs. Yet, this has meant that many community-development projects have not been initiated by autonomous organizations but rather have been linked to larger organizational structures and, in turn, to the survival needs of these organizations. As noted in chapter 2, we may expect new members of an organization or members of an outside group linked to an organization to demand that their respective interests be served. The concept of "inter­ ests," however, is not found in either concept of the com­ munity in community development and thus theoreticians and practitioners in this tradition have not anticipated ways to deal with such interests in the organizing process. Perlman and Gurin observe that the original overseas community-development programs were formulated within the framework of a nonpolitical terminology, in which, "polit­ ical competition and factionalism were seen as obstacles, along with the rigidities of the kinship and caste systems, to the adoption of methods that would yield greater benefits to the population. The community development ideology avoided concepts of political conflict and struggle, relying instead on a process that would unite various groups in a common effort" (1972: 106). Consequently, little attention was given to problems that might arise with respect to the political coordination between the interests of those involved in the local projects and the interests of individuals and groups in other areas, especially those working for the na­ tional government. This did not eliminate politics from community-development work. Perlman and Gurin point out that by attempting to mobilize formerly unorganized and powerless segments of the society, "Community develop­ ment became a political issue and came to be either opposed or dominated by political forces" (1972: 106). A lack of political awareness has been equally apparent in community-development work in the United States. In the

NEIGHBOBHOOD OBGANIZATION

writings of those who proclaim the ideal of the autonomous community, there has been little discussion of the political implications of this ideal. Jane Jacobs (1961), for example, correctly identifies conflicts of interests between existing ur­ ban-renewal goals and the neighborhood goals of North End residents, but she does not view these conflicts as political. Instead, she takes a distinctly apolitical approach, suggesting that the "public interest" will best be served by preserving neighborhoods such as the North End. She seems to imply that the problem is really one of "awareness"; if public au­ thorities and the public-at-large are sufBciently informed on the benefits of neighborhood preservation, the conflict be­ tween central city authorities and neighborhoods can be eliminated. Clinard goes one step further than Jacobs and notes that in some instances the preservation or building of a neighborhood may demand that citizens' groups use pro­ test tactics to confront urban-renewal planners, but even here conflict is viewed only as a last resort that can have serious negative consequences for the neighborhood (1966: 326-329). Most importantly, even the most "radical" com­ munity-development writers have not developed any the­ oretical perspective within which conflict might have a place. Rather, conflict seems to be seen simply as either a residual category or as another strategy altogether, which the organ­ izer picks up when a cooperative strategy fails.8 8 A typical conclusion regarding the relationship between com­ munity-development self-help projects and conflict is found in Ecklein and Lauifer's case book on community organization. They say: "In our observations of practice, and as our cases illustrate, organizers are gen­ erally involved in both social action and community development at the same time or at different times within an action process. Fre­ quently, a community-development approach may be seen as a stage in a process leading towards action and the achievement of specific goals. Similarly, a current focus on the achievement of a specific victory may be a means to a more long-range development approach. Action becomes a phase of development and development leads to action. We do not suggest that there are no real differences between organizers of the social-action persuasion and their colleagues in community devel-

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

The results of using cooperative and conflict strategies without any overall theoretical or operational plan is well illustrated in the Mobilization for Youth experience (Brager and Purcell, 1967; Moynihan, 1969; Piven, 1968; Weissman, 1969). This community-development project, which was funded by the federal government's demonstration Com­ munity Action Programs in the early 1960s, tried to combine the provision of social services to the poor with protest ac­ tions aimed at institutional change. Apparently, the Mobi­ lization for Youth organizers did not anticipate any problems in reconciling these two strategies. However, protest efforts that adversely affected the vested interests of powerful pub­ lic officials and private individuals resulted in threats to with­ draw funding from the Mobilization's social service pro­ grams. Thus a large amount of the organizations resources were channeled into defending its legitimacy as a social-ser­ vice delivery agency. Mobilization's directors had to learn the hard way that the people who "pay the bills" want some kind of voice in how an organization is run. Other com­ munity-development projects that have elected to combine service delivery with protest action have faced a similar kind of dilemma; they have been forced to choose between main­ taining their role as advocates for their neighborhoods and retaining the financial support for social services that they see as valuable for the poor (Brager and Specht, 1969; Haggstrom, 1968; Hillman, 1966-1967; Marris and Rein, 1967). Ironically, it is the apolitical orientation of community de­ velopment which is so instrumental in promoting rancorous conflicts. Because there has been little effort by communitydevelopment personnel to understand the political process opment. We do feel, however, that in practice, these distinctions be­ come muted" (1972: 13). Although Ecklein and Lauffer do devote a few pages to problems generated by the relationship between the two strategies (1972: 12-24), one still does not get any sense that these strategies fit togther within some kind of framework.

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

within which they inevitably must work, they have not con­ sidered the possibility of creating organizational structures and strategies which might institutionalize the conflict be­ tween the neighborhood and other interest groups. This could be done within a constitutional framework specifying a detailed set of decision-making rules and the scope of au­ thority of the various parties concerned. We will see a rather dramatic example of the results of not anticipating the need for such a structure when we look at the development of "maximum feasible participation" in chapters 5 and 6. Community-development projects in urban America suf­ fer the additional constraint, which is not so problematical in the rural village, of defining the parameters of the com­ munity. While in some instances rural villages may achieve consensus among their inhabitants with respect to the ob­ jectives of community-building processes, the urban social service-delivery systems in the United States provide an in­ herent basis of conflict between different interest groups over the allocation of scarce resources and the definition of the "public interest." To avoid facing the reality of the diver­ sity of interests in the urban milieu, many community de­ velopment projects have created a "fiction" that the whole city is the community. Again, however, masking the real bases of political conflict only leads to more costly kinds of conflict games. This is especially true when the different parties to a community-development project (i.e., the spon­ sors, the poor, and the organizers) have their own specific definition of the parameters of the community, usually cor­ relating highly with their respective vested interests. All of what I have said about the organizational dilemmas of community development should not be interpreted as meaning that the conflict between neighborhood goals and the goals of other interest groups, in the city or society atlarge, must always approximate a game of zero-sum conflict. Rather, it is my position, elaborated upon in chapter 7, that we can institutionalize conflict within a framework advan­ tageous to all parties concerned only when we stop pretend­ ing that conflict does not exist.

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

Acceptance of conflict of interests as an inherent aspect of the human condition, and therefore of human societies in general, demands that community-development personnel reevaluate the relationship between the social and political spheres in human societies. Both views of community that have influenced community-development theory are a man­ ifestation of the frustration of reform-minded persons with the ability of the political sphere to solve certain critical problems of human existance. The perspective of the auton­ omous community is a reaction against the dehumanizing consequences of the classical liberal political solution while the integrative view, at least in its conservative variant, is a reaction against the Marxian political solution. To be sure, each of these views has sensitized us to the fact that life in human societies consists of more than just the individual's relationship to the marketplace and the state; but, at the same time, if we try to completely replace the political (be­ cause "it doesn't work") with the social, we actually produce a situation in which the powerful have an even greater op­ portunity to dominate the less powerful. By treating com­ munity-building as a purely social matter, we cannot address ourselves to the issue of how the powerless may obtain the resources, either material resources or legitimacy, with which to gain some kind of permanent input into decision-making processes. Thus, community-development efforts to handle the organizing process as a "technical matter" merely gives legitimacy to the powerful to define the "rules of the game" or to change them when their interests are threatened. An overemphasis upon social elements and a tendency to shy away from the concept of interests and other political elements is rooted in some basic assumptions about human nature held, either explicitly or implicidy, by proponents of community development. Both the autonomous and integra­ tive views of community originated largely in opposition to some form of "individualistic" doctrine, ideology, or philos­ ophy. Emphasis upon the social was supposed to overcome "egoism" and other forces seen to be obstacles in the way of building cooperative social arrangements. How has this ori-

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

entation been translated into community-development ef­ forts to induce local persons to participate in self-help proj­ ects and how effective have these efforts been?

BUILDING A SENSE OF COMMUNITY A basic assumption underlying community-development work is that the participation of community members in selfhelp tasks will help them to overcome their traditional cogni­ tive frame of reference and develop a new frame of reference which will enable them to continue projects after the community-development team has left the area. Burke (1968) describes this approach as an "education-therapy strategy," which is concerned with training people in problem-solving and self-reliance. Bloomberg and Rosenstock observe that community-de­ velopment organizers assume that capacities for leadership and problem-solving are found in all communities and that the basic task of the development process is to bring out the "latent" talent that already exists among an indigenous pop­ ulation. Thus, they note: The problems of a cultural nature confronting the or­ ganizer are not so much those of alienation in the face of opportunity and apathy in the face of perceived needs, but patterns of evaluation that produce contentment with the status quo and habitual interpretations that prevent understanding or acceptance of available means for suc­ cessful problem-solving, such as new technology or formal procedures for political and legal action. Community development personnel, therefore, see ed­ ucation techniques as useful, not to change the "basics" of a culture or subculture, but to inculcate cognitive and judgmental patterns, especially in selected leadership per­ sonnel, that are specifically relevant to a definite project to be undertaken, whether it is to clean up a well in a vil­ lage in an underdeveloped nation or to petition and create

C O M M U N I T Y DEVELOPMENT

political pressure for a road in an Appalachian hollow or a park and recreation center within an urban slum [1968: 320], In the community-development project described by Clinard, for example, the project's personnel conducted door-todoor interviews to prod residents into identifying salient problems. After identifying the matters of greatest concern to the communitys residents, the organizers then provided the technical assistance with which to remedy these prob­ lems. Throughout this process they tried to maximize the in­ volvement of indigenous people in the project. In one in­ stance, project personnel helped the community organize to persuade persons not to urinate in open ditches (1966: 302-307). The project also engaged in more subtle tasks, such as the community letterhead-stationery effort. CIinard describes this program and its rationale: Probably the best example of how new identity was en­ couraged in the projects was the printing of a small supply of letterhead stationery for the newly established citizen organizations. Each sheet displayed the name of the vikas mandal in Hindi, Urdu, and possibly English and, occa­ sionally, the names of the officers. Supposedly, the sta­ tionery was to be used for communications with the mu­ nicipal councilmen, the government, and other vikas mandal officials, but it was recognized from the beginning that such largely illiterate groups had very little use for stationery. Although little use was made of it, it had great symbolic importance. It was one thing for people of low economic status to have stationery like that of government agencies and the wealthy: For largely illiterate people it was even more significant. The printed membership cards that members received and other small items built up sim­ ilar feelings of importance. When a vikas mandal was formed, arrangements were made to photograph the of­ ficers and the ceremony; copies of these photographs, which were given to the group for display, were treasured

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

not only because of their importance but also because they were probably the only, or at least among the few, pictures these people had of themselves [1966: 302]. As I indicated earlier, the community-development ap­ proach concentrates on the process of community involve­ ment in self-help tasks rather than on the accomplishment of specific objectives. Thus, although Clinard concedes that the letterhead-stationery project had little practical value, he contends that its long-range effect was to create more posi­ tive self-identities among the community's residents. In turn, this was supposed to encourage confidence to cooperate in more complicated ventures aimed at more fundamental struc­ tural changes in the community (Clinard, 1966: 307-308). Nevertheless, it is difficult to find much evidence to sup­ port the belief that projects such as the one described actu­ ally lead to a substantial improvement in cooperative proj­ ects. The United Nations surveys of community-development projects overseas do not lend support to the view that co­ operative projects improve productivity (Perlman and Gurin, 1972: 105). The results of the surveys on the rural Indian village programs, for example, show that ". . . new methods of work within the rural village were adopted by the individ­ uals who were able the improve their own condition, but that this was not associated with an increase in joint action for the common benefit" (Perlman and Gurin, 1972:105). In other words, surveys conducted by the United Nations cast doubt on the proposition that changing self-identities, if in fact they do change, will increase the desire of individuals to involve themselves in cooperative ventures. What is most striking is the lack of attention paid by the communitydevelopment literature, as well as by the project personnel to the question of what will induce the self-interested man to spend his personal resources in a joint effort rather than dispose of them in some other way. In addition to an aver­ sion to the concept of interests, we find in the literature the logical fallacy of assuming that greater awareness and under-

COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT

standing will lead to action in the collective aggregate situa­ tion. Moreover, once this assumption is accepted, it becomes difficult to dispose of; the failure of individuals to change simply becomes defined as a reason to implement more of the same in order to bring about greater change in their identities or to make them more aware of the benefits of progress. Even more misleading in this instance is the as­ sumption that the object of change should be the individual being organized rather than the incentive structure offered by the organizer, which is the true source of difficulty. Another problem inherent in the community-development approach is the lack of recognition of the peculiar kinds of incentive difficulties that arise with respect to the public goods dilemma. This is best illustrated by the Mobilization for Youth experience (Brager and Purcell, 1967; Moynihan, 1969; Piven, 1968; Weissman, 1969), often regarded as one of the most successful urban community-development ventures. In contrast to many other similar projects, Mobilization for Youth did make a serious effort to gear significant aspects of its programs toward the self-interests of individual residents, in this case, on New York's Lower East Side. In addition to promulgating nondivisible social action objectives, it spon­ sored a host of individual service programs aimed at the im­ mediate, concrete needs of the people. This was especially true in the case of the consumer-education and consumercooperative programs. The consumer-education program was a two-pronged ef­ fort designed to mobilize collective legal action against un­ scrupulous merchants, while at the same time educating the individual consumer in ways to get the most for his money. The consumer cooperatives purchased wholesale quantities of food items and offered them at prices substantially lower than those at local retail outlets (Wellman, 1969: 71-82). The long-range goal of MFY's community-development programs was to provide the technical assistance with which indigenous persons in the community might be able to op­ erate their own autonomous neighborhood organizations. By

NEIGHBORHOOD OKGANIZATION

working with existing institutional structures in the neigh­ borhood, as they did in the case of the food-buying clubs, MFY personnel hoped that eventually the bonds of commu­ nity would be strengthened on the Lower East Side. Un­ doubtedly, MFY was more successful than most American community-development projects in terms of providing com­ munity residents with relevant services, such as consumer education, cooperative food buying, and legal assistance. But, there is serious doubt as to whether the project's ulti­ mate goal was achieved. Perlman and Gurin note that: Under the pressure of immediate demands, effort was expended simply to achieve short-run objectives without regard to whether these were building an independent or­ ganization for the long-run. On the other hand, services were introduced in response to the needs of the people being organized; the services made a contribution toward the development of the organization but without neces­ sarily contributing to the goals of social action. It was found that the attempts to build an organization on a block basis were not adequate in themselves but that it be­ came necessary to provide and create services. Block or­ ganizations thus tended to develop into community cen­ ters. One reason for this was that only a relatively small number of people reached could be stimulated to take part consistently in organizational work but larger numbers could become identified with the project through the use of concrete services [1972: 111]. MFY was not successful in using its social services as in­ centives for individuals to make sustained contributions to its long-range organizational efforts. One major reason for this was the purely voluntary nature of participation in MFY programs. Individuals could receive the benefits of the foodbuying clubs, for example, simply by placing their orders at MFY offices in the neighborhood. The only cost to an in­ dividual for these services was 25 cents per week, which was returned if he decided to leave the cooperative (Wellman,

C O M M U N I T Y DEVELOPMENT

1969: 78-79). Because individuals were not forced to pay more, either in monetary terms (which may be unrealistic) or in terms of organizational effort, for the benefits offered by the cooperatives, the rational self-interested member of the neighborhood had little incentive to maintain continuous support of the organization. Thus MFY's staff and a few residents had to carry the weight of the organizational effort. Because it could not effectively employ the by-product strat­ egy, MFY was unable to muster a lobby of the poor to de­ fend it against attack from various public officials who al­ leged that the organization had engaged in subversive activities (Moynihan, 1969: 102-127; Piven, 1968). In short, MFY was unable to use the provision of services to individ­ uals as a stepping stone to an effective lobbying organization, such as the farm-bureau cooperatives or the AMA lobbies. In one sense, the failure of MFY organizers to deal with the public goods dilemma stems from their attempt to apply what are essentially rural organizing techniques to an urban milieu. The community-development model assumes the existence of a small population of persons who live in a gemeinschaft milieu where persons know each other on a face-to-face basis. The concept of "community," in which people know one another and share a common culture and lifestyle has real meaning in the rural village environment, whether in Appalachia, the rural American South, or in un­ derdeveloped nations. But in the urban slum, where a few city blocks may contain 50,000 people, we find a situation which approximates what Olson calls the large latent group (1965: 48-52). Even if an urban neighborhood contains a homogeneous ethnic subculture—the area served by MFY contained Puerto Ricans, blacks, and whites—it would seem, on the basis of my argument in chapter 1, that its size alone would make it less amenable than the small rural village to conventional community-development techniques. A more basic cause of the incentive problems faced by MFY and other urban American community development projects is found an the apolitical orientation of the com-

NEIGHBORHOOD OKGANIZATION

munity-development field as a whole, which has blocked any effort to look to successful interest groups, such as labor unions or farmers' organizations, for models of organizational incentive structures. A shift from this apolitical orientation to an interest-group approach to organizing, however, will demand some major ideological adjustments. We are likely to find—for example, among idealistic community-develop­ ment workers—a resistance to the need to go beyond volun­ tary participation and to use some form of coercion in order to insure a solution to the public goods dilemma. The most difficult task facing community development is the reconciliation of its goals with an analytical approach that offers some hope of achieving them. The goal of build­ ing cooperative communities and enlarging the participation of the grassroots in decision-making processes and the goal of integrating the local community or neighborhood into the larger society are not the major obstacles. But the concep­ tualization of these goals in light of the autonomous and in­ tegrative perspectives does not enable the organizer to fulfill them. What is necessary, then, is not abandonment of the goals as such but rather a reconceptualization of them in such a way that they are realizable within the existing pa­ rameters of the urban milieu. This not only calls for treat­ ment of the neighborhood as a latent interest group but also demands an analytical framework that considers the relation­ ship between the resource needs of the neighborhood orga­ nization and the interests of those in other groups and insti­ tutions in our society. Clearly, the resources necessary to a satisfactory resolution of the neighborhoods public goods dilemma often will have to come from outside of the neigh­ borhood itself. Thus the organizer must somehow find a political solution to the problem of meeting the requirements of interest-group organization while at the same time pro­ viding some benefits for other individuals and groups.

CHAPTER FOUR

Social Action-Protest Strategies

One of the most important features of Western democracies is the flexibility of their social and political institutions, which generates an enormous number of protest movements. In the United States the history of post-Revolutionary War protest goes back to the days of Shays' Rebellion and has taken on a variety of forms, ranging from the violence of the Civil War Draft Riots to the Ghandian-style nonviolent re­ sistance of the civil rights movement, and has been directed at a variety of objectives, including women's sufferage, labor rights, civil rights, and peace. Thus, the 1960s are hardly unique in American history, although this period does qual­ ify as one of our more celebrated eras of protest (Skolnick, 1969: 8-24). In their introduction to a special issue of the Annals devoted to "Protest in the Sixties," Boskin and Rosenstone note that: As the 1960s draw to a close, it is apparent that histo­ rians will look upon this decade as one of protest. After the quiescence of the Eisenhower years, American society in the 1960s has been stirred and then wracked by the social and political actions of dissenting individuals and groups. From the relatively peaceful days of sit-ins and freedom rides, protest has spread and been more militant to the point where university buildings have been oc­ cupied, sections of major cities have been burned to the ground, and a national political convention had to be held behind barbed wire [1969: ix]. Today, we are apt to forget that the early protest actions of civil rights groups did achieve some rather substantial re­ forms. The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and a host of antidiscrimination laws were enacted

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

during the mid-1960s, at least in part, in response to protest movements. Moreover, these laws have had a significant im­ pact on the political and economic affairs of many black Americans. In 1972, for example, 598 black officials were elected in 11 Southern states (New York Times, 1973: 24). In addition, a recent analysis of income data shows that a por­ tion of the black community made marked economic gains during the 1960s (Moynihan, 1972). Yet, despite the political gains of Southern blacks and the economic gains of some, mostly solidly middle- and workingclass blacks, we are still left with the inescapable conclusion that the civil rights movement has not had a very noticeable effect upon the daily lives of the vast majority of the black poor. The income survey, which I alluded to above, con­ cludes that for the poorest segment of the black community, the 1960s was a period of relative economic loss (Moynihan, 1972). In fact, as we move into the 1970s it seems that the problems of the civil rights era were much simpler to solve than the problems of poverty and inequality with which we must cope today. It is more difficult to cope with the latter problems be­ cause the solutions will be more costly for the affluent and powerful than were the solutions to the civil rights prob­ lems. Lewis Killian, in his pessimistic treatise, The Impos­ sible RevolutionP, concludes that although the majority of white Americans are willing to proclaim the ideal of equality and support the removal of legal barriers to equality, "Given a choice between a massive freedom budget and a police state, the American electorate is more likely to choose the latter. . . ." (1968: 173). In addition, solutions to the prob­ lems of the post-civil rights era often endanger the vested interests of the liberal allies of the civil rights movement. Thus one traditional source of support cannot always be counted on when minority-group demands are made. A classic illustration of this point is the Oceanhill-Brownsville school controversy in New York City. A few years ago, the New York State legislature passed a

SOCIAL ACTION-PROTEST STRATEGIES

law which gave neighborhood parents some discretion (al­ though the amount and kind of that discretion was not clearly defined) over the operation of their schools. When the black parents of Oceanhill-Brownsville tried to imple­ ment this law by transferring several teachers they viewed as unsatisfactory, the predominantly Jewish teachers' union resisted their efforts and there resulted a long and bitter con­ flict in which antisemitic slogans were directed at the union while antiblack slogans were directed at the parents' groups (Fantini, Gittell, and Magat, 1970: chap. 6; Green, 1970; Hoffman, 1968; Judge, 1966). It is significant that the teachers' union was led by a man who only a few years earlier had marched to Selma in de­ fense of civil rights and that most of the union members were Jews, who traditionally have been among the most liber­ tarian of ethnic groups, especially in the matter of race. Un­ fortunately, the racial overtones of the situation obscured the central issue: the organization of parents was a direct threat to the vested interests of the teachers' union. Any gain of prerogatives by the parents with respect to the operation of the school was viewed by the teachers' union as a loss of its authority. Whether or not the members of the teachers' union became more racist or the parents became more anti­ semitic is quite beside the point; the teachers and the parents were engaged in a clear conflict of interests. Situations such as the Oceanhill-Brownsville conflict direct our attention to the important fact that the shift from the legal issues of the civil rights era to the economic and po­ litical issues of the current period has been accompanied by a corresponding shift from the problem of generating and sustaining a social movement to the problem of generating and sustaining interest groups. The civil rights movement was essentially a temporary coalition of very dedicated people, some of whom sacrificed their lives, but the success of that movement demanded only limited participation for relatively short periods of time. The solution of the prob­ lems of the post-civil rights era demands the creation of in-

NEIGHBOBHOOD OBGANIZATION

terest groups that can produce sustained influence on decision-making processes. As we have seen, however, inducing individuals to support interest groups is much more prob­ lematic than inducing them to support short-run social movements. The critical question at this point, then, is whether protest activities can play an effective role in gen­ erating interest groups. Specifically, can protest strategies provide enough impetus for the successful organization of an aggregate of persons in a poor neighborhood into a viable interest group? The use of protest strategies in organizing poor neighbor­ hoods relies on the basic assumption that there is a latent conflict between the poor and those who exploit them, such as police, politicians, slumlords, merchants, and welfare bureaucrats. The protest organizer views his task as helping the poor to see this conflict and assisting them in organizing collective actions to force their exploiters to change condi­ tions in the neighborhoods. Protest advocates argue that if latent conflicts can be brought to the surface and the poor persuaded to engage in conflict with their exploiters, the poor will benefit psychologically and overcome their feelings of powerlessness and alienation. Therefore, protest is seen as having a "therapeutic" value for the poor in addition to the utilitarian value of achieving neighborhood goals (Alinsky, 1969, 1971; Alinsky and Sanders, 1965a, 1965b; Haggstrom, 1964). Bloomberg and Rosenstock describe the rationale for protest strategies in the following way: Only the experience of individual and group potency through organization on behalf of their own needs and in­ terests and through the exercise of power against those who have excluded and exploited them, will enable a ma­ jority of the poor, especially the most deprived, to break through the "bind" of their own cultural and psychological patterns at the same time that they break down the insti­ tutional barriers that are the source of their impoverish­ ment. An inevitable part of this "socio-therapeutic" process, and a necessary component for its full success, is the clari-

SOCIAL ACTION-PROTEST STRATEGIES

fication of the conflict between the poor and the presently powerful and affluent segments of the society, and the mobilization of the emotional and intellectual energies of the poor around this frequently concealed but now fully revealed nexus of antagonistic interests and purposes [1968: 319]. The neighborhood-organization literature contains reports of cases where protest strategies have been employed to build neighborhood organizations. The most noteworthy or­ ganizations are those which have been started by the pro­ fessional organizer, Saul Alinsky. For example, the Woodlawn Organization (TWO) was able to force the University of Chicago, at least temporarily, to modify its urban renewal plan so as to consider the interests of Woodlawn residents. In addition, TWO was successful in gaining other improve­ ments in the area; for example, it forced merchants to im­ prove the quality of their goods and to eliminate other un­ fair trade practices (Fish, 1973; Silberman, 1964: 318-350). More recently, Alinsky organizations in Rochester (FIGHT) and Buffalo (BUILD) have achieved some limited victories for the poor (Alinsky and Sanders, 1965a, 1965b; Anderson, 1966; Ecklein and Lauffer, 1972: 64-78; Ridgeway, 1965, 1967; Riessman, 1965; Rose, 1965). Following the initial successes of protest efforts, however, two fundamental questions about the role of protest in build­ ing neighborhood organizations have come to light. First, can the conditions which led to the short-run successes of TWO and other protest organizations be matched in other poor neighborhoods?1 Second, what have been the long-run 1 One of the difficulties in finding information on protest groups which have failed is that if they did not succeed in generating any controversy and conflict, they are not likely to be reported either in the popular press or in the neighborhood-organization literature. There­ fore, any attempt to do a content analysis of those cases which are available can be highly misleading, which is why I have not used the technique here. Instead, I have approached the data on protest orga­ nizations from the standpoint of the question, why haven't we seen more "successes" such as TWO reported in the literature?

NEIGHBOKHOOD OBGANIZATION consequences of protest-oriented neighborhood organiza­ tions that have achieved limited victories over their adver­ saries? Let us first examine some approaches to the applica­ tion of protest to short-run objectives for poor neighborhoods.

PROTEST AND SHORT-RUN VICTORIES The first problem which the protest organizer faces is find­ ing an issue which will interest the poor enough to induce them to support a boycott, demonstration, or some other kind of protest tactic. The organizer is essentially asking the poor, to use Mills' terminology, to translate their private troubles into public issues (1959: 11-13). That is, he is seek­ ing to clarify the structural sources of their discontent and to convince them that they can ameliorate their life situation through collective action. There are two orientations toward the problem of getting the poor involved in protest over neighborhood issues: the New Left approach and the Saul Alinsky approach. The New Left Approach One of the most important political developments during the 1960s was the evolution of New Left student radicalism (Altback, 1970, 1971; Aronovitz, 1964; Colfax, 1970-1971; Flacks, 1967; Gans, 1965; Hayden, 1966, 1967; Jacobs and Landau, 1966; Keniston, 1965, 1968; Lipset, 1972; Lynd, 1969; Marcuse, 1964; Zinn, 1968). In contrast to most tradi­ tional radical movements, the New Left never had an "offi­ cial" ideology and even the composition of the movement itself was rather amorphous. Newfield, a sympathetic critic of the New Left, identifies the following groups and individ­ uals under the New Left rubric: I define the New Radicalism broadly to include orga­ nizations like Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); ad hoc decentralized movements like the Berke­ ley Free Speech Movement (FSM) and the movement

SOCIAL ACTION-PROTEST STRATEGIES

against the war in Vietnam. It includes idealistic Peace Corps and VISTA (domestic Peace Corps) volunteers and nihilistic Berkeley bohemians; new institutions like the In­ stitute for Policy Studies and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party; new publications like Liberation and the Southern Courier; individuals like Bob Parris, Tom Hayden, and Staughton Lynd; it even spills over into sociocultural movements represented by Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Dr. Timothy Leary, and Allen Ginsberg [1966: 16]. In retrospect, we can see that Newfield's collection of New Radicals have since split apart on many fundamental issues. While all of the groups and individuals he mentions are ad­ herents of either the "counter-culture" (Roszak, 1969) or "new culture" (Slater, 1970), since the late 1960s there has been a growing gulf between those who seek to pursue change through the development of new "radical lifestyles" and those who seek change through political action. The ad­ herents of the "radical lifestyle" position have tended to be highly individualistic and apolitical—see, for example, Reich's Greening of America (1970)—while the political ac­ tivists have turned toward Marxist—for example, Maoist or Trotskyite—political ideologies (Slater, 1970: 113-118). In turn, this split has resulted in major schism in the SDS and has ended, at least for the moment, any effectiveness it might have had in American political life. Nevertheless, during the early 1960s New Left organizers conducted a number of important experiments in organizing the poor. SNCC was the first of the student-radical groups to attempt large-scale organizing during their voter-registration drives among poor blacks in the rural South (Carmichael and Hamilton, 1967). Later SDS initiated a number of or­ ganizing projects among poor blacks and whites in Northern cities, including Chicago, Cleveland, Newark, Chester, Penn­ sylvania, Baltimore, Oakland, Boston, and St. Louis (Bullock, 1968; Colfax, 1970-1971; Fruchter and Kramer, 1966; Hay­ den, 1966,1967; Newfield, 1966). To understand the character and direction of New Left

NEIGHBORHOOD OBGANIZATION

organization projects, we must first examine the historical circumstances which helped to formulate the New Left movement itself. The New Left historian, Staughton Lynd (1969), points out that the New Left movement emerged in the 1950s as a polemical reaction to the historical evolution of Old Left radicalism (as exemplified by the European and Soviet Marxist parties) and American post-New Deal liberal­ ism. Toward the end of the 1950s a number of Marxists, such as Djilas (1957), were becoming increasingly disenchanted with the bureaucratization of socialism in the Soviet Union. Most importantly, the Soviets' brutal suppression of the Hungarian revolt clearly illustrated that the Soviet Com­ munist party had little tolerance of individual freedom. This event led to the defection of many Western European radi­ cals from the Communist Party and these defectors began to search for a new radical alternative which would combine traditional socialist goals with the liberal values of freedom and participatory democracy. On the other hand, post-New Deal American liberalism was developing along lines which, from the point of view of some American radicals, bore a striking similarity to the position of the Communist party in the Soviet Union. Both the communists and the liberals, the radicals contended, had become defenders of the status quo in their respective nations. Liberals, who in the 1930s had been outside of the centers of power until the New Deal, in­ creasingly found themselves frightened into apathy or sub­ mission by McCarthy-style witchhunts in the 1950s and/or found a rationale for political inaction in the "end of ideology thesis" (Bell, 1962), which contended that the time for radical critiques and Utopian blueprints for change was over. This meant that American liberals were moving toward a general acceptance of the major parameters of the American political and economic system and were becoming less and less con­ cerned with the issues of inequality and the distribution of political power. In short, the radicals argued that American liberals had been coopted by the corporate state and were serving its interests by using their expertise to make the sys­ tem function more smoothly (Marcuse, 1964).

SOCIAL ACTION-PROTEST STEATEGIES

The intellectual fathers of the New Left movement, such as Mills (1956, 1959, 1962) and Zinn (1968) saw the afore­ mentioned tendencies reflected in the quality of research and scholarship in communist nations and the United States. In the communist nations serious Marxian scholarship was re­ placed by a banal "vulgar Marxism," which defended the in­ terests of the state and avoided the question of whether Marx's humanistic goals were being achieved. In the United States, the liberals' acceptance of the existing institutional arrangements was reinforced by the drift of social science re­ search into what Mills called "abstracted empiricism," which became almost exclusively concerned with techniques of analysis and almost totally disregarded the critical assess­ ment of what kinds of questions ought to be examined (1959: 50-75). Abstract empiricism, in Mills' view, was comple­ mented by the eagerness of universities to enter into co­ operative grant-service relationships with the defense de­ partment and the various branches of the armed services (Mills, 1956: 218-219; Horowitz, 1972: 369-430). The New Left's perception of the inertia of the Old Left and corporate liberalism explains in large measure why its ideology has revolved around a central commitment to action. On a philosophical level, this commitment to action is similar in one important respect to the existentialist's con­ tention that the only real alternative for contemporary man is to make a choice and act, even though the consequences of action may never be clearly understood or measured (Blackham, 1965). Both the existentialists and the New Leftists—in some instances, these are overlapping categories—abandoned the search for absolute guidelines or prescriptions for meansends rational action but, in contrast to the pessimism of some of the existentialists, the New Leftists adopted a Utopian vision of the future, which was supposed to be the final prod­ uct of their commitment to action. Lynd notes that: In summary, New Left intellectuality looks beyond ex­ isting empirical reality to what Zinn terms a "vision of the future." But this orientation still does not sufficiently de-

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

lineate the New Left mind. A certain kind of liberal, a Lewis Mumford or an Eric Fromm, shares the orientation just described. What decisively distinguishes New Left radicalism from all varieties of liberalism is its insistence on action [1969: 67-68]. In turn, this existential commitment to action is rooted in a specific conception of ethical values. Newfield describes how the New Left's ethical principles are manifested in the actions of SDS members: Α-historical and action-oriented, the politics of SDS are rooted in ethical values. One activist called it the "postNuremberg ethic . . . which means that every individual is totally responsible for everything he does." When SDSers are posed with a possible strategy they ask themselves not, "It it workable?" or "How much sup­ port can we get on this from the liberals?" They ask them­ selves, "Is it right to do this?" Most SDS members seem to be against the war in Vietnam not primarily because they think it is imperialistic or they fear a world war with China; they are against it because they feel they cannot participate in a war that demands they murder innocent peasants. Again, this is an invocation of the post-Nuremberg ethic—every man is responsible for his actions, in­ cluding murder, and at some moment he must say no to the machine and the officers giving the orders to kill. The adjectives the SDSers invoke most frequently to condemn Johnson's Great Society are not "reactionary" or "milita­ ristic," but "ethically corrupt" and "hypocritical" [1966: 92-93]. The guiding principles of the New Left movement, then, have placed a heavy emphasis upon immediate action eval­ uated in terms of highly individualistic ethical principles. In practical terms, this means that the New Left has been ori­ ented toward immediate concrete problems—that is, the existential commitment to action—but, at the same time, it measures the effectiveness of its involvement in these prob­ lems by the long-range goals of the "movement." Fruchter

SOCIAL ACTION-PBOTEST STRATEGIES

and Kramer describe how these aforementioned principles were put into practice in a typical SDS neighborhood-orga­ nization project in New Jersey, the Newark Community Union Project (NCUP): The crucial point is that the project is committed to two kinds of change at once: the specific remedying of individ­ ual aggravating grievances, and basic structural changes which would replace present systems of production, au­ thority, administration and control with far more egalitar­ ian and participatory institutions. The first kind of change requires the most dogged protest and pressure; the proj­ ect's work in this dimension is similar to the work of the grievance clinic at a settlement, the neighborhood im­ provement organization, the locally based, militant civil rights organization. But the project is simultaneously com­ mitted to that second level of basic change, and therefore the other dimensions of its activity and its existence as "the movement" cannot be judged by the standards rel­ evant to either the neighborhood grievance clinic or the local insurgent political club. Commitment to basic change means that the project pursues an impossibility, posits a Utopian aim, since that change is clearly not achievable on the municipal level. Most organizers and many active resi­ dents assume as much, but their more important assump­ tion is that the project, in its dimensions of association and activity as "the movement," embodies the possibility of the achievement of that change. Each project in its dimension as "the movement" offers and actualizes, in embryo, the national movement of poor people which constitutes both Utopian vision and transcendent possibility. Utopian be­ cause no clear conceptions exist of how such a movement, assuming national activity and concomitant, visible na­ tional membership, would operate to achieve the basic change it demands; transcendent because the existence of such a movement would transform American politics [1969: 234]. In one respect, New Left projects share an important ele­ ment with community-development projects: the organiza-

NEIGHBORHOOD OEGANIZATION

tional process is defined as more important than the realiza­ tion of concrete goals. Thus, SDS organizers have taken a great deal of pride in the fact that their organizations have exhibited a more truly grassroots participatory democracy than either OEO-funded or Alinsky-directed efforts, even though they have not achieved much in the way of fulfilling concrete goals. Overall, SDS projects have been more con­ cerned with the pursuit of ethical ideals than with the ame­ lioration of specific neighborhood problems (Bullock, 1968). Harwood's study (1966) of an SDS project in Chicago, however, illustrates some of the difficulties which the New Left organizers have run into when they have tried to in­ volve the poor in the "movement." The organizers spent a good deal of time disseminating information to the poor about specific ways in which they have been exploited, but the residents of the neighborhood perceived their standard of Hving as much better than that in their native Appalachian communities and viewed individual mobility as the most ef­ fective vehicle for attaining the "good life." Perhaps the difficulties faced by SDS organizers in Chi­ cago were due in part to the fact that they were trying to or­ ganize the white poor—as we will see in chapter 6, Com­ munity Action Programs were more successful in black neighborhoods than in white ones—but I have been unable to locate any convincing evidence that the SDS projects in black neighborhoods, such as in Newark (Fruchter and Kramer, 1969) were any more successful. A fundamental dif­ ficulty with the SDS projects was the inability, or unwilling­ ness, of the organizers to create any kind of incentive struc­ ture with which to induce the sustained support of the poor. Instead, they appealed to altruism and utopian visions, which were not compelling enough to induce the poor to make contributions to collective efforts. Because of the situa­ tional constraints on their lives, the poor simply cannot af­ ford the risk of "sociologizing" about the social-structural sources of their personal troubles and cannot risk the sanc­ tions which can result from participation in radical actions.

SOCIAL ACTION-PROTEST STRATEGIES

Bullock describes a typical confrontation between the idealistic SDS organizers and the realities of slum life: The youngsters are more likely to enter the community with preconceived idealistic notions, usually commendable in themselves but often unrelated to the realities of or­ ganizing in a slum ghetto. Certainly they cannot be satisfled when the result of their efforts is reflected only in a greater enlistment of Americans into the detested middle class. Yet the psychology of the ghetto itself militates against a too ambitious and large-scale perspective in com­ munity organizing. The ghetto resident, in the poorest and most alienated category, is the product of a cruel environ­ ment, and this hardly increases his patience and forbear­ ance. Essentially he is interested in only one thing—escap­ ing from poverty. He is not at all concerned about a mass redistribution of income, long-run social revolution, or any other concern of the young radical. He has no objections to being "corrupted" by money; quite the contrary, he yearns for the opportunity [1968: 143]. In addition, the New Left's efforts to organize the poor have been considerably hampered by its ideological aversion to the utilization of any existing neighborhood institutional structures. The desire to achieve pure participatory democ­ racy and avoid any connection whatsoever with the "estab­ lishment" (which is defined so broadly as to include almost any stable organization in the neighborhood or city) has un­ doubtedly made New Left neighborhood organizations the most truly grassroots, but it has also contributed to the in­ stability of these organizations, which suffer from a chronic lack of resources. Thus the difficulties experienced by the New Left orga­ nizers in trying to gain the support of the poor stem from essential elements in the New Left movement itself. While an anitibureaucratic bias, an existential commitment to ac­ tion, and an individualistic ethical imperative may be appeal­ ing to a certain segment of well-to-do-youths—research

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

studies indicate that the early supporters of the New Left came from highly affluent backgrounds (Flacks, 1967; Keniston, 1965, 1968)—these orientations, by themselves, are in­ sufficient to cope with the analytical problems posed by in­ terest-group organization. Certainly, many of these values· advocated by the New Left are consistent and indeed neces­ sary to any proper understanding of the problems and solu­ tions pertaining to the plight of the poor, but they must somehow be linked to a conceptual framework that con­ siders the preferences of the persons to be organized as the core data for further analysis. Unfortunately, although the New Left movement may have had an impact upon our willingness to reexamine the basic structural parameters of our society, it amorphous atheoretical bent has frequently reinforced a romanticism without discipline and, at worst, has become downright anti-intellectual. The Alinsky Approach2 In contrast to the revolutionary, idealistic orientation of the New Left, Saul Alinsky and his Industrial Areas Foundation take a distinctly pragmatic approach to neighborhood orga­ nization. Contrasting his perspective with that of radical youths, AHnsky says: 2 In writing this section, I have been helped a great deal by Sam Mueller and Arthur Hillman. Mueller pointed out to me, on the basis of his observations of The Woodlawn Organization, several aspects of the Alinsky approach that are not readily evident from reading the literature. Hillman, who is director of research for the National Settle­ ment House Association, was most cooperative in allowing me to go through his files on Alinsky efforts in a large number of cities. I was also fortunate in gaining cooperation of two of Alinsky's IAF organizers, which has been most helpful in attaining information about unpublicized organizational problems and strategy shifts. Finally, I was able to observe first-hand, for a period of about eight months, an Alinsky organizing effort in Lake County, Indiana—The Calumet Community Congress (CCC). The most comprehensive and scholarly treatment of a single Alinsky effort is Fish's (1973) book on TWO. By and large, however, the literature on Saul Alinsky and his approach to neighborhood organiza­ tion rarely approaches an attempt to be objective. Examples of litera­ ture positively disposed toward Alinsky are: Alinsky (1969, 1971);

SOCIAL ACTION-PROTEST STRATEGIES

Even the most elementary grasp of the fundamental idea that one communicates within the experience of his audi­ ence—and gives full respect to the other's values—would have ruled out attacks on the American flag. . . . For the real radical, doing "his thing" is to do the social thing, for and with the people .. . ; for years there have been people who've found society too overwhelming and have with­ drawn, concentrated on "doing their own thing." Gen­ erally we have put them into mental hospitals and diag­ nosed them as schizophrenics. If the real radical finds that having long hair sets up psychological barriers to com­ munication and organization, he cuts his hair. If I were organizing in an orthodox Jewish community I would not walk in there eating a ham sandwich, unless I wanted to be rejected so I could have an excuse to cop out [1971: xviii-xix]. The Industrial Areas Foundation is essentially a service agency which provides the services of professional organizers to poor neighborhoods.3 The relationship between the pro­ fessional Alinsky organizers and neighborhood organizations is strictly a contractual agreement. Organizers will come into a neighborhood only when invited by a neighborhood orga­ nization that is willing to pay the salary of the organizers, and the organization can ask the organizers to leave at any time (Silberman, 1964: 326-327). Alinsky argues that the strict contractual arrangement beAlinsky and Sanders (1965a, 1965b); Anderson (1966); Brazier (1969); Silberman (1964: 318-350). Examples of literature which take a decidedly negative view of Alinsky from different ideological stand­ points are Aronovitz (1964); Hauser (1964). Other references to AIinsky's tactics and specific organizing projects include: Bennett (1965); Bullock (1968); Carter (1967); Ecklein and Lauifer (1972: 64-78); Mueller (1967); Ridgeway (1965, 1967); Riessman (1965); Rose (1964, 1965); Sherrard and Murray (1965). 3 The Industrial Areas Foundation also trains indigenous leaders in organizing techniques. For example, the IAF held a workshop for "social-action" oriented clergymen in the Lake County, Indiana area. Also, one of the organizers in the Lake County effort was a local man who was paid by the area's Catholic bishop to receive training at the IAF institute.

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

tween a neighborhood organization and his professional or­ ganizers is necessary in order to get the poor out of their dependent state. He feels that one of the reasons that tradi­ tional social workers and other idealists are often so ineffec­ tive in helping the poor is that they develop a paternalistic relationship with them which further reinforces their de­ pendent state, but when the poor pay the bills themselves they can develop some sense of dignity and also control over the direction of their own organization (Silberman, 1964: 326-327). The service-client relationship between the professional Alinsky organizers and neighborhood organizations is often criticized by more idealistic reformers because once Alinsky leaves an area the organization is on its own and may use organizational skills taught by Alinsky organizers to pursue conservative and even racist goals (Aronovitz, 1964; Bullock, 1968). Alinsky responds to these criticisms by saying that his major task is to help people gain the power to determine their own destiny and for him, or any of his organizers, to direct the long-term objectives of an organization would de­ feat the goal of self-help. Concerning the racist orientation of the Back of the Yards Council, which he helped to orga­ nize, Alinsky states: In the dawn of the Back of the Yards the members— mosdy Polish-Americans—fought discrimination against themselves, and to justify their cause they had to be men and denounce all discrimination against anyone. . . . Through the years they mounted victory upon victory and moved steadily up the ladder from the Have Not's to the Have-a-Little-and-Want-M ore's. They then cast their lot with Haves, as—with a few burning individual exceptions—the middle class always does. . . . Today they are part of the city's establishment and are desperately trying to keep their community un­ changed. . . . They are segregationists. They have experi­ enced the fate of all successful organizations of men: wit­ ness the Christian Church as it evolved from the days of

SOCIAL ACTION-PROTEST STRATEGIES

the martyrs to what it is today, organized labor from the days of rebellion to what it is today.... Do I regret my leadership in organizing the Back of the Yards? I do not. If I could have foreseen what has come to pass I would still do it again because of the many changes that . . . have come about in some 200,000 lives in what had been a jungle of despair and defeat [1969: xi-xii]. There is some confusion as to the ideological category into which AIinsky falls. Because his mass-protest tactics often result in "red baiting" and because he calls himself a radical, there is perhaps a temptation to label him as a radical in the Marxian tradition. However, we must not confuse the means which Ahnsky employs with the goals which he seeks to at­ tain. His means, such as dropping rats on the steps of city hall to protest conditions in a slum, seem radical in com­ parison to conventional techniques for achieving objectives in city politics, but his goals fall basically within a pluralistic philosophical framework that finds its roots in the "American experience." In his writings, Alinsky makes frequent refer­ ences to citizen participation, grassroots organizations in American history (for example, the New England town meet­ ing), and it is clear that he views himself as an American radical (1969: 13-14). Alinsky feels that the use of extraordinary means is justi­ fied by the extraordinary situations with which he deals; However, the goals of his efforts are often quite modest. With the possible exception of his middle-class, ecologyoriented organizations, he restricts his groups to quite limited reform objectives, such as forcing retailers to improve the quality of meat in local stores or coercing slumlords to make repairs.4 AIinsky defines the neighborhood organization task as a political problem, insofar as he seeks to aid the powerless to become aware of the power arrangements that control their lives and to provide opportunities for them to gain the 4 In

fact, this is one of the major criticisms of Alinsky by the New Left organizers (Aronovitz, 1964).

NEIGHBOEHOOD ORGANIZATION

confidence to change the status quo. Fish observes that "in the IAF model, a community is defined by the way it is or­ ganized. The underlying notion implicit in the IAF approach is that a successful community association provides an alter­ native interpretation of the situation: it exposes outside con­ trol, it identifies issues, it locates undiscovered' leaders. The organization is the message" (1973: 26). Nevertheless, the al­ ternatives presented are framed within the immediate lifesituation of the persons being organized. Thus, IAF orga­ nizers tend to avoid abstract conceptualizations of the broader political and economic structures which ultimately create the poor person's environment and instead focus on issues which he can relate to in terms of his everyday life (Fish, 1973: 20-30). The actual process through which Alinsky organizers work is outlined by Silberman: Organizers from the Industrial Areas Foundation filter through the neighborhood, asking questions and, more im­ portant, listening in bars, at street corners, in stores, in peoples' homes—in short, wherever people are talking—to discover the residents' specific grievances; At the same time, the organizers try to spot the individ­ uals and the groups on which people seem to lean for ad­ vice or to which they go for help: a barber, a minister, a mailman, a restaurant owner, etc.—the "indigenous" leaders; The organizers get these leaders together, discuss the irritations, frustrations, and problems animating the neigh­ borhood, and suggest the ways in which power might be used to ameliorate or solve them ... A demonstration or series of demonstrations are put on to show how power can be used. These may take a variety of forms: a rent strike against slum landlords, a cleanup campaign against a notorious trouble spot, etc. [1964: 327], There is some discussion in the literature as to how much actual "grassroots" involvement Alinsky organizers allow. Several observers suggested to me that Alinsky organizers

SOCIAL ACTION-PROTEST STRATEGIES

manipulate people and issues, although they operate within the context of "democratic rituals," such as formal conven­ tions in which a constitution is voted upon and meetings in which issues are discussed. The residents of a poor neighbor­ hood are allowed to participate in the democratic process, but the most important organizational problems are handled beforehand by the professional organizers. My own observa­ tions of an Alinsky organization in Lake County, Indiana (The Calumet Community Congress), tend to confirm the claim. In this case, a Catholic bishop supplied funds to hire Alinsky organizers, who spent a year of preparation before the formal convention. After the founding convention (dur­ ing the eight months I observed the organization), few per­ sons who were formal delegates to the organization paraticipated in meetings and many of the crucial organizational decisions about issues and strategies were handled by the or­ ganizers. It is only fair to add, however, that this pattern of participation and decision-making is probably no less demo­ cratic (and in fact may be more democratic) than is found in most voluntary associations.0. The most striking difference between Alinsky organiza­ tions and New Left neighborhood organizations—which con­ sciously avoid involvement with existing organizations be­ cause "they are part of the system"—is that groups such as churches and ethnic associations are central to Alinsky's strategy. The TWO effort, for example, enlisted the support of the Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, the First Presbyte­ rian Church of Chicago, and the Woodlawn Businessmen's Association (Silberman, 1964: 340-341). In fact, one of the major appeals of Alinsky's organizational approach is its ori­ entation toward building a coalition among a large number of disparate organizations that do not have the resources or skills to bring about change on their own. Consequently Alinsky's neighborhood organizations are likely to be more 5 See, for example, Lipset, Trow, and Coleman's (1956) study. Their findings are unique largely because the International Typographical Union is one of the few large unions in which democracy is operative.

Ill

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

stable than New Left organizations, which suffer from a chronic lack of resources and have to depend entirely on volunteers to do organizing work. An Alinsky organization, then, is essentially an "organiza­ tion of organizations" (Fish, 1973: 12-64; Riessman, 1965; Silberman, 1964: 327). Because it approaches to some extent the federal-group model (although the constituent organiza­ tions are not small groups), we can expect that the incentives used to induce persons to participate in one of the constit­ uent organizations can also be used to gain their support, in­ directly, for the larger, federal-group effort. For example, the incentives that induced Woodlawn businessmen to join the Woodlawn Businessmen's Association (such as the desire to improve their business) were used, indirectly, to get them to join TWO (Silberman, 1964: 329). The costs of the Calu­ met Community Congress were paid, in part, by individual members of a variety of groups with quite different goals, including the American Federation of Teachers, the Isaac Walton League, and several community improvement asso­ ciations. The incentives which induced such support were found as much in the reasons for which individuals joined their respective constituent organizations as in the reasons for which they aided the CCC itself. For instance, Catholics in the diocese of Gary helped pay the salaries of Alinsky or­ ganizers through their contributions to Sunday collections. However they contributed basically because they belonged to the Catholic Church and not necessarily because they sup­ ported the CCC. Furthermore, organizations modeled after the federal group are likely to induce the support of a disproportionate number of persons whose socioeconomic status is higher than that of most of the residents in the neighborhood. Mueller (1970) points out that a "double filtration effect" developed in the formation of TWO: the more well-to-do in the neigh­ borhood were the most likely to already belong to voluntary associations and also the most likely to become part of the

SOCIAL ACTION-PROTEST STRATEGIES

neighborhood organization. Nicholas Von Hoffman, the ma­ jor organizer of TWO, estimates that 2 percent of the resi­ dents in the neighborhood actually participated in the orga­ nization (1964: 9). Thus it seems likely that Alinsky organizations, which focus initially on short-range concrete goals, will be success­ ful in gaining the support of the poor, or at least some of the more well-to-do residents of poor neighborhoods. This is borne out by empirical evidence which shows that residents of poor neighborhoods have organized for brief periods of time when their immediate needs have been threatened, for example, when urban renewal agencies have threatened to clear their homes (Wilson, 1966: 415-417). Also, Mobiliza­ tion for Youth organizers discovered that they were more successful in inducing the support of the poor for the resolu­ tion of short-term concrete, protest issues than in sustaining support for the resolution of long-range, less tangible prob­ lems (Weissman, 1969; Piven, 1968). Nevertheless, the fundamental question at this point is, can Alinsky tactics achieve victories for poor neighborhoods? Even if the protest organizer manages to find an issue which will engender interest in the neighborhood, he must still demonstrate that protest tactics will work. To do this he must contend with the fundamental problem of generating confrontations with his adversaries. Environmental Conditions and the Development of Confrontations The proximate objective of any protest effort, with the ex­ ception of those designed to win "moral victories," is the de­ velopment of a confrontation that will either force adver­ saries to bargain directly with the protest organization or create a condition (for example, severe disruption of public order, decline in business trade) that will prompt a third party to intervene as a mediator in the dispute. Producing a confrontation, however, requires (1) environmental condi-

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

tions that have created a latent conflict between the organi­ zation and its adversaries and (2) the "cooperation" of adver­ saries in their response to protest. The first condition is not difficult to meet. Poor neighbor­ hoods do have latent bases of conflict with bureaucracies which control public service-delivery systems, with slum­ lords, with merchants who sell inferior products, and with other assorted exploitive individuals and groups. In the organization of TWO, the first condition was met when the University of Chicago proposed to use urbanrenewal funds to clear an area of Woodlawn in order to con­ struct university buildings. As Silberman points out, this merely exacerbated a long-standing latent conflict between the university and the Woodlawn residents: And so the University of Chicago obligingly supplied the whipping boy—itself—that was needed to unite tenants, homeowners, and businessmen in a common cause. Even before the South Campus proposal, the University was generally hated in Woodlawn—in part because it was white, in part because of its "Negro removal" tactics in the Hyde Park-Kenwood area, and in part because of a barbedwire fence the University had put up to protect its campus against the Woodlawn community [1964: 337]. The second condition, however, is more difficult to meet than the first. In order to bring a latent conflict to the sur­ face, the object of protest must "cooperate" by reacting in an overt hostile manner to the organization which is protesting. This also happened during the organization of TWO. After members of TWO went to a public hearing to protest the university's urban-renewal plan and succeeded in tempo­ rarily halting work on it, the university reacted with ven­ geance. Alinsky was attacked as a "dupe of the Catholic church" because of the church's financial support of the IAF and TWO, and university officials tried to discredit the orga­ nization (Fish, 1973: 40; Silberman, 1964: 338-342). In fact, a well-known sociologist at the university, Philip Hauser,

SOCIAL ACTION-PBOTEST STBATEGIES

commented that "The people there [in Woodlawn] have only one common bond, opposition to the University of Chicago/' and "This is a community that reads nothing" (Silberman, 1964: 343). Fish describes the escalation of the conflict be­ tween TWO and the University of Chicago: Each partner in this controversy developed an image of the other and then reacted to the other in terms of that image. As the controversy progressed, the image each had of the other tended to be confirmed. The University saw TWO as trying to monopolize the role of spokesman for the community and as threatening to undermine the Uni­ versity's expansion plans. TWO saw the University as an alien force that was expanding in its own interest without concern for the community and residents affected. Inter­ acting in terms of these images, the University overreacted and over-anticipated so that what they did and said con­ firmed for TWO the image they had received from their initial contacts. As TWO responded in terms of their now confirmed perceptions, the University became more con­ vinced that TWO was indeed as they had first believed, a major threat to their plans. This spiral led to a polariza­ tion which made discussion of the original point of con­ tention impossible [1973: 41]. Thus the university's response to TWO, which increased the hostility of Woodlawn residents toward it, generated a good deal of publicity that helped the organization get off the ground. Eventually, the uncompromising attitude of the university forced a confrontation between it and TWO that became so heated it threatened to disrupt the city's master urban-renewal effort, so that Mayor Daley was compelled to intervene in the dispute as a mediator. The resulting com­ promise over the urban-renewal plan was a short-run victory for TWO (Silberman, 1964: 345).6 6 Later in the chapter I shall show that there are good reasons to be­ lieve that the eventual implementation of the "compromise" between TWO and the University of Chicago was not actually a significant vic­ tory for TWO.

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

It is clear that TWO did achieve some limited victories thorugh the use of protest tactics; however, the important question is, can the conditions which led to the success of TWO be matched in other neighborhood organizing efforts? It seems that the existence of latent conflicts can be found in most poor neighborhoods; however, there are reasons to believe that adversaries of Alinsky efforts will not be as will­ ing to "cooperate" in their response to protest tactics. From their own experience and from the experience of others, ad­ versaries can learn ways to cope effectively with such tactics.7 This is well illustrated by the Southern civil rights move­ ment. Initially, Southern community leaders "cooperated" with the civil rights groups in their protest strategy by help­ ing to produce confrontations. The die-hard resistance dur­ ing this early period led to "crises" in Southern communities which in turn led to bargaining between the civil rights groups and community leaders. However, after their initial defeats community leaders learned some effective techniques that prevented the development of confrontations and, hence, impaired the ability of the civil rights groups to use protest methods. They discovered that if they made "token" con­ cessions at the start of a protest they were much less likely to see an issue develop into a confrontation in which they would be forced to make significant concessions. They also used the strategy of cooptation, in which they granted for­ mal representation to black leaders on commissions and thereby reduced the bargaining power of these leaders as a threat to civil order (Killian and Grigg, 1964). Similarly, since the widely publicized controversy be­ tween TWO and the University of Chicago, Alinsky's adver­ saries have been much less willing to "cooperate" by playing the "villian role"; Alinsky organizations now find it much harder to produce rancorous conflicts and confrontations (Anderson, 1966; Ecklein and Lauffer, 1972: 77-78). The CCC conflict with U.S. Steel in Gary illustrates how, even during the course of a single organizing effort, adver7 See the discussion of Organizational Strategies and Changing En­ vironments in Chapter 2.

SOCIAL ACTION-PROTEST STHATEGIES

saries can learn from their past mistakes. During the early founding days of the CCC, the Lake County Democratic party chairman, John Krupa, and the director of U.S. Steel's plant in Gary both charged that the organization was infil­ trated by radicals and was seeking to destroy all that is good and holy in America.8 Based on the fact that a well known radical, Staughton Lynd, was one of the organizers, the charge received a good deal of publicity in the local news­ papers and by word of mouth.® The result was a positive boon for the CCC! From a relatively obscure and innocuous organization, the CCC suddenly emerged as a major issue in the community. Moreover, the confrontation enabled the CCC to publicize in the local newspaper information regard­ ing U.S. Steel's pollution of the Gary atmosphere and the connection between the company and the county tax as­ sessor (a key figure in the Lake County Democratic machine), who was charged with giving favorable tax breaks to the 8 Krupa and representatives of the John Birch Society tried to dis­ rupt the first open meeting of the CCC. Later, in an interview in the Gary newspaper, Krupa argued that the CCC was using tactics which communists use to take over communities. He said: "Right now, the CCC has the appearance of a knight in white armour . . . The orga­ nizers are picking on good causes—on things that should have been acted on long ago, like pollution and law enforcement. They're stirring up well-meaning individuals to get them involved in the movement. Later, all those issues and programs will turn out to be nothing but a false front for the real intent and purpose of the CCC, which is the elimination of the establishment" (Crile, 1970). 9 A "highlight" of the last two mayorality campaigns in Gary was the charge, made by John Krupa, that Richard Hatcher was working with "Castroite subversives." For a discussion of the first Hatcher cam­ paign, see Greer (1971). The large Eastern European population (which includes first- and second-generation emmigrants from Communist regimes), the absence of any major educational or cultural facilities, and the general provincialism of life in Gary, as well as in the whole of Lake County, is very conducive to "red-baiting." Greer provides an apt description of the social milieu: ". . . Most Gary workers own their own homes and the city's median income is 10 percent above the national average. The lives of these people, however, are parochial, circumscribed, on a tight focus. With the exception of the ethnic clubs, the union, and the Catholic Church, the outstanding social edifices in Gary are its bars, gambling joints, and whorehouses" (1971: 30).

NEIGHBORHOOD OHG A N I Z ATI ON

company.10 One of the organizers of the CCC commented to me, shortly after the red-baiting began, "we ought to put Krupa on our payroll!" Since that initial confrontation, however, the county Dem­ ocratic chairman was noticeably quiet and chose to ignore the CCC. U.S. Steel stopped its efforts to smear the organiza­ tion, and instead launched a massive public relations cam­ paign—the motto of which was "We're Involved"— to try to convince the residents of Gary that it was doing "good works" in job training and other causes.11 The shift in strat­ egy resulted in a marked decrease in the publicity accruing to the CCC and in the public interest in the issues the orga­ nization was trying to raise.12 To contend with the problem of counter-strategies learned by adversaries Alinsky and his organizers have tried to adopt a flexible stance. In contrast to many traditional radical or­ ganizers, Alinsky does not prescribe a given set of techniques to reach objectives. Consistent with his pragmatic view of the world is his admonition that the organizer should use any tactic which works (1969: 133-134). Therefore, his organiza­ tions use a wide variety of procedures to deal with different types of situations. Boycotts and demonstrations were the tactics adopted by TWO; the organization of stockholders was the strategy used by FIGHT against Eastman Kodak in Rochester (Alinsky and Sanders, 1965b; Anderson, 1966; Carter, 1967; Ecklein and Lauffer, 1972: 64-78; Ridgeway, 10 The

relationship between big business and the Democratic ma­ chine in Chicago is described by Royko (1971). 11 U.S. Steel's job-training program focused on the black population of Gary. The CCC was made up primarily of whites. 12 The CCC did participate in lobbying efforts to persuade the Gary City Council to pass an ordinance forcing U.S. Steel, sometime in the distant future, to drastically cut down on its coke-oven emissions. However, the mayor and other citizens' groups were also in favor of the ordinance. In fact, most of the groundwork for the ordinance was laid prior to CCC involvement in the issue. In any event, since that time the CCC has not had much success in winning victories. After the organization tried unsuccessfully to make a major public issue of alleged irregularities in the Lake County voter-registration lists, it did not get much publicity at all in the local press.

SOCIAL ACTION-PROTEST STRATEGIES

1967; Rose, 1965). The Calumet Community Congress relied heavily on legal assistance (including the support of Ralph Nader's organization) in its fight with U.S. Steel. Nevertheless, any given tactic has only a limited life span because adversaries can learn ways to counter it. Thus the protest organizer is under the constraint of developing a tactic that will have not only an effect but an immediate im­ pact. Finding such a tactic can be expected to pose a serious problem in organizing any kind of protest in a democratic society; however, it would seem to be even more problematic in the organization of poor neighborhoods. Since the poor are most likely to be induced to support efforts that will quickly yield concrete results, they can be more easily "bought off" with incremental reforms than, for instance, the more affluent middle-class college-student protestor. Ma­ chine politicians, such as Daley of Chicago, are well aware of this fact and often thwart the development of confronta­ tions with the use of a minimum amount of resources.13 An additional constraint on the utility of protest is found in the fact that only groups with a specific kind of organiza­ tional structure can use protest tactics effectively, even if other conditions are favorable to the development of con­ frontations. Organizational Structure and Protest Tactics If a neighborhood organization is vulnerable to sanctions through its organizational structure, adversaries either will not be forced into a confrontation or will be able to resolve the issues that generated the confrontations without bargaining. For example, neighborhood groups sponsored by organi13 The small cost of preventing confrontations with the poor was vividly illustrated to me in Chicago in 1964. One evening I learned that a block club on the West Side planned to protest the following morning the city's failure to provide the neighborhood with adequate trash removal service. However, sometime during the night, city sani­ tation workers cleaned up the area and even put new lids on the garbage cans. Thus, the conditions of conflict were removed, and the protest never developed.

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

zations which engage in general service programs often find that their activities can endanger the existence of larger service programs. Hillman (1966-1967) notes that conserva­ tive sponsors often threaten to suspend funding for the gen­ eral activities of settlement houses which support neighbor­ hood organizations engaging in Alinsky-type tactics.14 Local Community Action Programs that have sponsored protestoriented neighborhood organizations have faced similar threats (Haggstrom, 1968). Brager and Specht summarize the dilemma which social service agencies face when they support protest activities: A major, and often overlooked, source of strain in a so­ cial agency's support of organized social action is the like­ lihood that the social-change objective of the program will impede the agency's service functions. . . . In negotiating his client's needs with another institution, the professional depends upon his rapport with other professionals to ob­ tain special favors. His agency's support of a community challenge of that institution's policies endangers his power to obtain dispensations for his clients. This danger is often exploited by institutions seeking to avoid change. Thus large bureaucracies often make concessions to individual clients to avoid a challenge of administrative rulings which affect many people [1969: 228]. Financial autonomy per se does not seem to be the major problem in this regard. The highly controversial Alinsky groups have received virtually unconditional financial aid from churches, despite the fact that the churches sponsoring such groups have been severly criticized. Apparently, when individuals and groups directly support a protest-oriented neighborhood organization, they are apt to know "what they are getting into" before they offer financial support. How­ ever, sponsors who give money to general social service pro­ grams are often surprised when their money is used to sup14 Also, see the case studies of settlement-house involvement in Alinsky efforts in Neighborhood Organization: Case Reports (19661967).

SOCIAL ACTION-PKOTEST STRATEGIES

port neighborhood-organization efforts that are contrary to their ideological and political interests. For example, the development of aggressive neighborhood-organization efforts within the Community Action Programs was at variance with the intent of the many Congressional supporters of the OEO legislation who viewed the program solely as a means of providing federal money to support existing service programs for the poor.15 Therefore, it seems that a neighborhood group must have a certain degree of organizational autonomy in order to use protest effectively.

LONG-RANGE CONSEQUENCES OF PROTEST ORGANIZATIONS Even if the protest organizer is successful in using skillful tactics to achieve victories for the neighborhood on specific issues, a crucial question remains: can a protest-oriented neighborhood organization achieve some degree of perma­ nent status as an interest group for the neighborhood? In order to achieve this objective, the organization must (1) find some way to induce individuals to make sustained contri­ butions to the organization and (2) somehow be recognized by others as a legitimate representative of the neighborhood. Protest Strategies and the Public Goods Dilemma In response to his critics who argue that he works only on minor neighborhood issues, Alinsky contends that such issues are the first step in the organization process; once the poor see that they can bring about change through their own efforts and gain a sense of political efficacy they will be will­ ing to engage in sustained efforts oriented toward more fundamental changes in their neighborhoods.16 15 See my discussion of organizational structures and strategies in chapter 2. See also chapter 5 for a discussion of Community Action programs. 16 Throughout Reveille For Radicals (1969), Alinsky emphasizes the need for oppressed people to learn that they can exert influence, through collective action, on powerful people they have feared all their lives. Therefore, a crucial aspect of protest, in Alinsky's view, is to overcome the fear of the oppressor.

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

There is not a great deal of research on the therapeutic value of protest for the poor, although it is a fundamental element in the theory of protest strategy. Levens (1968) finds that mothers who belong to a welfare rights organization have a longer time-perspective and score lower on traditional social-psychological measurements of anomia than mothers from the same socioeconomic area who are not participants. But she admits that she cannot rule out a self-selection factor as an explanation for the empirical differences between WRO mothers and non-WRO mothers, since she does not know if the mothers who joined the WRO were different from the other mothers prior to their involvement in the organization. In a more controlled study, Bloomberg and Rosenstock (Ϊ968) find some evidence that participation in successful social action broadens the time perspective of the poor, but note that their findings are inconclusive. Nevertheless, there is some evidence from the civil rights struggle that protest activities can have therapeutic results for those who participate in them. Coles' (1967) clinical analysis of black children who participated in nonviolent protest during the civil rights campaign indicates that they did benefit psychologically from their experience. It is at least a reasonable hypothesis that the nonviolent protest campaign was an important social-psychological predeces­ sor to the increased movement of blacks into electoral politics in a very dramatic way during the past few years.17 We must be careful, however, not to confuse the thera­ peutic effects of protest for individuals with the organization 17 Studies have shown that when Socioeconomic Status is con­ trolled, blacks tend to participate more than whites in voluntary associ­ ations and voting. In recent years this trend shows a substantial in­ crease. What is most significant, however, is that studies in the 1950s found support for the thesis that the disproportionate involvement of blacks was an attempt to "compensate" for discrimination, while a recent study by Olsen (1970) finds support for the thesis that the dis­ proportionate participation of blacks can be explained by "identification with the black community." See Olsen's (1970) discussion of the earlier research and his own research findings.

SOCIAL ACTION-PROTKST STRATEGIES

of an aggregate of persons into an interest group. Perhaps protest can foster the development of leaders and the greater utilization of political resources by the masses, but the funda­ mental problem of organizing an interest group on any kind of sustained basis involves the development of incentives to persuade persons to make contributions after the dramatic confrontations are over. Protest activities do not in them­ selves provide any such incentives because all of the benefits that may result from a protest organization's efforts are re­ ceived by all of the neighborhood residents, whether or not they make any contributions toward those efforts. If there is no device to exclude those who do not pay their share of the costs (for example, time and money) of those efforts there is no rational incentive for persons to make sustained contribu­ tions to the organization. Therefore, after the dramaturgical effects of conflict have dissipated the organizer must come to grips with the public goods dilemma (Olson, 1965). In one important respect the difficulty with the "thera­ peutic argument" is similar to the difficulty with the pluralist argument. Although the advocates of the therapeutic value of protest vehemently reject the notion that the poor are devi­ ant, in the sense of having a unique culture or psychology, they do share with the pluralists the notion that the organiza­ tion of an interest group is fundamentally a problem of mak­ ing individuals aware that their self-interests can be realized in collective action. While the pluralist may argue that the personal characteristics of the poor have to be changed be­ fore they will engage in collective action and the protest advocate argues that participation in collective action will change their personal characteristics, both the pluralist and the protest advocate focus on changing the individual as a necessary precondition for sustained collective activity. Since protest itself does not provide a solution to the public goods dilemma it seems unlikely thaat organizations built solely on confrontation politics will be able to induce in­ dividuals to make sustained contributions. However, because the Alinsky organizational model (an organization of organi-

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

zations), is similar to the federal-group model (Olson, 1965: 62-63), it offers more hope for sustained contributions to its efforts. In fact, Alinsky organizations seem to be the only protest groups which have persisted for any length of time. But, as I suggested earlier, the federal-group solution to the public goods dilemma creates a number of organizational problems. In the CCC effort, for example, much of the organ­ izer's time was spent managing conflicts between the con­ stituent organizations in the coalition. At one point, liberal groups such as the AFT local at a nearby university wanted to pass a resolution on the Vietnam War, but some of the more moderate to conservative groups in the coalition op­ posed it. Radical critics of Alinsky, such as Aronovitz (1964), argue that his efforts to accommodate a wide variety of groups and individuals in a neighborhood will inevitably lead to an organization with a conservative orientation. One example of this is the transformation of the Back of the Yards Council from a militant organization concerned with human rights to a conservative organization interested in excluding blacks from the neighborhood. The most pressing problem connected with the federalgroup solution to the public goods dilemma is that small groups which formed a coalition in order to contend with specific issues may not have any further interest in pursuing goals collectively once the issues are resolved. Since each of die small groups can retain its autonomy and provide in­ centives to its members without the assistance of the larger organization, the federal group may not be able to sustain the support of its constituent organizations. A permanent state of "threat," in which the vested interests of each of the constituent organizations can only be served by joining to­ gether, seems to be necessary to the maintenance of an Alinsky federal group. The Problem of Legitimacy

Even if a neighborhood organization manages to find a de­ vice to sustain the contributions of individuals, it still faces

SOCIAL ACTION-PROTEST STRATEGIES

the problem of establishing itself as a legitimate interest group in the eyes of other individuals and groups in the neighborhood and city. Even if a protest organization suc­ ceeds in forcing adversaries to bargain with it, either directly or indirectly through a mediator, can it institutionalize its relationship to the adversaries over a long period of time? As I have shown, adversaries can learn ways to cope with protest tactics and thus can avoid confrontations that will force them to bargain with the organization. Further, the success of neighborhood organizations in winning shortrange victories can result in changes in the sociopolitical en­ vironment itself. The changes that a neighborhood organi­ zation can produce in neighborhood conditions may be slight but highly visible and thus may have a negative effect on the organization's ability to develop future issues. In addition, those organizations which are best structured to use protest as a tactic to bring about change are often least likely to become involved in the bargaining over the issues they raise.18 For example, Walker (1963) points out that black students in Atlanta were able to initiate a lunch counter sit-down strike because they were not tied to any "legitimate-respectable" institutions in the city. In short, they could not be sanctioned (apart from harassment by whites) for their activities. Once the students initiated the confronta­ tion, however, white community leaders bargained with more "respectable" black leaders to resolve the issue and thereby eliminated the students from the political decision­ making process. Therefore, the very organizational style which permits neighborhood organizations to use protest effectively makes it difficult for them to achieve long-term legitimacy. Protest organizations find themselves in a double bind because their ability to use protest is negatively associated with their links to the larger community; however, their ability to be viewed as legitimate may be positively related to such links. The 18 See my discussion of organizational structures and strategies in chapter 2.

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

organizations' immediate goals may be best achieved by maintaining a high degree of autonomy vis-a-vis other in­ terest groups and institutional structures, to the detriment of their long-range goals. On the other hand, if too many links with other interest groups and institutional structures are established, short-range objectives will suffer. Alinsky organizations have tried to overcome this dilemma by adopting a vastly more moderate posture after their initial protest actions. For example, TWO now enters into con­ tractual agreements with its old adversary, the University of Chicago, for federal grants for various kinds of neighbor­ hood demonstration projects (Fish, 1973: chap. 6; Moore, 1968; Sherrard and Murray, 1965: 18). As a result, TWO has lost its force as an interest group, even though many of the conditions existing in the Woodlawn neighborhood when TWO was founded remain unchanged. Now that the organi­ zation is tied to the University of Chicago and the federal granting agencies, it has to consider the "costs" of adversary actions (Aronovitz, 1964; Fish, chaps. 5, 6). The OceanhillBrownsville experience also illustrates the fundamental point that mere administrative changes which call for the par­ ticipation of the poor or poor neighborhood are no substitute for real political power and organization. In fact, such ad­ ministrative arrangements often provide a rhetorical mask for failure of the poor to organize in an interest-group sense (Green, 1970). The heart of the legitimacy problem can be understood if we compare the way in which neighborhood organizations use protest with the way in which unions have traditionally used protest. Alinsky and other protest organizers use their tactics to gain victories for poor neighborhoods on specific issues. Unions, on the other hand, use protest initially to gain the right to act as collective-bargaining agents; throughout labor history, their major objective has been achievement of legitimacy. Specific issues, such as wages and working con­ ditions have come later.19 19 Alinsky (1969) continually makes analogies between the massprotest tactics of the CIO in its early days and his tactics in the orga-

SOCIAL ACTION-PROTEST STRATEGIES

In short, while Alinsky has correctly identified the fact that basic conflicts of interest exist between neighborhood resi­ dents on the one hand and other interest groups and public authorities on the other, he has not found a way to institu­ tionalize these conflicts within a framework which will guarantee the collective strength of neighborhood residents vis-a-vis their adversaries. Even in the case of the widely publicized battle between TWO and the University of Chicago, there are good reasons to doubt that TWO won a very significant victory in the long run. TWO did force the University of Chicago to the bargaining table in 1963. The compromise reached there allowed the university to purchase the urban renewal land it wanted but also required the university to build on parcels of that land low-income hous­ ing for occupancy by Woodlawn residents. The implementa­ tion of the compromise was not announced by the Chicago Urban Renewal Agency until 1966. The university did agree to build "moderate" income housing units, but the incomeceiling requirements for tenants in these units were sub­ stantially higher than the incomes of the poor residents of Woodlawn. A family of seven was eligible to rent one of these units if its income did not exceed $11,000 a year. The "moderate-income" ceiling was $6,000 a year for a single individual and $8,500 a year for a couple with two children (Burke, 1966). These income ceilings were sub­ stantially higher than even the most liberal definition of the income of persons living in poverty in 1966! 20 nization of neighborhoods. However, Alinsky fails to recognize the historical fact that the CIO was not successful in organizing the massproduction workers until the Wagner Act granted it legal protection. Moreover, the primary goal of the CIO was to gain recognition as a legitimate bargaining agent for the workers. See my discussion of labor organization in chapter 1. 20 President Johnson's Council of Economic Advisors in 1964 set the poverty line at $3,000 family cash-income. For a discussion of various estimates of what income constitutes poverty, many of which are con­ siderably higher than that of the Council of Economic Advisors, see Miller and Rein (1966) and Miller and Roby (1970).

NEIGHB OBHOOD OBGANIZATION

Commenting on TWO's transformation from an agressive protest organization to a vehicle for community development programs, Fish observes that: As a pressure group TWO had faced opposition through­ out its history. However, only when the organization was strong enough to assume quasi-governmental functions and to pursue a decentralization of public authority, did it elicit decisive opposition. It is one thing to negotiate with centralized agencies for goods and services. It is quite another thing to challenge the sovereignty of the city of Chicago. On issues where that sovereignty was threatened the corporate power of the established city agencies pre­ vailed, not only over TWO but also over the federal gov­ ernment [the reference here is to TWO's unsuccessful at­ tempt to wrest control of the model cities program away from the mayor's office]. Contrary to the traditional adage, you can fight City Hall. What you cannot do is bypass it, split it up, or take it o v e r . . . . Faced with the might of established counterresistance and disillusioned with federally funded programs, TWO directed attention to a variety of less threatening ventures in community development. This move . . . was character­ ized by . . . an expressed awareness of the limits of power, a disengagement from direct conflict, and intensified pur­ suit of noncontroversial programs and projects [1973: 284-285]. In fairness to TWO, Alinsky, and the IAF, I agree with Fish's conclusion (1973: chap. 6) that this effort stands out as being remarkably successful in comparison to perhaps the majority of neighborhood organization efforts during the 1960s. Cer­ tainly TWO did manage to achieve some incremental ob­ jectives which would have been considered impossible by many before it took bold initiatives. Probably the most im­ portant contribution of TWO, other Alinsky-type groups, and protest organizations in general, including those of the New Left, is that they have provided us with empirical tests of

SOCIAL ACTION-PROTEST STRATEGIES

the nature of urban decision-making processes. The wide publicity given to TWO's confrontation with the University of Chicago, for example, has helped to explode the myth that only right-wing reactionaries are opposed to certain types of centralized planning schemes and to expose the fallacy of defining the city as a "single community." Perhaps the most important similarity between AIinsky organizations and New Left groups, however, is the difficulty both have experienced in combining intellectual rigor with efforts to "identify with the masses." This has been a per­ sistent problem with American radical intellectuals, whose tendency to give up the "tools of their trade" as they move into policy matters stems from the basic insecurity of their role in a democratic society (Lasch, 1965). Contrary to what many critics have argued, the limitations of protest strategies in organizing neighborhoods cannot be overcome by denying the existence of conflict, power, and political struggle. Rather, what is required, as the case of TWO illustrates, is a more complete conceptualization of the political parameters that have bearing on the neighborhood association prior to the organizing process itself. Again, we find neighb6rhood organizers confronting difficulties because they have not seen fit to forecast the kinds of "trade-offs" that will be required in order to gain the resources (especially legitimacy) to solve the public goods dilemma. The resolution of this dilemma calls for an awareness of the interests of others—especially adversaries, whose actions are critical to the organizing process—and for the specification of ways that such interests may be turned into advantages for the emerg­ ing interest group. It also demands that we find an alterna­ tive to the zero-sum, "winner-take-all" conceptualization of conflict from which opposing parties in protest-confrontation struggles have tended to view their respective situations. To do this we must be willing to reexamine the whole "move­ ment mentality" from which protest strategies have emerged and to accept the need for planning, especially in the rigorout analytical sense, as a concomitant to action.

CHAPTER FIVE

Community Action Programs

One of the basic assumptions of liberal American political scientists and sociologists—such as Burns (1967), Bell (1962), Lane (1966), and Lipset (I960)—is that if a disadvantaged aggregate of persons are unable to pursue their interests on their own, then the federal government will eventually come to their assistance. In fact, since the beginning of the New Deal, the federal government has served as an advocate for a number of disadvantaged parties. Through the Wagner Act, the government helped to organize mass-production workers (Olson, 1965; Galbraith, 1956). Through farm-bureau cooperatives (Olson, 1965) and price supports (Galbraith, 1956), the government helped to organize the farmers. Through the Voting Rights Act, the government helped black Americans gain the right to vote. These reforms have not resulted mainly from the benevolence of government but from political pressure and agitation by the disadvantaged aggregates and from the awareness of politicians that they could gain political benefits by supporting the "underdog." Nevertheless, governmental intervention in these cases has been essential to their successful outcomes. Unlike its previous actions as an advocate for the dis­ advantaged, however, the government's actions in develop­ ing a program for neighborhood organization did not spring so much from response to political pressure by the disadvan­ taged as it did from "reformer-technicians" in government. In 1961, the President's Council on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Development launched experimental Community Action Programs that included many of the traditional social service programs but also provided an opportunity for the poor to participate (Marris and Rein, 1967). Later, the Eco­ nomic Opportunity Act, which launched the War on Poverty,

COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAMS

called for "maximum feasible participation" of the poor1 in the planning and execution of its Community Action Pro­ grams. Maximum feasible participation was an ambiguous clause which later became a source of great political con­ troversy; however, it did provide the potential for govern­ mental assistance in the development of neighborhood or­ ganizations. In fact, the War on Poverty created a specific mechanism, the Target Area Association, with which to promote neighborhood organizations. According to OEO guidelines, the TAAs would be run by elected representatives from the target areas and representatives of the TAAs would sit on the central planning board of the Community Action Programs in each city.2 Some of the early advocates of these programs suggested that the call for "maximum feasible participation" was a "Wagner Act for the poor." However, while the Wagner Act supplied impetus for the organization of labor, the CAPs did not contain any provisions that would enable poor neighborhoods to organize in any appreciable measure. Most of the local Community Action Programs did not support aggressive neighborhood-organization efforts, and those that did, such as Mobilization for Youth and the Syracuse Train­ ing Project, received severe sanctions, which at times in­ cluded the suspension of funding.3 Mayors of large cities 1 Title II (Section 202 [a] [3]) of the Economic Opportunity Act did not use the term "poor" but defined the participants as "residents of the areas and members of the groups served . . ." by the Community Action Programs. 2 The best discussion of the Target Area Associations and their role in the Community Action Programs is found in Kramer (1969). Also see Zurcher (1970) and Zurcher and Green (1969). 3 Hallman, summarizing a survey on the CAPs in, thirty-five cities notes that ". . . except for a very small number of communities, the community action program does not involve a predominant commit­ ment to the strategy of giving power to the poor, of deliberate con­ frontation with established powers, of purposefully created conflict. This is a stereotype placed on CAP in its early days by a few articulate advocates of this approach and echoed ever since by journalists, who have not examined what is actually going on. Yet, this approach is found only in San Francisco, Syracuse, and Newark of the 35 com-

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

found that involvement of the poor in Community Action Programs could put demands on their service-delivery sys­ tems and/or develop new political bases in city politics, and this directly threatened their vested interests (Greenstone and Peterson, 1968). The mayors eventually were successful, with the help of Southern conservatives, in securing the passage of the Green Amendment in 1967 which placed the Community Action Programs under their full control and for all practical purposes ended the experiment in government assistance to neighborhood organization (Kravitz, 1968: 274). Yet the demise of neighborhood organization in the Com­ munity Action Programs cannot be solely attributed to the actions of the mayors. In fact, the most apathetic participants in the programs were the poor themselves. The much pub­ licized battles between the poor and the mayors were actu­ ally battles between the mayors and middle-class, self-pro­ claimed "spokesmen" for the poor, especially members of minority groups who were searching for a political base in local politics (Kramer, 1969). Studies show that the poor were apathetic about voting for their target area representatives, and this so embarrassed the director of OEO that he can­ celled the elections.4 Even when the very existence of the munities studied. All three were included in the sample because of the controversy surrounding them, but this writer does not know of any other communities where this approach predominates. To be sure, res­ ident participation is the major theme in Philadelphia and Washington, but not in the confrontation-through-conflict style which characterizes the first three. Contrary to the hopes of a few and the fears of many, CAP is not social revolution. However, in a number of places CAP is using less radical means to produce significant institutional change" (1968: 289). For descriptions of the sanctions that were applied to CAPs which did attempt aggressive neighborhood organization, see Moynihan (1969: 38-60, 102-127), Piven (1968), Weissman (1969) on the Mobilization for Youth experience and Haggstrom (1968) on the Syracuse Training Project experience. 4 U.S. News and World Report conducted a survey of voting turnout in CAP elections in seven cities. The report found that the percentage of poor people voting in the elections was less than 10 percent in all of the cities except Huntsville, Alabama where still only 15.6 percent voted ("Where Were the Poor on Election Day?" 1966).

COMMUNITY ACTION PBOGBAMS

programs was threatened by the lobbying efforts of the mayors and Southern conservatives, the poor remained de­ tached and apparently unconcerned about the outcome of the battle (Rubin, 1969: 25-27). The major theoretical question concerning the govern­ ment's attempt to assist in the organization of poor neighbor­ hoods is: why did the Community Action Programs fail to withstand the pressure of the mayors and fail to induce the participation and support of the poor? It is my contention that the answer to this question is found in the fact that the original design of the Community Action Programs aban­ doned the traditional "countervailing power" model of gov­ ernment advocacy and adopted a "technocratic" policy-mak­ ing perspective which failed to recognize the latent bases of conflict between the poor and other interest groups. To ap­ preciate the significance of this shift in points of view on policy-making, let use first examine the advocacy role of the federal government during the New Deal.

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND COUNTERVAILING POWER The rationale for the governmental assistance to disadvan­ taged aggregates during the new Deal was that because there was an unfair distribution of power in certain markets, it was the job of the government to make adjustments by granting countervailing power to the disadvantaged parties (Galbraith, 1956: 135-153). For instance, labor in the mass-pro­ duction industries was at a disadvantage because organized management could set industry-wide wage rates, but dis­ organized workers had no way to exert pressure to raise those rates. This is an example of what Olson (1965) calls the tyranny of small groups over large "latent groups." There­ fore, the government supported the Wagner Act which gave labor the right to collective bargaining and thereby in­ creased the countervailing power it could exert vis-a-vis management. Galbraith notes that the government used a similar rationale in dealing with a host of market issues:

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

In fact, the support of countervailing power has become in modern times perhaps the major domestic peacetime func­ tion of the federal government. Labor sought and received it in the protection and assistance which the Wagner Act provided to union organization. Farmers sought and re­ ceived it in the form of federal price supports to their markets—a direct subsidy of market power. Unorganized workers have sought and received it in the form of mini­ mum wage legislation. The bituminous-coal mines sought and received it in the Bituminous Coal Conservation Act of 1935 and the National Bituminous Coal Act of 1937. These measures, all designed to give a group a market power it did not have before, comprised the most impor­ tant social legislation of the New Deal. They fueled the sharpest domestic controversies of the New and Fair Deals [1956: 136]. A key feature of the government's role in dealing with power issues was that it did not try to eliminate conflict be­ tween market contestants; rather it tried to institutionalize that conflict within certain groundrules. The Wagner Act, for example, did not eliminate conflict between management and labor, but it did transform the nature of that conflict from rancorous violent confrontations to collective bargaining. Once the Supreme Court ruled that the Wagner Act was con­ stitutional, management was forced to recognize the legit­ imacy of unions (and especially of their right to strike) and it had no legal justification for "scabbing" and other devices which promoted industrial violence (Olson, 1965: 79). In addition, since workers could now coerce themselves into supporting a union through elections, they did not have any need to use violence to coerce each other into supporting union efforts (Olson, 1965: 70-72). Galbraith (1956), the supreme apologist for the New Deal economic policies, makes it clear that although the govern­ ment was challenging the competitive model of classical economics it was not challenging the fundamental economic

COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAMS

assumption that competition is normal and good—its support of the Wagner Act did not change the essential adversary nature of the relationship between labor and management. The classical model was challenged because the growth of oligopolies had, in fact, eliminated competition in many markets and it was evident that natural forces could no longer be expected to restore competition to those markets. By granting countervailing power to the disadvantaged parties in these noncompetitive markets, the government was actually increasing competition between market contestants. Paradoxically, while the old guard Republicans viewed the New Deal's economic policies as a subversive attempt to destroy capitalism, those policies actually saved as much, of the competitive capitalist model as was possible at the time. Given the enormous pressure for a solution to the economic plight of the United States during the Depression, one of the few alternatives to the use of countervailing power was to eliminate competition altogether and move toward a socialist or fascist centralized planning model. In any event, while economists and those who make public policy will un­ doubtedly continue to debate the wisdom of the New Deal's programs, the essential point here is that the government in supporting countervailing power recognized the normality of conflict in markets and, rather than eliminate it, tried to institutionalize it by making incremental adjustments in the "rules of the game."5 While the rationale for government assistance to disad­ vantaged aggregates in the New Deal was based in part on the notion of fairness and social responsibility, it is also clear that the advocacy role played by Franklin D. Roosevelt's administration was part of a political strategy to win elec­ tions. Labor and aggregates were part of the grand coalition of the Democratic party which had helped to put F.D.R. into 5 The most comprehensive theoretical defense of "incrementalism" in policy-making, from the perspectives of a political scientist and an economist, is found in Dahl and Lindblom (1953). Also see Lindblom (1959).

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

office; by granting them countervailing power through the Wagner Act and price supports, he was "paying off" for that electoral support and insuring its continuance. The only groups that could be adversely affected by the government's policy of granting countervailing power were the conserva­ tive Repubhcans and the radical political parties who stood to lose support once incremental reforms were initiated.6 Another, crucial aspect of the government's role in market issues was its recognition of the necessity of going further than voluntary efforts in achieving collective strength for dis­ advantaged parties. It was unrealistic to expect individual farmers to voluntarily withhold products from the market in order to boost prices, and therefore the government granted farmers price supports. Similarly, workers in the mass-pro•duction industries were unable to organize on a voluntary basis and needed some kind of coercive device to insure their collective bargaining strength. In these instances, the gov­ ernment recognized the public goods dilemma (Olson, 1965) and provided aggregates with devices to overcome that dilemma. While many liberals, both inside and outside of govern­ ment, thought that the Community Action Programs were simply an extension of New Deal policies, it is evident that from the very beginning the government's role in the Com­ munity Action Programs was quite different from its role in the market issues of the 1930s.

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AND COMMUNITY ACTION The origins of the concept of "community action" are not al­ together clear. Various writers have traced them to such diverse ancestors as the charity assistance programs in the nineteenth century or the more recent community-development and social action-protest movements (Bloomberg and 6 See my discussion of the impact of incremental reforms, such as those of the New Deal, on radical movements in chapter 2.

C O M M U N I T Y ACTION PROGRAMS

Rosenstock, 1968; Kravitz and Kolodner, 1969; Levitan, 1969; Rubin, 1969). The most immediate impact on the federal gov­ ernment's Community Action Programs, however, came from the delinquency theory and research of Cloward and Ohlin (1960). They contended that a major reason for the delin­ quency of poor boys is their exclusion from normal oppor­ tunity structures in American society, which causes them to feel powerless to bring about changes in their lives through conventional means. The notion that delinquency is caused as much by structural conditions in a society as by personal characteristics was not a novel idea, but the work of Cloward and Ohlin nevertheless had an enormous impact on practi­ tioners in the field of juvenile delinquency. Their work was appealing because it suggested a new approach to delin­ quency and rehabilitation at a time when existing techniques were not working. Traditionally, social workers had used the case-work approach, which placed emphasis on changing the individual delinquent, but Cloward and Ohlin felt that em­ phasis should be shifted from changing the individual delin­ quent to changing the opportunity structures within which poor boys operate. The personal characteristics of Cloward and Ohlin were also important in promoting their work. Both of them were active in social-work circles, both held posi­ tions in the School of Social Work at Columbia University, and both were acquainted with policy-makers in the field of delinquency. In any event, their work provided a rationale for involvement of the poor in social service programs. Such involvement, it was argued, would create new opportunity structures and thereby overcome the sense of powerlessness and alienation which pervaded slum life (Marris and Rein, 1967: 19-23,88,132,141,169-170). In 1961, when the President's Council on Juvenile Delin­ quency and Youth Development launched seventeen experi­ mental Community Action Programs in sixteen cities, it used the concept of "participation of the poor" as a central focus of its efforts. The two most famous projects were HARYOU (Clark, 1965) and Mobilization for Youth (Weissman, 1969;

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

Moynihan, 1969: 38-60,102-127; Piven, 1968). As Marris and Rein (1967) point out, the exact nature of the participation of the poor in these Community Action Programs was never clearly defined. During the early years of the projects there was a good deal of conffict between the poor, or their "repre­ sentatives," on the one hand, and mayors and public and private agency directors on the other. The projects were, then, committed by the funding agen­ cies to a democratic ideal of citizen participation, but were left with little guidance as to the form it should take, or even its essential purpose. They were bound to be held re­ sponsible for the consequences of any movement they stimulated, yet they were not, in principle, to defeat their own democratic idealism by controlling the direction which the movement chose. How the projects would come out, if the people of the neighbourhood were drawn into conflict with civic leadership, remained obscure. Pledged to bo.th sides, they could only hope to be allowed a benev­ olent neutrality. In practice, the three projects which had, by 1964, attempted some form of community organization, each experienced a serious crisis, and each resolved it differently. CPI accepted the limitations of its loyalty to the Mayor of New Haven; Mobilization for Youth was drawn into alignment with the people against institutions; and ABCD [Boston] largely withdrew from the risks of neighbourhood movements [Marris and Rein, 1967: 171]. Apparently none of the planners involved in the formula­ tion of juvenile delinquency Community Action Programs anticipated the political consequences of involvement of the poor in the programs. There seemed to be a consensus that the involvement of the poor was necessary because it would have therapeutic value for them, but the nature of that in­ volvement was left pretty much as a "technical matter." There were no clear guidelines stating whether involvement meant aggressive neighborhood organization^ formal par­ ticipation in policy-making, or simply jobs for the poor. The

COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAMS

consequence of this "technical" approach to participation of the poor was to leave the nature of participation ambiguous and subject to interpretation according to the distribution of power in each local area (Marris and Rein, 1967; Moynihan, 1969). . . . The new agency merely provided another setting in which to deploy the struggle for power, and generated, not a self-sustained process of reform, but a self-sustaining conflict over the control of reform. . . . Sooner or later, it found itself forced to choose between its principles and survival [Marris and Rein, 1967: 157]. However, despite the conflict and controversy surrounding the juvenile delinquency programs initiated in 1961. the section of the Economic Opportunity Act (which launched the War on Poverty in 1964) that provided for Community Action Programs in every city passed through Congress with surprisingly little opposition. Few people in Washington took note of the phrase, in section 202 (a) (3) of Title II of the Act, that calls for a Community Action Program "which is de­ veloped, conducted, and administered with the maximum feasible participation of residents of the areas and members of the groups served" (my emphasis). Historical accounts of the Congressional hearings and of the private political maneuverings indicate that, with the exception of then Attorney General Robert Kennedy, no one really bothered too much about "maximum feasible participation" (Donovan, 1967; Graham, 1965a, 1965b; Greenstone and Peterson, 1968; Kravitz, 1968; Miller and Rein, 1965; Moynihan, 1969). In fact, Donovan notes: While it is quite clear the Congress played no part in de­ veloping the stipulation that the poor themselves should participate to the "maximum feasible" degree, the precise manner in which the concept found its way into the draft legislation is not nearly so clear. People who were active in the drafting stage acknowledge that "participation of the poor" came directly from the staff of the President's

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

Committee on Juvenile Delinquency. At least one person who was part of the Shriver task force was unable to re­ call any extended discussion concerning "participation of the poor." The tendency now is toward the belief that the task force thought principally of the Southern Negro simply because they had difficulty imagining how com­ munity action might reach poor Southern Negroes unless the Negroes were themselves active participants in shap­ ing the local program. I have been able to uncover no evidence, even "circumstantial," which indicates that the Shriver task force inquired deeply into the probable im­ plications which "participation of the poor" in community action in Northern urban ghettos might have [1967: 41-42]. In retrospect, it is surprising that the big-city mayors did not oppose the "maximum feasible participation" clause dur­ ing the Congressional hearings. Greenstone and Peterson (1968) suggest that the reason for this was simply that the mayors were so desperately in need of money that they were not terribly concerned with the particulars of the program. At the time when the legislation for the Community Action Programs was being considered, the mayors were (and still are) in the midst of serious fiscal crises. The revenue to pay for the cost of public services diminished as more and more middle-class taxpayers left the city, while at the same time the costs of these services spiraled. It is certainly clear, given these fiscal considerations, that the mayors had nothing to gain from participation of the poor in the Community Action Programs and potentially a lot to lose. However, if participa­ tion of the poor meant that the poor would gain political leverage to put increased demands on service-delivery sys­ tems, the mayors might lose any gains that might accrue from the additional revenue supplied through the programs. "Maximum feasible participation" also posed another po­ tential threat to the mayors, of which they were apparently unaware. Minority groups, especially blacks and Mexicans, were turning their attention toward local politics, and the Community Action Programs provided rising minority leaders with a potential opportunity to gain the material re-

C O M M U N I T Y ACTION PROGRAMS

sources and political power necessary to establish a political base in city politics (Kramer, 1969). The technical approach which the government took toward involvement of the poor in the Community Action Programs created an "advocacy" dilemma for Lyndon Johnson which the New Deal administration did not have to face. While it is true that the Roosevelt administration had problems in trying to please everyone in the coalitions which supported it, it could still provide benefits for one group (for example, labor) without adversely affecting other groups (for example, farm­ ers or intellectuals). However, if Johnson vigorously sup­ ported the implementation of "maximum feasible participa­ tion" he was sure to alienate the mayors; if he did not vigorously support it, he was sure to alienate spokesmen for the poor, especially minority group leaders and middle-class reformers. Therefore, the very design of the Community Action Pro­ grams produced political costs not only for Johnson but also for the Democratic party. The big city mayors, reformers, and minority groups were all part of the grand Democratic coalition strategy, but the Community Action Programs were set up in such a way that benefits accruing to one group in the coalition would result in costs to another group. This became increasingly evident as the programs were im­ plemented: Increasingly, "community action" and "maximum feasible participation" become focal points in a vast, continuing struggle between big city mayors and militant leaders of the urban Negro poor. The stakes could hardly be higher. We tend to forget that mayors are a considerable force in American national politics with its tradition of decentral­ ization within the party organization. After all, Richard Daley is not only the mayor of Chicago, there is no more powerful Democratic politician in the entire state of Illinois [Donovan, 1967: 44]. In fairness to Johnson, it should be noted that some of the forces which were generating the conflicts between the

NEIGHBORHOOD OBGANIZATION

mayors and the minority groups had just recently emerged in American politics. During the early 1960s, the civil rights organizations were focusing their energies on de jure dis­ crimination in the South and looking for legislative remedies (for example, the Civil Rights Act of 1964) for these prob­ lems. However, in the mid-1960s, approximately the same time at which the Community Action Programs were started, the focus of black militancy took a dramatic turn. Black militancy shifted to the North, where it quickly became evident to black leaders that local political power, rather than federal legislative remedies, were necessary in order to improve the lives of black citizens. Nevertheless, even if race were not an issue, it is still sur­ prising that Johnson was so naive about the realities of local politics. The urban-renewal experiences, which began in 1948, had demonstrated clearly that different interest groups in cities would fight fiercely over the objectives and uses of federal funding (Gans, 1966; Glazer, 1965; Wilson, 1966). But the Johnson administration tried to perpetuate the myth that a city is a single community.'1 While some of the more mil­ itant reformers, such as Warren Haggstrom (1968), read Title II of the Economic Opportunity Act as simply meaning that Community Action was neighborhood organization, the administration seemed to view the "community" as encom­ passing the whole city. Thus, although the term "community action" originally was a phrase used by some professional social workers and organizers to refer to local organization that was frequently directed against established centers of power at the local level, it was used by the War on Poverty planners to mean the coordination of diverse institutions and groups; apparently under the assumption (at least implicitly) that consensus could be achieved. Graham notes that: With the full-scale adoption, by the federal government, of the "community action" approach, it has acquired another 7

In this regard, Johnson's view of the city shares certain funda­ mental similarities to that of the Reform movement discussed in chapter 2.

COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAMS

meaning more in line with the concept of "the community" held by its new advocates. To middle-class political scien­ tists and social planners, "the community" is the local gov­ ernment apparatus of the city or county plus the influential civic and business leaders. "Community action" in this context means the "reorganization" of the total community power structure in a manner which will focus both public and private resources on combined activities designed to eliminate juvenile delinquency, poverty or some other un­ desirable social problem. All of the public and private social agencies and organizations within the community are expected to join together and coordinate their pro­ grams in a comprehensive, planned attack. (There is a tendency to assume that the methods they will employ will be somewhat consistent with the original meaning of "com­ munity action" of the professional social worker) [1965b: 266]. There was, in the Johnson administration's formulation of the Community Action Programs, almost a "community chest" view of the "community." That is, there was an as­ sumption that everyone should pull together to work toward the "common good," in this case, the elimination of poverty. However, Johnson failed to recognize the essentially plural­ istic character of American cities, in which different interest groups compete with one another for scarce resources. How Lyndon Johnson, who was allegedly so steeped in the art of politics, did not foresee the dilemma inherent in the formulation of the Community Action Programs is not al­ together clear. There are, nevertheless, several factors that appear to have had an important impact on the course of events. First, as Donovan (1967) suggests, at the beginning of his term (during which time the War on Poverty was created) Johnson was enthralled with the notion of building a government by consensus, which would presumably ob­ viate the need for conflict and struggle. A short time later his preoccupation with the Vietnam war left him little time to

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

deal with the unanticipated conflicts that were spawned by "maximum feasible participation." Second, although we may not be able to precisely identify the causal connections, it is clear that the anticonflict bias in the original formulation of the Economic Opportunity Act was entirely consistent with the Weltanschauung within which liberal political scientists and sociologists had been operating since the end of World War II. This is seen, for example, in the widespread popu­ larity of Bell's (1962) "end of ideology thesis" and Burns' (1967) call for an expanded role for the executive branch of the national government in domestic problem-solving. Conse­ quently, although Johnson took a much different approach to social problems than did F.D.R., the successes of "gov­ ernment advocacy" during the earlier period tended to re­ inforce the optimism of scholars and politicians alike. Third, there was a strong tendency during the 1960s to regard local politics as peripheral to the key problems of the nation. Finally, we can observe a striking difference between the character of the political processes that resulted in the New Deal and the character of those that spawned the War on Poverty. Intense political struggle surrounded the policies of the New Deal and compromise legislation was finally ob­ tained, in large measure, because of the pressures for change generated by the Depression. By contrast, the general po­ litical attitude toward the Economic Opportunity Act legis­ lation seemed benign. The death of President Kennedy and the landshde victories of Democratic Congressional can­ didates in 1964 made passage of the OEO legislation smooth. As Miller and Rein (1965) point out, the ease with which the War on Poverty legislation went through Congress contrib­ uted to the development of many of the problems the pro­ grams faced later. Since there was so little debate about the merits of the programs, administration planners were not forced to anticipate many of the problems that arose as a direct result of the government's "technical approach" to par­ ticipation of the poor in the Community Action Programs.

C O M M U N I T Y ACTION PROGRAMS

ENVIRONMENTAL PROBLEMS AND ORGANIZA­ TIONAL STRUCTURE The failure of government planners to anticipate conflict between the "representatives" of the poor and the mayors over the operation of the Community Action Programs led to the creation of an organizational structure which created severe environmental problems for individual programs as well as for the whole OEO organization. The "maximum feasible participation" clause called for the involvement of the poor along with other interest groups in the city, includ­ ing the mayors, but the nature and extent of the participation of each of these parties was not clearly defined. Other or­ ganizations that have had to cope with the problem of ob­ taining cooperation from conflicting parties have usually developed some kind of constitutional groundrules establish­ ing the nature of the inputs of the various parties. However, the Economic Opportunity Act initially did not set any con­ stitutional limitations on the power that might accrue to either the poor or the mayors, and thus it is not surprising that both groups viewed control of the Community Action Program boards as a "winner take all," or zero-sum game. Control of policy-making in the Community Action Pro­ grams was much more than a question of democracy. The legislation and the national OEO office allowed those in charge of local programs a good deal of discretion in deter­ mining how money would be spent. As politicians surely know, control of jobs and/or services, such as those that might have qualified for OEO funding, is an important part of gaining political power. Thus disputes between the mayors and the militant minority-group leaders had vital implica­ tions for both groups (Kramer, 1969). From an organizational point of view, one of the most salient features of the Commmiity Action Programs was the inability of those involved to establish boundaries between themselves and their local sociopolitical environments. The OEO legislation stated that the programs should reflect the

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

character of the constituents served by them, but, in fact, the makeup of the Community Action Boards reflected the distribution of power in each local community (Greenstone and Peterson, 1968). The ambiguity with which their struc­ tures were defined prevented Community Action Program organizations from gaining any autonomy apart from local politics. The organizational problems of the individual programs were complicated by the fact that they never obtained per­ manent legitimacy. In contrast to the unions, which were granted permanent legitimacy by the Wagner Act, the Community Action Programs were subject to Congressional review each year. Since Congress was responsible for fund­ ing the programs, it also had the right to review their opera­ tions and add to appropriations bills amendments which could affect the manner in which the programs were oper­ ated. The amount of discretion allowed local Community Action Programs in spending money was progressively less­ ened as Congress put more and more restrictions on where money could be spent.8 The precarious legitimacy of the whole OEO program put tremendous pressure both on the national OEO ofBce and on the local Community Action Programs to make policy de­ cisions which would not offend Congress. Warren Haggstrom (1968) points out that the director of OEO adopted "a con­ flict-avoidance strategy" in which he tried not to alienate any­ one, but in the end he never pleased anyone. However, given the power of Congress to scrap the entire OEO program if it 8 "In the final analysis, the pressure against CAP was too strong to be resisted. While Congress was clarifying and specifying the meaning of participation, it was at the same time earmarking ever larger pro­ portions of CAP funds to what are called in the trade 'canned' pro­ grams—those, like Head Start, Follow Through, Upward Bound, Legal Services, and Comprehensive Health Services, which are initiated and controlled by Washington—and cutting back on the politically truoblesome activities of the local agencies. Thus, in fiscal 1967, the OEO had $66 million less for versatile and flexible community action activities than in fiscal 1966" (Rubin, 1969: 26).

COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAMS

so desired and given the pressure coming from reformers and minority groups, the director of OEO had little choice but to respond in the manner he did—a fact Haggstrom overlooks. If the director supported controversial programs, such as the Syracuse Training Project or Mobilization for Youth, he ran the risk of alienating the mayors and their Congressional supporters; if he failed to support these programs, he alien­ ated minority-group spokesmen and liberal reformers. In any event, such conflicts were resolved by the Green Amend­ ment, passed in 1967, which placed control of the programs firmly in the hands of the mayors (Kravitz, 1968: 274). While it is clear that some kind of change had to take place in order to resolve the problems created by the ambiguous definition of "maximum feasible participation," there certainly were alternatives other than the Green Amendment. Why, for example, wasn't the legislation amended in such a way as to establish a permanent legitimate status for the participation of the poor, and thus force the mayors to recognize that they would have to deal with the poor whether they liked it or not?

THE POOR AND THE FATE OF THE COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAMS During all of the battles for control of the Community Action Programs at the local level, as well as during the fight over the Green Amendment in Congress, the vast majority of the poor were not involved. Miller and Rein point out that one of the strange aspects of the programs was that they were developed without a constituency (1965: 276-278)—in sharp contrast to governmental programs involving workers or farmers, whose organizations lobby to pursue their members' interests. The poor failed to provide a lobby to defend the Com­ munity Action Programs partly because they were largely unorganized prior to the initiation of these programs. With the exception of blacks and Latins, the poor did not have

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

interest groups that could have exerted some influence on the origins and development of the Community Action Pro­ grams. Aside from public welfare issues, the poor as an aggregate do not have a latent basis of common interest. In fact, as Kramer's (1969) study of the San Francisco Bay area demonstrates, poor neighborhoods often compete with one another for resources to improve services. A more fundamental reason for the failure of the poor to develop a lobby, even when the Community Action Pro­ grams were under attack in Congress, is that the legislation which initiated these programs did not provide a device to insure the collective strength of the poor. In contrast, the government through support of the Wagner Act recognized not only the need for labor to have collective strength vis-avis management but also the need to provide workers with the opportunity to vote to coerce themselves into supporting a union shop. Similarly, government-supported farm-bureau cooperatives provided farmers with the opportunity to re­ ceive selective individual benefits from collective efforts. However, the Community Action Programs, although they allowed for the participation of the poor, did not provide any incentives for the poor to support them. In fact, there is strong evidence that the incentive structure of the Community Action Programs provided the most bene­ fits to the more affluent by, for example, generating a huge number of jobs for middle-class social workers and social science technicians. Elinor Graham points out that . . . the social-service orientation of the War on Poverty is activity and /ofc-creating for the middle and upper classes. Provision of social services, as opposed to income pay­ ments, requires the formation of new organizations and institutions which in turn are the source of activities and income-paying roles for the nation's expanding number of college-educated individuals. The War on Poverty, its programs and ideology, are a response to the demands of an educated "new class": it provides a legitimate outlet for the energies of a group that poses a greater threat to the

C O M M U N I T Y ACTION PROGRAMS

political system and moral fabric of the society than the inadequately educated poor who are the official objects of aid [1965a: 235]. Further, because the Community Action Programs were hurredly organized, the local directors were forced to work with the groups and individuals who were most visible and articulate in the poor neighborhoods. It is also evident that some of the decision-makers in the Community Action Pro­ grams viewed blackness and poverty as roughly synonymous. Therefore, positions ostensibly designed for the poor were filled by a disproportionate number of the more affluent9 and often by middle-class blacks who claimed to represent the poor (Kramer, 1969: 247-248). Kramer describes how the organizational maintenance needs of the local Community Action Programs in the San Francisco Bay Area affected the composition of the targetarea organizations: Regardless of which tactic was employed, all the CAPs were confronted with the task of creating a new organiza­ tion. It appeared most feasible for the staff members to work with those organizations and individuals previously known to them, who were most visible, articulate, in­ terested' and "ready," rather than attempt to seek out the unaffiliated poor. As a result, there was a strong tendency to rely heavily on the members of existing neighborhood and ethnic associations in the organization of the interim or organizing committees, which then formulated criteria for the permanent TAO [Target Area Organization]. . . . This meant that from their inception, the TAOs did not consist primarily of the alienated underclass usually de­ scribed in the sociological literature on the poor. The original composition of the TAOs, which persisted even later when they were reorganized by elections, consisted less of the poor who were conceived as potential con9 This is another illustration of' the "double filtration effect" referred to in chapters 2 and 4.

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

sumers of OEO-financed social service programs than of upwardly striving members of ethnic minorities—Negro or Spanish-speaking—who knew something about poverty, having recently escaped from it, or who were still Hving close enough to the poor to be able to identify with their plight. The primary incentives for involvement in these initial stages were the prospects of jobs, payment for par­ ticipation, access to services, or political power for oneself or one's organization or ethnic group [1969: 190-191]. Moreover, in a conflict a small group has an advantage over a large, unorganized aggregate; the former—in this case, the adversaries of participation of the poor, such as mayors of large cities—can use interpersonal sanctions to support collective action, or one member of the small group can pay the costs of collective action himself (Olson, 1965). However, the large unorganized aggregate—in this case the poor—is unable to match the power of the small group unless it can find a coercive device or offer some kind of selective benefit that will induce individuals to support collective efforts (Olson, 1965). As we have seen, the Community Action Pro­ grams did not provide the poor with any such device or benefit. Whether or not government assistance to neighborhood organization would have had a different outcome if it had become a public issue prior to its implementation is a moot point. If the mayors had realized the potential of "maximum feasible participation," we might expect that they would have fought to ensure their control over the program during the legislative hearings. Alternatively, given the desperate fiscal plight of the cities at that time, perhaps the mayors might have been willing to compromise if liberals threatened to block a Community Action Program which did not give the poor any voice in its operation. The critical point, however, is that the apolitical orienta­ tion of the Community Action Program planners and the community-development specialists, who in many instances became involved in either the design or implementation of

COMMUNITY ACTION PROGRAMS

the CAPs, closed off any awareness of the political param­ eters which later became so problematical. The planners overlooked the important fact that they were dealing with attempts to alter local power distributions within a federal system (Davidson, 1969). While the national government has limited prerogatives with respect to altering local affairs, local political organizations have a great deal of leverage over national party figures. As Ostrogorski (1902) pointed out some time ago, political parties in the United States consist of local organizations that form coalitions at election time. National figures are dependent on local organizations for survival and thus are forced to adopt policies which will, at the very least, not alienate these groups. Consequently, the War on Poverty experience calls for a serious reevaluation of liberal optimism about the "advocacy" role of the national government. Faith in the government's power in this regard has been based on two specialized cases. In the case of the New Deal programs, the national govern­ ment had a clear rationale for intervention through the inter­ state commerce clause and the national administration ac­ quired political benefits from these actions. The government's intervention in the civil rights field was, of course, more risky in terms of political costs; nonetheless the Constitution's guarantees of protection for individuals whose legal rights (as in the voting case) have been violated provide a clear rationale for federal intervention. But in the issues pertaining to the powerlessness of the poor in local decision-making processes, we find neither political payoffs nor a clear ratio­ nale for national government intervention, no matter how desirable this may seem from an ethical or humanitarian standpoint. In fact, by focusing on the national government as the "or­ ganizer" of the poor we have tended to turn our attention away from the search for ways that the poor might obtain the resources at the local level with which to form interestgroup associations. This does not mean, of course, that the national government cannot play an important role in deal-

NEIGHBORHOOD OBGANIZATION

ing with the total issue of poverty, and hopefully, with the more fundamental issue of inequality in our society. But, it does suggest that the national government's role in reform efforts will have to be reevaluated and that liberals will have to reexamine their basic assumptions about reform in general. The experience of the Community Action Programs can lead us to some important insights with respect to the relationship between solving the neighborhood-organization problem and achieving other reform objectives.

CHAPTER SIX

Variations in Development in Local Community Action Programs

Unique to the War on Poverty as a social program was the emergence of two relatively distinct political issues, each of which generated a different set of "costs" and "benefits" for the various interest groups which had a stake in the pro­ gram. Following much the same pattern as it had with other welfare issues, the liberal coalition of minority groups, re­ formers, and Democratic party organizations supported the funding of this program, while traditionally conservative groups such as the Republican party, business interests, and Southern Democrats opposed it. But, as we saw earlier, each of the parties to the coalition which sponsored the War on Poverty had quite different reasons for doing so, and once "maximum feasible participation" emerged as a salient issue, the conflicting interests of these one-time partners surfaced (Donovan, 1967). The significance of the political conflicts surrounding the War on Poverty goes far beyond the brief history of the ex­ periment itself. In the broadest sense, these conflicts were a manifestation of what has become a growing source of difficulty for the Democratic party coalition which was created during the New Deal years. Although in the past the various members of this coalition have found a clear basis of common interest in supporting welfare programs, recent issues involving participation of minority groups outside of the formal electoral process have created a split between re­ formers and minority groups on the one hand and Demo­ cratic party organizations and local elected officials on the other. While the national implications of the shift in issues

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

were apparent in the schisms in the Democratic party during the 1968 and 1972 presidential campaigns,1 we have yet to determine what bearing these factors have on our under­ standing of how local decision-making processes operate. Specifically, how does the shift from welfare to participation issues effect the kinds of inputs which different interest groups make into local decision-making processes and, in turn, how does the relative influence of these different groups affect the nature of issue development and issue-resolution?

WELFARE2 VERSUS PARTICIPATION In a study of decision-making in ninety-one cities, Morlock (1974) finds that the outcomes of welfare issues are deter­ mined to a large extent by the relative influence of a businessoriented group as opposed to a countervailing power coali­ tion. The business group—which includes downtown mer­ chants, industrialists, executives of financial institutions, newspapers, the Republican party organization, and civic clubs—usually takes a conservative view on welfare issues and has either opposed them or has given them little support. The countervailing power coalition—consisting of the Demo­ cratic party organization, reform groups, minority groups (for example, blacks and Latins), college students and teachers— usually takes a liberal view on welfare issues and supports expenditures in this area. The members of the business group share economic in­ terests and value-orientations with respect to the goals of community life and the nature of community decision-mak1 Here I am referring to the growing antagonisms between the re­ form wing of the party—in 1968 the McCarthy supporters and in 1972 the McGovern supporters—and the traditional bulwark of the party, the labor unions and local party organizations. 2 By welfare issues, I am referring to questions involving the support of programs to redistribute or reallocate community resources. These issues cover a wide range, including education and health services as well as special programs to aid the "underprivileged." Most important, for our purposes, these issues generate a liberal-conservative split along economic lines. (Morlock, 1974).

LOCAL CAP DEVELOPMENT

ing processes. In economic matters, members of this group are all of high status and are the economic elite in local affairs. Their value-orientations produce the view that local decision-making ought to be directed to the "public interest" or the "common welfare" of the community. Thus they tend to deemphasize conflict and politics and to assume that the proper role of government is to administrate, to operate in the same fashion as "good business." Implicit in this concep­ tion of decision-making is the notion that the business elite is best equipped to define and carry out the public interest (Morlock, 1974; BanfieId and Wilson, 1963: 138-150). The business group's apolitical consensual approach to local decision-making is rooted as much in the nature of their power-resource base as it is in their value-orientations. Be­ cause of their economic power, their high social status, their legitimacy as leaders in the eyes of other persons in the community, and the fact that they possess a relatively closed network of civic associations within which to operate, the business group is most effective in influencing decision-mak­ ing covertly rather than in the public arena of debate and controversy.3 Consequently, the transference of decision­ making from the covert level to the overt level of public controversy is antithetical to the values of the business group, partly because it may weaken the power of the group to in­ fluence decision-making (Banfield, 1961; Clark, 1969; Hunter, 1953; Morlock, 1974). The members of the countervailing power coalition have a common interest in opposing the business group with respect to welfare issues, although they frequently have different reasons for joining a united front. Democratic mayors, councilmen, and the Democratic party organization need to pro3 This phenomenon has been used by a number of sociologists as a justification for studying "reputations" for influence, in addition to overt issue resolution. See D'Antonio and Ehrlich (1961); Hunter (1953); Miller (1958); Polsby (1959a, 1959b); Presthus (1964); Rossi (1957; 1960); Spinrad (1966); and Wolfinger (1960) for different assess­ ments of this method for studying local decision-making.

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

vide the "disadvantaged" with economic payoffs to insure loyalty to the party, a goal that coincides with the self-interest of minority groups and the humanitarian goals of reformers. But the power-resource base of the coalition is much more fragile than that of the business group, whose resources, in­ cluding economic power, prestige, legitimacy, and the civic associational network, can be expected to remain fairly con­ stant. The more tenuous power base of the countervailing power coalition depends upon the ability of the Democratic party organization to gain the cooperation of the various members of the coalition in building and maintaining a massbased organization and voting blocs. In addition, while the strength of the business group s "behind-the-scenes" sphere of influence is relatively stable, the effectiveness of the coun­ tervailing power group's influence depends in large measure upon its ability to bring issues out into the public arena, especially through electoral processes (Morlock, 1974). Historically, differences in the value-orientations and power-resource bases of the various factions involved in local decision-making have been reflected in conflicts over urban governmental forms. Banfleld and Wilson (1963) and Hofstadter (1955a) point out that the mayor-council form of gov­ ernment, in which city councilmen are elected by wards, has been associated with white ethnic political interests, while reform governments, including the commission and city manager-council forms with at-large elections, have been associated with WASP business and professional in­ terests. A recent study by Gordon (1968) shows that even today the size of the white ethnic population in a city is positively correlated with the existence of the mayor-council type of government. Traditionally, white ethnic politicians have supported the mayor-council form because it allows for the greatest repre­ sentation of ethnic interests. The business-oriented reformers, on the other hand, have directed their efforts toward elim­ inating the structural sources of machine politics by attempt­ ing to substitute at-large council elections for ward-based

LOCAL CAP DEVELOPMENT

elections and by removing a political leader (the mayor) as chief executive of the city and replacing him with an ad­ ministrator, such as a city manager (Banfield and Wilson, 1963: 138-150). Banfleld and Wilson contend that at-large elections have weakened the strength of minority groups in electoral politics. When councilmen are elected at-large (as in the manager-council form), minority-group politicians have to compete with majority-group politicians in the city as a whole, and this puts minority groups at a distinct disad­ vantage (1963: 94-96). Consequendy, this form of govern­ ment supports the interests of businessmen in decision-mak­ ing processes by eliminating traditional political mechanisms for resolving conflict and by replacing the concept of a plural­ istic community with the concept of a single community. On the other hand, the highly politicized character of the mayorcouncil form of government historically has tended to in­ crease the political power of ethnic immigrants and the Democratic party through ward elections of councilmen, which tend to maximize the strength of the geographically concentrated ethnic populations, and through forcing the resolution of issues by means of public conflict processes (Banfield and Wilson, 1963: 115-127,138-150). However, be­ cause individual cities have adopted various "mixes" of re­ form and nonreform types of government, some reform ele­ ments have had a positive effect upon the development of more pluralistic decision-making structures, despite the single community orientation of the original reformers.4 Nevertheless, empirical research shows that, regardless of the type of governmental form found in a city, businessmen are still likely to exert considerable influence in local affairs (Morlock, 1974; Walton, 1970).5 In some instances Demo4 See my comparisons of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles later in this chapter. 5 More generally, Walton concludes that, "The proportion of busi­ nessmen found in the leadership group is high irrespective of the type of power structure found. The same result obtains for public officials, except that the proportion is lower" (1970: 446).

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

cratic party machines have worked out collaborative rela­ tionships between themselves and business interests, leaving open to question how much these kinds of relationships actu­ ally serve the "real" interests of the Democraticparty voters.6 Historically, businessmen have supported proposals which were designed to limit the participation of minority groups in the electoral process. Their ideological rationale for sup­ porting these proposals was based upon their conception of the public interest and their aversion to overt conflict pro­ cesses, but in a more fundamental sense, they were seeking to maximize their own power-resource base. Since the advent of the civil rights struggle in the 1960s, however, the relationship between businessmen and par­ ticipation issues has taken a different turn. During the early sit-downs and boycotts in the South, it was the business sec­ tor of the city which most frequently intervened as a medi­ ator between civil rights demonstrators and political au­ thorities. Whatever rationale businessmen may have had for assuming this role, they did contribute to the achievement of at least "token" integration (Walker, 1963; Killian and Grigg, 1964). On the basis of his study of school-desegrega­ tion disputes Crain concludes that ". . . our data indicate 6 For example, Banfield's (1961) study of decision-making in Chicago shows a great deal of convergence of interests and active collaboration between Mayor Daley and big business. The Chicago journalist, Mike Royko, claims in his book Boss (1971) that the Daley Democratic ma­ chine actively serves the interests of big business through low assess­ ments of business property by the county assessor (a Democrat and member of the machine). In fairness, however, any evaluation of the Daley organization's ability to serve the interests of working-class Chicagoans must also include the fact that without the power of the machine in state politics—a matter which liberals often overlook these days—it is much less likely that Chicago would have been able to re­ ceive as many resources as it presently does. See, for example, Banfield's (1961) description of the role of the Daley organization, in col­ laboration with Chicago businessmen, in forcing the state to build a major university in Chicago—the Circle campus of the University of Illinois.

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clearly that the members of the white power structure and the business class are the ones most willing to break with traditions and to innovate in order to meet the demands of the most oppressed group in our society" (1968: 358). Why have businessmen apparently shifted from their traditional stance of resistance to the participation of minority groups (that is, the immigrant ethnic groups) to their contemporary role as mediators in the participation struggles of civil rights groups? One explanation for this apparent inconsistency is found in the basic value-orientations of businessmen. It could be argued that in both instances businessmen have been averse to conflict. In the case of the earlier debate over govern­ mental forms, this position was used to defend the notion that the "public interest" would best be served by eliminat­ ing politics from government. In the case of the civil rights issues, when businessmen were forced to choose between the maintenance of segregation on the one hand and the values of public order, business prosperity, education of children, and, above all, the elimination of conflict on the other hand, they chose the latter option (Killian and Grigg, 1964). In short, businessmen have manifested what Schumpeter (1950) calls the capitalist's "non-heroic" ethic, which, of course, is consistent with the businessmen's vested interests. Public disorder is bad for business, as is illustrated by the boycotts and demonstrations in the South, which kept white, as well as black, patrons away from the downtown areas. Alternatively, what is good for businessmen is not always good for politicians, many of whom (for example, George Wallace) increased their political stature (in the eyes of their constituents) by serving as "patriotic" resistors to the "agita­ tors." The greater flexibility of Southern businessmen, as compared to Southern politicians, was not due to greater en­ lightenment; businessmen in the South sat quietly by for decades while racism flourished. Only when they were threatened with personal loss did they react in a compromis-

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ing way to the demands for desegregation. They learned that they would lose more in the end by not compromising than by making some adjustments in the social and political system. In fact, businessmen did not lose any of their economic power-base as a result of their role in the desegregation disputes. Politicians, however, correctly perceived that meet­ ing the demands of the civil rights protestors would result in a loss of their power resources. Since the influence of businessmen is manifested either covertly through the civic associational network or in response to a threat to higher order community values (for example, public order), they normally enter the decision-making process either before an issue is allowed to develop into open public controversy or as mediators to an already explosive issue. Consequently, they are more apt than politicians, who are forced to engage in open public controversy, to be viewed as servants of the public interest and as legitimate leaders. The role of community influentials in dealing with black demands in the North must be understood both from the perspective of the Southern civil rights experience and from that of the Northern racial situation. Certainly, the success of protest strategies in achieving integration in the South was an important influence on the thinking of civil rights activists in the North. In hindsight it is relatively easy to see that the racial situation in the North was fundamentally different from that in the South and thus called for a different kind of protest strategy. However, events during the civil rights era were proceeding at such a rapid pace—the battle over legal discrimination only lasted about one decade, from the Brown decision in 1954 to the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965— that civil rights leaders and their allies were faced with critical decisions without much time to even correctly assess the reasons for their past successes, let alone the probable consequences of future efforts. It is clear that some members of government and some civil rights leaders were aware that

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the era of de jure discrimination issues had ended by 1965 and that the de facto segregation issue in the North called for a strategy to deal with economic and political inequities facing black Americans (Rustin, 1965). If the civil rights activists and their liberal allies had recognized that the solution to de facto discrimination called for a program of major economic readjustments, then the de facto discrimina­ tion issue might have become similar to other welfare issues which have faced the nation since the depression. In addi­ tion, if the solution to the economic plight of black Americans had been framed within a larger program of reducing eco­ nomic inequalities across the board, perhaps there could have been a basis of common interest among the civil rights groups and interest groups representing white Americans in the working-class and lower-middle income brackets, especially the labor unions.7 In short, the brief period following the end of the civil rights struggle in the South and the beginning of the Northern civil rights campaign was one of the best chances we have had in recent times to make a major over7 A further source of difficulty here was the notion, accepted by many liberals, that we were living in the "affluent" society and con­ sequently, the only problem which remained was to bring the poor up to the standards of most Americans (Galbraith, 1958; Harrington, 1962). Miller and Hoby contend that "the social-welfare term poverty does not incur the disturbance of the political term inequality, but the ambiguity of the term poverty does prevent the badly needed, fullscale examination of the issues of inequality: Who gets what? Who does and should benefit from government subsidization? What should be the shape of the income and social profiles of this country?" (1970: 6-7). While the problem of poverty may not stir the concern of work­ ing· and lower-middle class Americans, except in a negative way, the problem of inequality is very much linked to their personal self"inter­ ests. Contrary to the myth of the affluent society, although inequality in the United States was reduced from about 1929 to 1944, there has been no appreciable lessening of inequality since 1944 (H. Miller, 1964: 52). Consequently, the feelings of "felative deprivation" ex­ pressed by white working-class and lower-middle-income voters in their resistance to expenditures on poverty programs have a real basis in fact.

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haul of our whole system of distribution and allocation of re­ sources. However, for a variety of reasons, many civil rights activists and liberals in government failed to seize upon the opportunity to use the issue of inequality as a lever for basic economic change, and instead of becoming a new catalyst for solidifying the New Deal coalition in the Democratic party, de facto discrimination became an issue which made enemies of these one-time partners and threatened to dis­ solve the historic coalition. Liberals in Congress preferred to deal with the problem of poverty within a framework which suggested that the prob­ lem was only technical and thus did not call for any major readjustments in our economic, political, or social systems. In addition they and the president became preoccupied with the war in Indo-China. Further, many of the influential civil rights leaders were either unable or unwilling to deal with the issue of major economic reorganization and in effect ac­ cepted most of the major parameters of the economic status quo.8 The rhetoric of the black power movement, for exam­ ple, was anything but a radical perspective, in spite of the term "militant" which is usually associated with it. Black power was actually, in the strictest sense, a conservative point of view, which simply demanded that blacks be able to get 8 A classic example of this is found in the resistance of many civil rights leaders to Daniel Patrick Moynihan's (1965) report on the Negro family in America. Moynihan's intention was to demonstrate empir­ ically that black family instability was rooted both in the historical conditions of slavery and the contemporary economic disadvantages of black Americans. While the report was supposed to provide a rationale for concerted massive government action on economic inequalities, the civil rights leaders were offended by Moynihan's characterization of black families and consequently, a great deal of debate ensued about whether this was an accurate picture of what black family life was really like. As the debate went on, and especially after President John­ son became more and more preoccupied with Indo-China, the political purpose of Moynihan's report was lost. See Rainwater and Yancey's (1967) analysis of the Moynihan report and the controversy surround­ ing it.

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"more of the action" within the existing economic and po­ litical framework.9 The most important consequence of the lack of a major assault on economic inequities was that local, as well as national, concerns became focused on participation rather than on welfare. Specifically, black organizations and leaders began to demand greater involvement of blacks in univer­ sities—both at the student and teaching levels—and better jobs, housing, and cultural affairs. Since all of these demands were made and some granted, at least at the token level, without any basic structural changes in our system, it is not surprising that working-class whites felt threatened by what they perceived as growing black militancy. For example, the response to demands for employment of more blacks was not accompanied by a commensurate increase in job positions; thus whites felt increased competition either for promotions or for new jobs.10 Blacks' demands for greater participation has had pro­ found effects upon the traditional countervailing power coali9 Many

observers have viewed black power as a radical ideology be­ cause some manifestations of it have suggested the use of violence or other kinds of extraordinary means to achieve black participation in the political process. However, it seems to me that they have confused what may be radical means with what are essentially conservative po­ litical objectives. See, for example, Carmichael and Hamilton (1967). On the other hand, the Black Panther party has consistently tried to place "black consciousness" within a broader ideological framework which calls for a truly radical revision of the economic and political structures of the United States. Also, the Panthers have consistently sought out alliances with radical whites. See, for example, Cleaver (1968, 1969). 10 A radical solution to the problem of getting black jobs would call for a major reallocation of resources to increase the total number of jobs at the same time in which guarantees are made that blacks would have assistance in getting into positions from which they have traditionally been excluded. To further ameliorate the hostility of working-class and lower-middle-income whites, such a solution could be combined with a major tax reform which would force the weaLhy to pay their share in solving social problems.

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tion in local affairs, where liberal-reformers and activist black leaders have found themselves increasingly at odds with the regular Democratic party organizations.11 A classic example of this new development is found in Chicago politics. The traditional relationship between the Dawson black organiza­ tion and the county Democratic party organization (the Daley machine) was one in which the party gave patronage and other "favors" to the black sub-machine in return for the wholesale allegiance of black voters to the straight Demo­ cratic ticket. But, as early as 1960, Wilson noted that the growing militancy of younger civil rights activists was pro­ ducing strains in this form of accommodation, which they had come to view as a form of "institutionalized racism." A good deal of attention has focused on the reasons for the strong reaction of younger black activists to the status of minority groups in the machine's political affairs. In this re­ gard, one could argue persuasively that these relationships have hindered the development of autonomous black organi­ zations and, in turn, have prevented basic structural changes in the black community. In fact, it might be said with some degree of truth that the Democratic party organization has a vested interest in maintaining the relatively powerless posi­ tion of minority groups, at least to the extent of controlling their massive voting potential. However, much less attention has been paid to the po­ litical costs which the Democratic party coalitions suffer if blacks are able to develop autonomous political organiza­ tions. Whatever the ideological persuasions of the Demo11 One of the major unexplored areas in political sociology pertains to the state-wide and national implications of this schism. In many of the midwestern states, such as Illinois, Ohio, and Indiana, the political interests traditionally has been divided between down-state rural Hepublicans and big-city Democrats. Ostrogorski (1902) made the point that the basic source of strength of our political parties resides at the local level. There is strong reason to believe, then, that intraparty fighting among the urban Democrats could have important implica­ tions for state politics for years to come. The effect of this schism on national politics is fairly obvious, as seen in the devastating defeat of the Democratic candidate in the 1972 election.

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cratic party leaders may be, the development of such "mav­ erick" organizations threatens their very existence as a political force in local affairs. I suspect that much of the resistance of big-city Democratic organizations to the grow­ ing militancy of younger black activists is rooted as much in self-preservation as it is in "racism" or conservatism. This and the other conflicts engendered by the historical shift from welfare to participation has been reflected in the responses of different cities to the problem of implementing "maximum feasible participation."

RESPONSES TO MAXIMUM FEASIBLE PARTICI­ PATION IN DIFFERENT CITIES Although the War on Poverty program was ostensibly di­ rected toward the poor, it quickly became associated with the interests and aspirations of ethnic minority groups, partly because Community Action Program planners tended to view poverty and being black as synonymous (Kramer, 1969: 247248). But we must account for the fact that the degree of in­ volvement of blacks and other minorities in the program was also a function of their own efforts. The Brandeis Survey (1971)12 of Community Action Programs in twenty cities found that the size of the black populations in the various cities strongly affected whether or not demands were made on public authorities to include representatives of minoritygroup poor on the boards of local programs (1971: 207). However, case studies and aggregate data show almost no activity by the white poor or their representatives in either neighborhood-organization efforts or other kinds of Com­ munity Action Program activities, at least in the urban sphere. 12 The complete unpublished report, which contains a wealth of im­ portant data is extensive. I want to thank Arthur Hillman for alerting me to the existence of the report and to thank David Austin for sending me copies of the unpublished materials. They were extremely helpful to me in a number of areas that go beyond the brief discussion con­ tained in this chapter.

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One explanation for this disproportionate exertion of de­ mands may be found in empirical studies which show that when socioeconomic status factors are controlled, blacks are more active than whites in voluntary associations and voting (Dahl, 1961: 294-295). In addition, Olsen (1970) finds that the trend toward disproportionate involvement is increasing now because blacks are identifying with their "ethnic com­ munity."13 Minority groups which have gone through vari­ ous kinds of "civil rights struggles" can be expected to have gained experience in organizing people, to have developed leaders with organizational skills, and to have developed some types of organizational structures. The proliferation of civil rights and other kinds of minority-group associations may not attract a majority or even a sizable number of in­ dividuals from these ethnic minorities, but they do provide organizational vehicles with which to pursue political ob­ jectives. Conversely, the white poor do not have the experi­ ence of collective struggles with which to promote the de­ velopment of organizational skills, leadership potential, or organizational structures. In the initial stages of the War on Poverty Program, the black poor had an advantage over the white poor insofar as the former had the rudiments of an ideology conducive to grassroots collective organization while the latter lacked any kind of ideological focus and were never able to accept an ideology manifesting class consciousness. Further, at the very time when "maximum feasible participation" was being im­ plemented, black communities were in the midst of an ideological struggle among moderates, civil rights integrationists, and the emerging black power advocates. Benson (1971) contends that the War on Poverty provided an or­ ganizational setting and a set of issues for the black power 13 It is interesting that in a recent analysis of the causes of racial disturbances, Spilerman (1970) was unable to find any significant re­ lationship between community characteristics and propensity for riots; instead, he found that the racial disorders of the 1960's were responses to frustrations uniformly felt by blacks, regardless of their community situations.

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advocates to pursue their objectives both in relation to whites and to the other black ideologists. Most important to minority-group leaders looking for a political power base in local affairs were the large sums of money available; the ambiguous definitions of who had the authority to control this money provided tangible financial incentives as well as power potential. (Kramer, 1969: 249). Stimulated by the ideological characteristics of minoritygroup communities and the special features of the Com­ munity Action Programs, urban minority-group leaders pushed for implementation of "maximum feasible participa­ tion" along lines which would maximize their own political power and authority in the local programs. How, then, do we account for variations in the manner in which different cities responded to minority-group demands? It would seem that participation issues would be more problematic for the countervailing power coalition than for conservative business groups—especially in the case of "maximum feasible participation," which has the potential to generate an autonomous political base for minority-group leaders outside of the regular Democratic party organiza­ tion. Consequently, we would expect business groups to be less apt than Democratic party organizations and leaders to resist the participation demands of minority groups. In turn, we would expect to find the most rancorous forms of conflict in those cities where minority groups had the strength to push for full implementation of the participation clause, but where the Democratic party organization was also strong. Obviously, the best way to test the aforementioned expec­ tations would be to examine the "maximum feasible partici­ pation" struggles in a carefully selected sample of cities in which the relative influence of business groups and Demo­ cratic party organizations could be measured directly. Un­ fortunately, since we are dealing with historical events, we are forced to rely upon whatever empirical studies are avail­ able. While these studies do suffer from a variety of methodological weaknesses and only give us a very "thin"

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data base, they do, nevertheless, provide us with some valu­ able information on the matter with which we are concerned. The Brandeis Stirvey (1971), for example, does not mea­ sure the influence of business, as opposed to that of the Democratic party organization, on the Community Action Programs to the extent we might prefer, but it does employ urban governmental form as one of its independent vari­ ables. While the type of government in a city may not in­ dicate exactly what the relative influence of various groups will be in that city's overall decision-making process, it does suggest some reasonable assumptions about the relationship between governmental form and the relative influence of businessmen and Democratic party organizations. Certainly the manager-council type of reform government provides the strongest structural support for the dominance of business interests in local decision-making. In effect, this type of government, by maximizing the possibilities for covert issue resolution, makes the development of a countervailing power coalition difficult. Alternatively, even if the business group is very influential or even dominant in a city with the mayor-council type of nonreform government, it would seem likely that the Democratic party organization would become more influential than business in responding to the participa­ tion demands of minority groups. Since Democratic party organizations and elected officials have much more to lose than business groups from the participation demands of minority groups and since they could fight the "maximum feasible participation" issue in the public arena, where they have effective power resources, we would expect to find more resistance to the demands of minority groups in mayorcouncil cities than in council-manager cities.14 The Brandeis Survey found that in the mayor-council cities in their sample, a staff member from the mayor's office played a major role in planning and organizing the 14 The existence of Republican mayors in some mayor-council cities confuses this issue somewhat. Nevertheless, I would still expect the overall trend to develop as stated.

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original Community Action Agencies. However, in the council-manager cities the city manager's office was not directly involved in the planning, which was left entirely to the discretion of nongovernmental agencies, such as the community welfare planning council or the board of educa­ tion (1971: 205). An even more important finding of the Brandeis Survey pertains to the manner in which cities with council-manager and mayor-council forms of government reacted to pressure from minority groups to involve the poor in their local Com­ munity Action Programs. In cities with small black popula­ tions (less than 10 percent), there was little pressure for par­ ticipation of the poor and public authorities neither granted the poor or their representatives much influence nor sup­ ported neighborhood organization. But in cities with a large black population (over 10 percent) the researchers found two different kinds of responses to minority-group demands. Generally, in cities with a council-manager form of govern­ ment, minority-group representatives made demands during the initial formation of the Community Action Agencies and provisions were made for their involvement without a great deal of controversy. On the other hand, in cities with a mayor-council form of government, minority-group repre­ sentatives generally made demands for participation after the Community Action Agencies were formed and their de­ mands were resisted by public officials (1971: 204-208). The Brandeis Survey does not indicate any explanation for these two prevalent patterns. However, both are consistent with our expectations. Because the manager-council form is anticonflict oriented, cities with this type of government often prevented rancor­ ous conflicts between minority groups and public officials by compromising before "maximum feasible participation" be­ came a public issue. On the other hand, the Brandeis Survey indicates that in cities with a mayor-council form of govern­ ment, the unwillingness of politicians to compromise during the initial stages of the Community Action Programs re-

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suited in major public controversies over "maximum feasible participation" (1971: 208). The different responses of council-manager and mayorcouncil cities to minority-group demands also resulted in different modes of participation by minority groups and representatives of the poor in the respective Community Action Programs. In the council-manager cities with large minority-group populations, the most prevalent pattern was external adversary participation. That is, minority groups and representatives of the poor directed their attention toward building neighborhood organizations to exert pres­ sure on public and private agencies to ameliorate problems in poor neighborhoods. The arena of conflict, when it did arise, was outside of the Community Action Agency. On the other hand, the most prevalent pattern found in mayorcouncil cities was internal adversary participation. That is, most of the adversary action of minority groups and repre­ sentatives of the poor was directed toward the issues of representation of the poor and authority over policy-making within the Community Action Agency boards (Brandeis Survey, 1971: 207). We might expect that in mayor-council cities minoritygroup leaders had more incentive and more opportunities to participate in the electoral process than their compatriots in manager-council cities. Therefore, control of the Community Action Association boards in the mayor-council cities might have been expected to allow minority-group leaders to use the material resources (for example, jobs) of those agencies as "patronage" with which to build a political base in local politics. Kramer indicates that in San Francisco (a mayorcouncil city) the struggle for control of the Community Ac­ tion Associations was viewed in this light by both minoritygroup leaders and the mayor (1969: 25-67). Conversely, in manager-council cities, minority-group leaders do not have much opportunity to build a political base (because of the at-large election system) and thus may not have had much incentive to try to control their associations.

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In fact, the greatest conflicts in mayor-council cities oc­ curred at the level of the Community Action Association boards. This was another manifestation of the way in which the "maximum feasible participation" issue was disruptive to the traditional organizational Hnes of the countervailing power coalition. The viability of the coalition depends on its ability to control material resources with which to induce the support of minority groups for party activities, especially in the area of voting. The attempt by minority groups to gain autonomous control over these resources was correctly per­ ceived by Democratic mayors as a major threat to their po­ litical life. In my view, the fact that in council-manager cities minor­ ity groups were able to obtain some degree of autonomy for neighborhood organizations without gaining control of as­ sociation boards is best explained by the covert nature of the power-resource base of business groups. Such groups may have perceived correctly that granting minority groups somewhat autonomous neighborhood organizations would prevent rancorous conflicts from developing and, at the same time, would allow business to control the economic resources of the Community Action Programs. On the other hand, in the mayor-council cities, separation of the issue of fiscal control (a tangible resource base) from the politically ex­ plosive issue of participation was virtually impossible. These observations on the relationship between power re­ sources and the reactions to "maximum feasible participa­ tion" are reinforced by studies of levels of participation of "representatives of the poor" on Community Action Asso­ ciation boards in Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and Los Angeles. Each of these cities has a mayor-council form of government, but each has been differentially affected by degrees of reform. Thus they differ substantially with respect to the distribution and nature of power resources in local decision-making processes. In Chicago, the least reformed city, the mayor has enormous patronage power, which helps him to centralize his influence over the county Democratic

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organization. At the other extreme, the reform measure of nonpartisan elections has almost totally destroyed the po­ litical party structure in Los Angeles. New York falls some­ where between these two, insofar as reforms have led to some decentralization of power, which has encouraged the growth of vigorous partisan politics and has strengthened the power of minority groups and liberals in the formal electoral processes. Philadelphia falls between Chicago and New York; the mayor and party organization do not have the control exercised by Chicago's chief executive, but liberals and minority groups do not have as much power as they do in New York (Banfield and Wilson, 1963: 101-111; Green­ stone and Peterson, 1968: 278-280). Greenstone and Peterson found that in Chicago Mayor Daley was able to gain complete control of the Community Action Association board (only 8 percent representation of the poor).15 In Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York the poor had sizable representation on their boards (35, 40, and 50 percent respectively) and, according to Greenstone and Peterson, these representatives were not controlled by the mayors.10 But only in New York were the representatives of the poor well organized. In Philadelphia they were organized to a much lesser degree and in Los Angeles they were totally disorganized (1968: 282). Partial decentralization of power in New York permitted minority groups and liberals to obtain the resources to mo­ bilize pressure to demand and obtain substantial representa­ tion on the Community Action Association boards. This was true to a lesser extent in Philadelphia. Extreme decentraliza15 Additional discussions of Chicago's War on Poverty are found in Mann (1966) and Peterson (1970). 16 Additional discussions of Philadelphia's War on Poverty are found in Shostak (1966) and Peterson (1970). Additional discussion of New York's War on Poverty is found in Peterson (1970). Most of the liter­ ature on New York centers on the Mobilization for Youth experience. In this regard, see Brager and Purcell (1967); Marris and Rein (1967); Moynihan (1969); Piven (1968); Weissman (1969). The less controver­ sial Haryou program in New York is discussed by Clark (1965).

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tion in Los Angeles did not permit liberals and minority groups to mobilize around any coherent set of resources, while in Chicago, the case of extreme centralization, the monopolization of resources by the mayor did not permit any type of mobilization by the poor or their representatives (Greenstone and Peterson, 1968: 286). Obviously "maximum feasible participation" posed more of a threat to the power-resource base of the mayor of Chicago than it did to the mayor of New York. Daley's po­ litical survival was contingent upon his maintenance of a well-disciplined machine, whereas Lindsay, the reform mayor in New York, had a less centralized resource base and thus could actually gain political support from liberals and minority groups by supporting "maximum feasible participa­ tion" (Greenstone and Peterson, 1968: 286). But, although centralization of power was negatively associated with the ability of minority groups and liberals to pursue the partic­ ipation issue effectively, the reverse was true in terms of obtaining OEO funds. Here, Chicago ranked highest, largely because of the "political clout" of Mayor Daley, until after the Watts riot when the funding for Los Angeles suddenly jumped (Greenstone and Peterson, 1968: 286-289). In short, the Greenstone and Peterson findings highlight the dilemma resulting from the effort to employ the federal government as an "advocate" for the disadvantaged in local affairs. In meeting the traditional welfare problem of ob­ taining funds for services, the solidification of power through a strong mayor and Democratic party organization was most effective in terms of the traditional goals of the countervail­ ing power coalition. But the kinds of power resources that were most helpful in obtaining funds became the greatest obstacle in achieving the newly formulated liberal objective of increasing the participation of the poor and minority groups through a nationally sponsored program. Certainly, conclusions based upon the Greenstone and Peterson findings are tentative. In the first place, they studied four of the largest cities in America, which in many ways

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are not typical of the total population of American cities. Second, a substantial body of empirical literature, as well as specific research, dealing with the War on Poverty offers an alternative hypothesis. Diffusion of power is positively cor­ related with the ability of a city to obtain funds from the federal government, according to Aiken (1969). Finally, any overall assessment of "maximum feasible participation" at the local level must take account of a number of situational variables. The characteristics and actions of Community Ac­ tion Program directors, for example, were important in de­ fining the directions of local programs. Especially significant were the initial decisions regarding the relative importance of community organization as opposed to traditional service programs. In addition, the social characteristics and skills of the "representatives of the poor" (Peterson, 1970) as well as the history of minority-group organizational efforts (Peterson, 1970; Kramer, 1969) were important in influencing the direc­ tion of the struggles over participation of the poor in the programs. The essential lesson of the Community Action Program experience is that the incentive and resource problems of neighborhood organization go beyond the poor themselves and must be seen in relation to the interests and resources of other interest groups and institutional sectors in our society. We must consider how proposals for social action are likely to affect the interests and resources of traditional allies of the poor and how these proposals correlate with the overall ob­ jectives of reform. Essentially, proposals for action must be based -upon a clear conceptualization of the parameters of local politics.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The Future of Neighborhood Organization

In view of the complexity and interdependence of the prob­ lems and principles of neighborhood organization, I believe this brief outline will be helpful to the reader.

PRINCIPLES OF INTEREST-GROUP ORGANIZATION1 I. The basic unit of analysis is the rational self-interested person. The central task of the organizer is to find in­ centives to induce this individual to pay for nondivisible collective goods (that is, public goods). II. The size of an aggregate makes a qualitative difference in the way in which inducement problems are experi­ enced. In the case of a small aggregate, support for collective goods can be accomplished through voluntary means; but in the case of a large aggregate, the in­ dividual's voluntary contribution will not be significant and thus the aggregate must adopt one or some com­ bination of the following alternatives: A. A coercive device with which members can ensure that everyone will contribute toward the costs of collective goods (for example, the closed shop). B. Or a by-product strategy in which the individual re­ ceives selective individual benefits in addition to collective benefits and pays for the latter as a means of receiving the former. C. Or a federal-group strategy in which a number of small groups form a coalition to support a federated 1 The appropriate references for the principles outlined in this sec­ tion are found in chaps. 1 and 2.

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

effort. The incentives for inducing individual sup­ port for this effort come from the respective small groups. III. Once the public goods problem is recognized, the or­ ganizer's primary task is to find a strategy to obtain organizational resources. This means that he must persuade other, existing interest groups to grant the organization either: A. Legitimacy to guarantee the group's right to impose a coercive device upon its members (for example, the Wagner Act) B. And/or the material resources necessary to provide individuals with selective benefits (for example, pro­ fessional privileges). IV. The interest-group process must be seen as a force op­ erating within the broader parameters of its environ­ mental milieu in which: A. The interest group is competing for resources with other organizations and institutions, which may be adversely affected by the mobilization of the group and which may therefore resist efforts to grant it legitimacy or material resources. B. Adversaries can learn to change their "counterstrategies" in response to the interest group's strategies. V. The need to obtain resources in a changing environ­ ment means that organizational success will be con­ tingent on the ability of the organizer to make adapta­ tions in the form of trade-offs with other interest groups and accommodations in his own goals and means (as illustrated by the evolution of the American labor move­ ment). The outcome of this process will be affected by: A. The quality of information (including ideologies, scientific knowledge, and pragmatic action strat­ egies) about the relationship between the interest group's goals and the position of other self-interested persons in the environment; especially with respect

THE FUTURE

to persuading other institutional spheres and interest groups (for example, labor's efforts vis-a-vis Congress and the courts) of the need to recognize the interest group's claim to legitimacy or to prevent unfair com­ petition with the group's provision of selective benefits. B. The constraints imposed by organizational structures, each of which will impose different cost-benefit ratios on its group's goals (in both the short-term and the long-run). We can expect: 1. "Cooperative" structures to increase the proba­ bility of obtaining material resources but place constraints on the ability of the group to maintain an aggressive adversary posture vis-a-vis other interest groups. 2. "Autonomous" organizational structures to permit the group to maximize its agressive adversary posture but reduce the probability that it can ob­ tain resources. C. The costs and benefits of different structural arrange­ ments. Hence the adaptability of different structures will vary according to the parameters of the environ­ mental milieu in which the group operates.

THE PROBLEMS WITH TRADITIONAL ORGANIZING APPROACHES OF THE 1960S I. The primary source of difficulty in neighborhood-organi­ zation theory is its failure to view the poor as rational self-interested people who must be induced to support collective action. All of the approaches we have ex­ amined assume that the poor person must be changed, either as a prelude to participation or as a result of the involvement process. This is especially pronounced in conceptualizations of neighborhood organization as a "therapeutic process," either in terms of "community building" (that is, the community-development and

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

community-action approaches) or in terms of using pro­ test and confrontation (that is, social action-protest ap­ proaches) as a means for cutting through the "institu­ tionalized apathy" of the poor. The poor person is called upon to lend support to nondivisible collective goals (that is, the "community" in community-development and community-action work and the "movement" in so­ cial action-protest efforts). In all of these instances, organizers have avoided asking the critical question: what payoffs exist for the individual to contribute to collective action? II. Neighborhood organizers assume, often implicitly, that the problem of organizing the large aggregate is analyt­ ically similar to that faced in dealing with the small group. Thus they fail to recognize the need to apply the exclusionary principle in order to solve the public goods dilemma. None of the strategies adequately treat the relationship between group size and interest-group or­ ganization. The attempt to involve the poor in neighbor­ hood organization on a purely voluntary basis has re­ sulted in a disproportionate involvement of persons with higher socioeconomic status who already belong to associations in the neighborhood (that is, the "double filtration effect"), widespread indifference by the poor toward neighborhood organization efforts, and a lack of sustained strength of neighborhood organizations vis-avis adversaries (for example, the Community Action Pro­ gram struggles over "maximum feasible participation"). A. The indifference of the poor toward supporting the Community Action Programs as opposed to the in­ terest of workers in supporting unions is accounted for by the fact that the latter possess a coercive de­ vice (the closed shop) to mobilize collective action, whereas the "maximum feasible participation" clause did not provide such a device for the poor. B. Community-development cooperatives failed be­ cause organizers attempted to transfer a model of organization based on the small rural village to the

THE FUTURE

large urban aggregate. They did not understand that the by-product principle of organization in the large aggregate demands the exclusion of non-contribu­ tors from receiving the selective benefits. C. The Alinsky model comes closest to solving the public goods problem insofar as it employs the federal-group principle; however, it possesses two weaknesses with respect to the neighborhood or­ ganization issue: 1. Utilization of existing organizational structures in the neighborhood results in the federated organi­ zation's attracting a disproportionate number of persons with higher socioeconomic status than the poor (e.g., only 2 percent of the Woodlawn resi­ dents were actually involved in TWO). 2. The Alinsky version of the federal-group model is geared toward dramaturgical conflict over specific issues and has not focused on the problem of in­ ducing individuals to support long-term organiza­ tional efforts. III. By focusing on changing the poor person and upon im­ mediate issue resolution instead of the public goods problem, neighborhood organizers have not seen their primary organizational objectives in terms of obtaining long-term legitimacy or material resources to produce selective benefits. The approaches we have examined treat the issue of long-term influence of neighborhood organizations in local decision-making processes as secondary to their primary concern with the therapeutic process or their success in winning victories over ad­ versaries on specific issues. Thus, organizers have not anticipated either: A. The problem of obtaining guarantees of the group's legitimacy vis-a-vis other interest groups prior to participation in social service programs (as shown by the Community Action Programs and communitydevelopment projects) or the difficulty of turning a "tactical victory" on a specific issue into permanent

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

neighborhood residents (as shown by the AIinsky recognition of the group's right to bargain for the approach) B. Or the fact that although some individuals may be induced to support collective efforts on a short-term basis because of the dramaturgical effects of con­ flict, they will not maintain that support over a long period unless they are able to obtain a coercive de­ vice or receive some selected individual benefits. IV. Above all, neighborhood organization theoreticians and practitioners tend to treat the organizing process as isolated from its environment. Thus they fail to antic­ ipate how other rational self-interested men will react to their efforts to change the balance of power in local de­ cision-making. One of the most striking features of neighborhood-organization theory and practice is the almost total absence of any kind of comprehensive view of urban political, social, and economic processes. Al­ though references are often made to pluralism and democracy, little attention is paid to the costs and bene­ fits accruing to different parties as a result of mobiliza­ tion of a new interest group and of the types of strategies employed to block such an effort. Two opposing ten­ dencies can be discerned here: A. To deny conflict altogether and to treat neighbor­ hood organization as a "technical problem" (as in the case of "maximum feasible participation") or as part of a process of social integration (as in the com­ munity-development perspective.) The effect of this view is to define what are essentially political prob­ lems as social problems and to create the conditions for a "winner-take-all" struggle between the neigh­ borhood organization and other interest groups over whose view best represents what is in the "common interest." B. To treat conflict (that is, the protest strategies) as a zero-sum condition and to fail to recognize that in a democratic society the flexibility of institutions per-

T H E FUTURE

mits adversaries to learn ways to handle conflict without granting legitimacy to a protesting group. V. By either pretending that conflict does not exist or treat­ ing it as a zero-sum situation, neighborhood organizers have been unable to establish bases for tradeoffs among rational self-interested men. The difficulty here is that neighborhood organizers have not adequately recog­ nized that the nature of the conflict situation in which they are engaged is analogous to conflict institutional­ ized by labor through the mechanism of collective bar­ gaining (that is, they must accept the inevitability of conflict and the principles of the public goods dilemma). The Alinsky model goes much further than the com­ munity-development or comunity-action models in this regard, but it, along with the others, has not: A. Provided a rationale for the need of residents of a neighborhood to organize (because they have a latent conflict relationship with other interest groups) and the kinds of benefits that might accrue to other in­ terest groups by institutionalizing this conflict (in other than the zero-sum form) by granting the neighborhood organization either legitimacy or ma­ terial resources. B. Provided a mechanism for institutionalization of con­ flict. Thus the organizational structures that have been developed generate irreconcilable organiza­ tional maintenance dilemmas. The costs and benefits of specific structural arrangements are different, however, insofar as: 1. The "cooperative," "community-wide" structure of the Community Action Programs permitted neighborhood organizations to gain material re­ sources, but the organizational maintenance needs of the larger organization became more important to its director than the goals of neighborhood or­ ganization. The lack of specification of inputs of opposing interest groups into the programs led to the development of zero-sum games. The poor

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

eventually lost because of restrictions on the ability of neighborhood organizations to assume an aggressive interest-group stance in relation to other interest groups. 2. The autonomous organizational structure of social action-protest groups permitted them to achieve greater freedom of action vis-a-vis other interest groups, but created long-term problems in attain­ ing legitimacy or material resources. C. Although mayor-council governments are typically more responsive than reform governments to minority-group input into the electoral process, maximum feasible participation (because of the creation of para-political structures and competing patronage bases) posed a direct threat to the viability of the Democratic party coalition. Thus conflict over par­ ticipation of the poor was more likely to manifest itself in rancorous forms in cities with a strong Democratic party organization than in reform cities.

REFOCUSING THE NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION PROBLEM The demise of neighborhood-organization efforts cannot be attributed so much to the failure of organizers to find the right answers as to their inability to ask the right questions. The public goods dilemma was never identified as the source of the frustrations experienced by neighborhood organizers, even when traditional approaches had failed. The appropriate questions cannot be asked until the para­ digmatic2 assumptions underlying neighborhood-organiza2 Here I am referring to the a priori assumptions from which theory is developed. In the case of neighborhood organization, the logical re­ lationships of propositions and assertions to the assumptions from which they have been drawn are frequently explicated only vaguely. For a historical treatment of the role of paradigms in providing a "consensual" basis for theory development in the natural sciences, see Kuhn (1970).

THE FUTURE

tion theory are reevaluated. Any chance of altering the initial assumptions about the nature of the poor depends upon the willingness of reformers to change their view of man in general. Rationality, Self-interest, and Freedom My description of the poor person is relevant only to the political problem at hand and in no way is applicable to his total human nature. Nonetheless, the concept of a rational self-interested man is often viewed with disdain by soci­ ologists and reformers, partly because of its close association with classical economic thought, which provided the intel­ lectual foundations for nineteenth-century capitalism.3 The dehumanizing consequences of political economy, which grew out of this system of thought, is well expressed by Benjamin Jowett's statement, "I have always felt a certain horror of political economists . . . since I heard one of them say that he feared the famine of 1848 in Ireland would not kill more than a million people and that would scarcely be enough to do much good" (quoted in Woodham-Smith, 1962: 373). In our country, laissez-faire economics complemented by social darwinism (Hofstadter, 1955b) employed the con­ cepts of rationality and self-interest to block the efforts of reformers to obtain government intervention to prevent child-labor abuses and to allow workers the right of collective bargaining (see chapter 2). For reformers, one of the most disturbing aspects of the laissez-faire doctrine is its insistence that the rational selfinterested man is ultimately responsible for his own fate. This position, of course, was used to justify the gross in­ equalities that existed in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Thus, it is not surprising that reformers have sought to demonstrate that conditions outside of the control of the individual are as much responsible as his own actions for the specific behaviors he might engage in. This effort has been greatly assisted by the growing sophistication of tech3 See,

for example, R. H. Tawney (1920).

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

niques in psychiatry, psychology, and the social sciences, so that today we do not ask whether environmental factors in­ fluence behavior. Instead we usually ask, what is the extent of their influence and what are the "relevant" independent variables? Consequently, we are more likely to look at the way in which individuals are acted upon (that is, by norms, values, childrearing, and so forth) than the manner in which they initiate action themselves.4 This tendency to turn away from the individual as the basic unit of analysis is reinforced by the reformer's sub­ stitution of the notion of "common interest" for the classical economists' concept of self-interest. In turn, we find that the replacement of the idea of conflicting individual prefer­ ences with the idea of meeting collective needs invariably leads to the belief that the assessment of "needs" is essentially a scientific and technical matter, limited only by imperfec­ tions in the state of our knowledge and our willingness to use it. In turn, this belief generates the rationale for having professional classes of experts who are "trained" to define and meet human needs.5 While the intent of reformers has been to provide a more humane approach to the poor, the mentally ill, criminals, and other disadvantaged parties, it sometimes results in the denial of basic existential human properties. Thomas Szasz (1970), for example, points out that although the view that the "mentally ill" are sick and should not be punished for wrongdoing was introduced for humanitarian reasons, it has been used to justify the denial of rights willingly granted to other citizens. Moreover, the psychiatrist's definition of "normality" is imposed on modes of behavior which formerly were defined as matters of individual ethical and political consideration. The problem is not whether certain types of behavior are healthy or unhealthy, but whether such claims should be used to thwart debate and conflict between men over their differing individual preferences. 4 Two of the most extreme statements of this orientation are found in: George C. Homans (1967) and B. F. Skinner (1971). 5 See, for example, Robert E. Lane (1966).

THE FUTURE

One of the most damaging effects of reform efforts to eliminate the concept of the rational self-interested man is that along with his culpability, the individual also loses his human dignity. He is pictured as lost in the midst of social forces over which he has no control and we are much less likely to see him in the "tragic" sense of a struggling, search­ ing person trying to find meaning in his life (May, 1953). If we view the poor person from the perspective of his sup­ posed culture of poverty, alienation, or anomie, we absolve him from moral condemnation for his condition, but, by the same token, we deny him qualities that we readily recognize and accept in other men. It strikes me as more than coinci­ dental that sociologists are apt to see the executive decision­ maker as a rational, choosing individual constrained by in­ formation problems and environmental exigencies, while they look upon the poor person as a passive, robot-like crea­ ture who is merely pushed along by forces of which he is not even aware, much less having any control over how he might react to them.6 Alternatively, I have proposed that the poor person does make rational calculations in order to survive within his en­ vironmental parameters. His lack of interest in voluntary collective action is not a result of apathy or "not caring," but rather is a very reasonable assessment of the costs and bene­ fits of such action in the large "latent group" situation. Thus, we see that the real problem with the classical economist's model is not the assertion that persons are rational and selfinterested but rather the failure to account for the structure of choice, which makes different options more or less reason­ able for the individual phenomenologically experiencing it. Consequently, neighborhood organizers face the key in­ tellectual task of understanding why the poor person's free­ dom to elect collective action as a solution to his problems is limited so long as he does not have a reasonable chance to solve his public goods dilemma. To do this, they must first 8 The reader should compare the traditional literature dealing with the poor (See chapter 1) with the literature on "organizational anal­ ysis," which deals with executive decision-makers (chapter 2).

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

reconcile the exclusionary principle with the generalized goals of neighborhood organizations. Excluding noncontributors may seem to many idealistic organizers as precisely the kind of principle of organization that grassroots movements are committed to fight. Indeed, some of the most successful applications of this principle have been by organizations, such as the AMA and the farm-bureau Cooperatives, which regularly support conservative or even reactionary causes. Thus, the neighborhood organizer is faced with the difficult choice between maintaining the "purity" of his ideology and accepting a principle that may be distasteful but that does offer some hope of truly giving power to the poor. In making this choice, the organizer will have to weigh the relative importance of involvement as an end in itself (for example, experience in democratic participation) on the one hand, and the goal of collective strength on the other. Obviously, the latter option does not preclude the issue of democratic par­ ticipation and the degree of involvement and influence of various members in an organization—as discussions of the oligarchical tendencies in labor unions illustrate (Lipset et al., 1956: 2-13). However, this issue can only be dealt with after the primary task of finding a solution to the public goods problem is accomplished. Accepting the public goods problem as the core concept in neighborhood-organization theory means, of course, that the primary organizational objective of neighborhood organiza­ tion work will have to be redefined as a search for ways to acquire the resources to solve this problem. For many or­ ganizers this entails eschewing a collective behavior model of organization while for others it means giving up the emphasis upon the "therapeutic effects" of involvement in neighbor­ hood organizations. Most importantly, neighborhood-organi­ zation theory will have to provide analytic definitions of the environmental milieux in which the organizing process takes place. In order to obtain either legitimacy or material re­ sources, a neighborhood organization will have to state pre­ cisely what resource problem residents face and propose a

T H E FUTURE

rationale for obtaining the necessary resources in a com­ petitive situation with other rational, self-interested men affected by the organizing process. These objectives demand that we develop a clearer perspective on the relationship be­ tween neighborhood-organization problems and the general problems of creating and maintaining a pluralistic society. Pluralism,1 Resources, and Neighborhood Organization

It can be said that all persons who propose that we ought to strengthen intermediary associations are pluralists. However, pluralism clearly can arise from quite different philosophical and ideological foundations, and the means for developing intermediary associations, as well as long-range goals, can be defined in different ways. The commitment of European conservatives to the preservation and building of communi­ ties stems from their primary desire to achieve stability and order in society. To do this, they advocate replacing ratio­ nalistic and utilitarian relationships with nonrational social relationships that deemphasize the role of individual prefer­ ences in social organization (see chapter 3). Libertarian plu­ ralists, such as Tocqueville (1945 ed.), emphasize the role of intermediary associations in permitting individuals to express their self-interests through collective associations, which be­ come mechanisms for entering and maintaining conflict situ­ ations. This model values individualism and rationality and sees the intermediary association as a way of protecting in­ dividual freedom against the encroachment of centralized elites or the "tyranny of the majority." Societal stability and the integration of individuals into the larger society are not defined as ends in themselves. Rather, they are looked upon as the result of an awareness by self-interested men that everyone has different preferences, that conflicts are in­ evitable, and that the best way to ensure protection of every7 In this section, I will be treating pluralism in a general philosoph­ ical, sociological, and political sense. "Pluralist interest-group theory," which I examined and found unsatisfactory in chapter 1, is merely one approach to the problem of maintaining a pluralistic society.

NEIGHB OBHOOD OHGANIZATION

one's rights and prevention of a "war of all against all" is to lay the foundations for continual competition between differ­ ent associations. It would be unfair to label as conservative, in the philo­ sophical sense, all persons who seek to replace rational and utilitarian interests with the "social bond." We have seen, for example, how the Utopian socialist vision of the good society (see chapter 3) tries to reach this end. Nevertheless, while this general orientation may be appealing from the standpoint of a humanistic concern with man's search for meaning in the "mass society," it is easy for sociologists and reformers to fall into the conservative frame of reference by accepting, however inadvertently, the assumption that social organization exists for itself rather than for the individuals who have a stake in its maintenance. Treating social interests as separate from individual in­ terests can cause us to overlook the fact that although "so­ cially derived" interests (for example, religion, ethnicity, community or neighborhood) may be potential bases of or­ ganization, they can be realized only if the emerging group generates some kind of tangible or intangible incentives that are meaningful inducements for individuals to make con­ tributions to collective goods (see the discussion of the im­ migrant experience in chapter 1). In turn, the reification of social interests turns our attention away from the problem­ atic aspects of how individuals obtain the resources to pro­ duce incentive structures. If we assume that men are self-interested and have differ­ ent preferences, we may expect to find conflicts among them over the allocation of resources. Treating pluralism as a purely social matter, however, does not provide us with any guidelines to manage conflict, which cannot be resolved simply by "technical expertise" or by appeals to the "com­ mon good." The classic libertarian treatises on pluralism, such as Tocqueville's Democracy in America (1945 ed.) and The Federalist (Hamilton et al,. n. d.), have pointed out that the critical problem in maintaining a pluralistic society is

THE FUTUKE

not the social bond per se but rather the establishment of the "right" of individuals to obtain the resources necessary to create their own viable organizational life. From the libertarian point of view, therefore, pluralism is essentially a political problem. The mediating influence of the political sphere is important in two ways: first, it can grant or deny legitimacy to a social unit, thereby affecting a group's right to control certain resources; second, it can in­ crease or decrease the efBcacy of a social unit's incentive structures by the degree to which it encourages or blocks monopolization of or competition for resources. Moreover, we cannot assume that structural arrangements which worked in the past will necessarily work today. A major weakness of so-called pluralist interest-group theory (see chapter 1), which assumes a priori that resources are avail­ able to a potential interest group, is its neglect of the resource problems that must be resolved in order to handle the public goods dilemma. In other words, we must specify precisely how the resource problem facing a particular emerging in­ terest group in a given historical period is affected by po­ litical actions or inactions and how alternative actions may correct the situation. The resource dilemma facing the neighborhood today is complicated by the monopolization of resources by public agencies and the commensurate decline in alternative re­ source possibilities available to indigenous groups trying to organize. In contrast to organizers of earlier periods, such as those who formed immigrant groups, the indigenous or­ ganizer now must compete with large-scale operations in trying to provide services meaningful enough to induce per­ sons to support collective action. A recent example of how the development of public so­ cial service bureaucracies places indigneous organizations at an unfair, competitive disadvantage is seen in the Black Panthers' sickle-cell anemia testing program. The Panthers sought to provide a service that was not offered by any public agency, but shordy after their programs were started

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

the public agencies moved into the area with much larger and more sophisticated technological and organizational re­ source bases. This was not a case of malevolence, but simply a function of the organizational maintenance needs of the public agencies seeing a new "market" developing. As often happens in the' private marketplace, the stronger organization obviated the weaker one. Advocates of reform through centralization of services often fail to appreciate the costs that can result from transfering a service from the private to the public sector. Al­ though such a transfer may substantially improve the ma­ terial quality of life for individuals, it may also eliminate or make less competitive the services which indigenous po­ litical entrepreneurs offer as inducements to potential in­ terest-group members. In short, the monopolization of re­ sources can destroy the material bases of communities. It is this phenomenon, more than the widely publicized character­ istics of mass society and alienation, that is the basic cause of the difficulties faced in creating viable social and political organization at the local level. The breakdown of social and political organization at the local level, especially with respect to the poor has been a major inspiration for government efiForts at community-build­ ing through Community Action Programs. Since federal ad­ vocacy in the past had provided the resources for labor and other groups to organize, many reform-minded persons naturally assumed that it would be equally successful in dealing with the neighborhood-organization problem. The Community Action Program experience, however, illustrates some fundamental limitations of federal advocacy in dealing with local resource allocation problems. Even though these programs were created on premises quite different from those of the New Deal (see chapter 5), it is doubtful that they could have been any more successful if they had accepted the realities of local conflict patterns. The national govern­ ment can intervene successfully in behalf of the disadvan­ taged person when his constitutional rights are violated, as in

T H E FUTURE

the case of the civil rights of black Americans, or when he is involved in interstate commerce, as in the case of labor laws, but our form of government grants enormous prerogatives to local authorities in other matters. Consequently, the con­ tinually increasing funds granted by the federal government to local areas flow through local decision-making structures. Even prior to the passage of the Green Amendment, the character of local Community Action Programs was largely determined by the character of local power arrangements; eventually, of course, these agencies came under the com­ plete control of local officials. Although the federal govern­ ment can have some impact on local power arrangements, faith in its ability to reallocate local power is not justified outside of the special cases I have mentioned. Therefore, resolution of the resource problem facing the neighborhood organization must take place at the local level and must involve a transfer of resources to individuals in the neighborhood or to the neighborhood iself. These require­ ments, however, respresent a radical departure from present social service arrangements and can be expected to affect scores of persons who have a stake in the maintenance of the existing systems. Given the limited resource capabilities of the poor at the present time, is there some basis to hope for support in reaching this end? In trying to find an answer to this question, we must recognize that persons other than the poor are rational and self-interested and that in order to induce them either to give up some of their resource preroga­ tives or to join a coalition for change we will have to provide them with some payoffs. Therefore, we must demonstrate that the costs of present service-delivery systems accrue to persons other than the poor. Resource monopolization clearly has created problems for the poor in organizing their neighborhoods, but by perpetu­ ating social disorganization, it obviously has produced seri­ ous costs for other persons as well. The present crisis of au­ thority between ghetto-slum residents (especially younger people) and city officials is characterized by the lack of a

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

bargaining agent to represent slum residents, even when latent conflicts erupt into major disturbances. Only a few years ago, when riots broke out in a score of Northern cities, public authorities frantically sought leaders with whom to negotiate the resolution of the grievances which led to the riots. The old-style black politicians and even many of the traditional civil rights leaders were unable to prove their legitimacy to the youthful rioters and thus were ineffective as a stabilizing force in the neighborhoods (Kerner Commis­ sion Report, 1968). Similarly, police have faced day-to-day conflicts with hostile slum populations, who view them as an occupying army, yet they have no way of bargaining with their adversaries, who are without leadership because they are unorganized. The costs of increasing the services of police and other agencies required to deal with the effects of social disorgani­ zation, such as drug treatment, are eventually passed on to the working- and middle-class taxpayers. Fears about per­ sonal security have also risen but, although their subtle and not-so-subtle racial overtones undoubtedly have been ex­ ploited, they should not cause us to overlook the important relationship between the stability or instability of poor neighborhoods and incentives or disincentives for the more affluent to stay in the city or leave it. The issue of personal security is also a manifestation of the disorganization of working- and middle-class neighborhoods. Because of the monopolization of resources by central city bureaucracies, these higher socioeconomic status groups also find it harder to obtain the material resources to create the incentive structures necessary to maintain their own unique social and political organizations. This is another reason for the development of highly volatile "winner-take-all" games in urban politics. When an agency, either through an on­ going service program or a special project (for example, the Community Action Programs) lias effectively eliminated other sources of resource mobilization (by making the latter noncompetitive), the various interest groups that have a

T H E FUTURE

stake in the output of the program have little option but to try to capture total control of the agency. Thus, as the process of centralization proceeds, it increases the costs that can accrue to individuals when "their side" loses control of the central city administration. Until recently, of course, we were apt to think of these costs as applying mainly to the blacks and the poor; but as the relative size of the black populations in our major cities has increased, so has the alarm of white working- and middle-class residents, who face the prospect of being members of a minority group. These costs will con­ tinue to rise as services become more and more centralized and neighborhood residents retain fewer and fewer prerog­ atives pertaining to the maintenance of their distinctive life­ styles in their own local areas (Novak, 1972). There is a growing amount of evidence to show that working- and middle-class citizens are dissatisfied with the performance of large public bureaucracies in meeting their personal preferences, especially in the areas of education and police services. These persons are less likely than those in poor neighborhoods to engage in public protest to display their discontent, but they do "vote with their feet" by leav­ ing the city and moving to the suburbs. The reemergence of "populist" ideologies and candidates in recent elections lends support to the notion that grassroots dissatisfaction goes far beyond the poor and racial minority groups (Bish and Kirk, 1974: 163-179; Bish and Ostrom, 1973: 35-46; Tiebout, 1956; Newfield and Greenfield, 1972). Consequently, the chances of obtaining the resources to solve the poor neighborhood's public goods dilemma can be enhanced if we are willing to conceptualize the problem from a more generalized perspective of the costs which all citizens will pay as a result of the present system of social service-delivery. However, it would be unreasonable to ex­ pect self-interested men to forego the benefits of the status quo, however limited they may be, unless we can make a persuasive case for an alternative arrangement. Many hu­ manistically inclined persons may agree with the principle

NEIGHBORHOOD OKGANIZATION

of reallocating resources, but fear that it may result in even more costly conflict games and the loss of existing benefits of centralization. The empirical observations reported earlier in this study show how inadequately planned shifts in re­ source distribution (e.g., "maximum feasible participation" or "neighborhood control") can produce rancorous conflicts and disrupt the normal flow of service-delivery. What is called for, then, is some clearer specification of how re­ sources may be redistributed within an urban pluralistic system. A Federal Solution The situation we face today ts analogous in many ways to the problems faced by our fledgling republic shortly after the Revolutionary War. Many persons wished the states to retain as much autonomy as possible in order to ensure the main­ tenance of their respective religious, economic, and political preferences; but, the costs of too much autonomy were also apparent in that a weakened union would be prey to incur­ sions from foreign powers and the weaker states might be imposed upon by the stronger ones in a zero-sum conflict situation. It was this dilemma to which The Federalist papers were addressed.8 Rather than propose a single solu­ tion, they contended that a multiconstitutional system would permit trade-offs between complete autonomy and complete centralization, thus avoiding the costs of either extreme. On the one hand, the less powerful state governments were asked to trade selected aspects of their "sovereignty" in re­ turn for constitutional legitimation for selected state preroga­ tives and other guarantees that minority rights would be protected through competing branches of government. On the other hand, the more powerful central government was asked to trade certain of its prerogatives, so that minorities would retain more power than in a centralized system, in return for guarantees that its authority in selected service areas would be legitimized and that the effects of zero-sum conflict games would be reduced. 8

See especially Madison's analysis of conflict in paper §10.

THE FUTURE

I am not concerned with the specific mechanisms that the federalists proposed but rather with the principle that we can develop "mixed solutions" to the problems facing men in human societies. Since there is no single best solution for delivering services, each service ought to be selectively evaluated in terms of its costs and benefits. This means that in some instances a centralized solution will be preferable to a decentralized solution, while in other instances the reverse will be true. Applied to the neighborhood-organization problem, the concept of federalism would suggest that control should not reside totally with city authorities or with the neighborhoods. Rather, the areas of resource control retained by various levels of political and social organization should be defined and coordinated within a federal system. The broad outlines of this approach have been developed over the past few years by "public choice"9 political economists, who recently have begun to find some empirical confirmation for their theoret­ ical models.10 Their work, which investigates the pricing of goods and services as well as the general matter of con­ stitution-building, does not deal in sufficient detail with the practical matter of creating viable neighborhood organiza­ tions. Nevertheless, it does suggest solutions to the neighbor­ hood organization problem that are consistent with the realities of an advanced urban-industrial society. The individual in the metropolitan region can be con­ sidered the basic unit of analysis for our proposed federal solution to urban problems. In recent years, growing citizen 9 The work of Mancur Olson (1965), previously cited in this study, is representative of the public choice tradition, insofar as it focuses on the rational self-interested individual as the basic unit of political analysis and uses "methodological individualism" as its methodological ap­ proach. As I have moved from a specific focus on the neighborhood organization toward a broader analysis of political, economic, and so­ cial parameters, I have been greatly assisted by some of the more gen­ eral works in the public choice tradition, especially: Bish (1971); Bu­ chanan and Tullock (1962); Downs (1957); Vincent Ostrom (1969, 1971); Vincent Ostrom and Elinor Ostrom (1971). 10 For summaries of empirical literature, see Bish (1971); Bish and Kirk (1974); Bish and Ostrom (1973); Sproule-Jones and Hart (1973).

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

dissatisfaction with city services and the flight to the suburbs has prompted many politicians and planners to see govern­ mental functions as encompassing an area that includes both city and suburbs. There are, of course, sound fiscal reasons for taking this view, especially in light of the fact that the tax base of the central cities has been shrinking. Further, the increasingly complex problems of waste disposal, pollution, transportation, and certain police functions involve over­ lapping political jurisdictions.11 But if metropolitan govern­ ment is conceptualized strictly as a process of consolidation, then minority groups and neighborhood organizers can jus­ tifiably balk at any further encroachment on the limited prerogatives they still possess. There is, in this regard, a good deal of justification for the contention that metropolitan gov­ ernment has gained more support as blacks have become majorities or near-majorities in many major cities. However, it is possible to conceive of metropolitan govern­ ment as a federal system in which the neighborhood becomes an integral element (analogous to the states) in the larger system. This involves, instead of centralization or decentrali­ zation, the coordination of different units.12 Thus the neigh­ borhood will receive either outright legitimacy or other sorts of resources to carry on selective service functions in return for participation in the larger federal government. Such a system would be appealing for several reasons. First, it pro­ vides an alternative to the winner-take-all game, insofar as neighborhood units would retain certain prerogatives over 11 The fact that certain problems involve overlapping jurisdictions does not mean that consolidation will always be the preferable solu­ tion. Bish and Kirk (1974) and Bish and Ostrom (1973) present ev­ idence of serious diseconomies resulting from consolidation in certain areas and propose alternative solutions. My concern at this juncture, however, is to show that we can analytically view the neighborhood organization problem vis-a-vis these other issues. For a comprehensive treatment of the metropolitan region, see Bish (1971), especially on "functional area analysis" in his chap. 6. 12 Bish and Ostrom refer to a "two-tier solution" as a compromise between advocates of extreme centralization and extreme decentraliza­ tion (1973: 12-15).

THE FUTURE

specific service areas, while the metropolitan system would retain control over others. In other words, if we can ensure that the neighborhood will retain certain functions regardless of what occurs at the level of the metropolitan government, then we would expect the costs of losing an election for con­ trol of this larger unit would be less than under the present zero-sum situation. Even if individuals lost control of the metropolitan government they would still retain control over their neighborhood's service functions, which they view as critical to the maintenance of their life styles. We would ex­ pect this to result in a reduction of anxiety about personal security and racial tensions insofar as each neighborhood would have a much greater degree of stability. A federal system would also increase the tax base of the central city area to help the poor who suffer financially when middleclass groups flee to the suburbs. In this instance, we can project a "tradeoff" in which minority groups would give up their quest for control of city government in return for fiscal advantages, whereas working- and middle-class citizens in the suburbs would pay part of the costs for the central city in return for a reduction in the costs of social disorganization and the benefits of political and social stability. One of the most serious objections to a federal solution, however, is that it would be contrary to our fundamental re­ form objectives of creating a more egalitarian society. It seems to me that a good deal of confusion surrounds the matter of centralization of resources, which indeed is a critical part of creating an egalitarian society, insofar as economic redistribution is concerned. For example, local property-tax support for schools clearly perpetuates gross inequalities in the level of education that children in different socioeconomic classes receive. From an egalitarian perspec­ tive, using a state or federal income-tax base of support would be a fairer way of funding education (Bish, 1971: 105-121). In addition, more attention might be given to the nationalization of industry and the elimination of regressive "loopholes" in the present federal income-tax system. Un-

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

fortunately, however, we have tended to neglect these areas in favor of over-preoccupation with the centralization of services (Hamilton, 1972: 1-15, 511-514). Our focus on service-delivery rather than on the structural causes of inequality stems, in large measure, from the belief that the New Deal resolved the basic economic and political issues and that we have become an "affluent society."13 Given this perspective, attention has shifted to providing services for those who have not entered the "mainstream," especially the poor and minority groups. Not only has this effort failed the poor, but it has created the basis for a schism among the onetime partners in the reform coalition. The implementation of special service programs has generated serious conflicts between the poor, minority groups, and liberal reformers on the one hand and traditional Democratic party leadership and working-class and middle-income voters on the other. Clearly, these programs, which are aimed at the poor, offer nothing tangible to the working-class and middle-income voters, who because of the regressive character of our in­ come-tax system pay a disproportionate share of the costs. Such programs also have the potential to create costs for the traditional party organizations in terms of developing com­ peting bases of power at the local and national levels. Thus it would seem that if we are truly interested in bringing about a coalition of the poor, the working-class and the middle-class to solve problems pertaining to inequality, we must lessen our preoccupation with service centralization and pay more attention to basic economic issues. Nevertheless, there remains the objection that turning away from bureaucratic modes of delivery will lead to less "efficient" provision of services. Since the publication of Max Weber's work on bureaucracy, it has become almost axio­ matic in sociological circles that bureaucracy is more efficient and rational than alternative forms of organization. Weber, although personally distressed by the dehumanizing conse13 See, for example, Galbraith (1958), Bell (1962) and Harrington (1962).

T H E FUTURE

quences of bureaucracy, saw it as an inevitable part of the rationalization process in the Western world (Gerth and Mills, 1946: 45-76,196-244). More recently, however, a num­ ber of writers have cast doubt on the general applicability of Weber's assertions. Niskanen (1971) and Tullock (1965) argue that if we see the individual bureaucrat as a rational selfinterested man, we find that frequently he is less motivated by efficiency than by the personal "payoffs" he will receive as a result of his actions. Some of the most serious diseconomies are produced by a payoff structure that creates inducements for lower echelon functionaries to provide their superiors with false information in order to improve their own per­ formance ratings. Empirical confirmation of this phenom­ enon are found in such diverse places as police arrest records (Skolnick, 1966), public service programs (Sterne et al., 1974), and foreign affairs (The Pentagon Papers, 1971). The most serious diseconomies are likely to occur when a public bureaucracy gains a monopoly over a service area. Bish and Kirk note: A commonly recognized characteristic of a public monop­ oly includes the maximization of agency size because ad­ ministrative salary levels are often correlated with agency size, and the larger an organization, the more politically powerful it will be vis-a-vis others. Another observation is simply that administrators and employees may take life easy rather than undertake the hassles that are necessary to adjust production to changing demands and maintain efficiency. Still another observation is that public servants will do good, with good defined as what they think people need. None of these behaviors, however, is Hkely to lead to output efficiently produced to meet citizens' preferences, yet the monopolistic position of the producer protects him from individual citizens, even if he is inefficient and un­ responsive in meeting their demands [1974: 107]. I do not mean to suggest that bureaucratic organization is always inefficient or that it cannot become an extremely use-

NEIGHBOKHOOD ORGANIZATION

ful vehicle for solving certain human problems. Rather, I am proposing that instead of assuming a priori that bureaucratic modes of service-delivery are inevitable or more efficient, we ought to specify what are its costs and benefits in different service areas. While almost everyone recognizes that the in­ puts and outputs of some services are more difficult to measure than others, the frame of reference of the profes­ sional and the bureaucrat often leads to the proposition that in "soft service" areas we simply face a measurement prob­ lem, which eventually will be solved by the development of more sophisticated instruments. Because this point of view overlooks real qualitative differences in the nature of inputs and outputs in different service areas, one of our most im­ portant tasks is to overcome it. To begin the process of "sifting out" areas where resources may be transferred to the neighborhood level, we can make an initial distinction between three classes of services: (1) those which involve production and consumption of a ma­ terial good, such as water, sewage, and roads; (2) those which involve production and consumption of interpersonal relationships between human beings, such as education, mental health, and certain police functions; and (3) those which involve production and consumption of complex interdependencies between material goods and the interpersonal relationships of human beings, such as land-use.14 The most appropriate ways of handling these three areas have been debated by economists and involve, at the very least, the complex and interdependent problems of pricing, efficiency, and individual preferences. But the first area differs from the latter two in the degree to which individual preferences become an important element in defining what are desirable or undesirable inputs and outputs. For example, the question of what technology will produce the best road or sewage treatment can be answered by analyses of the costs 14 This classification is drawn from a more extensive one developed by Bish and Ostrom (1973: 32-33).

T H E FUTUKE

and benefits of different materials and procedures; if, how­ ever, our referent is producing a "good student," the justifica­ tion for different inputs and the final product will depend upon our relative ranking of vocational skill development, spiritual growth, good citizenship, or whatever. The third area becomes even more complicated because, although land-use "values" can be calculated in a monetary sense, we know from empirical research that the use of land and its nonutilitarian value for individuals can deviate widely from its economic market value (Firey, 1945). It is important to keep in mind, however, that the above classifications cut across what may be conventionally de­ scribed as distinctive service areas. In police work, for ex­ ample, certain services, such as solving burglaries, arson, and homicide demand more sophisticated technologies and lower rates of interpersonal contacts than settling domestic quarrels or managing neighborhood disturbances. The former services come closer to the first category of "production and con­ sumption of material goods" than the latter, which falls into the second category of "goods that involve interpersonal re­ lations" (Wilson, 1968). Consequently, the breakdown of service functions within what are normally considered single service areas will be of considerable assistance in specifying those types of services that most appropriately can involve neighborhood residents. In some cases, goods and services in the first category may be most appropriately handled by further consolidation of existing service-delivery units. This becomes an important basis for making tradeoffs, insofar as neighborhood orga­ nizers may support specific programs for centralization in re­ turn for a transfer of other service functions to the neigh­ borhood level. Our attention, of course, will be directed toward the second and third classes of services in which in­ dividual preferences play the most pronounced role in de­ fining the nature of the service itself and in which the greatest amount of citizen dissatisfaction with traditional modes of delivery has occurred.

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

STRATEGIES FOR BUILDING NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATIONS While the notion of metropolitan federalism provides a rationale for transferring resources to the neighborhood, we still must face the problem of operationalizing programs that will solve the neighborhood's public goods problem and create the opportunity for effective interest-group action. To avoid the pitfalls of earlier efforts, we must anticipate the effects of various neighborhood-organization structural arrangements on others affected by the organizing process. Obviously, we cannot guarantee the success of any particular program of action; we may expect to find one solution more appropriate for a given service area, while another solution will be more appropriate in another area. Nevertheless, we can specify the probable "costs and benefits" of different solutions with respect to the following: 1) the chances of inducing individuals to support collec­ tive action (the public goods problem) 2) the types of organizational maintenance problems that are likely to arise 3) the problems that may arise over interneighborhood co­ ordination and competition between the neighborhood and other levels of social and political organization 4) the incentives for other interest groups to support or oppose a given program 5) how the preferences of individuals within the neigh­ borhood organization will be met. Since the resource dilemma facing the neighborhood has been created in large measure by "unfair competition" from other organizations, we must look at ways to prevent further erosion of either actual or potential services that may be offered by a neighborhood organization. Preventing Public Takeovers of Indigenous Service Delivery Do the probable benefits of public takeovers of services out­ weigh the costs that will result in terms of eliminating the incentive structures with which indigenous persons may find

THE FUTURE

a solution to their public goods problem? In the area of day­ care service provision, for example, we might ask whether the benefits of government financing, which clearly would be greater than that provided by indigenous persons, is worth the possible cost of lowering the chances that neighborhood organizers might employ this service as a "selective benefit" to operationalize a by-product solution to the neighborhoodorganization problem? An analytical and empirical demonstration of jthe costs of resource monopolization—especially those caused by the dis­ economies of bureaucratic organization, the diversion of efforts from fundamental reform goals, and the creation of conditions that lead to zero-sum conflict games—could aid the neighborhood organizer in protecting his resources. Al­ though social scientists could provide such assistance, they have paid much more attention to evaluation of public agency performance than to the measurement of outputs by indigenous persons. Because indigenous persons obviously cannot provide the research support money that can be pro­ vided by public agencies, this is an important area for further inquiry by private foundations and universities. The social scientist could also assist the neighborhood or­ ganizer in finding selective benefits as well as nondivisible goods that may be used in a by-product strategy. This calls for empirical inquiry into unmet preferences of individuals, with special attention to subpopulations (for example, family status, age, race). As we turn our attention away from "needs" to individual preferences we shall find large gaps in existing service networks. It is important, then, that we develop the analytical tools to understand the significance of these lacunae. Instead of assuming that unmet service needs call for in­ tervention by government, we ought to see if in specific in­ stances they provide an opportunity for neighborhood political entrepreneurs to create viable organizational strat­ egies. In many areas, of course, the capital or technical ex­ pertise required to satisfy a particular need (for example,

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

better hospital care) of the local population will demand re­ source assistance from outside the neighborhood, but many of the things that individuals desire cost very little in a monetary sense and yet offer the organizer the chance to create effective selective benefits. We know, for example, that most individuals experiencing crises in their lives do not turn to professionals in the mental health field but rather seek out informal "gatekeepers" in the local area, such as the minister, the barber, the bartender, or the neighbor (Snyder, 1971). To be sure, gatekeepers some­ times give people bad advice and may actually prevent them from seeking professional help when it is needed; however, they also perform by far the greatest amount of "mental health" work and it is with their assistance that most persons either resolve their crises or seek professional treatment.15 For instance, the most effective treatment for alcohol addic­ tion remains the nonprofessional volunteer organization, Alcoholics Anonymous (Clinard, 1974: 486-492). The point to be emphasized here is not that nonprofes­ sionals are always preferable to professionals or vice versa but simply that we ought to devote more attention to em­ pirical inquiry into services that local persons can deliver themselves. In short, we have to conceptualize different modalities for treating different aspects of what may be cur­ rently defined as a general service area. Returning again to the mental health field, we might consider the observation of Rollo May that the first desire of the patient experiencing a "mental health problem," such as depression, is to find some­ one who will share that experience. This, in Mays view, is a necessary preparatory step to any kind of therapy directed at helping the individual make readjustments in his life (1969: 72-83). Moreover, in my view, the identification with the ex­ perience of another is much more likely to come from some­ one who has shared life in a similar milieu. This is one of the reasons why recovering drug or alcohol addicts appear to be 15

See, for example, Richard K. McGee (1974: 209-234).

THE FUTURE

so effective in working with other addicts. However, identi­ fication with the "sufferer" may not solve his problem com­ pletely; he may still need the assistance of professionals in the mental health field. Therefore, the roles of professionals and nonprofessionals, although different, must both be recognized as significant in the overall mental health treat­ ment system. No matter what the source of the service, however, the or­ ganizer must still find a way of making it a selective benefit. In order for a service to become an effective mechanism for implementing a by-product strategy, it must be important enough for individuals to make some sort of sacrifice, such as time or money. Alcoholics Anonymous or Synanon (Clinard, 1974: 428-430) are able to induce their members to support organizational efforts because the selective benefit (that is, freedom from addiction and its related problems) is viewed by individuals as a matter of life and death. Similarly, we find that churches that are able to convince their members that "their way" is the only way can rely on a continuous flow of contributions in return for the selective benefits (that is, salvation) offered. Of course, an individual's preferences de­ termine what is important to him; but since we are dealing here with areas that do not produce immediate concrete pay­ offs, we have to ask: to what extent can we expect neighbor­ hood residents to find nonmaterial incentives meaningful enough to make some sort of sacrifice of time, money, or other kinds of potential organizational input? We should not expect the poor person to be induced by the same kinds of incentives that may appeal to the more affluent. Frequently during the sixties, middle-class orga­ nizers (both black and white), confused the poor person's struggles with their own search for meaning in life. While certainly the poor person is faced with the same existential questions as the more affluent person, he is less apt than the more affluent person to have resolved the material problems of his life. Consequently, we may expect that although the

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

pqor person will find certain nonmaterial incentives mean­ ingful, he is also more likely than the idealistic organizer to be concerned with resolving the tangible material problems of day-to-day living. Nonmaterial incentives, such as salva­ tion, good fellowship, participation in a "just cause," and so forth may be sufficient in themselves to induce the more affluent to contribute to collective action, but the poor and perhaps the working-class are more likely to respond to in­ centives that are directly related to the material quality of life. The Black Muslims, for example, have been successful in recruiting support from people in slums and jails because their religious message is geared toward the practical prob­ lems of managing one's work and family affairs. The Muslims also have initiated cooperative business enterprises, but these are a by-product of the involvement of individuals who have already received selective benefits (Essien-Udom, 1962; Lin­ coln, 1961). From an interest-group perspective, the key to the Mus­ lims' persistence is their order of priorities; they direct their attention first to the problem of individual mobility and then to the by-product goals of collective mobility. Most of the civil rights groups and neighborhood organizations in the 1960s operated from the other direction; they focused first on collective goals and only secondarily, if at all, on individual problems. For the future, therefore, we might expect that neighborhood organizations, especially those in poor neigh­ borhoods, will be more successful if they recognize that they can handle collective tasks only after they have offered some­ thing to ameliorate the personal life-situation of individuals. The strategic position of selective benefits in the organizing process suggests ways to implement more effective federal group coalitions. Federal-group strategies (for example, the Alinsky projects) have not been very successful largely be­ cause the constituent organizations have been able to draw only upon the support of a small minority of neighborhood

T H E FUTURE

populations. We might find different results, however, if the constituent organizations made greater efforts to adjust their respective incentive structures to provide selective benefits that are meaningful to presently uninvolved residents. Again, the logic that has been employed in the past must be re­ versed. The primary problem is not building the coalition; it is finding better ways to induce persons to join the individual organizations from which a federal group is created. Here again, we have to focus on programs for individual mobility rather than for collective mobility. Let us now look at some of the probable benefits and costs of reducing the number of public takeovers of indigenous service-delivery. On the benefit side, lessening the competi­ tion from public agencies may increase the chances and the motivations of local political entrepreneurs to fulfill cre­ atively the unmet needs and wants of individuals in the neighborhood. If individuals do not have public agencies to turn to in specific areas, they may be placed in the position of forming their own in the tradition of Alcoholics Anonymous, which was created at a time when the disease was not ac­ cepted as a medical problem.18 In addition, neighborhood or­ ganizations built on autonomous resource bases do not have the organizational maintenance problems that plague pub­ licly funded programs because they do not have to provide payoffs for persons outside of the neighborhood. Finally, if local organizers are forced to find selective benefits that are truly meaningful to their potential constituents, they have a better chance of adopting organizational goals that are manifestations of the preferences of their members rather than of self-proclaimed "representatives" of the people. In turn, the diversity of life-styles and interests found within the neighborhoods may be better reflected in organizations with resident-inspired goals. 16 Alcoholics Anonymous was started in Akron, Ohio in 1935. For a historical treatment, see Alcoholics Anonymous Comes of Age: A Brief History of AA (1957).

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

On the cost side, however, we find several limitations to strategies built upon the resource base of indigenous persons, even if their position becomes more "competitive" as a result of the actions I have suggested. Some of the more effective organizations, such as the Black Muslims, owe a large part of their success to the heavy demands they place on mem­ bers; but such demands may lessen the appeal of this type of organization to substantial portions of the population. Even more problematic, of course, are the areas that require larger capital expenditures than the neighborhood, especially the poor neighborhood, can generate on its own. In fact, too much reliance on local service-delivery could conceivably lead to an increase in existing inequities in service provision because neighborhoods with more resources would be able to support better services than those with fewer resources. Further, no matter how persuasive the case may be for per­ mitting neighborhood persons to deliver services themselves, we can expect, on the basis of what we know about organiza­ tional processes, that public agencies will try to "capture" unmet service areas. Of course, the costs and benefits ennumerated here are speculative; hopefully we will have better standards for evaluation when empirical inquiry is begun on these matters. At the very least, however, we do have some basis upon which to develop "experimental" low-budget neighborhoodorganization programs. Legitimizing Neighborhood Service-Delivery17 Clearly local resources can support only selected service issues; thus we must investigate the possibilities for more fundamental structural changes in resource allocation. From a purely analytical point of view, a simple solution to the public goods problem is to give individuals the opportunity to coerce themselves into supporting collective efforts through a mechanism recognized as legitimate. The concept 17 In writing this section I have gained many helpful insights from Kotler (1969), Altschuler (1970), and Yates (1973).

T H E FUTURE

of a neighborhood union would be applicable if we assume that current centralized modes of service-delivery will con­ tinue and thus the union would be viewed as a bargaining agent vis-a-vis the public service bureaucracies. This ap­ proach, however, does not seem feasible for several reasons. First, it is unclear what sorts of things the neighborhood could "withhold" that would be equivalent to the withhold­ ing of labor. Second, coordination of unionized neighbor­ hoods, each of which would be a center of power vying for prerogatives from the central city bureaucracy, would pre­ sent a serious problem. Therefore, I prefer to consider the possibility of a neighborhood government that would retain authority over selected services within a broader federal system. The two basic areas which seem most appropriate for con­ trol by a legitimate neighborhood authority are (1) selected aspects of maintaining order and (2) responsibility for co­ ordinating the preferences of individuals in the neighbor­ hood with those of individuals within the larger federal system. The problem of maintaining order is surely one of the most explosive issues of conflict between centralized authorities and local citizens. Much has been said in recent years about the need for police to become more sensitive to and more aware of the needs of the population with whom they are working. Yet, efforts at "professionalism" have not yielded substantial changes in the perception of many local residents, especially in minority neighborhoods, that the police are an occupying army. The weakness of the "professional" ap­ proach to police-community relations is not to be found in any inherent personality problems of the police officer or with his lack of training in sociology or other social science dis­ ciplines. Rather, we are dealing here with an area of intense interpersonal contact involving judgments by the officers as to what they should or should not enforce. Because advo­ cates of "professionalism" assume that a single standard of judgment can be applied to all neighborhoods, it is not sur-

NEIGHBORHOOD OBG ANIZ ATI ON

prising that local residents with different standards become resentful of having "outsiders'" preferences imposed upon them (Skolnick, 1966: chaps. 4,11). What is called for here is a specification of the types of police functions that can most appropriately be handled through centralized administration and those that can be handled most effectively at the neighborhood level. The de­ bates over police-community relations do not normally in­ volve areas such as homicide, burglary, and arson, but rather the day-to-day order-maintenance functions that re­ quire less professional skill, such as handling drunks, domes­ tic quarrels, and noisy youths. Thus legitimate control over these latter functions could be transferred to the neighbor­ hood while control of the former functions could become even more centralized through a metropolitan police system. A transfer of legitimate authority involves several con­ siderations. One of the benefits likely to occur from such a transfer is the reduction of administrative costs. An interest­ ing empirical study shows that in smaller police districts much more money is spent on patrol services than on man­ agement services; in larger units, the reverse is true (Ostrom et al., 1973). The most compelling evidence in favor of decentralization of specific police functions is found in a comparative study of black neighborhoods in Chicago and adjacent black villages, matched according to standard socioeconomic status criteria. Citizen satisfaction with police performance was substan­ tially higher in the villages than in the city, despite the fact that the villages spent approximately $40,000 per year for police services, while the matched neighborhoods in Chicago spent approximately $500,000 each (Ostrom and Whitaker, 1971). Perhaps the strongest objection to decentralization, from a civil libertarian position, is that it might involve simply a transfer of tyranny from central city police to neighborhood police. Conceivably, some individuals might abuse their power if a neighborhood police force were established with-

THE FUTURE

out appropriate safeguards. Yet, it seems likely that local police might be more responsive to local problems than police from a larger administrative unit. As the Knapp Com­ mission report (1973) illustrates, police administrators in New York looked upon minority-group neighborhoods as almost a feudal fiefdom in which they encouraged and made personal profits from gambling, drugs, and prostitution. The lack of accountability and sensitivity to the desires of citizens of such neighborhoods is very pronounced in the report on attitudes of police officers. In addition, the lack of effective mechanisms for maintaining order has spawned numerous gangs of thugs who terrorize residents in slum neighborhoods. Under the present system, residents have no organized means to combat these groups. Moreover, the existing mode of police administration actually discourages the use of informal mechanisms in the overall resolution of problems of social control. Because centralized urban police forces lack sensitivity to local resi­ dents, individuals in the neighborhoods are not willing to trust them or to cooperate with them in solving crimes. Further, as a problem area expands, the perceived values of an individual's input or potential input decreases propor­ tionately; thus as the problem of urban social control grows, we would expect the individual citizen to feel less capable of making any effective contribution to its resolution. Alterna­ tively, if a problem area were to be divided into neighbor­ hoods, each with its own police jurisdiction, we would ex­ pect an increase in the value of the individual's input into the collective good of maintaining order. Legitimizing selective neighborhood-police functions would increase the interdependence between indigenous so­ cial organization and formal police activities, thus encourag­ ing greater solidarity in the neighborhood. It would also remove one of the most abrasive sources of conflict in urban life and reduce costs not only for the poor but for the work­ ing- and middle-class taxpayer as well. The most effective means for minimizing possible abuse of this system is to con-

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

ceive of the problem as analogous to that of individual rights within the federal Constitution, which limits local authority and guarantees all citizens protection under law. A similar kind of arrangement might be worked out with respect to appeals to metropolitan authorities when citizens perceive themselves to be harmed by the neighborhood functionaries. In the broader issue of the relationship between the law and the preferences of residents in local neighborhoods, granting prerogatives to neighborhood police will most likely lead to selective enforcement of city-wide laws in the neigh­ borhood itself. In fact, it might be preferable in some in­ stances to go even further and propose that a neighborhood government actually have selected law-making powers. I am not referring to law-making powers that would violate the rights of citizens to move in and out of neighborhoods, such as a neighborhood closed occupancy law, but to the general area of "morality laws." A transfer of prerogatives in this area to the neighborhood may be preferable to current practices. Presently, an essentially "zero-sum" conflict situ­ ation exists with regard to morality laws covering activities such as pornography and gambling. "Acceptable community standards" are now the criteria for deciding whether or not a film is obscene; yet this guideline overlooks the fact that in­ dividuals in different neighborhoods will possess different preferences on this and other morality-law issues. Perhaps we should acknowledge the validity of different standards and avoid the situation in which enforcement or nonenforcement of a single standard becomes a city-wide matter and in which some groups invariably must lose at the expense of the preferences of others. This proposal involves complicated constitutional questions pertaining to individual rights, yet it does at least provide a plausible avenue for inquiry into ways to reduce what has become a divisive issue in American domestic politics. In a metropolitan federal system, legitimized neighbor­ hood governments could also bargain over coordination problems. Obviously, legitimizing a decentralized unit's au­ thority presents costly problems for those with a responsi-

THE FUTURE

bility to develop centralized plans, such as urban renewal. But the present disorganization of neighborhoods often re­ sults in even more serious costs, especially with respect to "winner-take-all" conflict games and long delays in the im­ plementation of plans. Would centralized administrations be willing to trade some of their prerogatives in return for a more disciplined and orderly process of bargaining with designated neighborhood authorities? Here again, the social scientist can perform a valuable service by calculating the diseconomies that exist under the present system and making cost/benefit analyses of alternative bargaining arrangements. The key factor in working out a constitutional relationship between neighborhood government and metropolitan gov­ ernment is a clear specification of the prerogatives each will retain. Elected officials must overcome fear of a repetition of the experiences of the 1960s when amorphous parapolitical structures created on the basis of "maximum feasible par­ ticipation" were used in attempts to usurp the prerogatives of legitimate authorities without offering them anything in return. If properly defined, a clear separation of powers be­ tween the neighborhood and central government may have real advantages for the latter. In the area of recreation ser­ vice, for example, we might create an arrangement where the centralized administration retains control of the budget (it collects the taxes), and the neighborhood government has the authority to determine how its allocation of funds would be spent. This might alleviate some of the discontent of citizens about the responsiveness of the central government to its preferences by permitting, let us say, a neighborhood made up of senior citizens to choose different recreational services than a neighborhood made up of young families. The same principle could be applied in other service areas as well, so that centralized administrations might have a better chance of meeting citizen preferences and thus enhancing their own political fortunes. Certainly, decentralization of specific service functions through neighborhood government will lead to tensions and conflicts between the different units of metropolitan gov-

NEIGHBORHOOD OHGANIZATION eminent. But, "fragmentation" of authority through constitu­ tional mechanisms may be expected to produce a stable set of rules within which conflict may express itself. As Bish and Ostrom point out: Fragmentation of authority does increase levels of visible conflict. But visible conflict may bring out information, clarify issues and encourage a search for mutually agree­ able solutions. These potentials must be contrasted with an anticipation that highly integrated command structures may repress information, produce mistakes and result in substantial discrepancy between promise and performance

[1973: 94]. Nevertheless, we must also recognize the limitations and potential costs of neighborhood government. Although a separation of powers provides residents with the resource of legitimacy and, in effect, translates the public goods dilemma from that of a latent interest group to that of an emerging polity, it may not provide very powerful incentives for in­ dividuals to make personal contributions to collective efforts. We could not coerce individuals to pay "dues" or make sim­ ilar contributions to the organization, because our constitu­ tional system would prohibit neighborhoods from excluding noncontributors. We cannot rely on taxation as the basis of enforced contributions because, even if neighborhoods were granted the power to impose taxes on their residents, it would produce a regressive effect on the quality of services, with poor neighborhoods suffering the most. Another cost inherent in the neighborhood government solution is that in a transfer of powers, the tyranny of cen­ tralized administrations could conceivably be translated into the tyranny of the neighborhood government. I have already spoken of some ways to limit these costs in the police service area, but the issue is more complicated in other areas, such as education. The lack of responsiveness by the schools to citizen preferences is a salient issue which cuts across class lines. Simply transferring authority over education from a

THE FUTUBE

centralized administration to the neighborhood may be viewed by individual residents as unsatisfactory because it does not increase their personal choice with respect to their children's education. Even if neighborhood residents are granted legitimate au­ thority over a given service area, they may still have to con­ tend with professionals who are organized on a city-wide or state-wide basis. Attempts to decentralize education, for ex­ ample, have been resisted more vigorously and more effec­ tively by professional teachers' associations than by govern­ mental authorities. The New York plan for creating local school boards within the neighborhoods was supported by public authorities but fought with a vengeance by the teachers, especially in the celebrated Oceanhill-Brownsville case. Consequently, it does not appear likely that a neighbor­ hood government can muster enough "countervailing power" to force a professional union or association to bargain with it. Therefore, although neighborhood government offers a plausible alternative for organizing neighborhoods around selective service areas and thus is worthy of further analytical and empirical inquiry (especially with respect to the legalconstitutional questions involved here), it cannot be ex­ pected to break up the monopolies enjoyed by professionals in certain service areas, such as education. We should, then, consider another strategy, which calls for transferring re­ sources directly to individuals in the neighborhood rather than to the neighborhood itself. Voucher Systems and Neighborhood Corporations One of the most radical proposals for restructuring servicedelivery is found in Milton Friedman's voucher plan (1962: 88-107). He calls for the continuation of public funding of education, but would establish for each child an educational voucher or credit for money that he or his parents can spend in any accredited school. The parents may elect to send their children either to the public schools or to private schools. Friedman's proposal, developed from his personal ideological

NEIGHBOBHOOD ORGANIZATION

commitment to competitive capitalism, has value in this context because it provides a way of conceptualizing a sepa­ ration between public financing of services and the actual delivery of those services. On a theoretical level, at least, the voucher concept suggests a way to circumvent the inertia of large bureaucracies and the obstructionist tactics of profes­ sionals (for example, teachers' unions) by permitting in­ dividuals more choice about their participation in different types of service arrangements. On an ideological level, the most significant objection to Friedman's scheme18 is that many parents, especially poor ones, do not have the sophistication with which to make reasonable choices about their children's education. Thus, critics contend, if the voucher system were implemented, "con-men" would cheat parents of their voucher money by promising programs with instant educational success. Other critics, who are genuinely committed to libertarian-demo­ cratic ideals, see the voucher system as having direct nega­ tive consequences for racial and cultural integration. Aside from raising the constitutional issue pertaining to public support of parochial education, the voucher system would give public sanction to racially segregated schools. The most compelling objection is that a voucher plan might actually increase existing inequities in public education. For example, if the voucher were set at, say, $500 but the cost of quality private education were actually $800, parents in higher so­ cioeconomic status groups would be able to provide the difference from their own funds, while poor parents who could not afford this extra money would be forced to send their children to the public schools. The validity of these objections depends upon the specific kind of voucher system which is written into law. Potentially 18 Discussions of the pros and cons of the voucher concept as well as discussions of different voucher plans are found in Benson, The Eco­ nomics of Public Education (1968) and "Capitalism in the Classroom" (1971).

T H E FUTUKE

regressive features of the system might be ameliorated by establishing a graduated payment plan in which a student s voucher credits would vary inversely with his parents' in­ come—along the same principle as the graduated income tax. In addition, "ceilings" on tuition charges of private schools could be established. To promote the goal of integra­ tion, voucher credits or tax credits could be given to parents who send their children to integrated schools. Even if the voucher system were proved to be feasible, however, could it also be an effective mechanism in build­ ing neighborhood organizations within a federal system? The most immediate benefit of the voucher concept, as con­ trasted with the neighborhood government proposals, is that it maximizes the amount of freedom the individual will have in choosing the kind of service-delivery he desires and thus would seem to be appealing to a wide range of persons in the metropolitan area. In addition, by transferring authority to give or withhold funds to the individual, it would appear to be more effective than a neighborhood government plan in combating the power of professional associations. Further, a voucher system may play an important role in reducing the level of "anxiety" experienced by urban residents, who would no longer feel captive to bureaucratic service delivery sys­ tems. Even if they did not like the manner in which a service such as education was delivered, they would not be forced to move out of the neighborhood in order to benefit from other service-delivery systems. Consequently, the voucher transfer might slow down migration from neighborhoods. We can conceptualize the voucher as providing the in­ dividual with the resources with which to "buy" selective benefits that he could not otherwise obtain with his own re­ sources. Thus, it could becoine a mechanism that would aid implementation of the by-product approach to the public goods problem. On the other hand, the very feature which makes the voucher concept appealing to individual citizensmaximization of individual choice—may generate serious costs insofar as neighborhood organization is concerned.

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

Because individuals will have a choice as to where they will spend their resources, many of them may go outside of the neighborhood itself. "Entrepreneurs" in the more affluent areas might be able to "outbid" indigenous entrepreneurs in terms of the quality of services they can provide students. We do not have a great deal of empirical evidence upon which to evaluate the probable outcomes in this instance, although scholars favorably disposed toward the concept have sug­ gested that the experimental programs in operation show that as of now the majority of parents do send their children to schools in the neighborhood and that voucher programs increase the responsiveness of education to neighborhood preferences (Bish and Ostrom, 1973: 40). Nevertheless, the evidence here is of limited validity and we will have to wait for more scientifically controlled evaluation studies.19 It is apparent, however, that professional educators have been vehemently opposed to voucher programs as well as performance-contracting schemes, because such plans threaten their monopolistic position in the educational mar­ ketplace (Bish and Kirk, 1974: 176-177). For this reason, it is unlikely that any broad efforts to implement voucher pro­ grams will be successful unless state and national political entrepreneurs emerge to challenge the basic paradigmatic assumptions underlying the notion that "experts" can best decide what is taught. Such politicians will have to make an effective appeal to a coalition of citizens who are interested in gaining more input into services which are delivered to them. Since it has the potential to spur indigenous political en­ trepreneurs, perhaps with the assistance of social scientists, to create selective benefits that truly meet the preferences of persons in the local neighborhood, the voucher concept is certainly worthy of more intensive inquiry. Its application to 19 The difficulty has been opposition to getting experimental pro­ grams off the ground. This has come from teacher associations and from Protestant church groups who oppose permitting Catholic churches to participate. See Bish and Kirk (1974: 176-177).

THE FUTUEE

areas other than education, such as mental health or recrea­ tion, might unleash the creative energies of indigenous entre­ preneurs in meeting citizen preferences while guaranteeing that "local control" will not result in a sacrifice of levels of funding. Moreover, a voucher plan would change the locus of de­ bate surrounding public service issues from the question of which modality of service provision is preferable to the ques­ tion of what levels of funding are desirable and what are the best mechanisms for appropriating funds (for example, sales tax versus a graduated income tax). It also could have im­ portant 'fringe-benefit" effects, such as the creation of reform coalitions, not only at the local level but also at the national level. The issues arising within the framework of a voucher plan might be less divisive than they are currently because individuals would be able to select their own preferences. The political struggle thus would center around the tradi­ tional economic issues of "fairness" in funding and the gen­ eral question of how egalitarian our society should be. Of course, post-New Deal reform orientations would have to undergo a drastic reevaluation. We would have to ask, for example, whether the goal of reform is to create a society in which individuals have standardized preferences (to be de­ cided by the experts) or whether it is to focus on the problem of providing all individuals with an equal opportunity to ob­ tain the resources with which to manifest their personal pref­ erences in those service areas that directly affect their every­ day lives. It is important to recall, however, that the voucher system, like the neighborhood government concept, must be treated as a potential solution to selected service problems and that its feasibility in relation to other solutions must be evaluated in light of costs and benefits. My theoretical arguments so far would tend to suggest that neighborhood government would provide greater stability as a neighborhood organization than a voucher program, insofar as the former has legitimacy and permanency irrespective of the degree of involvement of in-

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

dividuals in its maintenance. A voucher solution places ex­ treme demands on organizers to maintain a steady flow of selective benefits in order to prevent individuals from with­ drawing their contributions to the organization; but we can expect that because of these demands, an organization built through voucher funds would have a much higher level of citizen participation than a neighborhood government plan. A comparative analysis of the effects of different plans on conflict between neighborhoods is necessary before a plan can be selected. In a neighborhood government approach to education, for example, we might expect to find competition among neighborhoods for allocation of central administra­ tion resources, including physical facilities and teachers. With a voucher plan, we would expect to find less conflict but more competition among neighborhoods for students. Another possible mechanism for channeling resources into neighborhood organizations is Milton Kotler's (1969) concept of the neighborhood corporation. It is fairly simple in that it calls for the legal incorporation of neighborhood service cen­ ters, which would provide the legitimacy and autonomy necessary to the transfer of resources to the neighborhood. Two key problems stand out in Kotler's scheme. First, he does not have any provision for the resolution of funding problems. In the neighborhood corporations that have been set up so far, funding procedures follow the traditional pat­ tern of grants from private or public sources. It would ap­ pear, then, that Kotler's scheme has the potential for the same sorts of organizational maintenance problems that have occurred in past neighborhood-organization efforts, espe­ cially if a corporation were to become embroiled in public controversy. Obviously there are sponsors who are willing to support such efforts, but such an arrangement probably would not be feasible on a nation-wide basis. Second, even if the first problem were resolved satisfactorily, we still do not have any reason to believe that the neighborhood corporation will induce large numbers of individuals to contribute to its nondivisible collective goals because Kotler has not really

THE FUTURE

addressed himself to the problem of producing "selective benefits." The voucher concept, however, ipay offer a plausible solution to both of the aforementioned problems. A neigh­ borhood corporation .financed through voucher money would be primarily accountable to the individual contributors. In order to induce them to make contributions to the corpora­ tion, the directors would have to offer individuals meaningful selective benefits that would be excluded from noncontributors. Offering selective benefits that must be paid for by the individual receiving them is critical in terms of gathering support for collective efforts, even if the corporation requires additional contributions in the form of grants or technical assistance. The neighborhood-corporation voucher plan offers some interesting possibilities for experimental programs. The basic principle of opening currently monopolistic areas of servicedelivery to competition can provide the social scientist with real challenges in measuring the costs and benefits of this arrangement in selected service areas vis-a-vis traditional modes of service delivery. It also may offer individuals in their respective neighborhoods the chance to build coopera­ tives, an option that would not be possible with their own Hmited resources. Experimentation with the neighborhoodcorporation voucher plan would, at the very least, reawaken concern for meeting citizen preferences in providing public services. The most serious obstacle to .gathering the em­ pirical evidence to measure the costs and benefits of this approach is the current lack of adequate experimentation. Possible solutions to the problems of neighborhood organiza­ tion cannot be activated until we are willing to reassess our paradigmatic assumptions about the; relationships among services, efficiency, individual preferences, and the condi­ tions necessary for persons to organise. The recommendations I have made no doubt will be sub­ ject to the same critical attitude with which I have ap­ proached the neighborhood-organization strategies of the

NEIGHBORHOOD ORGANIZATION

1960s. As we have seen, no single approach can be used to build neighborhood solidarity because we have reason to believe that the differences among service-area problems call for a variety of solutions. In a very real sense, the contemporary crisis of authority and the tearing apart of the social and political fabric of American society resembles the crisis which faced nine­ teenth-century industrial Europe. During that era, many thinkers saw only three alternatives to growing class con­ flicts: a complete abandonment of industrial society (as espoused by Utopian communal movements), a reestablishment of functional equivalents of medieval institutions (as proposed by romantic conservatives), or class warfare (as predicted by the Marxists). Yet, the resolution of that crisis was found in accepting the realities of social change and de­ veloping new mechanisms with which to institutionalize conflict, especially labor unions and electoral politics. I be­ lieve that we too can solve our urban crises if we are willing to accept the unique problems that must be dealt with in creating pluralism in the urban milieu and see them, not as a cause for alarm or despair, but as an opportunity for the social sciences to fulfill their promise as instruments for creating a better society.

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Index

Abrahams, Roger D., 18n abstracted empiricism, 101 acquiescence, 19. See also situational adaptation affluent society, concept of, 161n, 198 agricultural extension service, 65. See also farm bureau cooperatives A.I.D. (U. S. Agency for International Development), 80 Aiken, Michael, 58,174 Alcoholics Anonymous, 204, 205, 207 Aldrich, Howard, 58n alienation, 17, 75. See also situational adaptation Alinsky, Saul, 21, 29n, 64n, 96n, 97, 98,104,106-29 Alinsky approach, 106-113, 114, 115,116,117-18,119,120, 121,126 128, 129,179: and the public goods dilemma, 121-24; and legitimacy, 125-129; compared to union movement, 126-27 Altback, Philip, 98n Altshuler, Alan, 208n American Medical Association (AMA), 24-25, 91,186. See also by-product strategy American Revolution, 194 anarchists and community, 67 Anderson, Patrick, 97n, 107n, 116n, 118n anomie, See alienation

apathy of the poor, 17; toward the Community Action Programs, 132. See also situational adaptation Appalachian whites, 28, 65, 91 Aronovitz, Stanley, 98n, 107n. 108n. 109n, 124, 126n Austin, David, 165n autonomous community concept, 67-72 Axelrod, Morris, 13n Back of the Yards Council, 108-9, 124 Baldridge, J. Victor, 52n, 58n Banfield, Edward C., 3,13n, 38n, 39-40, 46, 56n, 155n, 156, 157, 158n, 172n Barnard, Chester, 5n, 58n Bell, Daniel, 3, lOOn, 130, 144, 198n Bell, Wendell, 17n Bendix, Reinhard, 16n Bennett, John C., 107n Benson, Charles S., 216n Benson, J. Kenneth, 166 Bentley, Arthur F., 14n Berger, Bennett, 16n Bish, Robert, 193, 195n, 196n, 197n, 199, 200n, 214,218n black demands, for participation in the CAP, 140-42,165,169, 170; Democratic Party schism, 163-64. See also countervailing power coalition and liberals, dilemma of

249

INDEX

black identification with community, 37-38,165-67 Black Muslims, 43, 206, 208 black nationalism, 48. See also black power Black Panthers, 33, 163n, 189-90 black political entrepreneurs, 38. See also political entrepreneur black power, 4, 21, 48, 52: conservative orientation of, 162-63; and the countervailing power coalition, 162-65; and power base in'the Community Action Programs, 165-67 Blackham, H. J., IOln Bloomberg, Warner Jr., 86, 96-97, 122, 136n Boskin, Joseph, 93 Bottomore, Τ. B., 34n, 66n Brager, George, 83n, 89n, 120, 172n Brandeis Survey, 165,168, 169, 170, 171 Brazier, Arthur M., 107n Brown, Claude, 18 Brown decision, 160 Buchanan, James M., 195n BUILD, 97 building a sense of community, 86-92 Bullock, Paul, 99n, 105,107n, 108n bureaucratization, 57, 198-99. See also public social service delivery systems Burke, Edmund, 73 Burke, Edmund M., 86 Burke, Thomas, 127n Burns, James M., 3, 48n, 130, 144 businessmen: civil rights movement, 158-60; Community Action Programs, 167ff; local decision-making, 153-56; power base, 155,160; urban

governmental form, 156-57; values, 159 by-product strategy, 24-25, 32, 33,175,178-79, 203, 207: Black Muslims, use of, 206, 208; immigrant organizations, use of, 39-41; vouchers, use for, 217 Calumet Community Congress (CCC), 106n, 107n, 111, 112, 116-18,119,124 Calvinism, 76 Camelot, Operation, 80n capital expenditures, and neighborhood organization, 203-04, 208 capitalism, 68: concept of freedom in, 183; individual contact in, 45-46; individualism in, 76-77; New Deal policies in relation to, 134-35; voucher concept, origins in, 216 Carmichael, Stokely, 21n, 38n 99n, 163n Carr, Leslie G., 19 Carter, Barbara, 107n, 118n Catholic Church, 32, 111, 112, 114 Catholic Worker Movement, 67 centralization of power, struggle over maximum feasible participation, 172-74 centralization of resources, 189-90: efficiency of, 198-200; rationalization process and, 199; relationship to inequality, 198; bearing on schism in the New Deal coalition, 198. See also public social service delivery systems and liberals, dilemma of Chandler, Alfred D., Jr., 53, 57n, 61

INDEX

changing environments, in relation to organizational strategy, 51-56 changing neighborhoods, 28 Chavez, Caesar, 27 Chicago, 158n, 164n, 171-73 choice, structure of, 185-86. See also public goods dilemma Christian community, concept of, 67 churches, organizational problems of, 53, 57-58,120, 205 Cincinnati Social Unit Experiment, 65n citizen dissatisfaction with public services, 195-96 citizen preferences in relation to concept of collective needs, 184 civil liberties, in relation to neighborhood government, 210-12

civil rights gains, 94 civil rights legislation, 93-94, 130,142,151,160 civil rights movement, 3, 26, 52, 93-94, 95-96,116,122, 125, 158-60,160-65,166,190-91 Clark, Burton R., 52 Clark, Kenneth, 38n, 137n, 172n Clark, Peter B., 5n, 59n, 155n classes, as latent groups, 8, 9, 13: and social organization, 33-35 classical economics, 46n, 85 134-35, 183,185 Clinard, Marshall B., 64n, 65, 70n, 72, 82, 87-88, 204n, 205n closed shop provision, 24. See also Wagner Act Cloward, Richard Α., 10η, 137 coalition, neighborhood, 30. See also federal group strategy coercion and collective action, 21-26, 175,178. See also exclusionary principle and public goods dilemma

Cohen, Nathan E., 26n Cole, George D. H., 68n Coleman, James S., Illn Coles, Robert, 122 Colfax, J. David, 98n, 99n collective bargaining, 134. See also Wagner Act collective behavior, 26,186. See also social movements Colm, Gerhard, 23n common good, concept of, 77, 82, 184, 188. See also single community concept Commons, John R., 14n community: and anomie, 74-75; antidote to conflict, 74-75; antidote to rationalism, 73-74; autonomous concept of, 67-72; conservatives' concept of, 73-75; creativity and, 69; depersonalization and, 68; Durkheim's conception of, 74-75; functions of, 73; individualism and, 75; integrative concept of, 73-79; intermediary social bonds and, 75; mass society, 75; Nisbet's view of, 75-76; organic concept of, 73-75; philosophical foundations of, 66-79; political concept of, 66n; reaction against classical liberalism and Marxism, 85; renunciation of the larger society, 67; Rousseauian-Marxian concept of, 66n; Tawney's concept of, 76-77 community action concept, history of, 136-44 Community Action Program elections, 132 Community Action Programs, 120-21,130-52,178,179,181, 190, 191: variations in local programs, 153-74

INDEX

community development, 66-92, 177,178,179, 181 community organization, 64n, 65. See also community development conflict: between neighborhoods, 11-12; concept of community and, 74-75; cooperative strategies and, 81-84; counter­ vailing power and, 134-35; denial of, 180-81; latent bases of, 8-12, 96, 114-18; New Deal and, 134-35; public social service bureaucracies and, 10-11. See also zero sum conflict and federal solution Congress and the EOA, 139, 140, 144, 146 consciousness III, 69. See also counterculture movement conservative ideology: and concept of community, 73-76; black power movement as, 162-63; conception of pluralism, 187-89 consumer cooperatives, in MFY, 90-91 contract, sacredness of, 44-46. See also Coppage v. Kansas cooperative community concept, 67. See also autonomous community concept coordination problems, neighbor­ hood government and, 196, 212-15 Coppage v. Kansas, 45 Cornwell, Elmer E., Jr., 38 costs of collective action, 7 counterculture movement, 67, 99 countervailing power coalition, in local decision-making, 154-56, 163-64,167,168,170-71,173 countervailing power, theory of, 13, 133-36

covert v. overt influence, in local decision-making, 155 Cox Commission, 52 Crain, Robert L., 158-59 creativity and community, 69 Crile, George, 117n culpability and freedom, 185 culture of poverty thesis, 16-17, 185. See also situational adaptation Dahl, Robert Α., 13n, 14-15,16n, 38n, 135n, 166n Daley, Richard, 115, 119, 158, 164,171-73. See also Chicago D'Antonio, William V., 155n Davidson, Roger H., 151n Debray, Regis, 26n, 53n decentralization, see federal solution de facto v. de jure segregation issues, 20,160-64 Dehli, India, 65, 87-88 Delano grape strike, 27 delinquency theory, 137 Demerath, N. J., 26n democratic participation: Alinsky organizations, 110-13; exclusionary principle and, 186; New Left organizations, 104-05 Democratic party, local level, 155, 156,157,158,164-65,167, 168, 170-71, 172 Democratic party, sources of strain, 141-42,153,154, 162-65,167,198. See also liberals, dilemma of democratic socialism, 76-77 democratic systems, flexibility of, 54-56, 93 Depression and the New Deal, 135 deviant case, poor as, 15 dignity and choice, 185 dignity and freedom, 184

INDEX

Dill, William R., 53n diseconomies of bureaucratiza­ tion, 196n, 198-200, 203. See also public social service delivery systems Djilas, Milovan, 100 Dollard, John, 18 Donovan, John C., 139-40, 141n, 143-44, 153n double filtration effect, 112-13, 149n, 178,179. See also socio-economic status and participation Downs, Anthony, 195n Draft Riots, Civil War, 93 Durkheim, Emile, 25n, 74-75

Ecklein, Joan, 27n, 64-65, 82n, 97η, 107n, 116n, 118n ecological factors, 33-35 Economic Opportunity Act, 130, 139, 144, 145 education-therapy strategy, 86. See also therapeutic approach Ehrlich, Howard J., 155n Eisenstadt, S. N., 57n elections, 1968 and 1972 Presidential, 153-54, 164n Ellison, Ralph, 18 Emery, F. E., 54n "end of ideology thesis," 100, 144 Enlightenment, conservative reaction to, 73-76 environmental conditions; effect on: development of protest, 113-19; organizational structure and; 57-60,145-47; selection of strategies, 51-56 equality: freedom and, 197-98; federal system and, 197-98; poverty and, 198; voucher system and, 217 Erbe, William, 16n, 17n Essien-Udom, E. U., 206n

ethnicity, as a basis of interest group action, 12-13, 36-41 evaluation of services, criteria for, 200-201 exclusionary principle, 33, 178, 186, 214 existential human properties, 184-85 existentialism, 101 experts, 184. See also "end of ideology thesis" and technical approach to organizing the poor expressive behavior, 17-18 external adversary participation, 170 Fantini, Mario, 4n, 52n, 95n farm bureau cooperatives, 32, 65, 91, 130,186 federal advocacy, 130, 131, 141-44,173-74,190-91 Federal Constitution, 4, 9n, 151,

212 federal group strategy, 30-32, 112, 123-24,175-76,179, 206-207 federal solution, neighborhood organization and, 194-201 Federalist, the,188-89,194,195 Festinger, Leon, 61n Feurer, Lewis S., 34n FIGHT, 97,118 financial resources, 43, 44, 50-51. See also resources Firey, Walter, 201n Fish, John H., 97n, 106n, 110, 112n, 115,126n, 128 Flacks, Richard, 98n, 106n Force, Maryanne T., 17n fragmentation of authority, 214 Frazier, E. Franklin, 38n freedom, in relation to: exclu­ sionary principle, 186; nineteenth-century capitalism, 183; public goods dilemma,

INDEX

185-86; rational self-interested man, 183-87; libertarian pluralism, 187-89 Fried, Marc, 5n Friedman, Milton, 215-16 Friedmann, John, 5n, 70n Frohlich, Norman, 38n, 63n Fromm, Eric, 13n Fruchter, Norm, 99n, 102-3, 104n Fuchs, Lawrence H., 13n function, conceptualizations of, 73-75, 76-77 Galbraith, John K., 13n, 45, 46n, 130n, 133-34, 161n, 198n gangs, 211 Gans, Herbert J., 5n, 70n, 98n, 142n gatekeepers, 204 Gemeinschaft, 78 Gerth, H. H., 8n, 9n, 35n, 68n, 199n Gesellschaft, 78 Ghandian-style nonviolence, 93 Gittell, Marilyn, 4n, 52n, 95n Glazer, Nathan, 5n, 13, 37,38n, 39n, 70n, 142n goals of community, different conceptions of, 66-79 Goodman, Paul, 69, 70 Goodman, Percival, 69, 70 Gordon, Daniel, 13n, 156 Graham, Elinor, 139n, 142-43, 138-49 "great change," 78-79 Greek city state, 67 Green, Alvin E., 131n Green Amendment, 132,147,191 Green, Philip, 4n, 95n, 126n Greenfield, Jeff, 193n Greenstone, J. David, 132n, 139n, 140, 146n, 172-73 Greer, Edward, 117n Greer, Scott, 13n Gregory, Charles O., 45n

254

Grigg, Charles, 116n, 158n, 159n group size, principle of, 23, 25-26,175, 178 Gurin, Arnold, 65n, 81, 88n, 90 Gursslin, O. R., 16 Hage, Jerald, 58 Haggsrtom, Warren C., 17n, 83n, 96n, 120n, 132n, 142,146-47 Hallman, Howard, 131n Hamilton, Alexander, 188n Hamilton, Charles V., 21n, 38n, 99n, 163n Hamilton, Richard F., 198n Handlin, Oscar, 13n, 36, 38n Hannerz, Ulf, 16n Harrington, Michael, 16n, 161n, 198n Hart, Kenneth D., 195n Harwood, Edwin S., 28,104 HARYOU, 172n Hatcher, Richard, 117n Hauser, Philip, 107n, 114-15 Hausknecht, Murray, 16n, 30 Hayden, Tom, 98n, 99n Herberg, Will, 13, 39n Hillman, Arthur, 83n, 106n, 120 Hoffman, Marvin, 4n, 95n Hofstadter, Richard, 46, 156,183n Homans, George C., 25n, 184n Horowitz, David, 62n Horowitz, Irving L., 80n, lOln Hunter, Floyd, 155n Hyman, Herbert, 17n ideology, 61-62: exclusionary principle and, 186; in foundations of community concepts, 66-79; legitimacy and, 44-48; race and, 166-67 immigrants, organization of, 13, 32, 35-42, 56 incentives, 5: Alinsky approach, 122-23,179; Community Action Programs, 148-49,178;

INDEX

Community Development, 88-89; federal group, 30-32, 112-13,123-24; New Left, 104-5; nonmaterial, 30, 31, 32, 205; organizational structure and, 58; pluralism and, 188. See also public goods dilemma income tax, regressive features of, 197-98 indigenous service delivery, 202-8 individual mobility and collective action, 43, 206-8 individual preferences, concept of, 184, 188 individualism, different con­ ceptualizations of, 73-75, 76-77, 85,102,187 individualistic solution to poverty, 28-29 inducements-contributions problem, 58. See also organiza­ tional structure and strategy Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF), 106-7, 110, 114, 128 inequality: contrasted with poverty, 161-63; versus par­ ticipation, 163; and centraliza­ tion of services, 197-98 informal social control mechanisms, 211 information, problem of, 37, 60-63, 176 integrative view of community, 73-79 interest group: neighborhood as an, 9-12, 27-28; poor as, 11-12; principles of, 175-77; public goods theory of, 22-27; social movements contrasted with, 26, 95-96; social organization and, 33-42. See also public goods dilemma intermediary social bonds, 75, 187. See also pluralism

internal adversary participation, 170 Irish immigrants, 37 Irish potato famine, 183 Jacobs, Jane, 3, 70-72, 82 Jacobs, Paul, 98n Jewish immigrants, 36 Jewish liberals, 95 Johnson, Lyndon, 142-44 Jowett, Benjamin, 181 Judge, Joseph B., 4n, 95n Kahn, Robert, 51n Kahn, Si, 65n Katz, Daniel, 51n Katz, Elihu, 57n Katz, Harold Α., 45n Keil, Charles, 18n Keniston, Kenneth, 98n, 106n Kennedy, John F., 144 Kennedy, Robert, 139 Kerner Commission Report, 192 Khinduka, S. K., 65n Killian, Lewis M., 62n, 94, 116n, 158n, 159n Kirk, Robert J., 193n, 195n, 196n, 199, 218n Knapp Commission, 211 Kochman, Thomas, 18 Kolodner, Feme, 137n Kornhauser, William, 3n, 75n Kotler, Milton, 208n, 220-21 Kramer, Ralph, 12n, 131n, 132n, 145n, 148,149-50,167n, 170, 174n Kramer, Robert, 99η, 103n, 104n Kravitz, Sanford, 132n, 137n, 139n, 147n Kriesberg, Louis, 16n Krupa, John, 117 Kuhn, Thomas S., 182n Kvaraceus, W., 38n labor unions, see union movement

INDEX Landau, Saul, 98n Lane, Robert E., 3, 130 Lasch, Christopher, 129n latent group, concept of, 7-9, 23, 24. See also public goods dilemma Lauffer, Armand, 27n, 64n, 82n, 97n,107n, 116n, 118n Leggett, John c., 19 legitimacy, problem of, 44-51, 176-77,179-80,181,182,189: civil rights movement and, 125; Community Action Program and, 146-47; neighborhood govermnent and, 208-15; organizational structure and, 59-60, 125-28; protest and, 124-28 Lenin, V. I., 26 Lenski, Gerhard E., 13n, 19 Levens, Helene, 122n Levitan, Sar A., 137n Lewis, Hylan, 16n Lewis, Oscar, 16n liberals: as allies, 94-95; dilemma of, 3,47-48, 62,94-96, 130, 141,144,151-52; viewed by the New Left, 99-102 libertarian pluralism, 187-89 Lincoln, C. Eric, 206n Lindblom, Charles E., 135n Lindsay, John, 173 Lipset, Seymour, 3, 13n, 35n, 44n,46n,52n,55n,98n,111n, 130, 186n lobby, professional, 23, 24-25. See also by-product strategy locality development, 64. See also community development local decision-making processes, 3-5,144,151,164-65,190-91 Lockwood, George B., 68 Los Angeles, CAP in, 171-73 Lynd, Staughton, 98n, 99, 101-2,

117

256

McEwen, William J., 51n McGee, Richard K., 204n McKay, Henry D., 65n Madison, James, 194n Magat, Richard, 4n, 52n, 95n Malcolm X, 18, 38n Mann, Seymour Z., 172n March, James G., 61 Marcuse, Herbert, 98n, lOOn Marrett, Cora B., 58n Marris, Peter, 83n, 130n, 137n, 138-39, 172n Marx, Karl, 26n, 33, 34 Marxism, 62, 68, 85, 99-101 Marxist political parties, 52-53, 61, 100 mass society, 13,75, 188 Maurer, John G., 51n maximum feasible participation, 131,139,140,140-42,145-46, 167-68,213: responses to in different cities, 165-74 May, Rollo, 185n, 204 mayors, struggle over maximum feasible participation, 49, 131-32, 138-40, 141-47, 150, 169-70, 172-73 mental health problems, 184, 204-5 Merton, Robert K., 57n Messinger, Sheldon L., 54n methodological individualism, 195n metropolitan government, 195-97. See also federal solution Michels, Robert, 51, 53n, 57n, 61 Miller, Delbert C., 155n Miller, Herman P., 161n Miller, S. M., 17n, 127n, 139n, 144,147, l61n Miller, William D., 67n Mills, C. Wright, 3, 8n, 9n, 13n, 35n,52,68n,98, 101, 199n minority groups, see black demands

INDEX

mixed solution, 195. See also federal solution Mizruchi, Ephraim, 17n Mobilization for Youth, 83, 89-91, 113,131,132n, 137,147,172n Moore, Barrington, Jr., 61 Moore, Ruth, 126n morality laws, 212 Morlock, Laura L., 154-55,156n, 157n movement mentality, 96,102, 104, 129. See also social movements Moynihan, Daniel P., 13, 37, 38n, 39n, 83n, 89n, 91n, 94n, 132n, 138n, 139n, 162n, 172n Moynihan Report, 162n Mueller, Samuel A., 106n, 107n, 112-13 Murray, Richard C., 107n, 126n

national character studies, 16 National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, 53 National Liberation Front, 80 national liberation movements, 26n, 53 nationalization of industry, 197-98 Neal, Arthur G., 17n neighborhood corporation, 220-21 neighborhood disorganization, 192 neighborhood union, 209 neighborhoods: changing, 28; compared to the workplace, 27-28; conflict between, 11-12; as latent groups, 7-9, 27-30; ideological resistance to legitimation of, 46-50; public goods dilemma and, 27-33 new culture, 69. See also counterculture movement

New Deal, 3,100,130,133-36, 141, 144,151 New Left, 57-58, 69, 98-106, 111-12,128-29 New Harmony, 68-69 New York, 171-73 Newark Community Union Project (NCUP), 103 Newfield, Jack, 98-99, 102,193n Nisbet, Robert A., 13n, 66n, 73n, 74, 75-76 Niskanen, William A., Jr., 199 nondivisible goods, 22, 175. See also public goods dilemma nonheroic ethic, 55, 159. See also democratic systems, flexibility of nonmaterial incentives, 30, 31, 32, 39-40, 205-8. See also incentives nonprofessionals, 204-5 nonrational social bonds, 73-76 Nordhoff, Charles, 67n North End, 70-72, 82 Novak, Michael, 193n Oceanhill Brownsville dispute, 4, 94-95, 126, 215 O'Dea, Thomas F., 35n Office of Economic Opportunity ( O E O ) , 131,132,144-47 Ohlin, Lloyd, 137 Old Left, compared to New Left, 100-101 oligarchy in unions, 186 Olsen, Marvin, 13n, 35n, 122n, 166n Olson, Mancur, Jr., 8,15, 22-27, 30, 32, 38, 45, 46n, 91,123n 124n, 130n, 133, 134n, 150n, 195n open-systems approach, 51. See also organizational strategies, in changing environments Oppenheimer, Joe A., 38n, 63n opportunity structures, 137

257

INDEX

organic concept, 73-77 organization of organizations, 112. See also Alinsky approach organizational adaptation, 51-54, 176 organizational maintenance problems: Community Action Programs, 145-47, 149-50; community development projects, 79-86; federal groups, 31-32; public social service delivery systems, 10,190 organizational process, see therapeutic approach organizational strategies, in changing environments, 51-56. See also organizational structure organizational structure, 57-60: in relation to change, 60; costs and benefits of, 59; and environmental problems, 145-47; incentives and, 148-49; inducements-contributions bargain, 58; legitimacy problems with, 59-60; 125-28; 146-47; source of zero-sum conflicts, 145; strategy and, 57-60; using protest tactics, 119-21 Ostrogorski, M., 151, 164n Ostrom, Elinor, 195n, 210n Ostrom, Vincent, 193n, 195n, 196n, 200n, 214, 218n Owen, Robert, 68, 69 pacification programs, 80 paradigm problem, 182-83, 218,

221 Parsons, Talcott, 33n participation, as an issue; compared to civil rights issues, 160-65; compared to inequality issues, 163; compared to welfare issues, 154-65

Peace Corps, 65 Pentagon Papers, 199n Perlman, Robert, 65n, 81, 88n, 90 permanent state of threat, 124 personal crises, 204-5 personal growth and community, concept of, 69-70. See also autonomous community concept personal security, 192 Peterson, Paul E., 132n, 139n, 140,146n, 172,173,174n Peterson, Richard Α., 26n Philadelphia, 171-173 Pinard, Maurice, 16n Piven, Frances Fox, 10η, 83n, 89η, 91η, 113n, 132n, 138n, 172n pluralism, philosophical foundations of, 187-94 pluralist interest group theory, 14-22, 123,187n, 189 police, 10-11, 201, 209-10, 211 police arrest records, 199 Polish immigrants, 37 political awareness, lack of, 180-81: in community development, 66, 80-85; 91, 92; in Community Action Programs, 140-44, 150, 151; in social action-protest groups, 126, 129 political community, 66n, 85 political confidence, 15 political economy, 183 political entrepreneur, 38-39, 63, political machine, 32, 39-40, 157, 158n, 171-73 Polsby, Nelson W., I55n Pondy, Lewis R., 58n poor, as an interest group, 11-12, 147-48 poor neighborhood, 27-28

INDEX

poor person, as a rational selfinterested individual, 16-21, 177-78, 184-85 populist ideologies, 193 Populist party, 55 poverty v. inequality issue, 161-62, 197-98 power elite thesis, 3,13 powerlessness of the poor, 16. See also situational adaptation President's Council on Juvenile Delinquency and Youth Development, 130, 137-39 Presthus, Robert, 155n preventing public takeovers of indigenous service delivery, 202-8

price supports, 130 private troubles and public issues, 98 processual approach to social organization, 35n professional associations, see lobby, professional professionalism, police, 209, 210 professionals, 204-5, 215, 218 protest: in the civil rights move­ ment, 93-94,116; democratic flexibility and, 54-56, 93, 118-19; environmental conditions of, 113-19; in American history, 93; latent bases of conflict and, 96-97, 114-18; legitimacyproblem with, 124-28; long-range consequences of, 121-29; New Left use of, 98-106; organiza­ tional structure and, 119-21; public goods dilemma and, 121-124; as a therapeutic technique, 96-97, 122-23; short-run consequences of, 98-121 Protestant churches, 31-32, 57-58, 58n

psychiatry, concept of rationality in, 184 psychology, concept of rationality in, 184 public choice tradition, 195 See also federal solution public goods dilemma, 8, 22-27, 175,176,178,179,182,186: in the changing neighborhood, 28; coercion and, 22; in the Community Action Programs, 147-50; in community development, 86-92; contrasted with collective behavior, 26n, 186; countervailing power concept and, 136; democratic participation problem in, 186; freedom and, 185-86; latent group concept and, 23; mobilization for youth cooperatives and, 90-92; neighborhoods and, 27-33; nondivisible character of, 22; pluralism and, 187-194; pluralist interest group theory critiqued by, 22; protest strategy problems explained by, 121-24; therapeutic approach compared to 122, 123, 186; union oligarchy problem, 186; voluntary contributions effects accounted by 22 public interest, concept of, 82, 84, 154,159. See also single community concept public social service delivery systems: citizen dissatisfaction with, 195-96; conflict generated by, 9-11, 49-50, 191-93; federal solution to, 196-98; monopolization of resources by, 189-90, 202-8 Pugh, D. S., 57n Purcell, Francis, 83n, 89, 172n

INDEX

purposive behavior of the poor, 18-21. See also situational adaptation

radical political parties, 55-56, 135-36 Rainwater, Lee, 17-18, 27-28, 162n rapping, 18. See also situational adaptation rationalism, 73-74 rationality, in relation to: freedom, 183-86; libertarian pluralism, 187; pluralist interest group theory, 21, 22,177; the poor, 21, 22,177,185; public goods dilemma, 23-27 rationalization process, 35, 67-68, 198-99 Reform Movement, in city government, 46-47, 56,156-57 Reformation, 76 Reich, Charles A., 69n, 99 reiflcation of social organization, 188 Rein, Martin, 83n, 127n, 130n, 137n, 138-39,144,147,172n religion, as a basis for interest group organization, 13 Republicans, 135,136,153,154 reputational approach, 155n resources: centralization of and equality issues, 197-98; diseconmies of centralization of, 196n; financial, 43-44, 176; legitimacy as, 44-51; monopolization by public bureaucracies, 189-93; pluralism and, 187-94; transfer to neighborhoods, 191 responses to minority demands for participation in the CAPs, 165-74 Revolutionary War, American, 194

260

Ridgeway, James, 97n, 107n, 118n Riessman, Frank, 17n, 97n, 107n, 112n riots, 192 Roach, J. L., 16 Roby, Pamela, 127n, 161n Roosevelt, Franklin D., 135-36, 144 Rose, Stephen C., 97n, 107n, 119n Rosenstock, Florence, 86, 96-97, 122, 137n Rosenstone, Robert A., 93n Ross, Murray G., 64n, 65 Rossi, Peter H., 155n Roszak, Theodore, 67n, 69n, 99n Rothman, Jack, 64n Rousseauian-Marxian concept of community, 66n Royko, Mike, 118n, 158n Rubel, Maximilien, 66n Rubin, Lillian, 133n, 137n, 146n rural community development, 65, 84, 91 Rustin, Bayard, 161n Samuelson, Paul, 22n, 23n sanctions, in relation to group size, 25-26. See also group size Sanders, Marion K., 96n, 97n, 107n, 118n San Francisco, 170 schools and neighborhood government, 214-15. See also Oceanhill Brownsville dispute Schumpter, Joseph, 54, 55,159 Seagull, Arthur, 17n searching, as an organizational process, 51, 57 Sears-Roebuck, 53, 57, 61 Seeman, Melvin, 17n selective benefits, concept of, 24, 39-41,203, 204-8,217. See also by-product strategy selective enforcement of laws, 212

INDEX

selective evaluation of services, 195, 196, 200, 201, 215 self-esteem, see therapeutic approach self-help tasks, 86-91. See also therapeutic approach self-interest, in relation to: ad­ versaries of the poor, 180, 181, 187,191; community develop­ ment, 88-91; freedom, 183-87; inducements-contribution problem, 58; libertarian plural­ ism, 187-88; pluralist interest group theory, 14; the poor, 5, 21, 22, 177; principles of inter­ est group organization, 175; public goods dilemma, 23-27; rationality, 183-87 Selznik, Philip, 51n sentiment and tradition, 73. See also nonrational social bonds separation of powers, and neigh­ borhood government, 213 services, classification of, 200-201 Shatz, Marshall, 67n Show, Clifford R., 65η Shays Rebellion, 93 Sherrard, Thomas D., 107n, 126n short-run victories and protest, 98-121 Shostak, Arthur B., 172n Silberman, Charles E., 97n, 107n, 108n, 110, llln, 112n, 114, 115n Sills, David L., 53n Simon, Herbert A., 61 single community concept, 46-47, 142-43,157,184. See also Reform Movement situational adaptation of the poor, 16-21

Skinner, B. F., 184n Skolnick, Jerome H., lln, 93n, 199n, 210n Slater, Philip, 69n, 99n

small groups, advantage of, 25, 26,133,150,175 Smelser, Neil J., 26n Snyder, John Α., 204n social action-protest strategies, 93-129. See also protest social areas delinquency project, 65n social bond, reification of, 188, 189 Social Darwinism, 183 socialism, democratic, 76-77 socialism, Utopian, 67-70 social movements,· 16, 26, 95-96 social organization, in relation to political organization, 33-42, 85, 188,189 social service agencies, involve­ ment in protest, 119-21 socioeconomic status, in relation to: federal groups, 30-32; or­ ganizational involvement, 112-13,178-79; social move­ ments, 16; voluntary associa­ tions, 16; voting, 16 Sorel, Georges, 54-55 Specht, Harry, 83n, 120 Spilerman, Seymour, 166n Spinrad, William, 155n Sproule-Jones, Mark, 195n Srole, Leo, 19n Sterne, Richard S., 199n strategy and structure, 57-60 Student Non-Violent Coordinat­ ing Committee, 99 student protests, 26. See also protest Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), 99ff Supreme Court, U. S., 44-46, 134 survival strategies, 17-18. See also situational adaptation Suttles, Gerald S., 33n Synanon, 205

INDEX

Syracuse Training Project, 131, 132n, 147 Szasz, Thomas, 184 Target Area Associations (TAAs), 131, 149-50 Tawney, R. H., 76-77,183n technical approach to organizing the poor, 85,130,133,138-40, 141, 144 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), 51, 57 Terreberry, Shirley, 53n The Woodlawn Organization (TWO), 97,106n, 111-15,118, 126-29 therapeutic approach to interest group organization, 86-91, 96-97,122-23,177,178,179, 186 third parties, in electoral politics, 55-56 Thomas, William I., 37n Thompson4 James D., 51n, 57n Tiebout, Charles M., 193n TitleII (EOA), 131,139,142. See also maximum feasible partici­ pation Tocqueville, Alexis de, 187, 188 "tomming," 18. See also situa­ tional adaptation Townsend Movement, 54 tradeoffs, 176,181, 194. See also federal solution tragic sense, and freedom, 185 transfer of resources, 191 transfer of tyranny, in relation to neighborhood government, 210-11, 214 Trist, E. L., 54n Troelstch, Ernst, 53n, 57n Trotsky, Leon, 26 Trow, Martin, Illn Truman, David B., 14n Tullock, Gordon, 195n, 199

Turner, John B., 12n two-party system, 56n two-tier solution, 196. See also federal solution tyranny of the majority, 187 union movement, 15, 23-24, 27, 44-46, 49, 52,126,130,133-36, 176, 186 United Nations community devel­ opment projects, 65, 81, 88 U. S. Steel conflict with the C.C.C., 116-18 universities, organizational adaptation of, 52 University of Chicago conflict with T.W.O., 97,114-15, 126-27 urban governmental form, 56, 156-57,168,169,170,171,182 urban renewal, 4-5, 70, 82, 97, 113, 142, 213 Utopian elements in New Left thought, 101-2 Valentine, Charles Α., 16n vested interests, resistance to neighborhood legitimacy, 44, 48-51 Vietnam War, 48, 52, 80,143 Vogt, Evon Z., 35n voluntary association, social cor­ relates of membership, 15-16 voluntary contributions, in rela­ tion to the public goods di­ lemma, 21-24, 90-92,175,178 Von Hoffman, Nicholas, 113 "vote with their feet," 193 voting: in relation to race, 122, 166 social correlates of, 16, 166 Voting Rights Act, 93,130. See also civil rights legislation voucher concept, 215-21 Wagner Act, 24, 46, 60, 130,

INDEX

133-36,146,148,176. See also union movement "Wagner Act for the Poor," 131 Walker, Jack L„ 125,158n Walton, John, 157n War on Poverty, see Community Action Programs Warren, Roland, 78-79 Waskow, Arthur, 4n Weber, Max, 8-9, 35, 51, 67, 198-99 Weissman, Harold H., 65n, 83n, 89n, 113n, 137n, 172n welfare v. participation issues, 154-65 welfare-rights organization, 4,122 Wellman, Antoinette, 89n, 90-91n Whitaker, Gordon, 210n whites, poor, 28, 165-66 Wiley, Norbert, 9n, 17n Wiliden, Arthur F., 65n Wilson, James Q., 3, 5n, l l n , 13n, 21, 38n, 39-40, 46, 56n, 58n, 113n, 142n, 155n, 156,157, 164,172n, 201n winner-take-all conflicts, see zerosum conflicts Wirth, Louis, 36 Wolfinger, Raymond, 13n, 155n

women's suffrage, 93 Wood, James R., 32n, 58n Woodham-Smith, Cecil, 183n Woodlawn Businessmen's Association, 111-12 working- and middle-class persons, in relation to: changing neighborhood, 28; costs from neighborhood disorganization, 191-93,197-98; federal solution, 197-98; inequality issue, 198; sources of their resistance to poverty programs, 161,163n Wright, Charles R., 17n Wrong, Dennis, 16-17 Yancey, William, 162n Yates, Douglas, 208n Young, Oran R., 38n, 63n Zeitlin, Irving M., 73n zero-conflicts: alternatives to, 194-201, 212; sources of, 49-50,83-84,129,145,180-81, 191-93, 203, 212, 213 Zinn, Howard, 98n, 101 Znaniecki, Florian, 37 Zurcher, Louis A., Jr., 131n

263

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

O'Brien, David J 1941Neighborhood organization and interest-group processes. 1. Community power. 3. Poor—United States. I. Title. HM136.0216 301.34 ISBN 0-691-093-63-6 ISBN 0-691-02818-4 pbk.

2. Community organization. 4. Political sociology. 75-3468