Page 116 - Information and American Democracy Technology in the Evolution of Political Power

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Postbureaucratic Political Organization
and related collective action groups, the defining structural feature of
American pluralism in the twentieth century, are therefore likely to be
among the organizations most susceptible to changes in the nature of
political information and communication.
Collective action organizations are typically not conceived of as bu-
reaucracies, but in fact most constitute one variant or another on roughly
the Weberian administrative form. They rely on offices administered by
a central headquarters, they employ staff at fixed functions according to
their expertise, and they raise and spend funds in pursuit of priorities es-
tablished by leaders at the top through regularized planning processes. 18
As the size of the group increases, so does the degree of functional special-
ization into areas such as research, lobbying, press relations, and man-
agement. 19 Most rely somehow on memberships, unlike the firm, but
even these are formalized with membership terms, dues, and a strategic
and centrally determined body of selective incentives. The typical interest
organization is, in short, vertically integrated and well bounded, much
like the classical firm.

POSTBUREAUCRATIC POLITICAL ORGANIZATION
If the evolution of information abundance implies intensified social and
political association, as Tocqueville suggests, and also less bureaucra-
tized structures for collective action, as organization theory suggests,
what might the result look like? One feature of postbureaucratic politi-
cal organization 20 involves the resources required to organize collective
action. As “outside” lobbying and “grassroots” campaigns have become
21
more important in American politics, their costs have risen. Many local
groups, minor parties, and other poorly endowed political actors have
been unable for the most part to participate in the game of large-scale po-
litical mobilization. Often, even local-scale collective action is beyond the
means of political actors without access to substantial material resources.
This means that major efforts at collective action are largely the luxury
of well-endowed organizations. Costs for organizing collective action by

18 As Berry notes, this fact is typically independent of the nature of group membership
or the extent of democratic process the group publicly avows.
19
See Berry on this point.
20
Forthisterminologyandsomeofthetheoreticalconstructs,Iamespeciallyindebtedto
CharlesHeckscherforhischapter“DefiningthePost-BureaucraticType”inHeckscher
and Donnellon, eds., The Post-Bureaucratic Organization,pp.14–62.
21
Steven E. Schier, By Invitation Only: The Rise of Exclusive Politics in the United States
(Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2000).
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