By extending Webers social theory, Stone captures the essence of the traditional elitist-pluralist debate within what he calls a "social-control" paradigm. Within this paradigm, power is viewed as a matter of dominance, where the function of politics is simply that of legitimizing a social control system (e.g., bureaucracy, free markets, elite networks, etc). Thus, the central issues have nothing to do with the "rightness" or "wrongness" of, for instance, elite domination. Rather the central issues revolve, instrumentally, around the cost of gaining social-control or compliance through legitimacy:
Pluralists see the cost of compliance as the factor that engenders pluralism, especially in systems with constitutional and other restrictions on the use of coercion. Antipluralists believe that consent and legitimacy are engineered to reduce the cost of control and that system transformation can therefore be brought about by withdrawing consent and abrogating legitimacy. The conventional power debate thus centers on how the cost of compliance is handled (Stone, 1989: 222-223).
Indeed, Stone notes how a number of pluralists may have, inadvertently, acknowledged the compliance issue within their own research:
Banfield: To maintain control of a structure, repeated investments of power are required (1961: 313).
Laitin: As any elite group (or historical bloc) attempts to achieve domination over society, it will attempt to lower the costs of compliance by developing an ideology of its own legitimacy (1986: 107).
Dahl: Subjects can gain a degree of independence from their rulers on matters of importance to themselves if they can make the costs of domination so high that domination no longer looks worthwhile to the rulers. Resources are not infinite after all, and exercising control nearly always requires an outlay of resources (1982: 33).
Stones social-control paradigm is valuable in that it recognizes that the political system needs legitimacy in order to gain compliance. By doing so, Stone implicates ways in which the system may be transformed: either by withdrawing consent, by undermining the legitimacy of elite domination, or by increasing the legitimacy of an alternative system of control (Stone, 1989: 222-226). Dahl reiterates this point by noting how “subordinates can drive up the cost of exercising control (underline added), thereby reducing dominance” (cited by Stone, 1989: 224).
However, following Tilly (1984), Stone (1989) takes a step forward by noting how society has changed dramatically since the early works of the community power scholars and the inception of their social-control paradigm. According to Stone,
society is [no longer] bound by an integrating body of thought, a shared conception of the world, or even a set of norms and values that most people subscribe to. Instead... what holds the world together is a somewhat loose network of institutional arrangements. Though fraught with tension and conflict, these arrangements promote action on behalf of various social goods. Tillys thesis is akin to Longs ecology of games, though with a greater emphasis on conflict... instead of a single fulcrum of control, there are strategically advantageous points from which to wage struggle and promote some forms of collective action at the expense of others. There is no consensus (underline added). Conceptions of the world and other big beliefs are vague and compatible with a variety of applications... In some ways, the Tillian world is chaotic; certainly it is loosely coupled, and most processes continue without active intervention by a leadership group (Stone, 1989: 226-227).
If Tillys interpretation of modern society is reliable and, according to Stone, it is societys ability to process public policies with neither a need for consensus nor "active intervention by a leadership group" suggests the traditional structures of elite domination have become obsolete. After all, some degree of consensus, as to the basic norms and values of society, is fundamental to elite theory. This consensus holds society together and, according to theory, it is out of this consensus that the need for "active intervention" (by elitists) becomes apparent to society (Hunter, 1953; Mills, 1956). "Active intervention," is therefore, not only fundamental to elite theory, it is consistent with Bachrach and Baratzs (1962, 1963) notion of "nondecisions": the idea that, behind the scenes, exists an obscure set of actors who actively intervene to determine which issues are, and which are not, to be openly discussed. But what are the public policy implications of Tillian society?
First, absent consensus, social control becomes illusive, if not impossible. However, as Stone recognizes, individuals cannot function alone in modern urban society. Even though they do not share basic norms and values, they still need one other if for no other reason, to help produce the goods and services they have all come to require (e.g., jobs, health care, higher education, police safety, emergency services, substantive justice, enforcement of contracts, etc). And it is against this Tillian background that Stone introduces his "social-production" paradigm. He uses this paradigm to reveal the central issues of the urban development politics literature, and to explain why these issues have little to do with social-control and much more to do with the enhancement of urban productive capacity.
Author: Steven A. Maclin, Ph. D.
About the Author: Dr. Maclin has been a university professor of public administration and policy since 1994. Recently, from 1998 - 2004, he lived and worked with American military troops in Japan, Okinawa, and South Korea. He has previously edited and published dozens of articles in professional administrative journals and recently, in his ‘spare time,’ he’s been building websites for distributing materials to his graduate students. Hes now stateside, teaching graduate students online, writing articles and developing a small online business (see
http://buyfromart.com); he can be reached at info@buyfromart.com.