Political Organizations

by James Q. Wilson

A major work by one of America's eminent political scientists, Political Organizations has had a profound impact on how we view the influence of interest groups on policymaking. James Wilson wrote this book to counter two that popular interests will automatically generate political organizations and that such organizations will faithfully mirror the opinions and interests of their members. Moreover, he demonstrated that the way in which political organizations (including parties, business groups, labor unions, and civil rights associations) are created and maintained has a profound impact on the opinions they represent and the tactics they use. Now available for the first time in paperback, this book has broadened its scope to include recently developed organizations as it addresses many of today's concerns over the power of such groups as special-interest lobbies.


In 1973, when this book was first published, the press and public were fascinated by the social movements of the 1960s, thinking that the antiwar and civil rights movements might sweep aside old-fashioned interest-group lobbies. Wilson argued, however, that such movements would inevitably be supplanted by new organizations, ones with goals and tactics that might direct the course of action away from some of the movements' founding principles. In light of the current popular distress with special-interest groups and their supposed death-grip on Congress, Wilson again attempts to modify a widely held view. He shows that although lobbies have multiplied in number and kind, they remain considerably constrained by the difficulty they have in maintaining themselves.

Genres: Political Science

376 pages, Paperback

Published August 7, 1995

About the author

James Q. Wilson was one of the leading contemporary criminologists in the United States. Wilson, who has taught at several major universities during his academic career, has also written on economics and politics during his lengthy career. During the 1960s and 1970s, Wilson voiced concerns about trying to address the social causes of crime. He argued instead that public policy is most effective when it focuses on objective matters like the costs and benefits of crime. Wilson views criminals as rational human beings who will not commit crimes when the costs associated with crime become impractical.

James Q. Wilson most recently taught at Boston College and Pepperdine University. He was Professor Emeritus of Management and Public Administration at UCLA and was previously Shattuck Professor of Government at Harvard University. He wrote more than a dozen books on the subjects of public policy, bureaucracy, and political philosophy. He was president of the American Political Science Association, and he is the only political scientist to win three of the four lifetime achievement awards presented by the APSA. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian award, in 2003.

Professor Wilson passed away in March of 2012 after battling cancer. His work helped shape the field of political science in the United States. His many years of service to his American Government book remain evident on every page and will continue for many editions to come.

Reviews

[Colin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Old-school political science theory, heavily influenced by the social movements and political organizations of the 1960s and 1970s, the time in which this was being written. The principal kind of organization being studied is a formal, voluntary association, and the analysis generally assumes a pluralistic system analogous to the United States. The central argument is that organizations and their leaders offer different kinds of incentives to their members in order to overcome the collective action / free rider problem and to maintain and enhance the organization, which I think is a useful and appropriate point to consider when assessing an organization and its purposes. The author identifies the principle types of incentives as material, solidary (specific or collective), and the “purposive” category, which is further subdivided into goal-oriented, ideological, or redemptive groups. There’s discussion throughout of how these incentives shape organizational structure, leadership, and so forth.

There are some interesting insights and asides, but I wasn’t fully convinced of the generalizability of the theory’s application. I think the question of organizational formation was not fully developed — the argument that these are often formed in response to perceived threats is interesting, but otherwise there’s a bit of hand-waving about cycles or waves that didn’t seem especially strongly-grounded. One chapter suggests that varying economic resources, social status, and psychological time horizons produce the degree to which individuals value particular incentives offered by organizations, although this is described in rather unfortunate “high status” / “low status” language. I didn’t find the explanation for why organizations such as materially-oriented machine political parties get supplanted by more ideological / purposive organizations very clear or compelling. There is a fair amount of discussion of labor union politics, which I’m not very well-read in. The use of violence or coercion as an organizational strategy is touched on, but not really addressed at length; the chapters on competition (with peer organizations pursuing similar objectives) and oppositional protest and bargaining are interesting, though I imagine there is also a lot of game theory out there along these lines that I haven’t read.

Interesting on the whole but maybe not readily applicable in current form.