Unequal polities

Most nations are at least nominally based on the idea of the legal equality of all citizens. This commitment provides a salient pathway through which even the most disadvantaged groups can pursue their goal of achieving greater equality for themselves and their communities, consistent with the defining values of the nation. Some countries, however, have embodied legal differences among groups of their citizens based on the religion or ethnicity of the person. And in these circumstances, pariah groups have no pathway -- legal or moral -- through which to attempt to create a non-violent pathway towards greater social justice for themselves.

Malaysia is a striking example of the latter circumstance. Its constitution and legal system give fundamental privileges to members of the Malay majority, referred to as "Bumiputra" privilege, and accord more limited rights and opportunities to non-Malay groups (Indian, Chinese, Christian, other). It is a polity based on differential rights for different ethnic and religious groups. Many of the most desirable opportunities in Malaysian society -- in employment, government office, contracting, and education -- are reserved or prioritized for Malays, defined as a racial group. It is hard to see how such a political system, defined on the premise of significant legal and economic inequality across different groups, could be justified to members of the subordinate groups. And, in fact, large street demonstrations in 2007 by the Indian community marked an exceptional indication of the discontent these policies create, and the lack of legitimacy these policies create in the whole population.

The question here is a fairly specific one: how can a polity founded on these sorts of invidious and permanent distinctions among groups of its citizens remain stable? Is it possible to generate any variety of "political legitimacy" across the whole population that contributes to political stability in these circumstances of extreme constitutional inequality among ethnic groups? How can the government maintain its power and ability to govern?

In the case of Malaysia the answer to the question about governing seems to be a combination of institution-rigging, force, and intimidation of the large ethnic populations. The constitution sets the stage with its stipulation of Bumiputra privilege. And electoral and parliamentary rules pretty much guarantee a permanent and large Malay majority in the parliament for parties such as the UMNO. So the political rules entrench the political hegemony of the Malay majority. This means that minority ethnic groups and parties have no hope of gaining progress towards legal equality of rights of citizenship through the legal process.

And this is where force and intimidation come in. It would seem that the strategy of mass demonstration and protest would be a natural recourse for large ethnic groups in Malaysia. But the state has made it clear that it will quickly suppress demonstrations with force -- in fact, the 2007 demonstrations were striking by their rarity in Malaysian public life.

But there is a deeper and more sinister kind of force in the air as well. This is the threat of largescale "race riots" directed against Malaysia's Indian and Chinese communities. The riots of 1969 were vicious and destructive, and they are remembered. The threat of pogrom and ethnic cleansing by Malays against Indian and Chinese Malaysians is not far from the surface and it is taken seriously. Rhetoric by UNMO politicians in speeches before parliament reinforce this sense of threat.

The theoretical questions at issue here can be posed from two angles -- the state and the group. From the state's point of view, the question is whether it is possible to navigate the fundamental conflict of interest that is created between Malays and the rest of Malaysian society through some combination of minor accommodation and the threat of repression. Can a consensus politics, backed by the perennial threat of force, emerge from this kind of fundamental inequality across groups? From the point of view of the large Indian or Chinese Malaysian populations, the question is whether there are tactics of collective action and popular mobilization that might allow them to pursue their demands of social and political equality effectively. Can they turn the tables on the Malay government? Can they gradually create the conditions in which the Malaysian state is compelled to accept the fundamental premises of a just civil society -- equality of all citizens and free rights of political participation for all?

Here is a link to an independent Malaysian news source that many Malaysians have confidence in.

Labor mobilization

Workers are a group who ought to be readily prone to mobilization. They are brought together into proximity with each other in large numbers in factories, rail stations, ports, and other workplaces. The circumstances of production usually give them causes around which to gather -- health and safety issues in the workplace, bullying or disrespectful treatment by supervisors, petty or demeaning work rules. And the business incentives created for owners and managers assure an environment in which workers are likely to have economic grievances, ranging from low pay to withheld wages to pension fund corruption and default. So the conditions for mobilization of workers in protest and advocacy seem propitious almost everywhere. And yet passive acceptance seems about as common as spontaneous or organized protest and resistance. So what other factors come into play? What explains historical patterns of worker passivity and protest? And going a bit further, what factors influence the form that protest takes when it occurs?

Marx's answers to these questions are well known. The development of industrial capitalism brought about the objective conditions for a militant working class identity. Capitalism increasingly erased differences among artisans and other producers. It conducted a process of commodification of labor that increasingly place all producers in the condition of wage labor. And the imperatives of profits pushed the industrial system towards worse working conditions, lower wages, and a degraded social position. The emergence of a unified class identity and a readiness for protest was inevitable. "Workers of the world, unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains."

Marx's story here isn't a fantasy. There are real institutional processes embedded in this story that correspond pretty well to the historical experience of labor and capital in many countries and times. But neither is it an iron law of social development. Each country's experience of development is somewhat different -- sometimes in major ways. And crucially, the result Marx expected -- a steadily rising tide of radical worker mobilization -- has certainly not occurred. So, once again, what are the more specific and local factors that influence the occurrence and form of worker mobilization?

One of Charles Tilly's central ideas about the occurrence of protest is its historical character. Protest movements have histories that form their present. Tilly emphasizes the central role that traditions and repertoires of protest play in virtually every instance. Protest is not simply the automatic response to exploitation and bad conditions. Rather, protest is an act of collective agency. And this means that outrage and protest must be conceptualized and placed into a practical context. So traditions of protest and grievance play a key role in determining the occurrence and form of mobilization. Parades, strikes, boycotts, road blockages, and petitions all represent forms of the "art of resistance" that have developed differently in different traditions of popular politics. (See The Contentious French for more on this.)

E. P. Thompson's focus on the particulars of the group identity that has formed represents another crucial factor that helps explain differences across historical settings. Classes make themselves -- and they make themselves in different ways. William Sewell's treatment of the guild consciousness of nineteenth century workers in Marseilles illustrates the point (Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848). Historians and sociologists can observe these processes of identity in formation through a variety of ways -- both historically and in the present. And these differences in consciousness formation have consequences for mobilization and action. For example, C. K. Lee argues that China's workers today, in both "rustbelt" and "sunbelt" settings, have absorbed a set of attitudes towards the moral importance of their legal protections within existing Chinese law, that profoundly influences the form that protests take Against the Law: Labor Protests in China's Rustbelt and Sunbelt.

Resource mobilization theory highlights another crucial factor that helps explain differences in mobilization across similar material settings. For a group to successfully constitute itself as an effective collectivity, it needs to have access to a range of resources. Communication requires resources; organization requires fulltime activists; propaganda requires access to printing assets; and so forth. So we can get a better picture of the status of labor mobilization in a particular setting, by examining the resources and opportunities for collective action that exist for potential activists.

Organization is a factor that also makes a large difference in the occurrence and form of mobilization. The presence of the IWW plays a key role in Howard Kimeldorf's account of Philadelphia dock workers (Battling for American Labor: Wobblies, Craft Workers, and the Making of the Union Movement). The CCP is key in Lucien Bianco's trarment of peasant mobilization in China (Peasants Without the Party: Grass-Root Movements in Twentieth-Century China). Organizations permit a movement to acquire the coordination of effort required by successful mobilization. And it permits "escalation" -- extension of mobilization to a broader territory or a broader set of alliances.

It is also important to recognize the role that agency and strategic interaction play in the unfolding of mobilization. Struggle involved multiple parties responding to each other's actions. And the outcome may be entirely unforeseen; state actions can both ameliorate the causes of worker grievance (through more vigilant regulation, for example) and deepen worker grievance (through a legal system that systematically disregards worker claims) -- and may even do so at the same time.

A final factor that needs mention is the state. Actions and policies by the state can have a large effect on mobilization at several levels. Through regulation it can reduce grievances -- pension fund abuse, health and safety issues, intimidation in the workplace. And by providing a substantial social security system -- unemployment benefits, access to healthcare, decent treatment of the elderly -- it can blunt some of the aggressively harmful tendencies of the unbridled private system that would otherwise lead to explosive protest. Finally, the state can use its coercive and legal power to channel protest in one direction rather than another.

So where does this take us with respect to the original question -- what explains patterns of worker mobilization? We've noticed some general circumstances that are conducive to worker activism and mobilization. But this account also highlights a wide suite of independent factors that influence mobilization, both up and down. This treatment reinforces the view that social change is highly contingent. And it shows the irreplaceable role to be played by good, specific works of historical sociology. No comprehensive theory suffices for any particular case. Instead, we need to discover the particular ways in which general processes and more contingent factors come together to forge a particular historical juncture. (An influential recent book that tries to work out where workers' movements might be going in the twenty-first century is Beverly Silver's Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization Since 1870.)

Agency and deliberation

People act as a result of a great variety of mental influences: instincts, emotions, impulses, loyalties, norms, as well as reasons, intentions, and plans. A subset of this cacophony is "rational-intentional action": actions that are the result of deliberation about ends and means, and choice among the set of available options for action. How does this sub-system of action fit into the larger swirl of psychological causes within the actor's mental system? The photo to the right is relevant; it is an image of a demonstration at Berkeley in the 1960s, in which the motives of the participants were surely a mix of rational, ethical, emotional, and collective impulses.

One picture that philosophers of action have used is the idea of "higher" and "lower" faculties of motivation and choice. This is an Aristotelian model of practical reason. The higher system is the rational process of deliberation; the lower system is the range of emotions and impulses; and the point of the picture is that the rational component should govern the workings of the lower faculties.

How does this construction work as an empirical theory of human behavior (even if an idealized and simplified one)? It could prove faulty in several different ways: The emotions could turn out to be the more important cause, with rational deliberation a weak and tardy late arrival. Or it could turn out that the system of action is a more integrated process in which "emotion" and "deliberation" play a more equal and interactive role. Or it could turn out that these two realms really can't be separated at all, and reason and emotion are comingled. We might find that it is possible to deliberate and reason about emotions, and it is possible for some emotions to push the deliberative process one way rather than another. And, most radically, it could be argued that these categories of introspection and folk psychology don't explain behavior at all; instead, we need a more scientific and non-mentalistic foundation for explanation of behavior.

There are a few basic facts about action that constrain any proposed theory:

(a) actions are influenced by the goals that people have, so deliberation must be a part of the story. Whatever else we observe, it is certainly true that people are sometimes goal-directed and calculating.

(b) We can provide clear and important examples of actions provoked by emotion or passion, so means-end rationality isn't the whole story.

(c) People often give reasons for actions that do serve to motivate their actions, but that are not framed as "means-end" reasoning. (For example, acting out of fairness.) So there are instances of action that are reasoned but not utility-maximizing.

What these points seem to demonstrate is that the mental system underlying behavior and choice is complex. No simple theory -- Markov mechanisms, operant conditioning, maximization, or rule-following--captures the full range of behavior.

These questions are important for several reasons. First, we need some indication of an answer to the question if we are to have confidence in rational choice theory at any level. Second, our ability to explain a wide range of human behavior depends on our having better ideas about how reasons, emotions, and norms play out to create behaviors such as extreme altruism, hate crimes, suicide attacks, or indifference to the suffering of others. So social science needs to have a credible theory of human agency and choice.

Who has the right kind of expertise to attempt to theorize in this area? Philosophers, to start; this discipline has devoted a lot of rigorous effort towards creating a framework for talking about the mind, intentionality, and action. Second, psychologists have some powerful theoretical tools for conceptualizing and investigating behavior. Here I think of the example of cognitive psychology and its paradigm of trying to devise theories that would represent a psychological process that possesses a given set of cognitive capacities (memory, pattern recognition, speech). And, conceivably, it might be that the discipline and methods of neurophysiology and brain science can shed light on action and mentation as well.

Agency, action, and norms

How do norms influence behavior? More fundamentally, what is a norm?

The question arises for two separate reasons. First, we are interested in knowing why people behave as they do (agency). And second, we are interested in knowing how large social factors (moral and cognitive frameworks, for example) exert influence over individuals (social causation).

The agency question is the more fundamental. Philosophers typically want to answer the question in terms of a model of practical rationality and deliberation. One philosophical answer derives from Aristotle and represents action as the result of rational deliberation. Individuals have a set of goals and values; they have a set of beliefs about the world; and they deliberate about the choices they confront with the aim of achieving their goals consistent with their values, given their beliefs about the world. But philosophers and thinkers as diverse as Nietzsche, Skinner, or Adorno would take issue with this reason-centered theory of action. Other sources of behavior might include unconscious habits or prejudices, instincts, impulses, emotions, and role-playing. A model that incorporates these diverse possible influences on action is unavoidably complex -- but human behavior is likewise complex.

Now let's try to locate the role of norms within a theory of agency. Norms have to do with the reasons and motives that people have for their actions. A norm is a particular kind of influence on action: it is a rule of behavior that leads someone to do something that is otherwise contrary to immediate impulse or interest. Norms get us to do things we don't want to do.

We might say, then, that a norm is a rule of behavior -- for example, "Don't wear shorts to a business meeting," "Don't take coins from the blind man's cup," "Give up your seat on the bus to a disabled person." And a rule can either be internally or externally represented; this means that the the rule may be internalized into the agent's process of decision-making, or it may influence the agent's behavior through punishments and rewards.

Even this simple discussion raises questions, however. Do norms have to be consciously accessible to the agent? Is a moral principle such as "Always keep your promises" a norm, or do ethical principles fall in a different category? Do norms have rational justification, or are they simply an accidental social product like tastes or styles?

As for the ways in which norms influence behavior --

It would seem that there are only a few mechanisms through which norms could possibly influence individual and collective behavior, largely distinguished by being external and internal.

First, it may be that there is an effective mechanism of social education through which each individual develops or activates an internally regulative system of norms or rules. This process can be described as "moral education." The most superficial observation of social behavior indicates that this is so, and social psychologists and sociologists have some ideas about how these systems work. But the bottom line appears fairly clear: individuals who are reared in normal human settings eventually possess action-behavior systems that embody a set of personal norms that influence their conduct. We might draw the analogy to the example of language learning: a normal human child is exposed to the linguistic behavior of others, and arrives at a psychologically realized grammar that guides his/her own language production.

Second, a norm might be embodied in the attitudes, judgment, and behavior of others in such a way that their actions and reactions create incentives and disincentives for the actor. For example, others may possess a set of norms concerning civility in public discourse, and they may punish or reward others according to whether their words are consistent with these norms. In this case the agent conforms to the requirements of the norm out of a calculation of costs and benefits of performance. (It would appear that there is a possibility of circularity here: the externally imposed norm depends upon the internally embodied norm of enforcement of the content of the rule on the part of others.)

Third, it might be the case that there are some norms of inter-personal behavior that are hard-wired. Some norms might have a biological, evolutionary basis. This is the line of thought that sociobiologists have explored with varying levels of success. The emotional responses that adults have to infants and children probably fall in this category -- though it is a conceptually interesting question to consider whether these emotional responses are "norms" or simply features of the affective system. This is relevant to the work that Allan Gibbard does in Wise Choices, Apt Feelings: A Theory of Normative Judgment. Gibbard's fundamental insight seems to be that there must be an evolutionary basis for the "norm-acquisition system" -- the features of human psychology that permit them to acquire certain kinds of moral motives (altruism, friendship, fairness).

So -- what can we say about norms? Human beings act on the basis of deliberation, norm, impulse, and emotion. So our theory of practical rationality and action must make a place for the workings of norms. Second, norms are transmitted to individuals through concrete social processes -- family experiences, schooling, religious institutions, etc. Our theories of social life must incorporate an account of the processes of normative education through which individuals come to possess a particular normative structure. These experiences are the counterpart to the exposure to language on the part of the infant. And third, norms are socially enforced through the actions of others. So norms are socially embodied -- in the institutions of enforcement, the institutions and practices of moral education, and in the practical cognition of the individuals who make up the society.

New forms of collective behavior?

Personal electronic communication and the Internet -- have these new technologies changed the game for collective action? Here I am thinking of email and instant messaging, but also cell phones and other personal communications devices, as well as the powerful capacity for dissemination of ideas over the web -- has this dense new network of communication and coordination fundamentally changed the ability of groups to pursue their political or social goals?

There is no doubt that these technologies are relevant to collective action. Communication, coordination, and assurance are crucial features of successful collective action -- and these are precisely the qualities that current technologies offer. Moreover, the ability for a party or movement to disseminate its programs, ideas, and promises to potential followers is crucial for its ability to gather support; and this is what the Web offers better than any prior form of communications technology.

A couple of data points are relevant.

• The City of New York has recently subpoenaed the software and records of TXTmob from an MIT graduate student (story). TXTmob is a software tool created more or less on the fly before the party conventions in 2004 to permit demonstrators to use text messages to assemble and disperse quickly and effectively.
• Will.i.am's music video of Barak Obama's "Yes We Can" speeches has been viewed by eight million people since posting on YouTube -- generating funds, votes, and passion for the candidate.
• Cell phone photos and videos have made their way out of Tibet and Burma documenting the crackdowns that have occurred in those places -- allowing passionate groups of people outside the area to bring their protests to bear.

So what is genuinely new in this list? Covert cameras and travelers have existed for a long time. Cell phones were available in Gdansk and Teheran during street protests there in the 1970s. And newspapers, magazines, and television and radio have disseminated ideas widely. So, again, is there any reason to think that current communications technologies have changed anything fundamental -- either the nature of popular mobilization or the balance of power between the powerful and the numerous?

Two factors are important enough to significantly change the nature of struggles between the powerful and the popular. First is the capacity for coordination among a large group that is created by cell phones and IM devices. A "flash mob" can form and dissolve in minutes. This can make their actions and demonstrations more effective and more difficult to repress. And there is a secondary benefit for the organization -- rapid multi-sided communication can help to maintain solidarity and commitment within the group.

Second, the low cost and broad distribution of web-based communication gives a new advantage to the numerous but poor. Swift Boaters required hundreds of thousands of dollars to disseminate their attack ads against candidate Kerry -- whereas a six-minute video can reach millions of people on YouTube for free. This tips the balance of power away from the deep pockets towards the creative activist group.

So it seems reasonable to judge that these communications technologies are indeed a significant new element in the field of play of collective action. Groups can self-organize more effectively; they can coordinate their actions; and they can share and reinforce the urgency of their commitments through the use of cell phones, text messages, web pages, and dissemination points such as YouTube.

All this has implications for popular politics within a law-governed democracy. It is less clear that these technologies offer as much leverage for the powerless within an authoritarian state. Combine a powerful authoritarian state's ability to monitor communications with a perfect readiness to repress activists and dissidents and to control the technology -- and you get a situation in which these tools of communication are much less useful for an opposition.

Chaos and coordination in social life

Much social behavior is chaotic, in that it simply emerges from the independent choices of numerous agents during a period of time. It is analogous to Brownian motion -- particles in a liquid moving in random motions as a result of innumerable bumps and pushes at the molecular level.

However, there are also many patterns that become visible in social behavior -- examples of what I would like to call "coordinated social action": stock market panic selling, holiday travel, rumors, style, riots, pickpockets in train stations. And we can identify many causes of coordination of individual behavior into larger patterns: commands, regulations, institutions, customs, conventions, collective plans, shared beliefs about social behavior, common sources of information, and common changes in the environment of choice, for example.

What I mean by "coordination" here is the opposite of chaos -- something analogous to the coherence of photons associated with the laser effect. In a laser a set of photons are stimulated to fire coherently with each other, resulting in a beam of light that possesses focus and parallel propagation that is different in kind from the scattered diffusion of photons from an incandescent bulb. "Coordinated" social action is a set of actions that possess synchronicity or regularity in their occurrence, resulting in an observable regularity of behavior over time and space. A crucial problem for social inquiry is to provide an explanation of the mechanisms that underlie the instances of coordinated social action that we can identify.

Examples of coordinated social action can easily be offered, and specific mechanisms can be identified that produce these forms of social coordination. An army moves in concert across a landscape (command). People drive on the right in North America (regulation). People send their children to school (institution). People greet each other with a polite "good morning" (custom). Villagers come together to fish as a group in the morning (convention). People discuss a spontaneous demonstration in front of the mayor's office on Wednesday, and many appear (collective plans). Drivers choose Route 3 rather than Route 1 because they expect a lot of traffic on Route 1 (shared beliefs). People buy a large number of batteries and chocolate, anticipating an approaching hurricane (common environmental change).

These are all mechanisms that create a degree of coordination or synchronization of behavior among independent agents. There seem to be several large categories of mechanisms here: hierarchical coordination (command, regulation); common response coordination (each individually responds to the same signal); communications and network coordination (individuals exchange messages to secure coordination); and strategic coordination (each intends to behave in a way that will be desirable given his/her expectation of actions by others). Might we try out the thought that all forms of regularities of social behavior derive from one or another of these forms of coordination? This thought is probably somewhat too strong a claim. For example, there are probably social regularities that derive from our biology and evolutionary histories -- limitations of memory, bonds of intra-group loyalty, kin altruism. But the impulse is a sound one: when we are able to observe patterns of social behavior, there must be a cause of those regularities that works its way through influence on the individual actors who constitute the domain of action. And there are only so many mechanisms that might serve.

These sorts of regularities and mechanisms constitute part of the regularity of social life, but perhaps only part. It may be that they don't capture other kinds of more "structural" regularities -- for example, "racial discrimination increases health disparities," "feudal political systems are slow to respond to external aggression", "capitalist market systems are more innovaative than planned economies". But there is an important aspect of social explanation that centers exactly on this question: what are the social mechanisms that bring a degree of coherence and coordination among the actions of a population of independent actors?

Reasoning about agents

Rational choice theory usually advances a highly abstract theory of decision-making -- utility-maximizing choice among discrete options -- and then draws deductive conclusions. But actual human reasoners don't look much like this abstract ideal. It is interesting to consider how much one can explain while weakening the heroic assumptions about agent rationality. It turns out that it is possible to explain quite a bit of social behavior on the basis of a theory of agency that incorporates only a few qualitative assumptions about practical agency: purposiveness, deliberation, comparison, and choice -- without the specific mathematics of utility theory. And this gives a basis for a “practical agency” type of social explanation that doesn’t fall directly under the many criticisms that are offered of formal rational choice theory. And it represents a framework of analysis that corresponds fairly directly to Aristotle’s conception of deliberation.

First, purposiveness. We assume that agents have purposes -- states of affairs that they want to bring about. Their actions are intended to bring about their goals. (This is the basic assumption of means-end rationality.)

Second, deliberation. We assume that agents collect information about the courses of action that are feasible in the moment. And they collect information about the likely consequences of the various actions that they are considering. Within a deliberative process they choose an action to pursue.

Third, comparison. We assume that the agent deliberates by considering the advantages and disadvantages of each action (costs and benefits) and the degree to which the possible or probable effects of the choice serve the set of purposes the agent pursues. Further, the agent may compare choices on the basis of the nature of the action itself rather than solely on the basis of consequences -- that is, the agent may combine deontological considerations with utilitarian considerations (this represents an element of Kant’s theory of moral decision-making). That is, the agent chooses on the basis of full comparison of the choices.

So far we have described purposive deliberation without invoking utilities. We have invoked the idea of preference in this account, because we have assumed that the agent prefers outcomes that better fulfill his/her purposes. And we have likewise invoked comparison and the idea of “more and less” of something in ranking outcomes. The apparatus of utility theory is one way of articulating or modeling these features -- but we are not forced to attribute a full apparatus of utility measurement and aggregation in order to attribute purposiveness and comparison. It will suffice if the agent can judge "X is better than Y in fulfilling my purposes."

So let's refer to this less abstract description as a “broad theory of purposive agency”. The question here is a simple one: does this description give us enough to get a social explanation going? I believe that it does, and that this demonstrates that the conception of agents as purposive decision-makers is more durable than any particular formal theory of decision-making.

I support this observation with a single inconclusive illustration. We can reproduce the public goods problem, and the derivation of the rationality of free-riding, using only the comparative resources of the reduced theory of agency. And we can simultaneously prepare a theoretical location for future empirical research for those instances where free-riding does not materialize as expected.

First the derivation of the tendency toward free riding in the presence of public goods. The agent has preferences among the possible outcomes of possible collective action. He/she recognizes that the probability of realizing the collective good is not significantly altered by participation. Agent further recognizes that there is a cost to participation. Agent decides to not participate, based on costs and outcomes: the benefit of participation and non-participation is equal and the cost of participation is greater, so non-participation is preferred.

But now consider what happens when we turn on a deontological component of the comparison. Agent notes that non-participation involves taking unfair advantage of the actions of others. Agent prefers actions that are fair. Agent therefore chooses participation.

Finally, we might further complicate things by allowing that agent allows tradeoffs between the cost-benefit comparison and the deontological comparison. In some instances the weight of fairness prevails and agent chooses the less-good alternative. In other cases the situation reverses. Agent sacrifices minor unfairness and chooses the better outcome.

There are many, many examples of explanations in sociology, anthropology, and history that account for an outcome based on analysis of the situation of deliberation confronting a hypothetical set of purposive agents; and substantial explanations ensue. (As one example, consider Jean Ensminger’s explanation of Kenyan cattle-tending and bride price practices as a solution to a principal-agent problem between cattle owners and cattle tenders; Making a Market: The Institutional Transformation of an African Society.)

The power of the authoritarian state

If any collective entity possesses power, surely it is the state in a dictatorship – the Burmese military dictatorship or the single-party states of Cuba or China. So how does an authoritarian state exercise power?

It is common to equate power with the ability to coerce and threaten in order to compel behavior. And certainly force and repression play a crucial role in authoritarian politics. But even within a dictatorship the instruments of coercion are less than total. When the priests and young people of Burma went into the streets of Rangoon a few months ago, the military rulers were able to use a mix of violence and restraint that permitted them to prevail against a budding democracy movement in Burma. But in the past twenty years rulers in the Philippines, Czechoslovakia, and Tbilisi have found that their arsenal of water cannons, secret police, and truncheons have not sufficed to silence the streets. Plainly, then, control of the forces of repression is an important component of the power base of an authoritarian dictatorship; but its scope is not unlimited.

As was true in other postings about power, we have to begin by asking about the relational situation of the relevant actors. What is the will of the state? What is the scope of behavior that the state wishes to control? Who are the agents who are subjects to the state's power? We might put the geometry of state power into a simple diagram: goals and priorities => levers of influence (repression, persuasion, bribery, cooptation, horse trading) => varied actors (civil servants, military officers, community leaders, bandits, citizens) => behavior. From the dictator’s point of view, there are two sets of actors over whom power needs to be exerted: intra-state actors – persons charged within the government to carry out the dictator’s will; and actors in civil society – the citizens and organizations that make up mass society. Intuitively, the power of a state is measured by its ability to constrain the behavior of a set of actors in ways that permit it to achieve its goals.

Let’s look first at the intra-state actors. A state is a bureaucratic entity with decision-makers at a range of levels. Ministries and organs of the state -- the police and military for example -- have their own sources of power and domains of influence that are not fully within the control of higher authority. So the highest authority -- president or general – has only a limited ability to directly impose his will upon lower levels. In the extreme case the executive can discipline or remove the lower-level director. But this lever is imprecise; it leaves the agency director a certain amount of undetectable freedom of action. So we can readily envision the situation where the executive has announced a certain priority for his government, and where two important ministries come into conflict over what to do. And one or both may be motivated by local interests rather than the priorities of the state. (This seems to be an important clue in explaining some current developments in China. Central policies enacted in Beijing are ignored or reconsidered in regional government offices.) In this instance we need to ask, what levers of power and influence does the executive have within the government itself through which it can compel compliance by both agencies?

At this level we find the familiar processes of cooptation, alliance, inducement -- as well as threat -- found in all organizations. Perhaps a singular difference is that the use of violence is closer to the surface in dictatorship than in other political organizations. But the task facing the fascist dictator has much in common with that of the executive of other large organizations with multiple agendas. The 20th century confronts us with some extreme cases -- Stalin's terrorism extended within his government as well as towards Soviet society at large, and Stalin used purges and executions to compel bureaucratic compliance. But it is an important question in organizational studies to assess the degree to which force and violence can effectively run a complex organization. And it seems likely that more ordinary mechanisms of persuasion and cooperation must usually be invoked.

So much for the problem of exercising power within the state. Now consider the larger and more interesting question of power used against civil society and ordinary citizens. The issue of power arises only when the state wants a certain kind of behavior and citizens don’t want to behave in this way. Take the large issues over which states want to exercise their will over citizens: taxation, conscription, and delivery of agricultural products. There is, first, the use of the threat of punishment to compel conformance. Draft dodgers can be hunted down and punished, villages can be threatened with violent retaliation if villagers avoid taxes, and food can be withheld from non-compliant regions (for example, Stalin's war on the kulaks; see Lynne Viola, ed. The War Against the Peasantry, 1927-1930: The Tragedy of the Soviet Countryside). Moreover, if the state can establish a pervasive network of police and informants, it can make its threats credible -- with the result that compliance with law and dictum is reasonably high. So the organs of repression are certainly an important element of power for the authoritarian state.

Beyond violence, beyond effective enforcement, what other levers of behavior modification exist for the state? Two come to mind immediately: propaganda and the market. States often have a substantial degree of control over the instruments of thought formation -- schooling, media, and communications technology. And experience has made it clear that there is a substantial degree to which a population's behavior can be altered through these tools. Markets and other impersonal social mechanisms are another important mechanism for shaping behavior. China's one-child policy was successful in altering the reproductive behavior of hundreds of millions of Chinese people. And these policies turned on a combination of coercion, enforcement, and financial incentives.

So perhaps the question of how authoritarian states exercise power is somewhat straightforward to answer: through organized repression, through artful command of a bureaucracy capable of acting cohesively, through the development of alliances with actors inside and outside of government, through cooptation of some actors to the disadvantage of other actors, through management of large social structures such as the market, and through the ability to set the terms of political behavior through the media and schooling.

Impersonal social causes?

There is a substantial place in social causation for mechanisms that link the intentions of powerful actors to the specific features of the outcome. "The outcome came about because the powerful actor wanted it to." Why are there no petroleum refineries in mid-town Manhattan? Because zoning and planning boards have deliberately excluded such activities.

But what about causal mechanisms that are not the result of strategic choices by social actors? Are there impersonal social causes?

There are rare but real instances of social changes that occur without any intermediary of social action -- for example, the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the extinction of Pompeii. But these events fall outside the scope of the social sciences. And there are important social explanations that begin in impersonal features of the natural environment -- for example, the configuration of rivers in China's early history. But what makes these into social explanations is the analysis of the social behavior through which agents adapt these conditions to their needs. (See Mark Elvin's truly excellent environmental history of China for more on this; The Retreat of the Elephants: An Environmental History of China.) But social explanations always involve actors -- and that means that intentional social action always comes into the picture in some way. So we might begin by saying that there are no impersonal social explanations, if by that we mean "explanations of social outcomes that do not involve the actions of persons."

It is important to observe that there are actually two distinctions that are relevant here. There is the "personal-impersonal" distinction, and there is the "intended-unintended" distinction. In an obvious sense all social causation is "personal", in the sense that social causal mechanisms are always embodied in the constrained actions of socially constituted actors or persons. So the actions of deliberate actors are part of all social causation. But the intentions of the actors are often unrelated to the social outcome we are trying to explain. So in these cases the outcome is not caused by actors' intention that it should come about. In the refinery example -- it may be that there is no regulation prohibiting this kind of activity, but the cost of real estate makes the proposition unattractive from a cost-benefit perspective. On this scenario we would have the result occurring as an unintended consequence of the choices of a large numbers of independent actors.

These are the most interesting social explanations: explanations of social patterns or outcomes that are not the result of design or intention, but that nonetheless emerge through the purposive actions of large numbers of agents. These are "unintended consequences" explanations or "aggregative" explanations. We can quickly identify dozens of such examples: the silting of river deltas as a result of flood-management strategies upstream; the expansion of black-market sales of cigarettes as a result of new taxes on tobacco; the expansion of traffic flows as a result of the opening of the third harbor tunnel in Boston; etc. These explanations are "aggregative" in the sense that they work by "aggregating" the lower-level choices and preferences of individual actors into a higher-level social pattern. (Thomas Schelling offers numerous intriguing examples along these lines in his book, Micromotives and Macrobehavior.)

So now we can answer our original question. There are no social causes that work entirely independently from social actors, and actors are purposive. So all social causation stems from "intentional" human behavior; persons are always involved in social outcomes. However, there are many social outcomes that are unintended and unrecognized by all the participants. The participants' intentions are local and parochial; whereas the social outcome is large and unforeseen. These instances are the most interesting problems for social inquiry. We might refer to these as "agency-based explanations of unintended and unforeseen outcomes."

This suggests a different way of classifying social causes: outcomes that are the intended result of specific powerful actors (conspiracy, leadership, dictatorship); outcomes that are the result of strategic interaction among a small group of purposive agents (bargaining, collusion, cooperation); outcomes that result from concerted collective action by large groups with some sense of collective goals (boycotts, strikes); and outcomes that are the aggregate result of uncoordinated but constrained choices by large numbers of independent agents (markets, habitation patterns).

This classification also makes it more apparent why the concept of power is central in social explanation. The first three categories imply a distribution of powers across specific agents and groups, in order to account for the postulated connection between the agent's purposes and the eventual outcome. And the fourth category implies the exercise of power by some other agency, to account for the observed constraints on choice that constitute the heart of this type of explanation.

Power: social movements

Social movements usually have to do with change rather than persistence. And they usually emerge from "under-class" groups who lack meaningful access to other official and institutionalized means of power. They are among the "weapons of the weak", and their effectiveness usually turns on the ability of a sub-population to mobilize in collective action with determination and courage. Examples include the American Civil Rights movement, the use of strikes and boycotts by coal miners in the Ruhr after World War I, and the Solidarity Movement in Poland in the 1970s.

The question here is, what are the scope, limits, and mechanisms of social power wielded through social movements? Is it possible for a social movement to cause change in basic structures, policies, and distributions of wealth and power in society? (I am not thinking primarily here of revolutionary movements, but rather more prosaic struggles for improvement of some set of conditions for the under-group.) 

The question arises because the terms of the problem essentially raise a social contradiction: a numerous but powerless group, advocating for a change of structure or distribution that harms the interests of the powerful, aligned against the most powerful forces in society. It would seem that this contest is inherently determined by the disproportion of powers held by the social actors. And yet we can provide memorable examples of success. So the question is, how does this work? 

The first factor that provides an obvious source of potential power for the under-class group, is the size and functional role of the group in society. Several of the most obvious tactics for a social movement depend on this structural fact -- the strike, boycott, and mass demonstration. By mobilizing, the group can interfere with the smooth workings of society, compelling other parties to negotiate. And it can demonstrate its broad, mass-based support. 

But the obstacles to these mass-based tactics are severe – classic collective action problems, problems of coordination and communication, and the need for competent organizations and leaders. And the tactics available to the powerful (the state, police, mine owners) are imposing: repression and intimidation, divide and conquer, co-optation, control of media, and a greater ability to wait out the struggle. 

Besides mass mobilization, there is the tactic of broadening the movement through alliances. This strategy requires "changing consciousness" in the broader society by the actions of the under-class group. The group (primarily through its organizations and leaders) can strive to broaden the base of its movement through alliances with other like-minded groups and with the general public. And this depends upon successful communication -- setting the terms of the struggle in such a way that it aligns with the moral values and material interests of other groups. 

Once again, the tactical options and advantages residing with the powerful are substantial. The powerful control the media; they have an advantage in setting the agenda; and they have an extensive ability to co-opt potential allies of the popular movement (side deals, special accommodations, playing off divisions within the mass population). But not all the face cards rest with the powerful. 

So here we have several kinds of tactics for the social movement -- direct mass mobilization, broadening of alliances, and a deliberate campaign to capture the moral discourse for the public. But let's push forward and consider what comes next. Suppose there is a social constituency for an important structural change. Suppose this group is fairly strongly mobilized (in terms of the engagement of members), that it has competent organization and leadership, and that its members collectively play a significant role in the economy. Let us further suppose that the group has now engaged in all the tactics above -- large peaceful demonstrations in several cities, a few successful boycotts, and a successful communications campaign that has strengthened public support for the movement. Now what, in a constitutional democracy? (The analysis will look different within a dictatorship -- for example, the situation of labor unions in pre-war Nazi Germany). 

It isn't implausible to conjecture that this scenario results in legislative action in support of the program. The public visibility and popularity of the struggle seem to lead to the inference that voters care about the issue, and legislators listen. So the social movement has won the day and has secured its objective. It has won the battle. But has it won the war -- is the change of policy a genuine and enduring change of structure in favor of the under-class? And here we can speculate again: the long, slow "tectonics" of power and privilege will turn back these gains in the future. The popular coalition cannot sustain its vigilance and mobilization forever; whereas the interests and strategic advantages of the powerful persist like great tectonic plates. 

So on this line of thought, we can come to a provisional assessment of the causal powers of social movements in democracies: they have a fighting chance of securing tactical victories, but the prospects for achieving enduring structural change seem more remote. Their ability to change the rules of the game in a sustainable way seems limited in the face of entrenched and enduring interests opposed to such a change. 

(Perhaps the Civil Rights movement is the rare exception to this statement. The rules of the game have plainly changed since 1953 with respect to race relations in the US -- in spite of the pressing need for further transformation.)

(There is of course a huge literature on social movements. A few interesting sources are Charles Tilly, Social Movements, 1768-2004, Gary Marx and Douglas McAdam, Collective Behavior And Social Movements: Process and Structure, Peter Ackerman, Strategic Nonviolent Conflict: The Dynamics of People Power in the Twentieth Century, and James Scott, Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance.)

How does rational choice theory relate to social facts and individual psychology?

Rational choice theory is a mid-level theory of human agency, intended to capture core features of human decision-making in order to provide a basis for abstract and generalized theories of the dynamics of various areas of social behavior. The disciplines of political science and economics make particularly extensive use of versions of rational choice theory (decision theory, expected utility theory, game theory, theories of parametric and strategic rationality) in designing theories and models of stylized circumstances of social action (e.g. market decision-making, production decisions, voting decisions, collective action decisions). Homo economicus -- the rationally self-interested preference- or utility-maximizing individual -- stands at the foundation of typical models in economics and political science.

The theory of economic rationality can be specified in numerous ways. In all its versions it is an abstraction from real human behavior, in two senses. The theory abstracts from idiosyncratic differences in reasoning across individuals; and it abstracts from other, perhaps systematic, factors that might influence reasoning (emotions and morals, for example). The theory allows for differences across individuals, of course, but primarily in the individual's preferences or utility function. (The nature of the decision rule is also a variable: more risk averse or less, optimizing or satisficing, maximin or maximize expected utility).

The question here is, what role does rational choice theory play in social explanations and in formal models in political science and economics, and how does it function in description of individual psychology and behavior?

Some formalistic economists and political scientists treat the assumptions of rational choice theory as purely formal axioms that can provide the basis for a mathematical treatment of a stylized problem -- solution to an n-person non-zero sum game, for example. These theorists are not concerned about the descriptive adequacy of the axioms, but rather the feasibility of employing the axioms to derive a solution to the problem.

This approach is unsatisfying, however, if we think that the results of formal economic or political analysis are supposed to be explanatory in some sense of actual social phenomena. Suppose we explain the low level of public contribution to public radio, by saying that the "contribution/non-contribution" game is an n-person prisoners' dilemma, and the mathematical solution to such a game demonstrates an equilibrium of low contribution. This mathematical finding is only potentially explanatory if we have some reason to think that the model bears a relevant relationship to the system of behavior it is modeling; the model assumes rationally self-interested maximizers; so the model is potentially explanatory of the public radio result only if the listeners are to some degree approximately well-described as "rationally self-interested maximizers." In other words, the rational-choice explanation of this real social situation appears to require that there be some degree of realism in the assumption of individual rationality. The purely formalistic interpretation of the axioms would render the account devoid of explanatory value.

This suggests a different approach to the question. It suggests that we should regard the assumption of rationality as an approximately true description of most human beings. Rational choice theory is an empirical theory of human behavior, at a high level of abstraction. "Abstract" in this context means "disregarding of interfering or contrary factors" -- as the theory of ideal gases is abstract in its disregard of intermolecular forces. In other words, the theory of rationality might be construed as a particularly abstract part of an empirical theory of human psychology.

If we take this approach, then we are naturally invited to test and improve upon this theory of human decision-making. Are there other factors of deliberation and action that need to be introduced? Are there differences across human groups and cultures with respect to the system of reasoning that individuals employ in practical decisions? Is the theory of maximizing rationality true of at least a certain range of individuals and decision-making problems? (Perhaps, for example, we are maximizing decision-makers when it comes to choosing a loaf of bread, but are influenced by emotions and commitments when it comes to choosing a political party to support.)

The advantage of a simple, abstract theory of deliberation (the theory of economic rationality) is that it provides a mathematically tractable way of modeling certain common situations of social action. If we advance a theory of deliberation and agency that postulates more nuance at the individual level and more variation across individuals and cultures, we may lose the ability to put forward models that result in equilibrium. More empirical adequacy may reduce the theoretical or deductive adequacy of the disciplines. However, it seems unavoidable that social science is better served by a theory of human agency and deliberation that is somewhat more faithful to actual human practical cognition. And it would remain possible that the narrow assumptions of economic rationality emerge as being adequately descriptive in certain well defined problem circumstances (the circumstances of anonymous markets, for example). Finally, it may be that other methods of aggregating from individual-level assumptions to models of collective behavior are feasible -- for example, the agent-based models that are advocated by the Santa Fe Institute.

There may be one additional reason why rational choice theory asserts a centrality that separates it from the rest of social psychology -- that is the role that rationality plays in a normative sense. We might think that reason and rationality are especially important human creations, and that it is valuable to have a theory of pure rationality (and its implications) even if the typical human reasoner falls far short of its assumptions.

The heterogeneous social: institutions

Populations and groups are inherently diverse; virtually any property that might be attached to an individual shows variance across the group. So we have to pay special attention to specifying what we mean when we ask for a "measurement" of a property of a group. This is the basic ontological fact that undergirds a critical approach to quantitative social and behavioral science. And it means that we need always to be considering the variance within the group with respect to the property, the shape of the distribution, as well as the mean value of the property.

It turns out that social phenomena are heterogeneous at the level of institutions, mentalities, practices, and causes as well. Later posts will consider other forms of social heterogeneity. The topic here is institutional heterogeneity. An institution is a system of rules through which a set of social behaviors are mediated. Rules may be enforced through clear third-party enforcement powers (formal institutions) or diffuse participant enforcement practices (informal institutions). Examples of institutions include contract law (formal), cooperative labor-sharing (informal), marriage systems (formal and informal), and tenure systems (formal). Institutions are embodied in the beliefs, values, attitudes, and motivations of socially constructed individuals at various levels of action; they act to constrain and incentivize individual behavior in ways that are to some extent independent of the actions and preferences of those individuals. (That is, the individual is rarely in a position to directly change the rules of the institution so as to serve his/her goals better.) So institutions are both caused by (embodied in) the social consciousness of an extended set of social actors, and are causal in shaping the future behavior of an extended set of social actors.

Institutions have origins -- they come into being at a time and place. So we can ask the question, "what explains the fact of the emergence of the institution and the particular characteristics it possesses at that point?" And institutions undergo processes of development over time -- they undergo change in some characteristics, incorporate new scope and function, and gain new coalitions of supporters and opponents. So we can ask the question, "what factors explain the processes of change that the institution undergoes?" (Kathleen Thelen's How Institutions Evolve: The Political Economy of Skills in Germany, Britain, the United States, and Japan provides a very good account of the ways in which we need to investigate the origins and development of various important social institutions.)

Institutions are sometimes grouped together into broad categories or classes in terms of social function (what does the institution do?), observable characteristics (what does the institution look like?), and social functioning (how does the institution work?). So, for example, we might want to study institutions of marriage-partner selection, irrigation management, or institutions that regulate common property resources such as forests or wetlands; Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action. In each case the group of institutions is defined in terms of the common social problem that they solve.

Now we can frame the task of one important area of sociology and political science research: to undertake careful comparative research concerning the instances of institutions included within a category. In what ways are different examples similar and different from each other? How have parallel or divergent institutional complexes emerged to solve broadly similar social problems? What causal processes can be observed in the workings of these several examples? How do these institutional matrices influence and constrain the forms of behavior that flow through them? (So, in the book by Kathleen Thelen mentioned above, the author considers the national-level institutions of skilled-labor training that have evolved in Germany, UK, USA, and Japan; she considers the effects that these different regimes have on the flow of skilled workers; and she analyzes the political coalitions that were relevant in establishing a particular configuration of the institution.)

Here, finally, we can address the issue of institutional heterogeneity. Given the ways that institutions are formed, changed, and embodied, we should expect that there will be two forms of diversity among institutions. First, it is clear that there are normally multiple ways of solving a particular social problem (training workers for industry, managing prisoners, administering social welfare subsidies). So we should expect that there will be a range of institutional matrices that have emerged across societies to handle these challenges, and we can learn quite a bit about social causation by examining these differences and how they work. And second, given that institutions are "malleable" and dynamic, we should expect that institutions will show diversity within their own life courses. As powerful agents and coalitions shift in their powers and needs, as other constituents acquire more or less influence in setting the agenda for the institution, we should expect an ongoing process of modification of the institution over time.

What kind of thing is a religion?

The idea of a religion is apparently a very familiar one. It is a set of beliefs about the sacred shared by a group of people. It embodies some fundamental norms that guide and constrain believers' conduct. It is a potent social force that can determine the outcomes of presidential elections.

But notice the many complexities that these statements conceal. There is the question of the individual's psychology and mental life; how are religious beliefs and values embodied and acquired, and how do they function in the person's deliberative and affective schemes?

Second is the question of the group's religious characteristics. An individualist would say that the group's religious identity is simply the sum of the religious characteristics of the individuals who compose it, and that there is normally a distribution of variants around each dimension or element of the religious identity. (In other words, the members of thexgroup are not homogeneous in their beliefs and behavior.)

Third, we could dwell quite a while on the problem of formulating a theory of the core content of the religion, including beliefs, norms, and practices. The differences mentioned above imply that formulation of "core" beliefs is likely to be deeply controversial--witness the violence connected with schisms within religious traditions.

Finally, we need to consider the concrete social institutions and organizations through which religious groups and movements do their work: promulgate their religious commitments and knowledge to the young and converts, mobilize the followers to collective action, and function as a community of belief and action.

Notice the variety of disciplines that are invoked here in this still-brief account of the social efficacy of religion: personality psychology, social psychology, interpretative anthropology, political science, social movements theory, sociology, and the humanistic disciplines of philosophy, criticism, and hermeneutics.

We find, then, that religion is not one single thing, and it exercises causal powers in very diverse ways. "It" is many psychological, semiotic, organizational things, loosely held together by the idea of a group of co-believers. And causal-sociological stories pass through this station in many directions and on many levels. The causal efficacy of religion refers sometimes to the power that ideas and values have over individual believers. Sometimes it refers to the power a group of believers wields over other members of the group. And sometimes it refers to the power that religious organizations have over other persons through their sources of influence and threat -- a very secular exercise of power.

This comes down to several forms of efficacy -- the ability to
influence behavior through the grip of ideas, the ability to mobilize supporters, and the ability to marshall other more secular forms of power and influence.