CIVIL%20SOCIETY%20

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CIVIL SOCIETY the ORGANIZATIONAL SOCIETY
At the macro-global level of analysis, daily
social, political, and economic activities are
probably more structured by organizations than in
any prior historical period. A vast web of
public, private and nonprofit orgs weave together
local communities, nation-states, and
transnational entities. A major scholarly task
is to explain the growth, forms, and consequences
of these systems for individuals and societies.
Some useful perspectives for analyzing
macro-level organizational systems include the
organizational society, policy domain, and civil
society theories.
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The Organizational Society
Among orgl sociologists, Charles Perrow was a
persistent critic of large corporations negative
impacts on societal life.
... The appearance of large organizations in the
United States makes them the key phenomenon of
our time, and thus politics, social class,
economics, technology, religion, the family, and
even social psychology take on the character of
dependent variables. (1991)
Org theorists, especially in business schools,
over-emphasize internal org practices market
efficiencies, neglect adverse effects. He saw
two likely sources for revitalizing
organizational theory
I would expect any invigoration of OT to come
from an agency-aware neoinstitutional theory
and economic sociology, including network
analysis. Being concerned with the economy as
a whole, economic sociology would have to deal
with the social impact of organizations.
(2000475)
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Policy Domains
Policy network analysts seek to explain the
formation of state-interest organization
networks, their persistence change over time,
and the consequences of network structures for
public policy-making outcomes. Developers
include British (Rhodes, Marsh), German (Pappi,
Schneider, Mayntz), American (Laumann, Knoke)
political scientists sociologists.
POLICY DOMAIN a set of interest group
organizations, legislative institutions, and
governmental executive agencies that engage in
setting agendas, formulating policies, gaining
access, advocating positions, organizing
collective influence actions, and selecting among
proposals to solve delimited substantive policy
problems, such as national defense, education,
agriculture, or welfare. (Laumann and Knoke.
1987. The Organizational State)
A policy network is described by its actors,
their linkages and its boundary. It includes a
relatively stable set of mainly public and
private corporate actors. The linkages between
the actors serve as channels for communication
and for the exchange of information, expertise,
trust and other policy resources. The boundary
of a given policy network is not in the first
place determined by formal institutions but
results from a process of mutual recognition
dependent on functional relevance and structural
embeddedness. (Kenis and Schneider 1991)
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The Organizational State
The Organizational State (Laumann Knoke 1987)
conceptualized national policy domains power
structures as multiplex networks among formal
organizations, not elite persons. These
connections enable opposing coalitions to
mobilize political resources in collective fights
for influence over specific public policy
decisions.
Power structure is revealed in patterns of
multiplex networks of information, resource,
reputational, and political support among
organizations with partially overlapping and
opposing policy interests. Action set is a
subset of policy domain orgs that share common
policy preferences, pool political resources, and
pressure governmental decisionmakers to choose a
policy outcome favorable to their interests.
After a policy decision, the opposing action sets
typically break apart as new events give rise to
other constellations of interest orgs.
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Collective Action Systems
Collective action systems such as legislatures,
courts, regulatory agencies make policy
decisions about numerous proposed laws and
regulations. Organized interest groups hold
varying pro/con preferences across multiple
policy decisions. Action sets lobby officials to
choose outcomes favorable to coalitional
interests. Decision makers may also hold policy
preferences, and may change their votes on some
events to gain support for preferred decisions.
An actors structural interest is a revealed
preference, for a particular outcome, resulting
from identifiable social constraints or
influence, which may differ from an
unconstrained preference (Mizruchi Potts
2000231). Models of socially embedded
policymaking explore how network ties shape
collective decisions through information
exchanges, political resource, persuasion,
vote-trading (log-rolling), and other dynamic
processes.
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PoliticalCleavages
Memberships in action sets for 3 U.S. labor
policy domain events revealed overlapping
patterns of organizational interests in
influencing these policy decisions. The labor
and business coalitions comprise a core set of
advocates (AFL vs. Chamber of Commerce) plus
event-specific interest organizations,
particularly nonlabor allies of unions.
SOURCE p. 354 in Knoke. 2001. Changing
Organizations.
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Civil Society
Numerous conceptions of civil society
encompassing voluntary, nonprofit, social
movement organizations networks range across
local, national transnational levels. Most CSO
definitions exclude for-profit business
organizations and the state/government.
The realm of organized social life that is
voluntary, self-generating, (largely)
self-supporting, autonomous from the state, and
bound by a legal order or set of shared rules.
It is distinct from society in general in that
it involves citizens acting collectively in a
public sphere to express their interests,
passions and ideas, exchange information, achieve
mutual goals, make demands on the state, and hold
state officials accountable...it
excludes...political efforts to take control of
the state Larry Diamond. 1994. Towards
Democratic Consolidation. Journal of Democracy
35.
Does CS include interest group orgs created by
states and businesses? Communities? Extended
families? Criminal cartels?
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International, Transnational NGOs
Globalization generates numerous international,
transnational nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) United Nations, European Union,
International Labor Org, World Bank, IMF, WTO,
NATO They contend with sovereign national
states for autonomy, resources, and political
legitimacy.
UN resolutions on Iraqi sanctions US unilateral
decision to invade Bush rescinded steel tariffs
under threat of WTO EU trade retaliation

• Ottaway (2001) tripartite governance councils
  are creating a global corporatism participation
  not by individuals but by a limited number of
  corporate groups to which they supposedly
  belong.
• NGOs can diffuse tensions, forge political
  compromises
• Danger of authoritarianism is very limited under
  nation-state system
• Unrepresentative NGOs can morph into
  self-interested bureaucracies

QUEX Are international transnational NGOs the
seedbeds of a world governance system?
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Toward a Global Civil Society?
United Nations Development Programmes Civil
Society Division works with a differentiated
conceptual framework. The new task of UNDP is
to identify and work with all parts of the
private sphere that can contribute effectively to
social human development.

• Dynamic fuzzy boundaries of CSOs reached at the
  interfaces with
• Regime in power
• Public institutions gov bureaucracy
• Governance system (the way politics government
  interact)
• Market and its actors
• Affinities obligations of (extended) families

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Fuzzy Boundaries
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Nation-States in the World-Society
Meyer et al. (1997) analyzed the worldwide
institutionalization of the modern nation-state
form (equal, autonomous, expansive). Arising
in the West, the nation-state was constructed
diffused by rationalistic cultural and
associational processes that transcend national
borders.

• Three drivers toward the isomorphic nation-state
• World societal statelessness
• Multiple levels of legitimated associational
  actors
• Internal contradictions inconsistencies

Scholte (2002) noted democratic deficits in
current global governance. Positive
interventions from civil society groups can
infuse global governance with greater democracy.
CSOs should complement other political processes.
QUEX What are the prospects for replacing
nation-states with supra-state forms of
world-society sovereignty governance? Are
states still too powerful to allow any serious
erosions in their legitimate authority and
control over force within their territories?
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References
Kenis, Patrick and Volker Schneider. 1991.
Policy Networks and Policy Analysis
Scrutinizing a New Analytical Toolbox. Pp. 25-62
in Policy Networks Empirical Evidence and
Theoretical Considerations, edited by Bernd Marin
and Renate Mayntz. Boulder/Frankfurt
Campus/Westview Press. Knoke, David, Franz Urban
Pappi, Jeffrey Broadbent and Yutaka Tsujinaka.
1996. Comparing Policy Networks Labor Politics
in the U.S., Germany, and Japan. New York
Cambridge University Press. Laumann, Edward O.
and David Knoke. 1987. The Organizational State
Social Choice in National Policy Domains.
Madison, WI University of Wisconsin
Press. Mizruchi, Mark S. and Blyden B. Potts.
2000. Social Networks and Interorganizational
Relations An Illustration and Adaptation of a
Micro-Level Model of Political Decision Making.
Research in the Sociology of Organizations
17225-265. Perrow, Charles. 1991. A Society of
Organizations. Theory and Society
20725-762. Perrow, Charles. 2000. An
Organizational Analysis of Organizational
Theory. Contemporary Sociology
29469-476. United Nations Development Programme.
2003. lthttp//www.undp.org/csopp/CSO/NewFiles
/programmesglobalfmwrk2.htmframewrk2gt