Community Power Structure: A Study of Decision Makers

by Floyd Hunter

In this study of busy, complex Regional City -- and it is a real city -- the author has analyzed the power structure from top to bottom. He has searched out the men of power and, under fictitious names, has described them as they initiate policies in their offices, their homes, their clubs. They form a small, stable group at the top of the social structure. Their decision-making activities are not known to the public, but they are responsible for whatever is done, or not done, in their community.

Beneath this top policy group is a clearly marked social stratification, through which decisions sift down to the substructures chosen to put them into effect. The dynamic relations within the power structure are made clear in charts, but the real interest lies in the author's report of what people themselves say. The African American community is also studied, with its own power structure and its own complicated relations with the large community. The method of study is fully described in an Appendix.

The book should be of particular value to sociologists, political scientists, city-planning executives, Community Council members, social workers, teachers, and research workers in related fields. As a vigorous and readable presentation of facts, it should appeal to the reader who would like to know how his/her own community is run.

Community Power Structure is not an expose. It is a description and discussion of a social phenomenon as it occured. It is based on sound field research, including personal observation and interviews by the author.

Genres: Sociology

314 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1953

Reviews

[Erik Graff · Rating 3 out of 5]

The two major youth centers in my hometown, Park Ridge, having shut down, a friend and I asked ourselves, while sitting in my bedroom one night, what we might do about it. What we did was draw up posters, three of them. The right-wing one, designated for the commercial districts, asked "What does Park Ridge offer its young people?" (medium print), "according to a recent study" (small print), "Drugs, Suicide, Vandalism, Death!" (large, bold print). A left-wing version, designated for the high schools, began "No one has the legal right to take this leaflet from you" and continued with a long extract by the aformentioned study of suburban youth by the University of Illinois professor, Ken Krause. A moderate version, designated for residential sections of town, was a short and sweet summary of what was quoted in the student version. All announced "A Community Meeting on Youth" to be held at the public South Park Fieldhouse, the facilities of which we'd rented. Together, my friend and I posted hundreds, if not thousands, of these fliers all over town, working only at night and quite surreptiously.

When the meeting occurred only four persons were in the know: Dr. Krause; Steve Dahl, youth minister of the United Methodist Church; and the two of us. The posters hadn't mentioned any sponsors and the attendees, hundreds of them, didn't see anything when they entered, some of them in suits or dresses, others in spiked leathers, except a lot of chairs circled around a microphone on a stand. There was an uneasy silence, the straights glaring at the long-hairs. Then, by arrangement, Steve got up, played ignorant, and noting the serendipity of the gathering, invited Krause to get up to talk about his study.

By the end of the evening, at a subsequent ad hoc meeting at a Republican Committeewoman's home, The Park Ridge Community Coalition had been inaugurated and money had been pledged. The PRCC was for anyone and everyone, but it was at a meeting on my porch subsequent to the subsequent meeting that the real thing, The Park Ridge Youth Coalition (PRYK, pronounced as one might imagine) was founded.

PRYK held its first open meeting at the Edison Park Home for Boys' main building. We'd purchased many, many legal pads and pencils and, as kids arrived, they were divided into groups of eight and sent off, group by group, to individual rooms to draw up lists of their problems and their ideas for their solutions. Each group designated a recording secretary instructed to keep a thorough account. The hundreds of pages that came out of these small groups were then thematically organized and typed up into thick, stapled bundles.

Our second meeting was at the largest auditorium of the elementary school district. The hundreds attending were given copies of the bundles prepared at the previous meeting and asked to read them over. Then my friend, one of the least authoritarian personae one could imagine, asked the body as a whole to make a decision as to priorities from the data in front of them. The decision was clear and unanimous: young people wanted a youth center and they wanted to run and, if possible, own it themselves.

And so, in a few days, it began--a mass movement with buttons and concerts and dances and movies, a day-long festival downtown and even a play by Beckett. But mostly it was work...meetings, meetings, meetings punctuated by media events like clean-up days in the forest preserve and suchlike.

During the height of things I got interested in completely rationalizing the not-for-profit community organizations, in setting up a real community chest, and was spending my time doing a lot of presentations to such groups as well as to the city council. It was during this period that I picked up Hunter's book, hoping to find some useful insights into how towns like mine were really run--not just in city hall, but also in the corporations, clubs and fraternal organizations. (Frankly, it didn't help much, our town being smaller--40,000--than the one he studied).

Incidentally, the upshot of all of our efforts during the year my friend and I were involved was that some legislation got passed and some funding was found for a youth center and a senior citizen center. After I went back to Grinnell College (I'd taken a year's leave while facing prosecution for draft resistance) our organization and its funds were taken over by Jesus freaks and they set up their own cafe in town. It, Thresholds (later, The Hinge) wasn't bad, especially in its early days, but it wasn't what we'd hoped for. Still, the process itself was an education and very many were empowered by the experience in diverse ways.

[Opossum · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a decent book. I don’t know if I agree with everything and some aspects are clearly dated, but it is still relevant to the way cities operate today.

[Steven Peterson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a classic in the arena of community power studies in political science. Hunter's work is often juxtaposed with Robert Dahl's "Who Governs?" It is a comparison between an elitist interpretation of community power (Hunter) versus a pluralist perspective (Dahl). Hunter uses a reputational approach (speaking with experts on political reality in Atlanta) to identify who the "real" leaders are.

The result? An identifiable elite, according to Hunter, had control of the levers of power at the time. To get things done, this set of people had to be "on board."

Historically, this is indeed one of the classics on local power structures. There are problems with the reputational approach (Does reputation actually describe reality?). Still, worth looking at to get a sense of the debate over community power in the 1950s and 1960s.

[Hamse Awil · Rating 5 out of 5]

this book very important