Questioning Governmental Authority

Thirty-year-old U.S. Central Intelligence Agency contractor Edward Snowden caused an uproar in many parts of the world when he leaked thousands of classified documents. The clamor in the United States became especially loud in mid-2013 when Snowden told the world that the U.S. National Security Agency had attempted to prevent terrorist acts by spying on ordinary American citizens.

The events surrounding Snowden’s leaks reveal the relationship between us as individuals and the different organizations and institutions that frame our lives, such as our local and national governments.

Organizations

Organizations are collectives purposely constructed to achieve particular ends. Examples include your college or university, which has the objective of educating you as well as your fellow students; corporations, such as Apple, Google, and Walmart, whose objective is to earn profits; the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which seeks to stabilize currency exchanges throughout the world; and Greenpeace, which works to protect and conserve the global environment.

There is a particularly long and deep body of work in sociology that deals with organizations (Godwyn and Gittell 2011; Lammers and Hickson 2013), much of it traceable to the thinking of Max Weber on a particular kind of organization, the bureaucracy. A bureaucracy is a highly rational organization, especially one that is very efficient. However, as both Weber ’s own thinking and later sociological research (see below) make clear, bureaucracies are not always so rational and are even as irrational as you undoubtedly sometimes find them to be. Nevertheless, the bureaucracy is a key element of Weber ’s theory of the rationalization of the Western world. In fact, along with capitalism, the bureaucracy best exemplifies what Weber meant by rationalization. For decades the concept of bureaucracy dominated sociological thinking about organizations, and it led to many important insights about the social world.

Bureaucracies

Weber created and used many “ideal types” as methodological tools with which to study the real world and conduct historical-comparative analysis (see Chapter 2). An ideal type greatly exaggerates the characteristics of a social phenomenon like a bureaucracy. It is a model of how the social phenomenon is supposed to operate in some optimal sense, but rarely does. Once the model has been created, we can compare it to the characteristics of any specific example of the social phenomenon anywhere in the world. It serves to identify the ways in which the ideal type differs from the way the social phenomenon actually operates.

A bureaucracy has the following characteristics:

A continuous series of offices, or positions. Each office has official functions and is bound by a set of rules.
Each office has a specified sphere of competence. Those who occupy the positions are responsible for specific tasks and have the authority to handle them. Those in related offices are obligated to help with those tasks.
The offices exist in a vertical hierarchy.
The positions have technical requirements, and those who hold those offices must undergo the needed training.
Organizations, not those who occupy its positions, own the things (computers, desks) needed to do the job. Those who occupy particular offices—chief executive officers, for example—cannot take the offices as their own; these remain part of the organization.
Everything of formal importance—administrative acts, decisions, rules—is documented in writing.

Authority Structures and Bureaucracy

Weber ’s work on bureaucracy is related to his thinking on three types of authority structures. Before getting to those types, we need two preliminary definitions. Domination is the probability, or likelihood, that commands will be obeyed by subordinates (Weber [1921] 1968). There are degrees of domination. Strong domination involves a high probability that commands will be obeyed; domination is weak when the probability of obedience is low. Authority is legitimate domination. The key question, then, is what makes authority legitimate as far as subordinates are concerned.

Weber differentiates among three types of authority: rational-legal, traditional, and charismatic.

Rational-legal authority is domination legitimated on the basis of legally enacted rules and the right of those with authority under those rules to issue commands. For example, the president of the United States has rational-legal authority to take a variety of actions, such as appointing federal officials, because the president is duly elected in accord with the country’s election laws. It is also legitimate for the president, in the role of commander in chief, to issue various commands, such as to order the use of troops in the case of an attack on the United States. However, in some cases the scope of such authority is not clearly defined. For example, when President Barack Obama claimed the authority to order numerous drone strikes on enemies in places like Afghanistan, some argued that using drones in this way constitutes an act of war, and as such requires the approval of Congress, which alone has the rational-legal authority to declare war.
Traditional authority is based on the belief in long-running traditions. For example, although the pope is elected by the college of cardinals, his authority within Catholicism is based primarily on the long traditions associated with his position.
Charismatic authority is based on the devotion of followers to what they define as the exceptional characteristics of a leader. Large numbers of people believed that Martin Luther King Jr. and Mahatma Gandhi had such exceptional characteristics and, as a result, became their devoted followers.

Rationality and Irrationality

Much of that research has found Weber ’s ideal-typical model to be unrealistic. For one thing, there is no single organizational model. The nature of the organization and its degree of rationality are contingent on such factors as the organization’s size and the technologies that it employs (Orlikowski 2010; Pugh et al. 1968). For another, researchers have found Weber ’s ideal-typical bureaucracy to be overly rational. This is not surprising, since for Weber ([1903–1917] 1949: 47) it was “not a description of reality.” Weber purposely exaggerated its degree of rationality. The ideal-typical bureaucracy is a fiction designed to serve as a reference point for the study of real-world bureaucracies. However, researchers have often overlooked the fact that this ideal type is a methodological tool and have mistaken it for an attempt to bureaucracies accurately. They have concluded that, at best, real-world organizations exhibit a limited form of rationality, or what is called bounded rationality (Collet 2009; Simon [1945] 1976; Williamson 1975, 1985). That is, rationality is limited by the instabilities and conflicts that exist in most, if not all, organizations and the domains in which they operate (Scott 2008). It is also limited by inherent limitations on humans’ capacities to think and act in a rational manner. Some members of any given organization are capable of acting more rationally than others. However, none are able to operate in anything approaching the fully rational manner associated with Weber ’s ideal-typical organization (Cyert and March 1963).describe

The Informal Organization

A great deal of research in the twentieth century focused on the informal organization, that is, how the organization actually works as opposed to the way it is supposed to work as depicted, for example, in Weber ’s ideal-typical formal bureaucracy (Blau 1963). For instance, those who occupy offices lower in the bureaucratic hierarchy often have greater knowledge of and competence in specific issues than those who rank above them. Thus, fellow employees may seek the advice of the lower-level bureaucrat rather than the one who ranks higher in the authority structure. While at variance from the ideal type, the informal organization can help to make up for inadequacies in the formal organization (Gulati and Puranam 2009). Employees sometimes do things that exceed what is expected of them by the organization. However, they more often do less, perhaps far less, than they are expected to do. For example, contrary to the dictates of the formal organization, the most important things that take place in an organization may never be put down in writing. Employees may find it simply too time-consuming to fill out every form or document they are supposed to use. Instead, and contrary to the organization’s rules, they may handle many tasks orally. In addition, employees handle some tasks orally so that if anything goes wrong there is no damning evidence that could jeopardize careers and even the organization as a whole.

Contemporary Organizational Realities

As the social world has changed, so too has sociological thinking about many things, including organizations. New concepts such as gendered and network organizations are supplementing the concept of bureaucracy to enrich our understanding of these new realities.

Gendered Organizations

Weber ’s model does not account for discrimination within organizations. In the ideal bureaucracy, any worker with the necessary training can fill any job. However, as “gendered organization” theorists such as Joan Acker (1990, 2009) have shown, bureaucracies do not treat all workers in the same way (Pager, Western, and Bonikowski 2009). Jobs are often designed for an idealized worker—one who has no obligations except to the organization. Women, who usually have the responsibility for child rearing, can have difficulty fitting this model (Williams 2001). Women often face the “competing devotions” of motherhood and work (Blair-Loy 2003; Wharton and Blair-Loy 2006). Organizations may also discriminate (consciously or unconsciously) in hiring and promotions, with white men (who tend to populate the higher levels of bureaucracies) being promoted over women and minorities (Alvesson and Due Billing 2009; Ortiz and Roscigno 2009). Some women in male-dominated business organizations find that they hit a “glass ceiling”—a certain level of authority beyond which they cannot rise (Acker 2009; Appelbaum, Asham, and Argheyd 2011; Gorman and Kmec 2009). This is also true in other contexts, such as medicine, as female surgeons have experienced (Zhuge et al. 2011). They can see the top—hence the “glass”—but cannot reach it. Within other organizations, particularly female-dominated ones, men can find themselves riding the “glass escalator” (Williams 1995). This is an invisible force that propels them past equally competent, or even more competent, women to positions of leadership and authority (Williams, Muller, and Kilanski 2012).

Societies

Sociologists have traditionally defined society as a complex pattern of social relationships that is bounded in space and persists over time (Ray 2007). This definition has two key characteristics: First, it is very abstract; second, this abstractness allows it to encompass the gamut of social relationships. Thus, in these terms, a triad (a three-person group) and any larger group would be a kind of society, as would the United States and other countries, as well as global organizations such as the United Nations and the International Monetary Fund. Ferdinand Toennies ([1887] 1957) differentiated between two broad types of societies—gemeinschaft and gesellschaft. He labeled traditional societies gemeinschaft societies and defined them as being characterized by face-to-face relations. Toennies considered families, rural villages, and small towns to be gemeinschaft societies. Such societies tend to be quite small because they are based on intimate interaction. Relationships between people are valued for their intrinsic qualities, such as familiarity and closeness, and not, or at least not merely, for their utility. Gemeinschaft societies continue to exist in many parts of the world, including the United States.

The Global Domain

Most work on the global level of social organization does not start with the concept of a society, but rather works with a different set of basic concepts. All of these concepts are consistent with the macroscopic sense of society:

A nation is a large group of people linked through common descent, culture, language, or territory. Nations can exist in contiguous geographic areas regardless of country borders. For example, the Kurds (much in the news in 2015 as they battled Islamic State) live in Kurdistan, a region that overlaps parts of Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Nations can also be spread throughout much of the world, such as the Roma people (so-called Gypsies), who live throughout Europe and increasingly in the United States.
A state is a political organizational structure with relatively autonomous officeholders (for example, in the United States, the president functions largely independent of Congress and the Supreme Court) that makes its own rules and receives its resources largely from taxes. The U.S. government would be an example of a state.
A nation-state is an entity that encompasses both the populations that define themselves as a nation and the organizational structure of the state. Israel is a nation-state, since it has a state government and encompasses a nation of Jews (although there are large numbers of Muslims in Israel and its occupied territories as well).

Of greater importance in the global age is the idea that these entities, especially the nation-state, are losing influence because of globalization and broad global processes.

Controlling Global Flows

The nation-state is under siege largely because it has lost or is losing control over a number of global flows (Cerny 2007; Ritzer and Dean 2015). In many ways, it is informationalism that threatens the nation-state. E-mail and tweets, to take two examples, flow around the world readily and quickly. There is little or nothing the nation-state can do to stop or limit those flows, although China, among others, keeps trying (see Figure 5.5 for a depiction of the levels of Internet freedom in countries around the world). During the 2011 uprisings in Egypt, the government attempted to locate an “off switch” for the Internet to prevent the flow of news and images about the protests (Russia is currently searching for such a switch). However, Egypt was unable to block them completely (Richtel 2011). There are many economic, financial, and technological flows around the world that involve information of various kinds. Global information flows have the potential to subvert the authority of nation-states because they cover a much larger geographic area than the nation-state. This is especially true of information that would cast a negative light on the nation-state. One example would be the distribution of information throughout China about the great inequality that exists there and the Chinese government’s human rights abuses.

A more specific example of the decreasing ability of nation-states to isolate themselves from global processes is the 2008 economic crisis that began in the United States and cascaded rapidly around the world. Dramatic drops in the U.S. stock market were followed by declines in many other stock markets. Similarly, bank failures in the United States were quickly followed by even more ruinous bank failures in other countries. This series of events illustrates the importance and power of global flows and demonstrates the inability of the nation-state to do much, if anything, to limit their impact within its borders on its economy and the lives of its citizens. “In a global financial system, national borders are porous” (Landler 2008: C1). Global economic flows move more quickly than ever, if not instantaneously, and are so fluid that they are difficult if not impossible to stop with the barriers available to nation-states.

The organization Islamic State has been very adept at using various types of media in a recruitment effort that reaches many parts of the world. Its communications are designed to transcend national boundaries in order to attract new supporters, who, the group hopes, will help force the creation of a new nation-state, a caliphate. Among other things, IS has released videos of threatened and actual beheadings, has been active on social media including Twitter, and has made imitations of popular video games and movies. Countries in which IS has been successful in finding recruits, such as France, England, and even the United States, would dearly love to stop its call to arms, but that is literally impossible given the nature of modern technology. Information and economic flows are just two of the many global flows that nation-states cannot control. Among the others are flows of undocumented immigrants, new social movements, expertise in various domains, terrorists, criminals, drugs, money (including laundered money and other financial instruments), and human trafficking. Then there are global problems such as HIV/AIDS, flu, tuberculosis, and the effects of climate change that flow around the world readily and cannot be handled very well by a nation-state operating on its own. The nation-state has become increasingly porous, but the fact is that no nation-state has ever been able to exercise complete control over its borders (Bauman 1992). For example, people’s ability to travel from one European country to another was largely unimpeded until the World War I era, when passports were introduced on a large scale for the first time. It is not the porosity of the nation-state that is new, but rather the dramatic increase in that porosity.

Thus, the largest unit of analysis in sociology has now become the globe, and especially the global flows that best define globalization today. The concept of globalization appears throughout this book in an informal sense, but it is now time for a formal definition: Globalization is “a trans-planetary process or set of processes involving increasing liquidity and the growing multidirectional flows of people, objects, places, and information as well as the structures they encounter and create that are barriers to, or expedite, those flows” (Ritzer and Dean 2015: 2; see also Chapter 14). Clearly, this is a view that goes beyond the nation-state and sees it as enmeshed in and subordinated to a global set of flows and structures.

Other Global Flows

Globalization is increasingly characterized by great flows of not just information, ideas, and images but also objects and people. For example, food now flows more quickly and to more people around the world. Examples of foods sold in locales far from their sources include fresh fruit from Chile (Goldfrank 2005), fresh sushi from Japan, and live lobsters from Maine. Looking at a very different kind of flow, migration within countries and from one country to another has become more common as well. In addition, other kinds of physical objects are becoming increasingly liquid and thus able to flow more easily. Not long ago, we might have been amazed by our ability to order a book from Amazon and receive it via an express package delivery system in as little as a day. That method, however, now seems sluggish compared with the speed of downloading that book in seconds on a wireless device such as Amazon’s Kindle or Apple’s iPad. That level of liquidity and flow is a major aspect of, as well as a major contributor to, globalization. Even places can be said to be flowing around the world. One example is the global spread of chains of nearly identical fast-food restaurants.

Landscapes

Although global flows and globalization contribute to some degree of homogenization of the social experience around the world, they also contribute to greater global cultural diversity and heterogeneity. A very important contribution to thinking on the latter aspects of global flows is Arjun Appadurai’s (1996) work on what he calls landscapes—scapes for short. These are fluid, irregular, and variable global flows that produce different results throughout the world. These scapes can involve the flow of many different things, including people and ideas. There are five types of landscapes that operate independent of one another to some degree, and may even conflict with one another:

Ethnoscapes allow the movement, or fantasies about movement, of various individuals and groups, such as tourists and refugees.
The ethnoscape of undocumented immigrants is of particular concern these days. They are often poor people who have in the main been forced to move because of poverty and poor job prospects in their home countries. They have also moved because of the belief, sometimes the fantasy, that economic conditions will be better for them elsewhere in the world, especially in the more developed countries of the United States and Western Europe.
Technoscapes include mechanical technologies such as the containerized ships now used to transport freight, informational technologies such as the Internet, and the materials, such as refrigerators and e-mail, that move so quickly and freely throughout the world via those technologies.
Financescapes use various financial instruments to allow huge sums of money and other items of economic value (like stocks, bonds, and precious metals, especially gold) to move through nations and around the world at great speed, almost instantaneously.
Mediascapes include both the electronic capability to produce and transmit information around the world and the images of the world that these media create and disseminate. Those who write on Facebook walls, tweet, blog and download photos (e.g., on Flickr) and videos (e.g., on YouTube), global filmmakers and film distributors, and global TV networks (such as CNN and Al Jazeera) create a variety of mediascapes.
Ideoscapes, like mediascapes, include images, although they are largely restricted to political images in line with the ideologies of nation-states. Also included here are images and counterideologies produced by social movements oriented toward supplanting those in power or at least gaining a portion of that power. Thus, for example, the United States has one ideoscape that disseminates negative images and information about Islamic State; in turn, IS has an ideoscape that responds with similarly negative images and information about the United States. News conferences by the U.S. president attacking IS’s terrorism are met by videotapes by IS leaders critiquing American imperialism. Ideoscapes may be disseminated through mediascapes and technoscapes.

Global Barriers

The globe and the flows that increasingly pervade it are of central concern to sociology. However, there is another aspect of globalization that is of growing concern, and that is the various global barriers to these flows. The world is made up of not just a series of flows but also structures such as trade agreements, regulatory agencies, borders, customs barriers, and standards (Inda and Rosaldo 2008). Any thoroughgoing account of globalization needs to look at the ways in which structures alter and even block flows as well as produce and enhance them. In other words, there is interplay between flows and structures, especially between flows and the structures that are created in attempts to inhibit or stop them (Shamir 2005). As mentioned above, the most important and most obvious barriers to global flows are those constructed by nation-states, in spite of nation-states’ greater porosity. There are borders, gates, guards, passport controls, customs agents, health inspectors, trade regulations, and so on in most countries in the world. Although undocumented immigrants, contraband goods, and digitized messages do get through those barriers, some other phenomena (e.g., the sale of key companies to foreign entities) that nation-states deem counter to their national interests are successfully blocked or impeded.

Are Global Barriers Effective?

However, many of the barriers created by nation-states are not effective. For instance, it is highly doubtful that the very expensive fence that has been constructed between Mexico and the United States, combined with the use of cameras, lights, satellites, and drones, will be able to curtail the flow of undocumented immigrants to the United States. It has become more difficult, costly, and dangerous to enter the country illegally, but the fence has not stopped such entry. Moreover, the fence has had the unintended consequence of making it harder for Mexican nationals who are already in the United States illegally to move back to Mexico. The fence between Spain’s African enclave—Melilla—and Morocco has not stopped some migrants, who have scaled it to gain entry to Spain and thereby to the EU (Associated Press 2014). Similarly, it is not clear whether the wall between Israel and the West Bank (or the more recently erected wall between Israel and Egypt) will stop the flow of terrorists into Israel the next time hostilities in the Middle East flare up. On the positive side, the wall is not stopping Palestinians and Israelis from communicating person to person via digital media, as the “Digital Living” box (above) demonstrates. While there is no wall around the Gaza Strip, there is a closely watched and guarded wire fence. Nevertheless, in 2014 the Israelis discovered that Hamas fighters had dug numerous tunnels that they used to commit terrorist acts in Israel. In spite of all of the problems with border fences, Bulgaria is currently building a fence in an effort to keep out refugees from Turkey (Lyman 2015). In the European Union, barriers to movement between member countries have been greatly reduced, if not eliminated. The EU has created a structure that allows people (including, unfortunately, terrorists) and products (including, regrettably, illicit drugs and weapons) to move much more freely and quickly throughout Europe. However, in late 2015 the flood of refugees from Syria and elsewhere caused some EU countries, most notably Hungary, to reinstitute such barriers. It remains to be seen whether this is only a temporary development or whether these reconstituted barriers will become long-term realities in at least some EU countries.

Organizational Barriers

There are many different kinds of organizations that, though they may expedite flows for some, create all sorts of barriers for others. For example, nation-states create protectionist tariff systems (Reuveny and Thompson 2001) that help their own farms to send agricultural products (such as wheat) and their manufacturers to send goods (such as automobiles) across the borders of other nation-states while inhibiting the inflow of goods from their foreign competition. Another example is found in the two-tier system of passport control at international airports, where citizens usually pass through quickly and easily while foreigners wait in long lines. Multinational corporations use market competition rather than trade policies to achieve similar results. Toyota, for instance, is devoted to optimizing the flow of its automobiles to all possible markets throughout the world. It also seeks to compete with and outperform other multinational corporations in the automobile business. If it is successful, the flow of automobiles from competing corporations is greatly reduced, further advantaging Toyota. Labor unions are also organizations devoted to promoting the flow of some things while working against the flow of others (Bronfenbrenner 2007). Unions often oppose, for example, the flow of undocumented immigrants because they are likely to work for lower pay and fewer benefits (e.g., health insurance) than indigenous, unionized workers. Similarly, labor unions oppose the flow of goods produced in nonunion shops, in other countries as well as their own. They do so because the success of nonunion shops puts downward pressure on wages and benefits. This adversely affects unionized shops and, in turn, hurts the union and its members. On the other hand, many employers are willing to hire undocumented immigrant labor despite laws against their doing so. Because these laborers lack documentation, they are easy to exploit. Employers can threaten to deport them if they demand higher wages and better working conditions or attempt to organize.

More Open Organizations

Organizations of many types that seek to control global flows are facing increasing competition from organizations that are becoming more fluid and open. The bestknown computer operating systems are produced by Microsoft (whose latest version is Windows 10). They cost a great deal and are closed. Only those who work for the company can, at least legally, work on and modify them. In contrast, IBM, a traditional closed organization, has embraced Linux, a free computer operating system that welcomes changes contributed by anyone in the world with the needed skills. IBM has also opened up more and more of its own operations to outside inputs. Another example is Apple, which has traditionally kept its Macintosh operating system closed but is now allowing outsiders to produce applications for its iPhone and iPad. Many other manufacturers of smartphones have followed suit. The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia and wikis more generally encourage virtually anyone, anywhere in the world, to contribute. In contrast, traditional and very costly dictionaries such as Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary and encyclopedias like Encyclopedia Britannica and the Encyclopedia of Sociology (Ritzer 2007a, forthcoming) are closed to contributions from anyone other than selected and invited experts. Even with the new open systems, structural realities help some and hinder others. For example, to contribute to Linux or Wikipedia, one must have a computer, computer expertise, and access, preferably high-speed access, to the Internet. Clearly, those without economic advantages—people in the lower classes in developed countries and people who live in the less developed countries of the Global South—are on the other side of the “digital divide” and do not have access to the required tools. As a result, they are unable to contribute to, or to gain from, open systems to the same degree as those in more privileged positions. The fact that women are less likely than men to contribute to Wikipedia suggests that there are additional social factors to be considered here as well (Cohen 2011). This further suggests that women in the Global South are doubly disadvantaged when it comes to access to these open systems—and much else. Thus, despite the new openness, most organizations and systems remain closed to various flows. These barriers usually benefit some (elites, males) and disadvantage others (the poor, females).

Summary

Much sociological work on organizations is based on Max Weber ’s model of bureaucracy. However, one criticism of this model is that bureaucracies are not as highly rational as Weber believed. Their rationality is limited by the instabilities and conflicts that exist in organizations. McDonaldization has become an increasingly important model for organizations seeking to operate more rationally. This model is applicable both to large corporations and the relatively small outlets that are crucial parts of these organizations and to organizations increasingly devoted to consumption rather than just production. Compared with classic bureaucracies, networks are less hierarchical, more open and flexible, and more capable of expansion and innovation. The next level of social organization on the micro–macro continuum is the society, a large population that lives in a given territory, has a social structure, and shares a culture. Talcott Parsons identified several structures particularly important to modern societies, including the economy, the political system, the systems responsible for transmitting culture and its norms and values, and the legal system. A key recent change is the shift from industrial to risk societies. A key structure in global analysis is the nation-state, which combines the organizational structure of the state and a population that defines itself as a nation of people with shared characteristics. However, the nation-state as a form of social organization is under siege because of global flows over which it has little control —for example, flows of information, economic phenomena, and new social movements. Consequently, sociologists are coming to focus more attention on the global domain, the process of globalization, and in particular the global flows that best define globalization. Arjun Appadurai focuses on five different types of global landscapes, or scapes. There are also limits to global flows, mainly created by macro-level entities like nation-states and labor unions.

Reference

Ritzer, G. (2016). Essentials of sociology.(2nd ed., pp. 100-119)