The Policy Outputs and Conflicts of Large Communities from an Interorganizational Viewpoint

Abstract

An interorganizational framework is employed to merge elitist, pluralist, and dialectic perspectives on the community in this pilot study of 36 large United States cities.

An interorganizational framework is employed to merge elitist, pluralist, and dialectic perspectives on the community in this pilot study of 36 large United States cities.

Where organizations fail to abound, power may be wielded by an organized elite over an unorganized mass, thereby creating the conditions of polarized conflict, undampened by the crosscutting and issue-specific lines of coalition and conflict existing in organizationally richer environments. The indicators of community decentralization did indeed have independent effects upon the absence of conflict, measured by flouridation of the municipal water supply.

Decision by coalition lends special significance to linkage-providing organizations, such as large-scale and diversified municipal government. The idea of organizations with plural interests and values suggests that centralized governments either are weak or exist in organizationally barren communities; neither alternative is conducive to collective community action. The finding follows that seven different community outposts, each one requiring interorganizational cooperation, were positively affected by the scale and diversification of municipal government and/or by its decentralization.

All of this suggests that various small conflicts serve to prevent large ones in the multiorganizational setting and that the power of organizations, even government agencies, depends upon their capacity for coalition-formation, whatever the degree of their political autonomy.